User talk:Karmafist/Wikipedians' Political Perspectives

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[edit] An alternative

I found this test to be more accurate of my views. I got Social Liberal (65% permissive) and Economic Moderate (55% permissive). This is a more accurate depiction of my views than the results I posted on the page. (I'm also neatly straddling the line between libertarian and democrat according to the page, something that I would also agree with.) Incidentally, I think my views coincide exactly with Adam Sandler's, unless I've mistaken that person on the diagram for someone else. Johnleemk | Talk 07:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks John! I'm sorry, I said I was going to take the test last night, but i'm going to do so now. Perhaps we can add this in some way to this subproject? karmafist 16:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I got 72% and 21%, right on Hillary's left eyeball. The dot chart was fascinating, but since when has Adam Sandler been politically active? Also, I have volunteered with Libertarians around here when our views coincided, but Socialists are rare, if not extinct in the U.S now. karmafist 16:52, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I got a 65% / 13% - pretty much in between Hillary and Gorby. Guettarda 22:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

83%/10%... seems just about the same as the other test (well, mirror image as drawn, but conceptually basically identical). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Methodology problems

I've never met a political quiz that I've liked. Two axes are better than one, but are still not enough, and at least some of the questions are always badly worded - I tend to agree with what the quizzer is trying to say, but disagree as worded, or vice versa. The quiz labels me an almost dead-on centrist, but I hold a lot of views that could be considered controversial. --DDerby-(talk) 08:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how to answer a few of the questions. Some of them had always and never in some confusing places. --TantalumTelluride 16:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm happy enough being called left-leaning economically and non-statist, but while I am an economic leftist ideologically, I'm enough of an Indian to want to accumulate property. I have contradictory views - I doubt a quiz could pick up on internal contradictions. Guettarda 18:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, none of them are perfect(so far), but tools of some sort are necessary if you want to gauge this stuff. karmafist 04:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Flawed Methodology:This was my point to you earlier, karmafist - I think the quiz questions are bogus as an algorithm for plotting where you are on a political scale (partly because some of them assume your political view will be within a certain range) - the better way is to say "generally, how much do I like the idea that people can do what they like (i) socially and (ii) economically - and you can work out where you ought to be on the compass from that.

Any multi-choice questions will fail to capture nuance. When I completed the quiz I found mystelf frequently wanting to answer to the effect that "that question completely misses the point, given my political views". For example, take the first question: "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations."

My view (I'm basically a Darwinist) would be that:

• global economic activity (of which "globalisation" is simply a tendency) does not and can not have any "intentional" ends at all - as the aggregated activities of millions of automonous individuals and entities all of whom are essentially minding their own business, it just is what it is (or is not); and
• to the extent it does as matter of fact tend serve a purpose (note - this disentagles the "is" from the "ought" which the question confuses), then the interests of humanity and the interests of transnational corpoations are more or less aligned in any case, so the question is impossible to answer.

Note that to say "strongly disagree" is doesn't answer the question accurately/unambiguously, because it would (or at any rate could) be taken to mean "no, corporate interests ought to be preferred over humanity's interests", and a person holding a "Darwinist" view wouldn't agree with that either.

Now the view I wish to express might be a controversial political view, but the questionnaire does not allow it even to be expressed and therefore case begs the very question it purports to answer. ElectricRay 12:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Ray, how can this be fixed? Also having some sort of qualitative option in addition to the current (more or less)quantitative option? Qualitative surveys do give you more nuanced data, but they're also much harder to condense into something useable. Feel free to add any qualitative stuff you like, i'm thinking of putting this in non-userspace. karmafist 19:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it can necessarily be fixed - in the sense of achieving the "truth" of the matter, since "truth" is a function of language, and we all speak a (slightly) different "language" (particularly in terms of politics). Yes, this makes me sound like some arch relativist, and I guess I probably am.

What "language" we speak influences the sort of questions we're interested in asking, and the way we interpret answers given to them. To avoid this bias in a Political Compass questionnaire you can limit the number of questions you ask in getting to your answer: the fewer the questions, the less scope for nuance and interpretation; but conversely the less definition of the issue in the first place. As I say, the best you can do is to keep the question to a single very general one: i.e., "generally, how much do I like the idea that individuals can do what they like (i) socially and (ii) economically".

But even that doesn't quite cut it: the best it can do is, for example, to paint anarchism as the view that individual rights triumph absolutely over societal rights - i.e., it still involves some measurable conception of "rights" to work. I can imagine a sort of anarchist (indeed, I think I am one) who (like a good relativist) rejects the idea of "rights" altogether and instead sees overall societal function as a simple manifestation of billions of individual iterations of Prisoner's Dilemma, each of which have no moral content at all, with the view of "right" and "wrong" appearing over the whole enterprise in the manner of an invisible hand (ie seeming to be there, but not actually there). I don't think the political compass caters for that view at all - perhaps it could be on a third (backwards and forwards) axis or something, but I'm not really sure that works either. Sorry, I'm babbling - but I do find this very interesting. ElectricRay 21:36, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I find this particular test (I've taken it before actually) more flawed than most. Consider this question "A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system." So how are you supposed to answer that? It is true but is it an advantage? is it a good thing? As a libertarian (I score way way in the corner on the Nolan test) I know it's true but it's a bad thing and therefore not an advantage. I'll put my data in anyway but I fear GIGO... ++Lar: t/c 19:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)