Yes, it's that time again, Vince! ACS Political Compass / 2005 edition!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
I think you have missed the point. Political beliefs tend not to occur in a vacuum. People's opinions on these questions will tend to cohere with certain political tendencies.

Not for those who actually think out their ideology.

The point is that most people, if asked, would say they were opposed. This is not a test of one's knowledge, or of the truth, but of one's political tendencies.

There's no option to say "but they aren't opposed!"

For example, people who believe in God tend to be more conservative, but it's no objection to that fact to claim that God doesn't exist.

It's possible to be a conservative atheist, or a religious liberal. There is no necessary connection between being religious and being conservative.

There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.

What's this have to do with politics? Sure it's worrying, no the government shouldn't do anything about it. I'll put disagree.

You obviously don't think that it is worrying enough to warrant government intervention in the form of regulation or public broadcasting. You have answered your own question, since if you thought it was worrying enough to warrant action, you would betray your proclivity for government intervention, since there is no other realistic solution.

They don't ask that. It's not the scale of the worryingness that makes me not want government intervention, its that I'm opposed to government intervention in that area REGARDLESS of how worrying it is.

It is supposed to measure your attitude towards commodification. If our society is dumb enough to prefer branded water to plain old tap water when there is really not much difference, this speaks to capitalist brainwashing. If you are a lefty, you will think that this is a problem caused by capitalism and consumer brainwashing.

I can be a righty and still think it's a problem. I can also think that it's outside of the acceptable sphere of government regulation.

The problem is that there are two dramatically different positions that have the same "correct answer" to this question - one, that it's not worrying or a problem at all, and the other, that it's worrying but this is not within the acceptable sphere of government regulation. I think tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use are problems in our society. I do NOT think they should be regulated by the government.

Authoritarian people are more likely to countenance force and violence as solutions. I thought this was obvious.

There's no necessary connection at all.

It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.

More than stupid, it's an easily answered empirical question, not one of ideology.

It's not a question of truth, but of what you believe. Authoritarian persons are likely to view their children keeping secrets from them as an affront to family order.

Being an affront to family order isn't the same as being unnatural. The problem is that "unnatural" isn't a subjective term, it's an easily measured objective one.

At a guess I'd say that this correlates with authoritarianism as well. People who believe in authority are less likely to reflect critically on their own problems, but try to suppress them.

I'm sure there are as many OCD/depressed authoritarians as libertarians.

Again, one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to remember that the Nazis, Stalin and the fascists raved against "decadent" art that didn't "mean anything".

So does Dave Barry.

If you think that art must be utilitarian and portray happy workers or Aryan supermen, or have some "moral" content, you are more likely to tend towards authoritarianism.

Must? No. Do I think it's stupid? Yes. Just like I think LOTS of things are stupid, but I don't think people should be prevented from doing them.

Your tendency to believe in authorities which cannot be questioned.

Astrology can be questioned and is questioned. Belief in astrology is do to ignorance or stupidity, not authoritarian tendencies.

You cannot be moral without being religious.

I can see how this MIGHT be an OK question, but it's still way too apolitical.

Again, this is authoritarian. Most religious codes of ethics stipulate rules for personal conduct that if applied in the law would involve massively authoritarian structures and policies.

That's not the question at all! The question is if there can be a moral system outside of religion. There clearly ARE such systems. It's like asking whether you agree or disagree with "You can be happy without being wealthy." There are concrete examples establishing this as true.

Some people are naturally unlucky.

WTF? How does not comprehending statistics determine someone's political ideology?

Again. Conservative people tend to think that a justification for inequality is that it is part of the natural or divine order.

Luck is by definition random, that is, it's NOT a consequence of the natural or divine order.

Again. this speaks to authoritarianism. I can't see why you would miss that.

I can't see why you can't see that I understand what they're looking for; I just don't see how it actually indicates anything one way or another. Teaching your children your morality isn't "authoritarian", it's universal. You can't avoid it.

[Agathon]

Kuci. Get a brain.

You have been told repeatedly by many people that the point of the questions is what people believe, not what the facts are, and that beliefs on these matters tend to correlate with one's political leanings.

It's a test for everyone. They don't have the time or the resources to tailor it for people who want to make fine grained distinctions.

What part of that do you not understand?

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Kontiki
I don't think the Republican's are for banning all guns.

Even more so. Republicans are all for people having sex with their firearms...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
Kuci. Get a brain.

You have been told repeatedly by many people that the point of the questions is what people believe, not what the facts are, and that beliefs on these matters tend to correlate with one's political leanings.

