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#Post#: 9331--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Political Compass
By: the lost minion Date: November 18, 2018, 3:44 am
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[quote author=Allie link=topic=620.msg9288#msg9288
date=1542466266]
If you take one of this tests, chances are indeed the result
will be different from your actual political position and
there’s a clear reason for that: they are usually biased, rely
on ignorance or play on words (or all of those together)
For example, they have questions such as “Do you believe there
should be less income inequality?”
Who would actually say “no” to that?
But we don’t live in Wonderland and the real question is
actually something like “Would you be willing to sacrifice your
own income to promote income redistribution via taxes?”
Then your answer may be different.
You can also have questions such as “Do you believe everybody
should have access to education, health and security?”
Again, this would be really fantastic in an ideal world, now
wouldn’t it?
But the real question is “Are you willing to give more power to
the government when it comes to health, education and security
areas and pay for that through a raise in taxes?"
[/quote]
Not so fast.
Asking people the question you suggest as unbiased would be
effectively measuring how willing they are to give their money
to the government. This is would be simply a wrong methodology
here. When you want to check if a test seems sound, you always
need to ask yourself a question: what is measured here. And in
these tests what is measured are values.
Now, with values the biggest problem is that you can't ask about
them directly as most people don't realize what their values are
and even if they think they do, there tend to be a discrepancy
between what they declare and what they do (and we assume we act
according to our true values, not against them). So you need to
come up with questions that would reveal people's opinions on
subjects that tend to be viewed differently depending on one's
political orientation (that is based on values, for example:
what is personal freedom and what should not be regulated, how
important is human life, are we all equal, if not, should
something be done about it, what are our "rights" bla blah) - in
other words, that are indicators.
So asking the questions you suggest as unbiased would not only
completely miss the point, (it wouldn't be an indicator of
political beliefs), but would also be unnecessarily narrow which
is another error (and would actually create a huge bias as
people don't give away their money easily, regardless of their
political orientation). This kind of questions has their place
in tests whose job is to match a respondent with a political
party - there you ask concrete questions about what a person
thinks should be done, and check which party's program it
matches. It's a different test, though, with a different
objective.
And as a side note:
There are quite a lot of people who wouldn't agree that there
should be less inequality, because they view inequality as a
natural result of normal differences between people, also as a
kind of reward-punishment system. They would reject some or all
arguments about system induced inequalities. They would believe
that one's position on the ladder mostly depends on the hard
work of an individual and should not be interfered with because
a society is hierarchical and rightly so as this model provides
an incentive for those who want to get to the top.
#Post#: 9332--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Political Compass
By: Alharacas Date: November 18, 2018, 5:29 am
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Allie, I agree with you as to my position probably being more
center than anything else. It's just that there used to be a
party called Zentrum - (Catholic, plus they voted for Hitler) in
the Weimar Republic, so we don't usually use that word to
describe our political position.
And yes, that test is definitely US-centred.
But I think Marmolada's raised some interesting points, so I for
one would be grateful if you posted again on this thread, quota
or no quota. ;)
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