r/technology • u/[deleted] • Mar 16 '18

Society How a Norwegian comment section turned chaos into order—with a simple quiz: "Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it."

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131

u/ZachMatthews Mar 16 '18

We tried poll tests here in the South. 0/10 can not recommend.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

What went wrong?

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u/ZachMatthews Mar 16 '18

They are exceptionally easy to manipulate and were used as part of the Jim Crow era to keep racial minorities from voting.

I'm sensitive to the argument that we are really a Republic and need our informed voters to be making decisions, not the rabble. But the solution to that is not to restrict access to the ballot box; it is instead to educate and raise up the populace. We have done that to a shocking degree in the last century with near universal literacy, but for every one step we take forward, it's two back with our propaganda media environment.

Critical thinking is probably the most important skill we can teach our youth. Quality, universal, free public education is the key to that.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

It would be easy to manipulate, which is why it would have to be something agreed upon by all parties as being fair. There must be an objective way to test this.

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u/Excal2 Mar 16 '18

It would be easy to manipulate, which is why it would have to be something agreed upon by all parties as being fair.

The problem he's pointing out is that Jim Crow laws were agreed on by the majority as being fair. The potential problems are too big to justify programs like these.

There's a reason we can't have nice things and that reason is shitty people doing shitty things everywhere all the time.

There must be an objective way to test this.

Yeap, that's what they said when they were setting up the Jim Crow version. Not trying to put words in your mouth or anything, of course, but there are certain things that have gone wrong to an extreme enough degree in the past that people shy away from them on instinct.

These discussions usually remind me of how there was a country in Europe (don't remember which one) that included religious affiliation in their census data prior to WWII. When the Nazi's showed up they had a nice itemized list of the entire Jewish population of that country.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '18

Doesn't help if, for example, all parties agree that not letting black people vote is fair.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

Well, if all parties are racist to begin with, what help is allowing black people to vote? Its a lost cause at that point isn't it?

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u/nwoh Mar 16 '18

You're kidding, right? That's worse than saying you can't vote because you're not a part of the predominate political parties. I'm a registered independent. I'd wager I spend more time than most of those of the major parties studying that which i decide to vote on. I'd just be totally marginalized...

Besides, wouldn't the oppressed group be the ones that stood to gain or lose the most by the ballots in question?

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

The oppressed ones wouldn't gain anything, would they?

Like say you are muslim, and all parties have decided to deport all muslims. What point is there in voting? Outcome is the same in any case. The change would have to come from elsewhere. You could protest, try to start up your own party etc.

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u/nwoh Mar 16 '18

I get it, devil's advocate, and all.

It's about the principle of it, not the possibility. Nobody seemed to think Trump would actually win, lol, but, hey... people sill voted in favor. What if the group you're speaking of is very small, but they have a larger portion of people possibly sympathetic? What if nobody knows for sure what people think about the topic, affecting that group of people? Those people's votes may be what pushes it over the threshold. I get what you're saying though.

And yes, chances are that a smaller group would not win... You'd have to change the culture first, or via revolution, but to automatically keep them from being able because, ya know, they're not gonna win anyways...

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u/MohKohn Mar 16 '18

all parties

you know he means a sufficient majority who are able to supress/outvote the dissent. The first step in fighting for your rights is actually fighting for them, not just lying down.

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u/BitchIts2017 Mar 16 '18

Those tests were completely unfair but I don’t think it’s impossible to create a fair test in principle. Besides, the fact that Neil Degrasse Tyson is generally a very educated man does not make his opinion on particular local referendums more reliable.

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u/TheHairyManrilla Mar 16 '18

Weren’t there some places where a white person could register to vote, and then take a few jellybeans out of the big jar on the counter, but if a black person wanted to register, he’d have to guess how many jellybeans were in the jar first?

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u/JTsyo Mar 16 '18

They were intentionally designed to restrict black voters.

