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Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". Global adult literacy rates have been drastically improving since the 1950s (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy

Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". Global adult literacy rates have been drastically improving since the 1950s (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy https://ourworldindata.org/literacy). Today, global adult literacy rate is estimated at ~87%. I -think- this is the appropiate interactive plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reaching-sufficient-reading-comprehension-by-the-end-of-lower-secondary-age https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-children-reachin... The controls are annoying, but world level data only goes back to 2000: * 2000: 38% * 2005: 41% * 2010: 45% * 2015: 47% * 2019: 48.5% (this is the closest point)

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". And one would argue that comprehension is more essential than ever, since every last thing you do in the modern world and nearly every product you interact with comes with a pages-long terms and conditions document in which you get the funny stuff like the inability to use iTunes to make nuclear weapons, and far more importantly, how a number of large platform services reserve the right to sell your soul to as many devils as they can. Like, on balance, I'm doing okay in life. I could have more savings put away but ultimately I have a good job in tech, I own a home, and basically have all my essentials handled with a side of a few toys to tinker on. I cannot fathom how I could get my life functioning without strong reading skills. It's... it's literally everything, it's communication in my office since I'm remote, it's filing taxes correctly, it's interacting with my local government, hell writing is a side hobby of mine and has been all my life. I can't fucking imagine what kind of utter hell it must be to even only be literate, let alone illiterate.
- relaxing 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - realce 2y ago
    https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-highly-educated/ https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-hig... >Germany had the world’s finest elementary school system, the highest literacy rate and the best universities; by 1913 more books were published annually in Germany than in any country in the world. Believing that authoritarianism stems from lack of education is a flawed ideology.
    - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
      IIRC, the lead up to WW2 was incredible poverty, and debt to France and others following WW1. So it was easier to just go to war than pay back the debt.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      Pretty much. People thinking "another Hitler can't happen in this day and age" have no idea.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      That’s not what I said. It’s frustration with a system that’s set up to work against you. Is that not a fair assessment of the US political climate?
      - realce 2y ago
        Sorry, I didn't mean to nitpick. I totally agree with you about the frustration, but I also wanted to highlight how authoritarian governments aren't simply the outcome of general social stupidity or a lack of education. IMO that's somewhat of an elitist or champagne-socialist scapegoat and simplification. A notable point would also be that the USSR had an authoritarian government while also maintaining a near 100% literacy rate and an exceptional regard for education. Apologies if I misrepresented your statement.
        peterfirefly 2y ago
        > while also maintaining a near 100% literacy rate And totally honest official statistics!
- polishdude20 2y ago
  This makes me think of how neuralink and Elon keep saying how their tech will revolutionize communication where people without it will seem so slow and utterly disadvantaged. Literacy and comprehension allows vast amounts of data to be transferred between humans. Anything that increases that even more will be a game changer and really bad for those who won't have it.
  - callalex 2y ago
    He also said cars would drive themselves in 2017, so you probably shouldn't listen to anything he has to say. https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/ https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      It's almost like he is not and has never been an actual engineer or something.
      - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
        I challenge you to say one nice thing about Musk’s achievements.
        callalex 2y ago
        He is legally the “founder” of Tesla.
        ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        I'll get back to you when he has one. Like seriously, I'm being glib, but also, what fucking achievements? He considers PayPal a failure because it never matured into his everything app. Tesla? The Tesla model S, X, and 3 were all blueprinted by Tesla before he bought it from it's actual founders and ratfucked them out of the company. The only vehicle that's seriously got his influence in it's design is the Cybertruck, and it's a complete shitpile. The Tesla semi has been a complete nothingburger since it's announcement, and he paid a TikTok performer to be his robot on stage because their robots suck ass too. Space X does alright, but they also are using tons of upcycled NASA patents and designs, and while their contributions certainly are far from nothing, that's not Musk. That's the engineers Musk hired. The Boring company is a complete fucking con job, end to end. It's only actual product has been a tunnel full of cars from his other stupid company, and flamethrowers. And again, as with Space X, as with Tesla: he didn't do shit. His engineers did. His marketers did. In fact two of these organizations are rumored to have dedicated teams of people who manage Elon's stupid tendencies so they don't sink the company. And Twitter! Holy fuck where do you START. I fully grant the above are only rumors, but it's rather borne out by the fact that Twitter definitely didn't have an Elon wrangling team, and it shows. He's cratered it to be worth less than 10% of what it was when he bought it. It's gone from being the "worlds front page" stuffed to the gills with ads from prominent brands offering real products to just a higher budget, better engineered Info Wars, complete with the Nazis and the ads for dick supplements every 3 posts as they try desperately to break even in the budget. Meanwhile, "free speech absolutist" Musk bans people for being mean to him and invites folks openly exposed as Russian disinformation discriminators back to what's left of Twitter. And, at a time when the company was already struggling, he got into a pointless fucking pissing match with the city of San Francisco