[FRIAM] Political compass teest

Mon Oct 12 12:52:21 EDT 2020

The only thing it suggested to me is that I am not as different from you-all as I expected.  Suddenly I felt in the midst of a great flock of fuzzy sheep.  I made me feel cozy. 

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2020 10:12 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Political compass teest

uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> This test is propaganda, pure and simple.
I tend to accept this proposition...
>
> sunday: Economic Left/Right: -8.75
> Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.92
>
> monday: Economic Left/Right: 7.75
> Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 5.9
Can you name these two humunculii who took these tests?
>
> Self-reported data isn't, at all, a reliable measure. It's shocking to buttress our conversations about lacking free will, behaviorism, complexity from simple rules, stochasticity, etc. against an apparently ingrained belief that idealistic answers to a questionnaire like this are meaningful. I suppose one *might* take the approach that such a questionnaire is one tool for *biasing* near-term behavior. The recent article on whether a belief in a controlling god affects one's self-reported attitudes toward "environmental support": https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167220948712?journalCode=pspc  The result is basically yes, you can manipulate thoughts with other thoughts. Does that translate AT ALL to any sort of action/behavior? Pffft.
>
> The political compass test, I can argue, phrases their questions to bias the result toward the lower left. The difference between my sunday score and my monday score is, I think, solely in how I interpret the questions, merely altering which words would "trigger" me. Words like "sometimes" and "should" are so ... poetic ... so open to arbitrary interpretation as to be completely useless as an indicator for political positions, much less political action.
>
> It wouldn't surprise me if there were a correlation between what you eat for breakfast and where you land on that plane. You'd need a refractory period between each response, of course, otherwise you'll simply memorize the questions and "teach to the test". Every day would be too frequent. Once a month might work, though. Once per quarter would be better. And randomized intervals would be best ... a longitudinal study over maybe 5 years. And a good study would use an upper ontology for the questions so that the wording could change each time you took it, but where each was a slightly different expression of the same concept. You'd still be biasing thought with thought, steering the subject into affinity with the ontology, but it would be easier to tease out the ephemeris from the noise.
>
> I wonder if this is what cult leaders do implicitly ... hound their followers with "surveys" ostensibly posed to *ask*, but ulimatately designed to *steer*. AA, Synanon, and NXIVM apparently use[d] such. And I suppose Scientology's E-meter is the same type of thing. And let's not forget Socrates! If you steep yourself in Plato's rendition, you get self-righteousness. But Diogenes has the more realistic, data-driven approach.

>From Klemperer's "Testimony" diary, there were plenty of examples where he and his fellow Jewish friends and colleagues were presented with various "false choices" to herd them into a corner of the Nazi's choosing with less pushback, as well as seducing/intimidating them into actually collaborating in their own abuse-unto-genocide.   This is how
*I* feel when dealing with most bureaucracies (government or corporate)...  that they are very practiced at channeling me into one of the (alarmingly small number) of predetermined outcomes they have contrived to support *their* preferences.

I tried to self-reflect (after reading your analysis here) on what direction or in what manner, taking this test and comparing results with others here suggests.   Did I become *more* Liberal/Anti-Authoritarian through the process?  Or did I react to the score I got and recalibrate myself?   No clear answer.

- Steve

>
> On October 10, 2020 2:21:53 PM PDT, jon zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I just took the political compass test and surprise surprise, I am a 
>> left-libertarian.
>>
>> Take the test here if you are interested:
>> https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
>>
>> <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/file/t395744/Screen_Shot_2020-10-1
>> 0_at_3.png>
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