tumblr reading comprehension: electric boogaloo

A good example is Titanic where people keep saying Jack could fit on the door, despite the film showing him trying to get onto the door and almost capsizing it, so he leaves it alone to ensure Rose's safety.

People weren't on their phones when they saw the Stormtroopers let the rebels get away from the death star so they could track them, heard one rebel say "they let us get away from the death star so they can track us," and then spent 50 years joking about how awful stormtrooper aim is

Irl I often repeat what other people say in my own words and ask them if that's what they believe. It both helps me understand where they're coming from and confirm I get them

On the Internet I almost never do.

Communication is a two way street. You can be as explicit as you want but if people are trying to win an argument instead of have a discussion they're going to misconstrue what you're saying more often than not.

@fsxylo @Mandarbmax Two of the three direct replies are solid Exhibits A and B of exactly what you're talking about xD

Or maybe just stop making racist jokes

As someone who has 30$ in bills, even they get in the way and manage to be obnoxious. There was a girl in my middleschool who had "a lot* of change and she was constantly miserable. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"my wife is rather petite" also supports your view point on the topic.

BUT another way of viewing the topic is that $30 in paper money only has that value because it has it written on it. If you set them both on fire and melt them, copper and nickel maintain a lot more of their value than paper currency.

So really it can be argued either way ¯⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I came to a similar conclusion from the greentext. Big and small are valuable but one is more convenient to carry around with you (due to the mass).

E: I think I see the tumblr users' confusion here... the sentence

Suppose you had $30 in coins as well, which would have greater mass?

can be interpreted like a semicolon or separate sentence...

Suppose you had $30 in coins as well. Which would have greater mass?

or as a extension describing the object...

Suppose you had $30 in coins which would have greater mass as well?

Some might have taken the latter interpretation which makes the rest of the story incomprehensible.

It’s not about reading comprehension, it’s about the reader not understanding the unwritten parameters of the question. That the possibility that neither have greater value exists.

I recall one occasion where something similar happened to me back in middle school. We were learning about probability using dice rolls. One of the questions on the worksheet was (something like) “What is the best way to influence the probability of the dice roll outcome?”

When the question was posed to me I fully understood that there was no way to influence the probability, assuming no influence by external factors, the probability of a given outcome will always be equal. But the fact that the question was posed to me in this way led me to believe that this was not the answer the question was looking for. It implied that in fact there was a way to influence the result, so I got very frustrated in trying to come up with an answer which made sense. In this situation I felt that actually the question was wrong, and got upset that the task I had been set to answer it was impossible to complete correctly. When I realised that the true intent was just to get me to acknowledge that there was no way to influence the result, I felt betrayed by the framing of the question. I knew the answer the whole time, it was obvious, but the framing of the question misled me to believe that was not the intended answer.

The question in my case wasn’t actually an earnest question about probability, the pretext for is was deliberately false. There was no way for me to figure it out using better reading comprehension. The intent of the question can only be realised via comprehension of non-written concepts, essentially being able to recognise when someone is trying to throw you a curveball. It isn't quite the same as just recognising the path of the ball being thrown to you, because in that case it appears to be being thrown away from you.

If you examine the person replying person's responses, that's pretty much where they're at. The whole 'dude is expecting the answer to be their own views' thing is conjecture, what they're expecting is a view given an existing proposition that there is a view to take.

We should create a space to help these people, maybe some kind of center for adults who can't read good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.

One good thing is most of those "adults can't read" things don't take into account that many adults can read just fine...in spanish, or their otherwise native language, but get counted for these because their english reading is less than 6th grade.

Still too damn many english-as-a-first-languagers can't read either, but usually less than the scary numbers suggest for america.

Most valuable tits are the ones in your hand (with consent).

That's a technic I call learning by figuring out. I realized some time ago that information you figure out yourself lasts longer. When some at work for example asks me something I usually only return suggestive questions. Questions wich if they answer them lead them to the answer of their questions. I always get rolling eyes when I do but it helps in two ways. First is they really manifest the wisdom so they don't need to ask me a second time and second they learn relativly fast that they have to think what to ask me and how anoying it is so they ask less frequently but more specific. People hate it but it is benefical for both sides in my opinion.

You want concave chest craters on your ideal mate?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking.

So.... a dude ?

They're fungible, and can be transferred into each other easily. They have the same value but different situational utility.

Value is not and cannot be derived solely based on utility in a vacuum. This is proven by the marginal utility of too many titties. While one pair of titties may have value based on their utility, each subsequent pair of titties decreases in utility, as you only have so many hands and so much time.

yes. one has drawbacks for one set of preferences, the other has drawbacks in different ways, for example, if you ran a shop that needed to give change, or you were going to the casino to play slots, or arcade machines, or you were covering a floor in coins decoratively, or you needed to club someone about the head with a heavy sack...

The actual value of the money doesn't change though, and I think that was the person's misinterpretation as well, your implicit preference can be different based on how the money is presented but it's still 30 dollars, bills, coins, stock, gold, whatever. Portability can change, ease of use can change, mass can change, shape can change, but 30 bucks is 30 bucks and titties be titties.

Strong grammar skills isn't the same as comprehending, though. Being able to write, being able to write well--is also not the same as comprehending what someone else has written. Let alone what someone means by what they've written.

"thatguyfromthatwebsite" seems to have read and interpreted the language properties of the greentext, but was not able to comprehend it, not able to take one single step beyond the text to what the author intends it to mean.

There's an easy experiment I've accidentally run.

Find a thread with a consensus emotion. For example, say that something is a scam, so you have outrage, mistrust, and scepticism.

Take some words from the opposite emotion, calm, trust, believe. Use them to make a point that agrees with the consensus. Watch the downvotes roll in.

People will focus on the emotions from the individual words and not think at all about their meaning as a whole.

YMMV, but I've had more issues with people being this obtuse here on Lemmy than I've ever seen on Tumblr.

Plus, Tumblr is basically all queer content creators who have been on the site for 10-14 years. Subtext is like oxygen to them at this point.

Interpreting metaphors is reading comprehension...am I getting whooshed?

If it helps you understand better: big boobs have more mass than small boobs.

Lemme try to help you out here

The original question is about size, but the Philosopher, for some reason, makes a detour into mass. This detour goes nowhere, and just ends up as a distraction to the point he's trying to make.

Larger breasts have more mass. His point was that just like how mass is irrelevant to the value of money, it is also irrelevant to the value of breasts.

It's also distracting that he says "you were to have $30 in coins as well". That makes it seem like it's important that Anon now has $60 instead of $30. If the idea was to compare $30 in coins to $30 in bills, a better wording would be "instead".

This is where reading comprehension comes into play. You have to be able to interpret what someone is saying, even if they don't phrase it in exactly the way that would make it easiest for you personally to understand. If you can't parse what they meant, that is indicative of poor reading comprehension on your part. It never says nor implies that the man having $60 matters. You're adding that to the story, and then complaining that the story doesn't address it.

The way it's written is like a trick question where the obvious answer is wrong.

The way it's written is meant to lead you to the understanding that while size (and mass, which is inexorably linked to size of living tissue) can vary, breasts are still breasts, regardless of size, just as $30 is still $30 regardless of denomination. It is a trick question, and being able to recognize trick questions is an important factor in reading comprehension.