And I've told you repeatedly that's an idiotic way to assign someone a position on a political chart.

they could ask you if you're black, too! Since most blacks are democrats...

See?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Not for those who actually think out their ideology.

Except for a short period of time where you are looking for your political ideology in an open fashion, in the end, your ideology and your attitudes will be strongly related. Over time, your ideologies influence your attitudes, and vice-versa.

(It should be noted that the people who are developing their ideology are also influenced by the other perks of their personality, but since both the ideology and the personality are open to significant change in these formative years, one may consider it as an "open game")

This is the main reason why most Bourgeois, despite being left-wingers in their youth, become right-wingers as they grow old. This is also the main reason why many working-class people who have been ambitious in their past, and trusted the ability of the system to reward hard work, will progressively become more left-wing as they grow old.

[Agathon]

And I've told you repeatedly that's an idiotic way to assign someone a position on a political chart.

No it isn't. People's politics tend to follow these indicators. Anyone who knows anything about politics could explain most of the questions to you.

They could ask if you were black, but this would provide poor results for the 10% of blacks that are conservative. In any case many blacks tend to be more socially conservative. This isn't about Republicans or Democrats anyway.

[Az]

Spiffor a slight threadjack: do you think that your ethics and your personal morality are completely identical?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon

And I've told you repeatedly that's an idiotic way to assign someone a position on a political chart.

No it isn't. People's politics tend to follow these indicators. Anyone who knows anything about politics could explain most of the questions to you.[

They could ask if you were black, but this would provide poor results for the 10% of blacks that are conservative. In any case many blacks tend to be more socially conservative. This isn't about Republicans or Democrats anyway.

They can also ask me many of these questions, but they provide poor results for those who don't meet these correlations.

[Agathon]

They can also ask me many of these questions, but they provide poor results for those who don't meet these correlations.

You mean the 2% of people who actually think about politics?

I'm so sorry for you. Welcome to the real world...

[Spiffor]

Kuci:

Do you know the concept of correlation? Do you know the concept of quasi-laws? You may not (which wouldn't be any shameful from you considering they belong to social sciences' jargon), but I think it may help you understand how a poll's methodology works.

Social scientists never if say "If A then B". You'll never hear a political scientist say "If the guy strongly agrees with spanking children, then he is an authoritarian". Such "If A then B" statements are Laws. They may be fine in hard sciences (I wouldn't know cause it's not my domain), but they suck utterly in soft sciences. This idea is not always shared by economists, but it is universally shared in sociology and political science.

Social scientists will rather say "If A, then it is more likely that B happens". The causality between the two events is not absolute. It gives room for "aberrations". But more than that, it means it is possible to measure how true a theory is.

Let's say, my theory is "The more religious one is, the more conservative he is likely to be". To verify it, I conduct a poll with many questions about religiosity and politics. The poll has many questions (you can do fairly long polls IRL, because the people generally don't leave the pollster once they're hooked). My poll discovers that there is a 25% correlation between religiosity and conservatism, which means: When a respondant has one more point on the religion scale, he has 0.25 points more on the conservatism scale.

My theory would then be considered as having an explicative power of 25%, which may be nice for a student's paper (last time I did such a paper, about the reasons for identifying with the EU, I got an explicative power of 10%, which was among the best in class), but which is pure crap for an actual political scientist.

Now, you may ask plenty fo questions like:
"So you decide what questions you ask? What if those are laden questions?"
"So you decide to make a 'religiosity scale' and a 'conservatism scale'? How do I know those scales correspond to reality?"
"So you get to pick who you'll question? It's fairly easy to prove your point if you pick the respondents" etc.

These questions are justified. When you make a quantitative poll, you are bound by the following problem: you simplify reality in such a fashion that you may end up having a treated material (the responses to your poll and the way you scale them) that is completely different from the raw material you want to understand (the attitudes of the people).
This difference between actual reality and measured reality is what we call Artefacts. When they are proven to be terrible, they can destroy a theory, no matter how sound it is.

However, there have been several generations of political scientists, who have since developed ways to reduce these artefacts. Many polls ask questions that have existed in former research, and these questions' validity and reliability (if they actually measure what they intend to measure) have generally been checked.
There is a very clear methodology about how to pick a sample, and the margin of error is clearly calculated from them.
The way one constructs scales (such as 'religiosity scale' or 'conservatism scale' has also come under scrutiny more often than not.

