We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

The part of your comment that is a bit twisted is saying that we would be taking away someone's fundamental right under the current system. I'm not suggesting we take away anyone's current rights, but institute a new policy for future children to require the test for them. Under our current system the right to vote is only a right for citizens. As we wouldn't be removing anyone's citizenship, we wouldn't be stripping anyone of that right. Not to mention that the current test is allows some immigrants to vote and others not, due to literacy constraints. So why not extend that paradigm to people who are born here.

Finally, it seems the most important part of what I have said is consistently ignored - citizens have duties and to be a citizen one should be capable of performing those duties. That's a fundamental principle of democracy, as the people are the government. If being illiterate prevents one from being able to perform those duties, then they have have no reason to be afforded the privileges and specific rights from which they are derived (basic human rights would be intact).

If one can have all the rights and privileges of being a citizen without the responsibilities, why would they even want to be a citizen? What would being a citizen even mean at that point?

Citation needed. "Ranking" in plain English is practically synonymous with sorting, and it's no different in computing, unless you're in some very specialized pocket where they've twisted it. The difference is that it's possible to show different posts first within the same set and IMO that's not particularly problematic. What's problematic is when Facebook selects a different set. Those posts I didn't ask for shouldn't just be at the bottom of the list; they shouldn't be on it.

In an infinite-scroll world these phases do get interleaved a bit. Query, sort, show top N, repeat. Some posts might get dropped in the "show top N" part, but the point is that those posts I didn't ask for should never even have come back from the first query. In SQL terms, it's the WHERE that's broken, not the ORDER BY or LIMIT. (Yes, I know it's not SQL. I could tell you exactly what it is, but I'm still bound by a legal document that says I shouldn't.) It's really not that subtle or unusual a distinction, and I'm sure most people understood it. Why are you so invested in a weird definition?

As you've said before, people like you would be forced to wear something you think is uncomfortable. I'd even be forced to play the world's smallest violin for you.

The thing is, you have to weigh those consequences (ideally non selfishly), not just assert they exist.

So, one the one hand, you have minor inconvenience and intolerable oppression of having to think of others for even a second. On the other hand, you have hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths and the economic toll of a poorly-managed pandemic.

I don't know, seems like a tough call. /s

That's a thing too, which I was trying to get at with my comment about fringe specialists. But it's not like every specialty is homogeneous (especially true in something like economics), so decision makers may need to choose between one camp or another of some specialty.

The thing I was arguing against was the now prevalent behavior of dismissing any specialist view that contradicts what you would have done in the first place. Common people should have a say in a democracy, but if that democracy is going to function, those common people need to understand the limits of their knowledge and understanding, which means they need to respect the knowledge and understanding of specialists.

I want to go back to something I forgot to respond to earlier:

>>> A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from misinformation. It’s an imperfect response, but effective.

I used to think that too, but I think that's turning out to be far, far less true than anyone would have hoped. That's proven by how prevalent and influential misinformation and disinformation have shown to be. For instance, by the support of totally baseless claims of election fraud by an alarming fraction of Republican party officials [1], which in my view is substantially driven by the influence those claims have on the Republican party base. I say that as someone who's leaned to the right for the past 20 years.

[1] See: "17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit" (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/trump-texas-s...) "Two reasons the Texas election case is faulty: flawed legal theory and statistical fallacy." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/technology/texas-election...)

Your statement contradicts itself. If in fact the oppressors are targeting both white and black people to maintain power, then they are by definition not targeting only one race and would instead be classist/elitist.

Also, not all racism is about people getting richer. Some of it was done on their (misguided) principles without financial benefit, or even to their detriment as the civil rights movement grew.

I fail to see how the citizenship test would lead to the rich getting richer.