putting up an enormous stupid X on the building which he was eventually made to take down anyway. So like, you challenge me to say a nice thing about Elon's achievements? Okay, but I need your help, because I don't know about any. Let me know of one, and I'll say something nice about it. I don't know if you'd call this an achievement, but I will say he has offered everyone watching for it a first-class lesson in how being a billionare makes you medically incapable of relating to anyone and anything who isn't bending over backwards to tell you how amazing you are. He literally cannot handle any criticism, which is a problem because everything he touches turns to shit in one way or another. And the worst part is our system, as setup, is incapable of holding him to account for any of it. If everything he has goes down in flames, Tesla, X, Space X, Boring, the LOT, he will STILL be worth more than me and my friends will earn in our entire lifetimes. And for DOING WHAT? Making WHAT? Achieving WHAT? If he wasn't the son of an Aparthied emerald mine owner, and didn't have daddy's money to get him started in investing, nobody would know who this fucking weirdo is, and nobody would care. He would be exactly like his fans: socially maladjusted weirdos screaming about white replacement theory on web forums.
nabla9 2y ago
The concept of literacy itself means more than "able to read." (aka alphabetical literacy meaning word and letter recognition). Literacy is the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential. International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) has five levels. Only 50% of U.S. adults age 16 to 65 are level 3 or above. Level 3: >Texts at this level are often dense or lengthy and include continuous, noncontinuous, mixed, or multiple pages of text. Understanding text and rhetorical structures becomes more central to successfully completing tasks, especially navigating complex digital texts. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information and often require varying levels of inference. Many tasks require the respondent to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. Often, tasks also demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate content to answer accurately. Competing information is often present, but it is not more prominent than the correct information.
- vundercind 2y ago
  I've come to think that a good chunk of the resistance to written-word-heavy remote work, and to the phenomenon of "let's just hop on a quick call" where the alternative was pretty likely to be a much quicker IM exchange, is due to this exact thing—not just that a lot of people can't read at that level-3 proficiency, but that another cohort can, but finds that the absolute limit of their ability and quite taxing, leaving well more than half of the population uncomfortable in a professional reading- and writing-heavy environment, if not wholly incapable of working in it at all.
  - yesco 2y ago
    To add another angle: in the past I've experienced issues where I'd always butt heads with a co-worker if we used a messenger, but would be fine when we talked over a call. I'm sure a higher reading comprehension from a certain someone could maybe have helped with that, but I suspect much of it just comes down to the fact that a lot of nuance/tone is lost when thoughts are put into writing, which makes it easier to offend people. At work, arguing with people is the last thing I want to deal with, so calls are sometimes the simplest way to cut through the bullshit.
westurner 2y ago
SDG reports have literacy stats, Goal 4: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4#targets_and_indicators https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4#targets_and_indicators Target 4.6: By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy Indicator 4.6.1: Proportion of population in a given age group achieving at least a fixed level of proficiency in functional (a) literacy and (b) numeracy skills, by sex SDG4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4 SDG4 > Target 4.6: Universal literacy and numeracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4#Target_4.6:_Universal_literacy_and_numeracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4... The UN Stats 2024 Statistical Annex says there's no data for 4.6.1 since 2020? https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2024/E_2024_54_Statistical_Annex_I_and_II.pdf https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2024/E_2024_54_Stat... SDG e-Handbook re: Target 4.6.1: https://unstats.un.org/wiki/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=35291733#content/view/35291733 https://unstats.un.org/wiki/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId... World Bank data series: SE.ADT.LITR.ZS, https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/millennium-development-goals/series/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/millennium-d... FRED Series > Literacy Rate, Adult Total for the World (SEADTLITRZSWLD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SEADTLITRZSWLD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SEADTLITRZSWLD There is no Literacy Rate data for the United States in World Bank or in FRED according to a quick search. Literacy in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States The National Literacy Institute > Literacy Statistics 2024 - 2025 : https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s... > On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024. > 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. > 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). > Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year. But what about comprehension? Reading comprehension: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Comprehension is a higher bar than "literacy". And one would argue that comprehension is more essential than ever, since every last thing you do in the modern world and nearly every product you interact with comes with a pages-long terms and conditions document in which you get the funny stuff like the inability to use iTunes to make nuclear weapons, and far more importantly, how a number of large platform services reserve the right to sell your soul to as many devils as they can. Like, on balance, I'm doing okay in life. I could have more savings put away but ultimately I have a good job in tech, I own a home, and basically have all my essentials handled with a side of a few toys to tinker on. I cannot fathom how I could get my life functioning without strong reading skills. It's... it's literally everything, it's communication in my office since I'm remote, it's filing taxes correctly, it's interacting with my local government, hell writing is a side hobby of mine and has been all my life. I can't fucking imagine what kind of utter hell it must be to even only be literate, let alone illiterate.

