Political Compass

[Kris Lachowski]

Scott i don't know if it is just me, but your political compass image isn't showing up on my computer.

[Guest]

nevermind, I guess you just fixed it

[Greg Stephens]

I don't have a nifty graphic to post here, but my score came up to be:

Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95

Which is a little up and to the left of the dot in Scott's graph.
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Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.

[jturner]

I'm way the heck off in that corner

Economic Left/Right - 7.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97

I guess I should get out there and vote for my local anarchist communist party. And post the comic I drew but never quite finished from last February 15.

[MSUSpar10]

-4.12, - 4.41


I think most who post here will be in this range...just a guess.
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"I'm here to do some card tricks and fall way short on the yardstick of your love."

[LeeshaJoy]

I'd be a lot more impressed if there were more questions about public policy and fewer that amount to loaded political rhetoric. Also, there should really be a "neutral" or "no opinion" option when answering the questions.

[Jimmy Ho]

When I took the testlast month, my score was {-8.62, -8.21}, wich puts me in the "Left Libertarian" corner.

However, the method used in the Political Compass has been found questionable, and an alternative test has been proposed, as you can see on this page at Deltoid (Tim Lambert maintains a chart of bloggers results to the Compass). I, for instance, was surprised to be more "libertarian" than Barry Deutsch, aka Ampersand, a -liberal feminist- political cartoonist (and great essayist, I must say).

[Jimmy Ho]

LeeshaJoy, I hadn't noticed your comment before posting mine, but you are not first to point this out. For what it's worth, here is the alternative (allegedly better) survey. I didn't try it myself, but you may want to compare the results obtained with both methods.

[mecherath]

Hey... I'm near Ghandi. Score!

Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.05

[Greg Stephens]

[Rip Tanion]

[Rip Tanion]

left/right +4.8300 (+0.2907)
pragmatism +2.1597 (+0.1300)

whatever the hell that all means.

This survey was a bit more balanced, but still had a slight liberal bent to it.
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"Park the beers, and grab the smiles. It's flight time." - LtCdr. J. Robert "Bobby" Stone, USN (R.I.P.)

[Greg Stephens]

At the risk of mastering the obvious, how could the test not have seemed skewed in one direction or the other? If nobody thought it was skewed, then everybody would be scoring in the center. I do agree that neither of these tests appear very comprehensive, but I applaud the idea of starting to make people think of the range of opinion as a two-dimentional field than one-dimentional axis. Personally, I find that the one-dimentional either/or, left/right, liberal/conservative, us/them thinking is what makes political debate- particularly on the internet, where it's less debate and more shouting match- quite tiring.
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Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.

[kobey]

Just as a semi-aside, I think the politicalcompass.org questions were a bit muddy (i.e. including terms like "benefiting humanity" without explaining what they mean by that!). A simpler and much clearer test is found at [url]politopia.com[/url]. It asks for an email address before taking the quiz but you can put in a fake one. I live next door to Ayn Rand.

(This post is in response to Scott's blog where he posted his political compass results, since we're all getting all kinds a political here!)
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I am mostly made of water.

[Doc MacDougal]

Took the Politopia quiz (halfway between Jesse Jackson and FDR), but found it a bit more USian-centric than the other quizzes that have popped up in these discussions. For example, supporting nationalised healthcare puts you to the left on their quiz, but is essentially a centrist position here. And I'm sure in the section of one-word ideological descriptions, their "liberal" would mean something rather different than if I said "liberal".

However, the puns in that quiz? Centerville? The Main Stream? Yuck.

[IronSpike]

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.38

I'm so neat and orderly. Envy me.
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http://www.ironcircus.com

[Guest]

[Rip Tanion]

You'd be surprised how many real-lefty-liberals are, conciously or not, are a bit dissapointed that's Saddam's on ice. Howard Dean's campain workers chat rooms, and message boards were filled with people talking about how this was a "bummer", because it hurts Dean's campaign; which is running on a pacifist-appeasment platform. Worse, it's helps Bush's chances of getting re-elected. And I saw I few dissapointed smirks on the faces of some known-liberal TV journalists.


Actually, the point I was trying to made about the liberal bent of the questions, is that if you phrase a question one way you get one answer. Phrase it another way, you get the oppostie answer. I paraphrase this example from that great literary source, Mad Magazine (Iss. 229)

The Issue: Allowing stores to be open for buisness on Sunday.
Ask a working man "Do you think that stores should be allowed to remain open of Sundays so that working people can have some extra time to shop and buy the necessities of life?" and he'll say he's for the issue.

Now, ask that same man "Do you think stores should be closed on Sunday so that the greedy owners won't be able to squeeze the last penny out of the poor shoopers EVERY DAY of the week?"
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"Park the beers, and grab the smiles. It's flight time." - LtCdr. J. Robert "Bobby" Stone, USN (R.I.P.)

[mecherath]

[Cyborg Caveman]

Looks like I'm a little to the north of Gandhi on the political compass. My results on the other one were...

Axis Position
1 left/right -3.4260 (-0.2062)
2 pragmatism -0.4823 (-0.0290)

A bit to the left and pragmatic as hell apparently. My question on this one is where in the hell do they get results like that for Blair? Anyway, on the politopia one...

Apparently they think I belong in Centerville, but to judge from their description of it (and me) they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. That aside I found this to be the weakest of the tests overall.
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Greg O.

[Rip Tanion]

[gareis]

There was a reason for the war with Iraq that few mention. Saddam sent SCUDs at our ally, Israel. That was ten, twelve years ago, and we should have deposed him then.

The other reasons were suspected links to Al Qaeda, suspected WMDs, and Saddam's strategies for maintaining order within his country. The first two are completely justified as casi belli because they are potentially hurtful to the US--but to reverse the scenario, Saddam was justified because the US was potentially hurtful to his reign at the time. (It has proven itself hurtful to the regime since then.)

So it's down to matters such as using chemical weapons on your own people because of their civil protests. It's not a nice thing to do from their perspective, but from the dictator's, it's completely logical, even expedient. But it's wrong. Therefore expedience is not the same as good.

[xxxtatic2000]

[xxxtatic2000]

My problem with the political compass quiz it seems to be based almost entirely on how people stand on issues of civil liberty, morality, questions of economics, etc., but scarcely gives any weight to people's environmental views. Nor does it address Zero Population Growth, arguably the most important topic the world's not talking about.

Perhaps the compass graph should be plotted on a CUBE rather than a square...

Chris B.