Talk:Pournelle chart

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This article was nominated for deletion on 2005-05-19. The result of the discussion was keep.

Is it indeed similar to the Nolan Chart? The only similarity I see is that they are both two dimensional.

That is the only similarity. That part needs to be revised. Harvestdancer 22:33, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)Harvestdancer

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With a heavy heart I put this article on the "Votes for Deletion" page, because it is non-unique. All the information on this page is on the page Political Spectrum Harvestdancer 16:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

This page was up for VFD. I'm the one who nominated it. I'm glad to see it survived though. Harvestdancer 14:55, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

This page is in dire need of a criticism section. I'm sure at least leftist anarchists would feel insulted by the chart deeming their ideology "irrational" (many of whom would probably label rightist libertarianism irrational). It would seem that the chart is little more than propaganda for the right libertarian agenda. ——Quirk 13:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood the word "irrational" in this article. It doesn't mean that a political view of this sort is irrational, but that the people with these views do not believe that human rationality can turn society into a perfect world. Pournelle himself is towards the "irrational" end of this spectrum, so it certainly isn't meant as pejorative. I've edited it a bit to make this more clear. Lawrence King 05:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Jerry Pournelle

An anonymous IP claiming to be J.P. has criticized the criticism section right there in the text, apparently not realizing that such belongs on this talk page. I don't feel comfortable trying to integrate, so I request an expert. S Chapin 18:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• I find the above paragraph difficult to understand. This was a dissertation, and in it I claimed -- then and now for that matter -- that the standard one dimensional "left to right" model was inadequate in that it did not map different political positions to unique places, and the underlying spectrum of left and right was not definable. My model uses definable axes and maps each political position to a unique place. I have never claimed that these are the only relevant political axes; only that they will serve uniquely to map the political field. Note that the axes chosen are orthogonal; it is certainly possible to find other political positions, but they will generally be correlated and thus not orthogonal. [J. E. Pournelle]

• I do not believe I have used the word "irrational" in any discussion of this model. My sub-title for the vertical axis was "belief in planned social progress." For more on these matters, see Oakshott on Rationionalism in Politics. Rationalism has been important in American politics, although it is not usually debated as such. The New England Unitarian movement divided when Charles Francis Adams and others rejected the Transcendentalist notion of the perfectibility of man, and the notion that human action can bring about perfection has had profound impact on political life. Such things are not much studied now, but they remain important. One might also see Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium. [J. E. Pournelle]

The above paragraphs were added to the Criticism section. -Will Beback 21:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

It was Dr. Pournelle, he mentions it at [1].

I have three times tried to make a couple of points and edit it and each time someone else has removed what I said, so I pay no attention to Wikipedia any longer. It has some good information, but it is also full of errors that cannot be corrected because someone wants those errors to be there.

I don't know what Wikipedia policy says on this, but I would tend to think the author of a document has the right to fix errors an article on said document..? Stereoroid 22:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

He, or anyone, has the "right" to correct this article. However no one should insert their personal comments into an encyclopedia article. Pournelle is quite literate and internet savvy, so he should be able to discern the difference between an article and a comment page. In any case, please fix the article in whatever way it needs fixing. Please don't write your personal complaints about the article into it, no matter if you're John Doe or Jerry Pournelle. -Will Beback 09:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm writing to Dr. P about that. Don't make assumptions - Wikipedia's norms and procedures are not obvious if you don't spend a lot of time here, and it has changed a lot in the last year e.g. the emphasis on logging in. Wikipedia is not the Internet. For now, though, since we know it was Jerry Pournelle, I have retitled this section (no question mark any more), and I propose we remove these other extraneous comments (mine and yours). We don't need to dispute their authenticity any more. Stereoroid 12:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Please don't remove comments. They record the discussion. -Will Beback 19:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for improvement?

Based on Jerry Pournelle's comments, how can we improve the article? I think that it's inconsistent to move his initial comments to Discussion, but then to insert his latest comments in the article. That does even less to improve the article than his initial comments, so can we now start looking to improve the article, and drop the negativity? I've suggested to J.E.P. that he put up a web page with his definitive version, but he is busy and currently (as he says) does not pay any attention to Wikipedia. Can we improve the article and (respectfully) improve his attitude? Stereoroid 17:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I've left a note for the editor who created the chart with the term "irrational" in it. The other criticism is harder to address. We refer to "lefist idealogies", but only to indicate where they fit on the chart. The "criticisms" section is unsourced and I wouldn't mind seeing it removed entirely. -Will Beback · † · 19:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)