relaxing 2y ago
[flagged]
- realce 2y ago
  https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-highly-educated/ https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/10/nazi-germany-was-hig... >Germany had the world’s finest elementary school system, the highest literacy rate and the best universities; by 1913 more books were published annually in Germany than in any country in the world. Believing that authoritarianism stems from lack of education is a flawed ideology.
  - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
    IIRC, the lead up to WW2 was incredible poverty, and debt to France and others following WW1. So it was easier to just go to war than pay back the debt.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    Pretty much. People thinking "another Hitler can't happen in this day and age" have no idea.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    That’s not what I said. It’s frustration with a system that’s set up to work against you. Is that not a fair assessment of the US political climate?
    - realce 2y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to nitpick. I totally agree with you about the frustration, but I also wanted to highlight how authoritarian governments aren't simply the outcome of general social stupidity or a lack of education. IMO that's somewhat of an elitist or champagne-socialist scapegoat and simplification. A notable point would also be that the USSR had an authoritarian government while also maintaining a near 100% literacy rate and an exceptional regard for education. Apologies if I misrepresented your statement.
      - peterfirefly 2y ago
        > while also maintaining a near 100% literacy rate And totally honest official statistics!
polishdude20 2y ago
This makes me think of how neuralink and Elon keep saying how their tech will revolutionize communication where people without it will seem so slow and utterly disadvantaged. Literacy and comprehension allows vast amounts of data to be transferred between humans. Anything that increases that even more will be a game changer and really bad for those who won't have it.
- callalex 2y ago
  He also said cars would drive themselves in 2017, so you probably shouldn't listen to anything he has to say. https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/ https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    It's almost like he is not and has never been an actual engineer or something.
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      I challenge you to say one nice thing about Musk’s achievements.
      - callalex 2y ago
        He is legally the “founder” of Tesla.
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        I'll get back to you when he has one. Like seriously, I'm being glib, but also, what fucking achievements? He considers PayPal a failure because it never matured into his everything app. Tesla? The Tesla model S, X, and 3 were all blueprinted by Tesla before he bought it from it's actual founders and ratfucked them out of the company. The only vehicle that's seriously got his influence in it's design is the Cybertruck, and it's a complete shitpile. The Tesla semi has been a complete nothingburger since it's announcement, and he paid a TikTok performer to be his robot on stage because their robots suck ass too. Space X does alright, but they also are using tons of upcycled NASA patents and designs, and while their contributions certainly are far from nothing, that's not Musk. That's the engineers Musk hired. The Boring company is a complete fucking con job, end to end. It's only actual product has been a tunnel full of cars from his other stupid company, and flamethrowers. And again, as with Space X, as with Tesla: he didn't do shit. His engineers did. His marketers did. In fact two of these organizations are rumored to have dedicated teams of people who manage Elon's stupid tendencies so they don't sink the company. And Twitter! Holy fuck where do you START. I fully grant the above are only rumors, but it's rather borne out by the fact that Twitter definitely didn't have an Elon wrangling team, and it shows. He's cratered it to be worth less than 10% of what it was when he bought it. It's gone from being the "worlds front page" stuffed to the gills with ads from prominent brands offering real products to just a higher budget, better engineered Info Wars, complete with the Nazis and the ads for dick supplements every 3 posts as they try desperately to break even in the budget. Meanwhile, "free speech absolutist" Musk bans people for being mean to him and invites folks openly exposed as Russian disinformation discriminators back to what's left of Twitter. And, at a time when the company was already struggling, he got into a pointless fucking pissing match with the city of San Francisco putting up an enormous stupid X on the building which he was eventually made to take down anyway. So like, you challenge me to say a nice thing about Elon's achievements? Okay, but I need your help, because I don't know about any. Let me know of one, and I'll say something nice about it. I don't know if you'd call this an achievement, but I will say he has offered everyone watching for it a first-class lesson in how being a billionare makes you medically incapable of relating to anyone and anything who isn't bending over backwards to tell you how amazing you are. He literally cannot handle any criticism, which is a problem because everything he touches turns to shit in one way or another. And the worst part is our system, as setup, is incapable of holding him to account for any of it. If everything he has goes down in flames, Tesla, X, Space X, Boring, the LOT, he will STILL be worth more than me and my friends will earn in our entire lifetimes. And for DOING WHAT? Making WHAT? Achieving WHAT? If he wasn't the son of an Aparthied emerald mine owner, and didn't have daddy's money to get him started in investing, nobody would know who this fucking weirdo is, and nobody would care. He would be exactly like his fans: socially maladjusted weirdos screaming about white replacement theory on web forums.

