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True. I should have said “It’s possible it would be a good thing, but it’s just as possible that it would be a really, really bad thing.” Because frankly, you can never tell with this guy. As for him dropping dead, that’s unlikely. I think he made a deal with the devil that went something like this;
S: I want your soul
T: Okay, as long as I get to be rich and famous
S: You don’t want to be handsome? Or smart?
T: No need, as long as I’m rich and famous
S: Right you are. Here’s the contract.
T: Oh yeah, one more thing, I want to be president of the United States.
S: Well for that, I’m going to need something extra
T: firstborn?
S: I’m going to need the first four
T: Okay
S: And I’m going to need you to wear your tie in a ridiculously long fashion that points to your genitals so everyone knows you’re mine. It’ll be like a giant arrow that says "Satan Owns My Junk"
T: Sounds good - now where is that contract? I don’t need to read it, just tell me where to sign.
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Great! Relying on rumors to make a point about Trump. That’s just what we need. I think that’s a dangerous path to walk down, since it gives a wannabe dictator lots of ammunition (and ample opportunity to prove the idea wrong). Also, where are these firm statements?
So let’s trust this person with no direct connection to Trump that he can’t read? We should avoid making the same mistakes as our enemies.
What? Not sure where you got that from my comment. I suspect Trump has pretty average reading skills, but is happy to let the rumour permeate (or the rumour that Bannon somehow controls him). It’s all a distraction from the real issues. It wastes ink, and frankly, without concrete supporting evidence it DOES make the media look biased and vain. Discrediting the media is one step on the road to authoritarianism.
I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, but it is possible that Trump and Bannon know exactly what they are doing, and that is quite scary.
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He’s just speaking at the same level as his supporters. It worked.
I do have pretty terrible vision, but it’s possible that he’s too much of a baby to wear contacts and too narcissistic to wear NERD glasses.
Irrelevant to whether he can express concepts at a higher level. The difference between him and his supporters is that he was born into wealth that could buy him a college diploma and given by daddy a career in high-level New York real estate.
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I very much doubt it’s an act.
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Without a source, I’d be very skeptical of that.
Depending on how you define and measure “intelligence,” I agree that there’s probably a correlation between that measurement and the amount that you read, but that could just as easily be that people who are “more intelligent” are more likely to want to learn and to read more.
I remember reading about this study in Freakonomics:
A child with at least 50 kids’ books in his home, for instance, scores roughly 5 percentile points higher than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores another 5 percentile points higher than a child with 50 books. Most people would look at this correlation and draw the obvious cause-and-effect conclusion: A little boy named, say, Brandon has a lot of books in his home; Brandon does beautifully on his reading test; this must be because Brandon’s parents read to him regularly.
[…]
Now, back to the original riddle: How can it be that a child with a lot of books in her home does well at school even if she never reads them? Because parents who buy a lot of children’s books tend to be smart and well-educated to begin with — and they pass on their smarts and work ethic to their kids. (This theory is supported by the fact that the number of books in a home is just as strongly correlated with math scores as reading scores.) Or the books may suggest that these are parents who care a great deal about education and about their children in general, which results in an environment that rewards learning. Such parents may believe that a book is a talisman that leads to unfettered intelligence. But they are probably wrong. A book is, in fact, less a cause of intelligence than an indicator.
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I think you’re being generous.
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Rumors give Trump opportunities to prove that the rumors are wrong? With or without rumors, he’s free to show us all how literate he is. I’ll just be over here waiting.
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Yes, but those competing ambitions and self-interest have to be really impressively bad before we should take Bannon over them. Ousting Bannon is a valuable end in itself, even though he’ll be replaced with another snake from the pit. There aren’t many snakes as viciously racist or so dangerously effective at it.
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This is the problem. There are so many overlapping issues. Underlying reading ability, attention span, affinity to the material he’s reading, ability to make himself do things he doesn’t like, ability to make up for it when he hasn’t read something, and on and on.
Yeah, reading can be one of the best indicators of intelligence without actually causing people to become intelligent. Of course reading may cause people to do better on the tests we use to measure intelligence. It may cause higher IQ without necessarily causing higher thing-IQ-is-supposed-to-measure.
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There are two bills – one senate (S.291), one House (H.R.804) – that would crack down on putting political appointees on the NSC. If you go to the Resistance to Trump thread . . .
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/a-round-up-of-resistance-to-trump?source_topic_id=94460. . . you’ll find links to articles about them that I posted earlier today (Monday).
Call and/or write your Representative and Senators and urge that they support these bills, and that you don’t like the presence of Bannon on the NSC. Or in the White House, for that matter.
