Best "Political Quiz" site?

[angus]

Okay, I demand that anyone posting here on this thread put their score down forthwith.  It cannot possibly be more humiliating that mine.  

also, note how no one falls in the southeast quadrant of their graph.  Really, isn't there some intrinsic logic problem they haven't identified here?

on the mini test

Personal Self Government 50%
Economic Self Government 40%

When you say South-East quadrant, are you talking about for political compass, because I was in the South-East area of that grid, just, i was like 1,-1.

yeah, okay, just in that quadrant.

Here's the thing.  Either is okay for relative comparisons to one another agreed.  Like we can use Joules or BTU or Calories or kW.h or ergs or wavenumber or hartrees or AU or eV or even Kelvins to talk about kinetic energy.  As long as we're using the same scale, we're comparing apples to apples.  But for an absolute scale neither of these tests is good.

The self-gov test is obviously Libertarian party propaganda and contains questions which will skew the results in favor of making everyone look like libertarians.  Of course it does, that's it's raison d'etre.  Fine.   But we can say well I got x1/y1 and you got x2/y2 and compare so no problem.

The other test may or may not be subjective in that way.  I don't know and don't much care, as it doesn't matter for relative comparison purposes.  What I liked about it was that it was a bit mixed up, so you can't fake your way through it without blatantly lying.  And was a bit more incisive.  What I didn't like about it were the choices for answer.  In this way the self gov test was better.  It had Yes, No, Maybe.  Whereas the compass test had Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.  

I know when my answer is yes, I know when it's no, and I know when it's maybe.  I have no idea what strongly or not strongly mean, and I didn't put strongly for anything.  Either I agree with the statement or I disagree, but there's no quantity there, just quality.  And, sometimes I don't know whether I agree or disagree, or sometimes I think I might agree with part of it or only in some circumstances.  Thus "maybe" should be a choice, or "neither agree nor disagree" should be a choice.  Most marketing mailings I get offer these choices.

I think if you could have the incision and motley and scatterbrained aspect of the compass test together with the Yes/No/Maybe choices of the compass test you'd have a better test.  Of course you'd have to rewrite the code, but it's just a matter of tweaking a few nested For and Do loops, right?  take about six minutes to fix that.

[afleitch]

The Political Compass is a good site, but I think it forces too many people to the right, such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Shroeder, who should be more to the centre. I find myself sitting exactly on the same box as John Kerry, according to the primaries section, so there you go!

[JohnFKennedy]

The Political Compass is a good site, but I think it forces too many people to the right, such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Shroeder, who should be more to the centre. I find myself sitting exactly on the same box as John Kerry, according to the primaries section, so there you go!

Schroder is pretty darn central, must be about 1,1

[angus]

The Political Compass is a good site, but I think it forces too many people to the right, such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Shroeder, who should be more to the centre. I find myself sitting exactly on the same box as John Kerry, according to the primaries section, so there you go!

I don't think that matters.  That's like saying you don't want a meter-stick because it makes the numbers too small.  Like, I'm 1.77 meters tall.  I'd rather be about 69 and a half inches tall.  Well, those two mean the same thing, so why bother with such triviality?

So what if it puts schröder and Blair in a certain quadrant, So what if those quadrants do not meet with your preconceived notions as to what is what.  That sort of thing depends on your local politics anyway.  What a Englishman would call the center is definitely different than what a French man would.  What a swiss or an American would call center is definitely different than what a mexican or hungarian would.  You want to avoid such subjectivity based on socialization.  Both these tests do just that.  as long as it puts them in the right relative positions so we can compare them.  If so, then it's a good scale.  And that's why it is not a good scale, because it does not, as far as I can tell, put people in the right relative ordering.  The self-gov test does a slightly better job at this.  Of course, it tries to call everyone a Libertarian, but that's okay, by the same logic.

my complaint about the compass test is not one of absolute posturing, as there are no absolutes.  it is one of relativity.  That's how the compass test, even with all its advantages, fails and how the self-gov test, with all its shortcomings, passes.

[JohnFKennedy]

selfgov told me I was a centrist, not a libertarian.

[Beet]

big surprise...not

90/40

[angus]

big surprise...not

90/40

so we'd be in much more agreement than either of our respective partisan loyalties would allow.  thus the greatness of president washington.  good advice not followed?

[Kghadial]

big surprise...not

90/40

Exactly the same for me ...

[opebo]

Libertarian.  8.12 econ and -2.21 social.

[angus]

Libertarian.  8.12 econ and -2.21 social.

deep in the SE quadrant (8,-2)  okay, we have one.

actually this would be my childhood notion of a prototypical republican.

[Gustaf]

Libertarian.  8.12 econ and -2.21 social.

deep in the SE quadrant (8,-2)  okay, we have one.

actually this would be my childhood notion of a prototypical republican.