nabla9 2y ago

The concept of literacy itself means more than "able to read." (aka alphabetical literacy meaning word and letter recognition). Literacy is the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential. International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) has five levels. Only 50% of U.S. adults age 16 to 65 are level 3 or above. Level 3: >Texts at this level are often dense or lengthy and include continuous, noncontinuous, mixed, or multiple pages of text. Understanding text and rhetorical structures becomes more central to successfully completing tasks, especially navigating complex digital texts. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information and often require varying levels of inference. Many tasks require the respondent to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. Often, tasks also demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate content to answer accurately. Competing information is often present, but it is not more prominent than the correct information.

vundercind 2y ago
I've come to think that a good chunk of the resistance to written-word-heavy remote work, and to the phenomenon of "let's just hop on a quick call" where the alternative was pretty likely to be a much quicker IM exchange, is due to this exact thing—not just that a lot of people can't read at that level-3 proficiency, but that another cohort can, but finds that the absolute limit of their ability and quite taxing, leaving well more than half of the population uncomfortable in a professional reading- and writing-heavy environment, if not wholly incapable of working in it at all.
- yesco 2y ago
  To add another angle: in the past I've experienced issues where I'd always butt heads with a co-worker if we used a messenger, but would be fine when we talked over a call. I'm sure a higher reading comprehension from a certain someone could maybe have helped with that, but I suspect much of it just comes down to the fact that a lot of nuance/tone is lost when thoughts are put into writing, which makes it easier to offend people. At work, arguing with people is the last thing I want to deal with, so calls are sometimes the simplest way to cut through the bullshit.

westurner 2y ago

SDG reports have literacy stats, Goal 4: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4#targets_and_indicators https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4#targets_and_indicators Target 4.6: By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy Indicator 4.6.1: Proportion of population in a given age group achieving at least a fixed level of proficiency in functional (a) literacy and (b) numeracy skills, by sex SDG4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4 SDG4 > Target 4.6: Universal literacy and numeracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4#Target_4.6:_Universal_literacy_and_numeracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_4... The UN Stats 2024 Statistical Annex says there's no data for 4.6.1 since 2020? https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2024/E_2024_54_Statistical_Annex_I_and_II.pdf https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2024/E_2024_54_Stat... SDG e-Handbook re: Target 4.6.1: https://unstats.un.org/wiki/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=35291733#content/view/35291733 https://unstats.un.org/wiki/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId... World Bank data series: SE.ADT.LITR.ZS, https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/millennium-development-goals/series/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/millennium-d... FRED Series > Literacy Rate, Adult Total for the World (SEADTLITRZSWLD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SEADTLITRZSWLD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SEADTLITRZSWLD There is no Literacy Rate data for the United States in World Bank or in FRED according to a quick search. Literacy in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States The National Literacy Institute > Literacy Statistics 2024 - 2025 : https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s... > On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024. > 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. > 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). > Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year. But what about comprehension? Reading comprehension: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_comprehension

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]