4 ms·

This reminds me of a literary test to vote. In this case it's: "Here's our news story. Answer some questions to be sure you understand OUR point of view, the wo

This reminds me of a literary test to vote. In this case it's: "Here's our news story. Answer some questions to be sure you understand OUR point of view, the words and ideas WE want you to acquiesce, in order to express your so-called opinion." Ungood.

anotheryou 9y ago
Really depends on the wording. "What does this remind him of? - a literary test to vote" vs "This is like a ...? - literary test to vote"
pmarreck 9y ago
Would you really want illiterate voters, though?
- ice109 9y ago
  are you like totally ignorant of how literary tests (and poll taxes) were used to disenfranchise minorities
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    if all the literate people were male and all the illiterate people were female, requiring literacy would not necessarily be sexism. you're conflating 2 different things. as did they. perhaps it did exclude more recently-emancipated black people. oh well. requiring literacy for something as important as an election is not obstructionist, IMHO The fee you mentioned, however, is, IMHO. if I had to hire a scientist for a job and the only applicants that were qualified enough were white males, hiring a white male would not make me a racist sexist. i look forward to the day when people just stop trying to correlate everything both positive and negative to race, gender, age, and any other attribute other than "are you a good person" and "can you do this job well"
    - warrenm 9y ago
      If it were universally applied, evaluated identically each time, and then used a clear pass/fail manner, you would be right. For example, the mathematical answer to "1 + 1 = ?" can be evaluated objectively. But those "literacy" weren't anything even close to similar.
      - pmarreck 9y ago
        People are biased dicks. I know.
    - ice109 9y ago
      >i look forward to the day when people just stop trying to correlate everything both positive and negative to race, gender, age, and any other attribute other than "are you a good person" and "can you do this job well" completely abstracted of the rest of history maybe that'd be possible. the problem is that black people in antebellum south were prevented from learning to read. so really it went something like: let's not teach black to read and then require literacy in order to vote. >oh well. requiring literacy for something as important as an election is not obstructionist, IMHO i would gladly wager that an overwhelming majority of voters don't read more than 10,000 words about any given election and get most of their data from television/radio/speech. so tell me why literacy is of paramount importance?
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  Overtonwindow is referring to historical policies in parts of the US that were used to suppress the black vote. These had nothing to do with actually ensuring a literate electorate. White voters were often either exempt from the tests altogether or held to a much lower standard. The concern is something like wording the questions to be ideological shibboleths to let the "right sort of people" comment rather than checking for awareness of specific facts or claims.
- reificator 9y ago
  This response is why such measures were so effective. Many of the tests were so subjective they could simply fail anyone they wanted to. Especially certain groups who had just recently gained the power to vote.
icebraining 9y ago
Even with your wording, it doesn't seem that bad. Shouldn't the reader understand the POV of the author? Even if - or especially if - one considers the author's position as wrong or evil?
chrchang523 9y ago
US state voting literacy tests were problematic because (i) the criteria for being able to skip the test tended to be racially discriminatory and (ii) it wasn't practical for most of the affected citizens to move to a state which treated them better. (i) does not apply; regardless of whether you intend to argue for or against a point made in the article, you're responsible for knowing the same things about what the publishers think they said. Furthermore, even oarsman:regatta-style test bias is of negligible relevance because (ii) also does not apply; as we can see from the 2016 election results, enough people "disenfranchised" by NYT/WP/etc. policies were able to communicate effectively in other Internet venues to produce a catastrophic outcome for the old gatekeepers. Most of the Internet comments that produced 2016 were either written by folks who'd easily pass this sort of test, or on venues that won't add this sort of test in the future; I wouldn't worry about the impact of this on dissent. If you want to fight against anything a specific media organization does, fight against selective reporting/censorship [1]; but it's not a big deal, the Internet has demonstrated itself up to the challenge of routing around it. 1: If you have a signal with 0s and 1s, and a filter that lets only the 1s through, what is the information content of the original signal? The filtered signal? Incidentally, this is also a major problem in science today.

anotheryou 9y ago

Really depends on the wording. "What does this remind him of? - a literary test to vote" vs "This is like a ...? - literary test to vote"

pmarreck 9y ago

Would you really want illiterate voters, though?

ice109 9y ago
are you like totally ignorant of how literary tests (and poll taxes) were used to disenfranchise minorities
- pmarreck 9y ago
  if all the literate people were male and all the illiterate people were female, requiring literacy would not necessarily be sexism. you're conflating 2 different things. as did they. perhaps it did exclude more recently-emancipated black people. oh well. requiring literacy for something as important as an election is not obstructionist, IMHO The fee you mentioned, however, is, IMHO. if I had to hire a scientist for a job and the only applicants that were qualified enough were white males, hiring a white male would not make me a racist sexist. i look forward to the day when people just stop trying to correlate everything both positive and negative to race, gender, age, and any other attribute other than "are you a good person" and "can you do this job well"
  - warrenm 9y ago
    If it were universally applied, evaluated identically each time, and then used a clear pass/fail manner, you would be right. For example, the mathematical answer to "1 + 1 = ?" can be evaluated objectively. But those "literacy" weren't anything even close to similar.
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      People are biased dicks. I know.
  - ice109 9y ago
    >i look forward to the day when people just stop trying to correlate everything both positive and negative to race, gender, age, and any other attribute other than "are you a good person" and "can you do this job well" completely abstracted of the rest of history maybe that'd be possible. the problem is that black people in antebellum south were prevented from learning to read. so really it went something like: let's not teach black to read and then require literacy in order to vote. >oh well. requiring literacy for something as important as an election is not obstructionist, IMHO i would gladly wager that an overwhelming majority of voters don't read more than 10,000 words about any given election and get most of their data from television/radio/speech. so tell me why literacy is of paramount importance?
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
Overtonwindow is referring to historical policies in parts of the US that were used to suppress the black vote. These had nothing to do with actually ensuring a literate electorate. White voters were often either exempt from the tests altogether or held to a much lower standard. The concern is something like wording the questions to be ideological shibboleths to let the "right sort of people" comment rather than checking for awareness of specific facts or claims.
reificator 9y ago
This response is why such measures were so effective. Many of the tests were so subjective they could simply fail anyone they wanted to. Especially certain groups who had just recently gained the power to vote.

icebraining 9y ago

Even with your wording, it doesn't seem that bad. Shouldn't the reader understand the POV of the author? Even if - or especially if - one considers the author's position as wrong or evil?

chrchang523 9y ago

US state voting literacy tests were problematic because (i) the criteria for being able to skip the test tended to be racially discriminatory and (ii) it wasn't practical for most of the affected citizens to move to a state which treated them better. (i) does not apply; regardless of whether you intend to argue for or against a point made in the article, you're responsible for knowing the same things about what the publishers think they said. Furthermore, even oarsman:regatta-style test bias is of negligible relevance because (ii) also does not apply; as we can see from the 2016 election results, enough people "disenfranchised" by NYT/WP/etc. policies were able to communicate effectively in other Internet venues to produce a catastrophic outcome for the old gatekeepers. Most of the Internet comments that produced 2016 were either written by folks who'd easily pass this sort of test, or on venues that won't add this sort of test in the future; I wouldn't worry about the impact of this on dissent. If you want to fight against anything a specific media organization does, fight against selective reporting/censorship [1]; but it's not a big deal, the Internet has demonstrated itself up to the challenge of routing around it. 1: If you have a signal with 0s and 1s, and a filter that lets only the 1s through, what is the information content of the original signal? The filtered signal? Incidentally, this is also a major problem in science today.