True, the measure instruments continue to be far from perfect. And the theories continue not to reach the fabled 100% correlation (actually, when a theory exceeds 70%, people begin to think it's fishy, and that there is a tautology somewhere). But overall, the methodology is a pretty solid one.


Politicalcompass.org is fairly famous in the small circle of behavioral political science. It's the typical poll, with many different questions, among which some you don't see where they are going to. It's also short and entertaining enough for the Students not to get bored with reading whatever huge poll would be methodologically flawless, but impossible to digest for the freshman.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Azazel
Spiffor a slight threadjack: do you think that your ethics and your personal morality are completely identical?

Err, I have some trouble making the difference between the two words (I always forget the difference, even though I know there is one). Could you please clarify?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Kuci:

Do you know the concept of correlation? Do you know the concept of quasi-laws? You may not (which wouldn't be any shameful from you considering they belong to social sciences' jargon), but I think it may help you understand how a poll's methodology works.

I do. I think it's stupid to use such things to measure a person's ideology when you can simply ASK their position on an issue. Such as, instead of "There is now a worrying fusion of entertainment and information" and just Agree/Disagree, also have "and the government should do something about it." Or just ask "The government should regulate news to keep it truthful/whatever". Just like, if you're trying to find out someone's income, you don't ask "what race are you", you ask how many dollars they earn every year.

[Kidlicious]

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -10.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.77

I still only believe in one axis though.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I think it's stupid to use such things to measure a person's ideology when you can simply ASK their position on an issue.

However, you plunge in another problem : people will often not have the same opinion of left/wing, authoritarian/libertarian, or whatever than the pollster.
For example, I cannot even understand why Oerdin is on the center-left on the economic scale. It strikes me as completely absurd, considering that he is an outspoken supporter of the free market and of fire-at-will practices, while he considers European like welfare system to be bloat that should be heavily purged.
These ideas, in my understanding of the economic scale are extremely right-wing. Yet, Oerdin could be considered as reasonably central in the US, which has a different understanding of the political spectrum.

However, it does happen fairly often, that polls ask people to situate themselves on a left - right scale. The indicator is not great, but it's a quick'n'dirty fix if you want no precise analysis about it. Obviously, this is not the case of this poll, in which the left/right position is not a side note, but an aim.

Besides, these scales are new to about everybody who takes the test for the first time (remember, in the real world, most people perceive only the left / right division). You can guesstimate your position on this scale, but prior to taking the test, the average person never thought too strongly about their self-position on an authoritarian scale. That would mean a very erroneous self-positioning. Simply because you have never devoted the time to think about it.
Just look at Fez: he believes he supports personal freedoms more than anybody here. He would have probably placed himself at the extreme bottom right. Yet, he "doesn't care" about the liberalization of Marijuana (and only because he significantly mellowed his position recently), which means he is more authoritarian (at least in that regard) than a great many people here.
On the other end, I seem to understand that Al-Kimiya takes pride in being an authoritarian. Yet, he has only 4 because he probably disagreed with statements such as "The most important thing children should learn is discipline" or claims like that, which could pass for utterly absurd in our societies, but which are considered as truth in authoritarian societies. Al-Kimiya would have probably placed himself higher on the authoritarian scale, because his point of reference are the liberal Apolytoners, rather than the Taliban.

Just like, if you're trying to find out someone's income, you don't ask "what race are you", you ask how many dollars they earn every year.

The difference is that income is already measured. You know that you earn 30,000$ a year. You know that you are 36. You know that you have a BA (which is the usual measure of education, for all its flaws). You don't know that you're -5.42 on economic and -2.30 on social matters.

Edit: You can only guesstimate, from your political experiences and aims you have in your mind at that moment. So does the political scientist: he estimates, according to a precise and systematic scale he applies to all respondents (it is not necessarily good, but it has the merit of being the same), and he according to your political experiences and aims he prompted you to think about.

Come to think of it, it is certainly a better way to estimate how one is located. On the one hand, you have the usual respondent, whose sole interest in life is probably not politics, and who'll scale himself according to immediate attitudes or deep-seated emotional self-scaling (such as an ardent democrat always scaling himself "2" on a 1-5 left-right scale, no matter what).
On the other hand, you have the political scientist, who took monthes to develop a questionnaire featuring all (or at least the most relevant) aspects of Personality that can affect political ideology. He prompts the respondents about it, and always uses the same method. Overall, I think it's a much better way to measure something for the sake of comparison.

[Al'Kimiya]

Nah.. I like discipline