PoliticalMatters/PoliticalCompass

[Political Compass Quiz]

Note that when it talks about "Our country", it appears to be referring to the UK. Unless they're doing clever tricks with rDNS.

Ah, but what did you score?

RA is impressed. He knows loads of people who've taken this and no-one who's come out with such a huge variance.

Aww - I came out boring this time.  -5.38 / -4.15  --Vitenka

The Political Compass contains a lot of questions MoonShadow can't answer because he thinks they are based on incorrect assumptions; a bit like "You have stopped spanking your pet alligator, rather than still spanking it now. Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree." MoonShadow suspects his alleged position on the compass will vary depending on which answer he randomly picks for such questions. Nevertheless, MoonShadow just got -2.12/-2.51.

Sally had this problem, but the test still seems to score (you can judge it's accuracy if you know my political views... ;-) ) if you just leave them blank - I suppose it takes it as some sort of mu answer...

They aren't questions. They're statements. If you believe that the statement is founded on an incorrect premise, then you disagree with it. MathMos... -RA, in should have done SPS mood.

(PeterTaylor) Yes, some of the questions could use a "Don't know" at least, if not a "Mu". Another problem is semantic ambiguity: "Social workers waste their time trying to rehabilitate those who are simply born bad." I presume the intent is "Social workers spend all their time trying to rehabilitate those who are simply born bad. This is a waste of time", but it could be "If someone is simply born bad, social workers who try to rehabilitate that person are wasting their time".

*StuartFraser sighs and remembers why he hangs round arts students when discussing deep stuff*

(Sally) I read it as the latter... but then I wasn't really thinking...

I read it as a combination of both: "Some people are born bad.  Social workers spend a lot of time with these people getting nowhere. This time is wasted." --M-A

No, the ambiguity is real and is a problem - if you disagree with the existence of 'born bad people' then you must, obviously, disagree with the statement.  But you may still agree with the sense of the statement, that social workers ar emainly wasting their time.  --Vitenka

'A government must give its citizens as much social freedom as possible.' Surely everyone agrees: the disagreement comes on how much is possible, weighing other considerations into account?

Not at all. Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore is an example of a government that gives its citizens very little social freedom and is still widely admired for it's achievements.

I couldn't quite work this one out.  What's "social freedom", as opposed to any other kind? To my mind, giving people as much freedom as possible leads to there being very few laws and then anarchy, which then impinges on people's freedom... very circular. Just supposing that they mean getting the balance just right so that most people have as much freedom as reasonably possible, I might have said "Agree", but I don't think that's what they meant. --M-A

I think it means social freedom in the conventional sense of being free from social oppression ("society won't let me do what I want").  As opposed to physical freedom ("I am restrained from doing what I want"), economic freedom ("I can't afford to do what I want") and free will ("Do I want?").  This is related to the discussion of negative and positive freedoms.  Are you free to walk the streets at night, without danger?  (Negative freedom, a freedom 'from' danger).  Or are you allowed to access the Internet freely? (Positive freedom, a freedom 'to' do something which you can't do in Singapore). --Mjb67

Edith Believes all such tests are flawed for not having enough questions or axes (insert stuff about the impossibility of a perfect simulation here). OTOH that one could certainly be improved with the simple addition of a null option as suggested above. I certainly wanted to click "Don't Know/Care?/Think? the question starts from the right assumptions" button but couldn't find it. I think the basis of the test (that of a double axis) pretty much explains the flaws in our 2/3 party system, well some of them.

Yes, there are many people StuartFraser (who lurks on politics discussion boards) knows who have got positive scores on either or both axes. Personally, I think they are somewhat off-centre with the zero, which should be at something like (-2, -2), but I know people with positive scores. Note that I got a positive score in economics (I consider myself a right-wing libertarian, so no suprise).

I reckon ToothyWikizens' scores are unrepresentative because we're mostly a bunch of leftie recent ex-students. I strongly suspect that my parents and many of their generation, and also my sister, would get positive scores. --Rachael

Eep, he's more extreme than me! -- Senji

Placed on, no, this is CategorySerious. Linked to, probably yes. -RA

I refuse to believe that a multiple choice netquiz should be CategorySerious... to be honest, I've got results that tell you more about me from [What LOTR Villain are you], and [What Bisexual are you]... MaintainMe/BrokenLink

Not bad - his questions are better balanced than political compass, but the interpretation is screwy. I come out in the same place on the L/R scale as you, and a bit more pragmatic. But I'm a small-government libertarian, have a *positive* score on the political compass economics chart (and a whopping -7 on the political one...), which puts me rather more distant from Senji than this would suggest. --StuartFraser

Jumlian comes out as effectively being Charles Kennedy.  Since I currently vote that way that's pretty accurate, although there seems to be little variance up-down.  Then again, I came out rather similar to Senji in the political compass above, so that's pretty much to be expected. --Jumlian.

qqzm scored thus:

left/right  -7.1935 (-0.4330)

pragmatism  -0.6946 (-0.0418)

On the chart that's about exactly half-way between Charles Kennedy and Tony Benn.

• 1 left/right  -0.8265 (-0.0498)
  
• 2 pragmatism  -0.6707 (-0.0404)