This post was originally a link post to

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/fcc-chairman-mocks-industry-claims-that-customers-dont-need-faster-internet/

together with an instruction to read the article before proceeding, and then the following text rot13'd:

I believe this article is a nice rationality test. Did you notice that you were reading a debate over a definition and try to figure out what the purpose of the classification was? Or did you get carried away in the condemnation of the hated telecoms? If you noticed, how long did it take you?

 

I'm open to feedback on whether this test was worthwhile and also on whether I could have presented it better. There's a tradeoff here where explaining the post's value to Less Wrong undermines that value. Had I put "Rationality Test" in the title, I could have avoided the appearance of posting an inappropriate article but made the test weaker.

As you can see from the comments here, it didn't work very well.

I'm mostly editing this now because the apparent outrage-bait link in the discussion section was a bit of a nuisance, but I'll take the chance to list what I've learned:

• Not many LWers are susceptible to this genre of outrage-bait. That is, they don't have the intended gut reaction in the first place, so this didn't test whether they overcame it.
• The only commenter who admits having had said reaction immediately and effortlessly accounted for the fact that the debate was over a definition. This suggests the test was on the easy side, even for those eligible. (Unless a bunch of people failed and didn't comment, but I doubt that)
• Most commenters did not indicate finding it obvious that this was a test. The sort of misdirection I employed is quite viable.
• Feedback on the idea of the test is mixed. People don't seem to mind the concept of being misdirected, but (if I read the top comment correctly) being put through the experience of an outrage-bait link was annoying and the test didn't offer enough value to justify that.