dagblog - Comments for "Political Spectra"

Ah, Johnny Burke, pure sunny

artappraiser — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:51:58 +0000

In reply to Okay. Maybe the teasers are

Ah, Johnny Burke, pure sunny Americana, the Norman Rockwell of jazz lyrics, fun stuff, tho definitely not reality based.

Okay. Maybe the teasers are

EmmaZahn — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:08:54 +0000

In reply to Tips to get that standoffish

Okay. Maybe the teasers are a little different but the questions still lead to the desired response. For example, would you like to:

a) swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar and be better off than you are.

b) be a mule, a pig, a fish, or a monkey.

(For the young ones in the audience, that is from a really, really old song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rATftJiWdkw)

Hah.Sarah Palin already has

artappraiser — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:56:40 +0000

In reply to Tips to get that standoffish

Hah.

Sarah Palin already has #2 taken care of. And that got me thinking: if the main GOP faction keeps bashing her, maybe in the future we'll see a "Sarah!" magazine with headlines like all three of yours.

Tips to get that standoffish

Donal — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:46:46 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the link. I got

Tips to get that standoffish Libertarian eating out of your hand.

How to be the life of the Tea Party.

March against Wall Street, and flatten your tummy at the same time.

Thanks for the link. I got

EmmaZahn — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:08:56 +0000

In reply to Wikipedia's entry "political

Thanks for the link. I got lost there for a couple of hours. ;)

You're right, btw, these tests really are like those in Cosmo and other magazines.

I took the tests and it turns

moat — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:46:52 +0000

In reply to Political Spectra

I took the tests and it turns out I am a Librarian: Pretty relaxed about quiet hanky panky in the stacks but inclined to punish any shelving done outside the Dewey Decimal System. Guns are okay as long as they aren't used as bookmarks. Cackling should not be permitted unless I am on the phone with another Librarian.

One problem with these examples is that the categories used to define the axes are not actually orthoganal in relation to each other. If the idea is to be "surprised" at where you stand in relation to others who have self identified themselves in some manner, then one shouldn't use the conventional forms of self identification to make up the categories. The Pournelle chart has the conventional axis of less to greater belief in "Statism" in one dimension and the ultimate procedure in self identification in the matter of rationality as the definition of the other. One person's reason is another person's bowl of Lucky Charms.

I think an example of an orthoganal pair of axes would be something like the following:

Arbitrary Constraints

Communitarian <-----------------l-----------------> Cosmopolitan

Necessary Constraints

The arbitrary constraints are those that are imposed to maintain the order of a system but are not intrinsically vital to our existence. For instance, if one believes our planet is very close to the limit of how many humans can live on it, then constraints upon our behavior are seen as necessary. At the other end of the scale such concerns are just a part of a game.

With maps like these, some people would need a large number of maps to represent their views and some would just require a few.

I should probably explain myself better but I have to leave the Library for a while.

I agree with you about

Oxy Mora — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:06:59 +0000

In reply to I think the two-axis model

I agree with you about "mainstream", much better word. While I have liberal social views I also run a company and therefore don't want to fill out any more 1099's than necessary. And I really have a hard time defining myself as a liberal, if for no other reason than the effective demonization of the word by the R's. And "Centrist"--that just sounds like milk toast. Ideas emanating from the "mainstream"--that's a new mindset.

It appears that giving

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:42:02 +0000

In reply to I think the two-axis model

It appears that giving answers at the extreme of each pole would plot you dead in the middle. I expect that most people who are called centrist and who identify themselves that way have at least some beliefs that fall towards one extreme or the other.
To actually be a centrist on every, or even most, political and life question/s seems to me to be a completely indefensible cop-out position.

I think the two-axis model

Doctor Cleveland — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:22:27 +0000

In reply to Political Spectra

I think the two-axis model will always oversimplify. And you've got to make pretty subjective judgments in order to plot (Jerry Pournelle thinks Communists are more rationalist than "welfare liberals?" Really? One word: Lysenko.)

Maybe "center" is not really a good word; "mainstream" seems more like it. If you imagine "centrists" as just in the middle of whatever the current debate is, or as having no opinion but the one that currently polls best.

There are positions that are mainstream in the sense that they're common-sense applications of the society's dominant political and philosophical traditions. Maybe if we think of ideas growing from the center, rather than occupying a center, we'd be on to something.

Wikipedia's entry "political

artappraiser — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:21:43 +0000

In reply to New test = no difference.

Wikipedia's entry "political spectrum" is good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

obviously written by political scientists and showing how many of these there are out there, and noting that

researchers have frequently noted that a single left-right axis is insufficient in describing the existing variation in political beliefs, and often include other axes.

I think that, like stereotyping, these "maps" can be a slightly useful simple analytic tool to get a grasp of the big picture of a society. But after you use them, you have to move on to the real complexities of life within a society. And it strikes me as ridiculous to try to force-fit complex individual human brains into them by making related tests. Unless you're someone who prefers rigidly following an ideology to actually thinking.

There was one of the tests that was extremely popular in the blogosphere years back, and a lot of commenters put their +/- number results as signature lines on their comments. As a moderator around that time, I used to read nearly all of the comments on a board, and it often struck me that depending on the issue, people often had totally different arguments from their political spectrum number.

I also remember looking at the test questions and thinking they didn't seem any more well written than your basic Glamour or Cosmo magazine test from my teen years (i.e., "are you are social person or a homebody?" or "are you a guys' girl or a girls' girl?") The spectrum business is one thing, the silly testing written to fit individual people into them is quite another.