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Sadly i don't think this will ever happen. Remember, the bottom fraction in terms of intelligence has trouble figuring out that theyv would probably be hungry right now if they hadn't eaten breakfast this morning. They certainly aren't going to intuit chains of reasoning like this.
This isn't true. Even if the original study didn't have measurement errors(and my two cents is that the study you're referring to almost certainly added points to the prisoner's IQ scores- I can say from personal experience that there is an IQ cutoff for the question but it's a lot lower than 90. Maybe a high seventies or something) it showed the IQ threshold for simple conditional hypotheticals to be 90, which you'll notice is noticeably below average. The US average IQ is 98 IIRC with a standard of deviation of 15, so like 67% is above.
You're right. Bottom half was too aggressive. I'll edit it to say bottom fraction.
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Eh, this is pretty uncharitable towards the lower half of the population
The "Muslamic ray gun" guy sounded like a low class idiot (which egalitarians gleefully pointed out), but his "stereotypical" view of things turned out to be closer than the people mocking him for his accent gave him credit for. They already have these views. If they keep reading and don't see it, they'll notice.
You also ignore that distrust of the media will lead them to people who will point it out explicitly for anyone too dumb. "Coulter's law" is not some obscure wisdom for >100 IQ nerds. It's one Google search or rightist YouTube video away, for those without the IQ or patience to read it's a real golden age.
(This is the same logic behind "low class conservatives are too dumb to use their smartphone to find out Bud Lights parent company and it's subsidiaries. ". Well, if you went on /r/conservatives there was a copypasta in every thread listing them. Even if they were that dumb -and they aren't- only one person needs to be smart.)
I've found that it's the fully bought in progressive, "right side of history" middle class - who should be higher IQ - who're really hard to convince if they can't find an NYT article stating something. It's them this omission works best on. If they say "X never happens" (about something contentious like say...race or gender) you can have a billion NYPost/whoever articles with proof they will simply shut down the minute they see the URL unless you can show a paper of record also touching the problem. This is why activists hate Jesse Singal so much for that Atlantic article.
A lot of the time the news isn't obscuring knowledge so much as denying it legitimacy. People know the Muslamic ray gun theory. It's just that educated people all just know it's merely another instance of justifying racism by appeal to protecting white women from dehumanized people of color.
But this only lasts so long as the system as a whole is legitimate and isn't under too much strain.
Which Jesse Singal article, the trans kids one?
Yes, he had an article where he touched on trans kids and the detransitioning issue.
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Note that I said "every reader", not "every person". The people who read broadsheet newspapers are a selected group already.
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I don't eat breakfast, and I often am not hungry by lunchtime. So "you will be hungry at Y o'clock if you don't eat breakfast at X o'clock" isn't always true. What you are trying to say is that there are some people who don't know how to play the game of answering problems like that, that the 'right' answer is 'supposed' to be "if I didn't eat breakfast, I would be hungry now" even if you are one of those people who skip breakfast and don't get hungry until later than you are 'supposed' to get hungry.
He's referring to a psychological experiment on inmates which showed prisoners with IQ's below 90 can't understand hypotheticals no matter how dumbed down eg "how would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast". I suspect that prisoners were either systematically less cooperative than average(likely) or their IQ tests were graded on a curve(also not implausible).
Was it even a real experiment? I first saw this as a post on 4chan and when I google it it just leads me back to that.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-breakfast-question
I don’t actually know, but that’s the context.
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Yeah, I think it's likely both that (1) some prisoners were too dumb and (2) some prisoners were messing with the interviewers. Besides, I don't think that question is such a great test: it's just testing "do you know how to guess the teacher's password?"
Yeah, I might be hungry if I didn't eat breakfast. Or I might not. Or the question might make no sense because I always make sure to eat breakfast, so why are you asking me if I don't? Or I might be someone who always skips breakfast, so replying "I feel fine" is the true answer. The only 'correct' answer for the test-takers is "I would feel hungry" but that's not 'considering a hypothetical', that's 'can you guess what answer you are supposed to give?'.
I agree that if you're smart enough to be able to guess the 'correct' answers then you're not likely to be in prison, but then again you don't need to be too smart to figure out "what does this guy want me to say?", either.
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As an experienced pedatn, I enjoyed the fact that the line morphed from the grammatically correct "How would you feel now if you hadn't eaten breakfast?" to the strictly incorrect "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?"
Obviously look it's variation in dialect, blah blah prescriptivism, but I still found it funny
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No. I was just speaking in shorthand. You don't have to say you would be hungry. "I probably still wouldn't be hungry even if i skipped breakfast because i often don't eat breakfast" is a perfectly fine answer as well. "Bad" answers are those that reveal that the person is incapable of embracing hypotheticals. Ie people who say things like "what are you talking about, i did eat breakfast"
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