Political Compass mega thread 2011

HalloweenJack

Denerick

RandomName2 wrote: »

I'm stuck right in the middle of left-and right economically (when I first took the test I was actually on the line... now I'm just a tiny piece to the left :eek:)

And naturally moderately libertarian.

I do not know how they have labelled the Socialist Party or Sinn Fein as Libertarian. Not. At. All. :pac:

Of course, one has to distinguish between those who say 'question authority' and those who say 'question authority... until such a point that we are in power and then do as we say.' There have been plenty or liberating revolutionaries who swept away the old order only to be far more authoritarian than those who came before.

My biggest problem is with the economic questions. It asks you where you stand on principle, but not in practise. As a matter of principle, I think commodities like bottled water (Whose brands differ in only the most superficial ways) are a bit of a joke and that its a shame that we pay one euro fifty for 500mls (The markups are ludicrous)

That said, my loathing of bottled water (And to a lesser extent the speculation of land for profit) are comparable to my loathing to going to the dentist. In the end, I'll still go to the dentist, because I recognise I won't have any teeth left if I don't. The questions need to be less about ideals and more about what you actually think works in practise. Which is why I emerge further to the left than Lenin!

Histie

dannny1 wrote: »

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

This should help.

That has a bias to place people in the "Libertarian Left" quadrant. Here's another one: http://www.edwardgaffney.com/political-compass.html.

Scofflaw

Histie wrote: »

That has a bias to place people in the "Libertarian Left" quadrant. Here's another one: http://www.edwardgaffney.com/political-compass.html.

Hmm....100% of people are closer to the centre than me? That's almost impressive.



Needs an easy way to do that. A generated image taking in the coords of the user's result would work.

Political Compass (current) for comparison:

Economic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.87

cordially,
Scofflaw

Histie

Yes, it doesn't work as well visually as the other political compass, but it is innovative in treating less directly political views separately, rather than lumping them all together (that website isn't mine, by the way).

Scofflaw

Histie wrote: »

Yes, it doesn't work as well visually as the other political compass, but it is innovative in treating less directly political views separately, rather than lumping them all together (that website isn't mine, by the way).

One of the interesting things is that there is no unoccupied space on the diagram - every combination of left-right/inward-outward seems to happen - which suggests the independence of the axes is real.

cordially,
Scofflaw

20. Homosexuality is always justified.


justified? What a way of putting it

oscarBravo

Interesting.

FreudianSlippers

Histie wrote: »

That has a bias to place people in the "Libertarian Left" quadrant. Here's another one: http://www.edwardgaffney.com/political-compass.html.

I don't like that one... most of the questions aren't ones which can be answered with specificity. "Immigrants"? Legal or Illegal, do EU nationals count? Asylum seekers? Legally recognised seekers of asylum or undocumented "refugees"? etc. etc.

Very poorly written and thought out IMO.

HalloweenJack

I think the worst statement is something along the lines of "Religious values should be taught in schools".

Very ambiguous as a lot of my moral values are ones that are found in various religions and I would encourage them to be spread but I'm totally anti-religion and against indoctrination so it would depend entirely on the way that these "religious values" are being taught.

Histie

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I don't like that one... most of the questions aren't ones which can be answered with specificity."Immigrants"? Legal or Illegal, do EU nationals count? Asylum seekers? Legally recognised seekers of asylum or undocumented "refugees"? etc. etc.

I would assume it spans all of those groups apart from asylum-seekers. There should be no issue in answering the question on whether or not there should be very strict limits on immigration as far as legality/illegality is concerned, because controls presuppose legality.

I think very specific questions can be problematic when one tries to draw a general inference as to a person's political views, unless one asks an extremely large number of them, because there are any number of reasons why one might be of an opinion in relation to a very specific case. For example, if the test asked whether you agree with the last abortion referendum proposal, it would be of little assistance in determining whether you're pro-life/pro-choice, because there were both pro-life and -choice people on both sides. It is true that there could still be different reasons for agreement with such a statement as "abortion is wrong", but because it is broader, many are ruled out.

HalloweenJack wrote: »

I think the worst statement is something along the lines of "Religious values should be taught in schools".

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Very ambiguous as a lot of my moral values are ones that are found in various religions and I would encourage them to be spread but I'm totally anti-religion and against indoctrination so it would depend entirely on the way that these "religious values" are being taught.

This should not be ambiguous, because it concerns the intent, rather than the content. I am sure that anyone’s set of values intersects with those of some religion to some degree or at some level; the point is not that they would be taught but that they would be taught qua religious values.

Whilst one might agree that the Decalogue’s commandments against killing and stealing serve as good values to hold for normal conduct, they would lose their religious accretions if taught in isolation; they would need to be contextualised in terms of God, Moses and Mount Sinai for them to be understood as religious values. Therefore, if there is a mere coincidence between the values a school instils in its pupils and some of the values of religion X, that is not to be understood as a “religious value” per se.

FreudianSlippers

Histie wrote: »

I would assume it spans all of those groups apart from asylum-seekers. There should be no issue in answering the question on whether or not there should be very strict limits on immigration as far as legality/illegality is concerned, because controls presuppose legality.

No, we currently have controls on movement of EU Citizens in and out of the country. That is immigration, legal immigration.
I would favour strict illegal immigration policy but I think legal immigration policy is fine.

Histie

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

No, we currently have controls on movement of EU Citizens in and out of the country. That is immigration, legal immigration.
I would favour strict illegal immigration policy but I think legal immigration policy is fine.

A "control" in a formal sense exists as a matter of policy, law, etc. Your issue is more to do with whether those controls are being enforced properly, because if a person is an illegal immigrant that means they are not living in this country in accordance with whatever controls there are.

FreudianSlippers

Histie wrote: »

A "control" in a formal sense exists as a matter of policy, law, etc. Your issue is more to do with whether those controls are being enforced properly, because if a person is an illegal immigrant that means they are not living in this country in accordance with whatever controls there are.

So... the question makes no sense then; glad we're agreed.

Histie

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

So... the question makes no sense then; glad we're agreed.

How exactly does that follow from what I said? The question deals with the idea that there should be limits on immigration; whether you agree or disagree with this depends on what you think of this idea. How does the fact that there are illegals, i.e., people who don't abide by the controls, alter the justification of there being limits on immigration as a policy, which is what the statement concerns?

FreudianSlippers

The question states very clearly:

There should be very strict limits on the number of immigrants coming to live in Ireland.

There is not enough information there to answer the question. How do you define "immigrants"? Do EU citizens who technically "immigrate" to Ireland count? Or are you just referring to legal non-EU "immigrants"? Are we counting asylum seekers? How do we impose "strict limits" to control the number of illegal immigrants; some sort of honour system?

Another problem one:

Asylum seekers should have the same rights to social services as Irish people.

Well, wouldn't registered asylum seekers have been granted a right to remain in Ireland and therefore automatically be granted state aid under international law?


The list goes on... I have a problem with at least 90% of the questions on that site for lack of clarity and general vagueness.

RandomName2

One finds oneself either a) trying to look at the core value that is underpinning the ambiguity of the question or b) engaging honestly with the question, as it is stated, in order to preserve the integrity of its attempt to strip away our knee-jerk biases.

I'm not a great fan of either approach tbh.