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The British politician Michael Heseltine is dyslexic. You wouldn’t know it. That’s because he has stuff read to him to make sure he understands it. He was the only one who refused to sign the gagging order when the Government wanted to conceal dodgy dealings over Iraq, and it’s believed that is because the other Ministers asked to sign it simply did so without reading, whereas Heseltine had it read out to him.
Like Trump, he was a businessman before he went into politics, but instead of the “win/lose” dichotomy he understands non-zero-sum. He is one of a handful of Conservative politicians for whom I have some regard (and yes, I’ve met him several times.)
I’m just making the point that Trump, if he does indeed have trouble with reading and writing, has absolutely no excuse because he has the resources to fix it.
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Ok, that clicks. I was wondering what was up with his only two adverbs being ‘really’ or ‘very’ (and for more emphasis, simple repetition). Could we beg Randall Munroe to write a Government Thing Explainer with half the vocabulary and have it read to the the POTUS* if necessary?
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Everyone knows that Trump is a Soros puppet. 
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Correction. Here he is reading + with glasses:
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He hasn’t really changed, though. He’s always been a petulant nitwit with a 4rd grade bully’s vocabulary and worldview.
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That actually brings up something I’ve been wondering about. With Obama, and even at a lower level with Bush, you saw Evangelicals bending over backwards to match them up with the various claims about the Anti-Christ. Which often swirl around charismatic business man etc. Trump matches most of them to a T. But I’ve noticed no bubbling Anti-Christ claims. And I can’t help but wonder why.
That’s the implication of what you’re suggesting. As we have reports of Trump’s lack of reading ability going back decades. Often first person reports from actually meeting the guy, and you know videos. If he reads fine, but not particularly well. Well enough for it to not be of concern. That would require Trump to read poorly enough in public and certain meetings for it to be noted. But for him to read much better than that in private. That’s just over complicated and unlikely.
Long standing decades long rumors, his own behavior, statements, and leaked reports of how things are actually operating in the White House. As opposed to what? Rote speculation that’s he’s a sinister genius who’s manipulating everything?
If a guy who sat there and watched Trump attempt to read says “I don’t think he can read”. It is more likely that Trump has trouble reading than it is that a person who does not work for Trump and can not have been directed to “leak” this particular information is part of Trump supervillian like manipulation of the media.
If that person was not told to “leak” information by Trump. He has to have some how. Repeatedly, accidentally or deliberately. Indicated to many people that he has difficulty reading.
You may have noted that one of the “real issues” here is that we have a president who is entirely, and uniquely unqualified for the job. That the story we are commenting on includes an indication that Trumps unwillingness or inability to read may have allowed an adviser to manipulate his way into a position of greater power. That this same adviser is apparently responsible for the Muslim Ban executive order. And likely directly interfered in its execution to ensure it was applied to green card holders.
That’s a pretty god damned real issue right there.
Bannon absolutely knows what he’s doing. It is arguably just as dangerous if Trump doesn’t. If he is being manipulated by guys like Bannon there will always be a guy like Bannon pushing him to do heinous things. In everything that is happening that is the major concern with Trump. Who is influencing or controlling him. The Russia connections. His conflicts of interest via business.
Point taken. But the Freakonomics guys are… problematic. Essentially its pop-sociology based in sometimes weird statistics. And I’ve noticed its not typically well regarded in any of the subjects they touch upon. When they comment of medicine the medicine guys get pissed. When they touch on politics the politics guys get pissed. And so forth.
In that passage I’d say they’re right. Number of books in the home is gonna correlate directly to wealth level. Which is going to be a huge factor in success on intelligence/aptitude tests and educational attainment.
I don’t have a citation for you, but when I have a bit more time on my hands I might look into it again. If I’m remembering some college sociology classes correctly. When you use the metric of actual words read. Not number of books. And control for things like economic level and race. More words read in a day, week, month, year. Generally correlates to higher reading level. Which is obvious. Practice makes perfect after all. But both more words read, and higher reading level correlate to higher educational attainment and better results on various intelligence measures. And increases in both over time.
Regardless of what is read. Books, comics, magazines, blogs. Doesn’t matter.
Feakonomics are merely pointing out that more words read tends to correlate most heavily with economic situation. More money means more opportunity and access to learn to read and do so frequently. Making these sorts of assessments complicated. But l think the correlation between reading and various progress markers holds even when that’s controlled for.
They could have likewise pointed out that our methods for measuring intelligence are them selves inadequate. And likewise very reliant on things like economic level, cultural literacy and race. The tests and measures themselves are inherently structured to be more “friendly” to those who have access and experience in very particular intellectual structures shot through our education system. Money = access to those systems and opportunity to focus on them. So money = better success at tests regardless of actual intelligence level.
Its complicated and weird, in the fun way.
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I just got the digital subscription. I’m more concerned with supporting the “journalism” side of the industry than the “print” side.
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Agreed. The trick is for that to happen without it taking down the country and us with it.
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