Atlantis
03-19-2021, 09:16 PM
The average American gets a 500 on the SAT verbal meaning that they only understand around half of what they read in a short text that's less than a page long. The 500 scorer misses almost all of the harder questions about inferences, contradictions, assumptions.
The average American has strong political opinions and thinks their side is right and the other side is wrong and is pretty closed-minded about it. But society, economics, politics, science are way more complex than a single sat passage. You don't have to just sit and read one page, but understand the world in all its complexity. But that world still has to be understood through language, so being well-informed about politics and having an accurate understanding of the world has a lot to do with one's reading comprehension skills.
But it's a demonstrated fact that the average American only understands half of what they read in passages that are specifically written to eliminate as much ambiguity and confusion as possible - otherwise, there wouldn't be any basis for saying there's a right answer or a wrong answer to actually grade the test.
So the average Joe should be humble and always doubting and questioning whether his knowledge of the world is accurate, unbiased, and reasonable. Because it's likely to be full of biases, inaccurate and unreasonable because the world is extremely complex and they've got objective evidence showing that they can't understand subtle nuances in reasoning that are tested on the SAT verbal.
But they aren't. They're sure of themselves. They think their political views are right, and they're sure that the other side is wrong, and the average Joe votes and determines the course of our nation.
People who are bad at math admit that they're bad at it - they don't pretend like they're good at it. People who are bad at sports admit that they're bad at it. People who are bad at trading stocks lose money and eventually stop doing it. But why do people who are bad at or only average at reading comprehension think that their political opinions are well-founded when the accuracy of their political opinions are basically a direct reflection of reading comprehension, as almost everything that we learn about politics comes from comprehending written material?
Why don't people just honestly acknowledge their ignorance just like they do with math, sports? Why do people lie to themselves like this?
The average American has strong political opinions and thinks their side is right and the other side is wrong and is pretty closed-minded about it. But society, economics, politics, science are way more complex than a single sat passage. You don't have to just sit and read one page, but understand the world in all its complexity. But that world still has to be understood through language, so being well-informed about politics and having an accurate understanding of the world has a lot to do with one's reading comprehension skills.
But it's a demonstrated fact that the average American only understands half of what they read in passages that are specifically written to eliminate as much ambiguity and confusion as possible - otherwise, there wouldn't be any basis for saying there's a right answer or a wrong answer to actually grade the test.
So the average Joe should be humble and always doubting and questioning whether his knowledge of the world is accurate, unbiased, and reasonable. Because it's likely to be full of biases, inaccurate and unreasonable because the world is extremely complex and they've got objective evidence showing that they can't understand subtle nuances in reasoning that are tested on the SAT verbal.
But they aren't. They're sure of themselves. They think their political views are right, and they're sure that the other side is wrong, and the average Joe votes and determines the course of our nation.
People who are bad at math admit that they're bad at it - they don't pretend like they're good at it. People who are bad at sports admit that they're bad at it. People who are bad at trading stocks lose money and eventually stop doing it. But why do people who are bad at or only average at reading comprehension think that their political opinions are well-founded when the accuracy of their political opinions are basically a direct reflection of reading comprehension, as almost everything that we learn about politics comes from comprehending written material?
Why don't people just honestly acknowledge their ignorance just like they do with math, sports? Why do people lie to themselves like this?