Why is that? Republicans are generally social conservatives.

[angus]

Libertarian.  8.12 econ and -2.21 social.

deep in the SE quadrant (8,-2)  okay, we have one.

actually this would be my childhood notion of a prototypical republican.

Why is that? Republicans are generally social conservatives.

I was a child from 1967 to 1985.  I suppose it wasn't till the early eighties that this shift had completed.  I think your generational socialization would affect your perceptions.  Also, one's filters affect these perceptions.  We really don't hear much about how very socially conservative many of the key Democrat demographic groups are, but you hear quite a bit about how socially conservative some key Republican demographics are, in the major news sources in this society.  (Even to the point that the 'right wing' of the GOP is usually referring, oddly, to the authoritarian wing.  RWN is the only one, as far as I can tell, who correctly uses 'right wing' in his name to mean 'I'm a tightwad.')  I imagine scandanavian news sources play about the same.

Certainly the liberal/conservative and authoritarian/libertarian alignments are weird at this moment, in this society.  We have skirted around this issue in past conversations.  This is a part of the reason for misuse of certain terms in american english, I think.  

[Gustaf]

Libertarian.  8.12 econ and -2.21 social.

deep in the SE quadrant (8,-2)  okay, we have one.

actually this would be my childhood notion of a prototypical republican.

Why is that? Republicans are generally social conservatives.

I was a child from 1967 to 1985.  I suppose it wasn't till the early eighties that this shift had completed.  I think your generational socialization would affect your perceptions.  Also, one's filters affect these perceptions.  We really don't hear much about how very socially conservative many of the key Democrat demographic groups are, but you hear quite a bit about how socially conservative some key Republican demographics are, in the major news sources in this society.  (Even to the point that the 'right wing' of the GOP is usually referring, oddly, to the authoritarian wing.  RWN is the only one, as far as I can tell, who correctly uses 'right wing' in his name to mean 'I'm a tightwad.')  I imagine scandanavian news sources play about the same.

Certainly the liberal/conservative and authoritarian/libertarian alignments are weird at this moment, in this society.  We have skirted around this issue in past conversations.  This is a part of the reason for misuse of certain terms in american english, I think.  

OK, I'm with your reasoning now, but I'm not sure whether I actually agree.

[The Dowager Mod]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

[TeePee4Prez]

Mine is -5,-5.  I'm from SE Penn. though.  Influenced by liberal thoughts in college with a union upbringing.  My father would be more left economically, but much more authoritarian socially.

[© tweed]

I'll take the compass again now

[© tweed]

Holy crap.  I am not an economic centrist?  aagh

Economic Left/Right: -2.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.46

I got -6 -6 the last time I took this.

[angus]

Holy crap.  I am not an economic centrist?  aagh

Economic Left/Right: -2.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.46

I got -6 -6 the last time I took this.

this is what I'm talking about.  you and I are only about one full unit apart.  this test is definitely faulty.  the other test puts us at I'm a wee bit more liberal than you socially, and way more free-market than you economically.  I like that characterization better.

[JohnFKennedy]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

*gasp* A girl who registered AND posted? It's a miracle!!!!!


Welcome to the forums!!!

[dunn]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

*gasp* A girl who registered AND posted? It's a miracle!!!!!


Welcome to the forums!!!

It is...now guys try to be civil...

[Gustaf]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

*gasp* A girl who registered AND posted? It's a miracle!!!!!


Welcome to the forums!!!

It is...now guys try to be civil...

I bet you'll scare her off like you did with the others...you even made JohnDFord change his sex!

[ShapeShifter]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

welcome to the ghandi club

[angus]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

welcome to the ghandi club

my dot was pretty much right on top of ghandi's too.  welcome texasgurl24.

[YoMartin]

it put me to the left of ghandi.

welcome to the ghandi club

Anybody else in the Dalai Lama club? No? Maybe it´s time I start being less purist and more pragmatic and join the popular Gandhi club...

About the previous discussion on the merits of this compass, I found a couple of strange positions: George W Bush is the leader situated closer to the (economic) right in the compass. Maybe they are judging his ideas -assuming he has any- but for his record as a president I don´t see him as the champion of laissez faire. It´s true, maybe the important thing is not any Ideal notion of "left" or "right" any of us may have, but even that relative position seems odd, right next to Milton Friedman. I also think Chirac is not as authoritarian as the Pope. But still, I agree with most of the chart, which I find very reasonable considering the dificulty of placing people that spend most of their time trying to hide their real ideas...

[angus]

nice shot, very subdued.  

Yeah, he's a big spender and at times irresponsible.  Many republicans on this forum recognize this and bitch about this.  But none of us has ever written or spoken to him about it, I'm guessing.  I guess you can call that apathetic or logistically challenging, but you're pretty much right otherwise.

Dalai Lama, Ghandi and Nelson Mandela are all here with us.