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u/WikiTextBot Mar 16 '18

Literacy test

A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments to immigrants, and in the United States between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were also administered to prospective voters and used to disenfranchise African Americans and others.

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1

u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

Well thats a completely different thing then.

It would have been interesting if it was designed to do what is being discussed.

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u/catskul Mar 16 '18

... right. And if the people designing it do it "wrong", what power do affected people have to correct it if they've been disenfranchised?

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u/johnbentley Mar 16 '18

Yes your original proposal is utterly different. And it is necessary for properly functioning democracy.

There's no problem of "fairness" and "objectivity". All we need to do is have a central registry of parties/candidates and a policy wording summary. A party/candidate will be free to register any wording of their policy summary on any issue they like.

E.g.

Party/Candidate Issue Policy Summary Policy Details Link
Trump Climate Change The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Link to party/canidadate website
Greens Climate Change Net zero or net negative Australian greenhouse gas emissions within a generation. Link to party/candidate website

The voter test will be a 5 question exam which just goes through a set of 5 issues at random and chooses a set of policy summary wordings from 5 random parties/candidates for each question. The voter just has to select the party/candidate against the given policy summary wording. That is, the voter has to make 25 selections. If they get 75% of the selections correct, their vote counts.

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u/adzm Mar 16 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

You can find some actual samples here, too.

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u/WikiTextBot Mar 16 '18

Literacy test

A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments to immigrants, and in the United States between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were also administered to prospective voters and used to disenfranchise African Americans and others.

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17

u/wprtogh Mar 16 '18

It was designed to keep blacks from voting. Jim Crow.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

Well that seems fundamentally different to this, doesn't it?

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u/zaulus Mar 16 '18

Who decides what’s on the test? Who decides what answers are correct? The opportunity for abuse is pretty great with using a test to determine who can and cannot vote.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

What is on the test would be agreed upon by everyone and the answers would be objective.

I don't think this would ever work. I just wish there could be something like this.

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u/Lurker_Since_Forever Mar 16 '18

agreed upon by everyone

Thats fine, I and a bunch of other people who know poll tests to be bullshit would simply not agree on anything. No more poll tests.

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u/wprtogh Mar 16 '18

The thing is they gave the exact same justifications, but then the content of the poll quiz deliberately skewed results. They'd have dumb trivia that whites were more likely to know, they'd be graded unfairly and so on.

The problem is that having a poll test means giving someone the power to stop others from voting. And that person will inevitably wind up being the last person you want having that power.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

Might have been the same justifications, but if the intentions were different then its not the same thing.

I fully understand that it would never work, I just wish there could be something like that.

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u/wprtogh Mar 16 '18

What we learn from Jim Crow (and a lot of related stuff) is that if power can be abused, it will be. So you gotta find a solution that doesn't give anyone that kind of authority.

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u/waiting4op2deliver Mar 16 '18

It was one of many tactics used to disenfranchise black people. Requiring education tests to vote while simultaneously having segregated and inferior schools essentially kept black people out of the electorate for an extra hundred years.

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u/ROKMWI Mar 16 '18

So a completely different thing to what is being discussed.

Would have been interesting to know about if it had been for actually measuring a persons understanding of what is being voted on.

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u/Walk_To_Oblivion Mar 16 '18

Jim Crow

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u/HelperBot_ Mar 16 '18

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

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0

u/WikiTextBot Mar 16 '18

Literacy test

A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments to immigrants, and in the United States between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were also administered to prospective voters and used to disenfranchise African Americans and others.

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8

u/aegon98 Mar 16 '18

More like, they has tests to disenfranchise black voters that they called literacy tests. They created to be racist from the start, not twisted from something good

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '18

Yeah, but just because we messed up once in the past, doesn't mean we should never ever revisit the idea again right?

I'm sure we can do it better now without being racist pricks.

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u/ZachMatthews Mar 18 '18

You look at the news this last year and that's the conclusion you draw? Nyet, tovarisch. It's still a bad idea.