The PPPC

[Pandemoniak]

The Planetarian Project for Political Compass

I have been thinking about that before, but now, Im on my way to do it. First, Id like to ask everyone if they are interested to help me. The objective is to provide something like a quizz which could give an overview of someone's position in a political compass.
Maybe it would be helpful to let me know if you're just ready to help, or really willing to work on it. Most of the work will be made by e-mails or conference chat on yahoo.

The first problem to solve is how the compasa will be made : I though about giving two kinds of "results" to the test :
- first a position in the compass,
- second the two or three closest faction according to the tester ideology.

The compass could be delimited by the social engineering choices, making something like that :
Democracy is opposed to Police State
Fundamentalism is opposed to Knowledge
Free Market is opposed to Planned
Power is opposed to Wealth
Eudaimonia is opposed to Thought Control,

which leaves Cybernetic opposed to Green : this is quite coherent if we consider cybernetic opposed to nature, but not coherent if we take it like it was meant to be, with the +2 Planet Rating for Cybernetic, leaving Planet unharmed.
As well, the Planned economics could be opposed to green, since Domai cant switch green -that sounds unnatural to me, you can be marxist and green, im the proof.
AS well, the free market could be opposed to green, seeing its ruins trhe environment, thus planned would have to be opposed to cybernetic, which is not very coherent either...

I also though about simply ignoring Cybernetics and Green.

Feedbacks and sign in welcome.

[Drogue]

Sounds great .

If you want to see where you are in real life, go to The Political Compass and answer the questions. Although it is British based, it's quite accurate IMHO, and should work for most countries.

If you do it, please post or PM me you're result, be interesting to see.

[Pandemoniak]

I already did it before, im like -8.5 leftist, -9 libertarian. Archaic is around Margaret Tatcher IIRC

[Drogue]

Probably nearer Pinochet

I'm -1 leftist, -6 libertarian, btw.

[Aaron Blackwell]

And I am 4.80 leftist, 3.20 liberalist

[lucky22]

I don't recall my scores but I was fairly center-left. As far as our own, here, are the equations available for the original? I do a fair amount of work with statistical models and may be able to help.

[Pandemoniak]

No, lucky I dont think so. First question is still to be answered : on what compass are we gonna make this test ? A 2D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian?
A 3D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian; green/poluter ?

Anyone has suggestions ?

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
No, lucky I dont think so. First question is still to be answered : on what compass are we gonna make this test ? A 2D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian?
A 3D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian; green/poluter ?

Anyone has suggestions ?

That's actually one dimensional or two dimensional-

rather than lose the cybernetic aspect we could add a third dimension- "parsimonious/complex". The notion that on planet one's technological orientation is political really could make some sense. Actually the original five you posed look pretty good.
We could derive a single score from five measures using multiple regression and then do an analysis of variance to determine if each faction differs significantly in outcome on the score. From there we'd have to get a goodness-of-fit routine together for individuals' scores on our measurement instrument (questionnaire) which could place them in an appropriate faction. Just an idea. Much messy work would be required, but the outcome could be pretty slick.

[DeathByTheSword]

:relieved: i thought that we had an new branch of the CCCP on our hands

[DeathByTheSword]

Economic Left/Right: -2.00
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.46

not that far from gandhi

[lucky22]

Originally posted by lucky22


That's actually one dimensional or two dimensional-

unless I read it properly and see the "left/right" at the beginning of each list.

rather than lose the cybernetic aspect we could add a third dimension- "parsimonious/complex". The notion that on planet one's technological orientation is political really could make some sense.

Actually the original five you posed look pretty good.

If we want to leave out green and create other problems hence the two and three dimension soulutions Pan posed.

So... what I posed above could work with the FOUR dimensions "left/right" "authoritarian/libertarian" "green/polluter (or anthrocentric or whatever)" and "high tech (complex)/low tech (simple, parsimonious, etc.)"

[DeathByTheSword]

how would you show a 4D picture?

[lucky22]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
how would you show a 4D picture?

We wouldn't- we'd wind up getting an equation into which we could plug answers to a set of questions- it would probably be a "structural equation model" (perhaps you are familiar with LISREL) which would show an individuals "most likely faction tendency".

Graphs of 4d regressions are really really messy.

A "model" will show linear relationships of "factors" and is much easier to look at.

[Drogue]

I would go 3d, leave out high/low tech. Left/right, authoritarian/libertarian and green/environmentally unfriendly covers enough I think.

Is it based on what you use (what you play best with) or what society you would rather live in?

[AdamTG02]

Even a 3d graph is sojmewhat unwieldy. Let's go with five dimensions, as Pande said to begin with. Sure, Eudaimonia could be merged with Democracy, and Police State with Thought Control, but do we really want to simplify it that much? Let's go with the option that ascertains and stores the most information.

With five dimensions, it should be trivial to take out any two of them and make a 2D graph on those two axes, showing where everyone stands. We could even take three axes and make a 3D graph, if we had the software to support such a graph.

Even if we don't want Pande's originial five dimensions, that's fine. But let's have something a little more elaborate than simply a three-dimensional or two-dimensional graph. What about Demo vs. Police State, Planned vs. Free Market, Green vs. Free Market, Knowledge vs. Fundamentalism, Power vs. Wealth? That's five axes as-is, without pulling Future Societies into the loop, and none of them are repeats of the others. (As someone who thinks the environment must be protected from exploitation may nonetheless be strongly against a centralized economy. Take your average pro-Green Morganite.)

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like more complexity, not less. We can always limit our view to two criteria, and simply looking at the five ratings on sliders next to one another gives a pretty good view of where we stand and what we care about.