I still struggle to believe it, but it does shed some light on previously-mysterious phenomena. IIRC the high-school-graduate equivalent adult literacy rate fr

I still struggle to believe it, but it does shed some light on previously-mysterious phenomena. IIRC the high-school-graduate equivalent adult literacy rate from similar studies—as in, possessing reading skills that we hope a high school graduate would have, which basically equates to being able to read two moderate-length, moderate-complexity texts and understand them well enough to synthesize a description of their positions, and how they agree and differ—isn't much more than 20%. Four out of five people you encounter are going through life constantly struggling to understand WTF is happening or what they're supposed to do and getting by on a lot of guesswork, while all continually mis-communicating with one another. Really explains a lot.