This post was originally a link post to
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.
I noticed immediately. Still, definitions do things. It doesn't seem fair for ISPs to have to stop calling internet broadband even though it's just as good as it was last year. I feel like what they should have done is made up a new word for even faster internet. That way, the ISPs can keep calling their old speed broadband, they have a nice way of advertizing faster speeds for people who don't know about what the numbers mean, and if the politicians want to talk about faster internet, they have a word for it. I suspect there's a downside I'm missing, since they didn't do that.
The entire thing wasn't about definitions though. They were also talking about a sort of standard speed that they want to bring everyone up to. My opinion on this is that it's more expensive to bring fast internet to people that don't live in cities. You can't just call all of the benefits of living in cities rights and then expect to be able to live in the middle of nowhere and get the best of both worlds. If you really want fast internet without living in a city, pay for it yourself.
I guess I had an unfair advantage. I don't hate the ISPs. I can't get mindkilled if I don't care.
I had the same unfair advantage, but I think to a lesser degree. I noticed quickly but not immediately, which is to say not quickly enough.
On the object level, I think there are possible legislative purposes that would justify the change (as instrumental to those purposes), but my strong suspicion is that the FCC is wrong. I fear that 'broadband' effectively means 'above baseline speed', which actually would make it reasonable to tell the ISPs to change what speed they advertise as 'broadband', but would turn the mandate to give everyone broadband into a Lake Wobegon/Kafka crossover.