[PLUG-TALK] Rate Your Position on the Political Compass

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I learned of this web site years ago, and discovered that it's still in 
>business. If you're curious where you are positioned on the 
>two-dimensional political compass, take the test here: 
><http://www.politicalcompass.org/>.

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 06:24:09PM -0800, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> The "test" consists of a bunch of knee-jerk inspiring statements without 
> any context or depth.  Each are rated as to whether the examined would 
> "strongly disagree", "disagree", "agree", "strongly agree".

I agree with Jeme on some things and disagree on others, but I strongly
agree with his take on this test.  The questions are all infused with
unacknowledged assumptions:

1) Questions are assumed to be well posed.  There is no choice for "this
is a stupid question" or "this is not stated correctly".  If you try
to leave an entry blank, the webpage scolds you.  Jeme's parenthood
example is one of these;  the question "Mothers may have careers, but
their first duty is to be homemakers" is actually at least eight questions:

 My question:                                                   My answer:
-Should parents focus first on children:                        Strongly Agree
-Are women often better than men at caring for children:                 Agree
-Are women ALWAYS better than men at caring for children:    Strongly Disagree
-Should parents have great careers, if circumstances permit:    Strongly Agree
-Can parents have great careers and still take care of children:         Agree
-Can the needs of children on occasion prevent a great career:           Agree
-Can parents make bad choices about career versus home:         Strongly Agree
-Should family roles be assigned by government or culture:   Strongly Disagree

So how do I fold those 16 bits into one dumb question with four choices,
when I don't even agree with four choices?

2) Test takers are required to have opinions on everything, there is
no choice for "there is room for wide disagreement here, and I would
rather connect to a wide range of opinionholders than choose an
arbitrary position that alienates many unnecessarily".  So I share
Jeme's disgust with questions like "The businessperson and the
manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist."
I don't rank people that way.  The important person to me is the one
in front of me, or the one I can be the most helpful to, or the one
who is most pleasant to be around.  I endured many unpleasant writers
and artists, while others are among my best friends.  Ditto for
businesspeople.  Most interesting people don't fit into one little
box like that anyway.

When I was in high school, a rank-addled English teacher berated me
for being technically minded.  My parting shot, on the way to the
principal's office, was "without people like me, people like you
would still be scraping their breakfast off the bottoms of rocks."
I've mellowed, but I still have a strong disregard for assholes.

3) The test is based on majoritarian assumptions, particularly that
I want a world where my opinions dominate.  For example, I would
like most of you to be vegetarian like me.  However, I would rather
be killed and eaten than live in a world where this preference of
mine could be forced on you.  I value your freedom too much.

I could identify many more bad assumptions, but overall the test
designers show a poor understanding of the diversity of human thought.
I like the attempt to go beyond simple left and right.  I have a personal
weakness for the two-axis test at http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html ,
for example, but I can see how a lot of people would consider those
questions ill-posed, irrelevant, or missing the point.  People are
not single valued, or even two valued.  That is why they are better
than computers.

One of the disgusting affectations of this test is that they assembled
a "panel of experts" to pretend to answer the questions for famous
historical figures.  At least half those figures would be likely to
find the test too silly to bother with, while others would replace
most of the questions.  Jeme's main man, Gandhi, was well known for
inventing his own questions and his own answers, replacing such dumb
questions as "who is better" with "what makes for a better life".  My
main man, Milton Friedman, would change questions with "always" or
"only" in them into "sometimes".   In the world of ideas, Mohandas
and Milton would get along much better than the spacing on the silly
graph implies;  after all, Gandhi was good friends with Viceroy Louis
Mountbatten, though on this graph he would probably be farther from
Gandhi than Friedman is.

Rich, you are a good friend and often bring us cool stuff, but
this time I feel like a doting cat owner when Fluffy proudly
presents a dead mouse.  Unlike Fluffy, you are wise enough to see
why some of us might not enjoy the dead mouse (except in a twisted
watch-the-train-wreck sense), so I am risking this posting in 
anticipation of your forbearance.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs