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I feel like we haven't done this in forever. I'm too tired to try to find our last thread (the search tools are lacking, or maybe my memory is shit ), but as I recall some years ago I used to be pretty much center. Something like (-1,-1) on a grid ranging from -10 to 10 on both axis. I just took the test today to see how I've changed (above^[1]).

Try it yourself here: https://www.politicalcompass.org

I got -5.8,-5.5

For a lot of questions I missed the "Neutral" option. There are things that I just don't feel that strongly about. Protectionism for example.

I dislike the binary, hyperpartisan, "you're with us or you're against us" thinking that's so common. It forces people to take extreme positions.

I like to reserve the right to say: it depends. Or: I just don't know, it's not my area of expertise.

I'm about where I expected to be.

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I agree with you on that. I had a few questions where I felt the same: neutral, but was forced to choose which side I would lean towards if forced, which was often an arbitrary conclusion. Often the answer is "if X then A else if Y then B else C", but there's no way to express that in these rigid questionnaires.

Stoned thought: I wonder if we could create an AI/ML that is able to understand arbitrary branches of conditions within a response. Essentially I guess it boils down to allowing humans to give any response they want: yes/no, a brief paragraph, or an essay; and the programming would figure out how to normalize the data into a simple and clean structure that it can reason about easily (or fuck it, if computers are there, then I guess just reason about the fuzzy human words instead, but the point being have your cake and eat it too).

Alternate thought: Can you design a game, in a fantasy setting, where you have to make moral choices (something simple, just a long branching dialog tree), and after a while the game knows your political preferences?

One could sell such a game for targeted political ads. "Shudder"

Most certainly it's possible, and I would wager it has already been done, but probably never on a AAA scale. I do generally yearn for a game that judges my morality. I've always been obsessive about making moral choices in the GTA series, even from the 2D beginnings, at least when taking the game serious and not just venting steam on how long I can survive with how many stars. Sort of like I was always paranoid that I was being judged anyway and never wanted the possibility to be caught being naughty.

Insert: To clarify, I mean that I was paranoid that the game was secretly keeping track of actions I took in the open world, and knew whether I did bad things or not (i.e, paranoid thinking that murdering a bystander for no reason would be stored in the game save file). Which I think is why a game that actually could do that would appeal to me so much. I'm already going out of my way to avoid it, so it would be nice to be recognized by the game for it.

Being raised a Christian fucks with your head. Even though I haven't believed in God in 15+ years I still find myself acknowledging his existence and questioning his judgement of me. I don't consider this evidence that he exists, but rather evidence of mental illness resulting from the delusions that I was subjected to as a child.

Such a game would have to get it so perfect that I think it's infeasible to please a wide enough audience to make it profitable without making the judgement catered to the player somewhat (which might defeat the purpose). If there was an objective morality then I suppose the game could theoretically be based on that, but (a) that's probably not really a true thing, and (b) even if it were we couldn't trust the corporation making the game to know what it is, let alone remain true to it.

I do like how the Red Dead Redemption series sort of tries to track your morality. I think that more work should be done trying to do that in games. I don't think that it's something that should be tracked and reported to government or anything tyrannical like that. I just think that it's good for us as people to be reminded of morality while we're playing these games. I think that it's healthy to think of the morality of something, even though technically it's imaginary and doesn't matter. I should point out though that RDR2 actually forced me to make several immoral choices that I was opposed to. I was uncomfortable doing it and only did it to progress the story and continue playing, but I was very annoyed that Rockstar title was so constrained. I think that their intention was for the protagonist to be a bit more evil than is usually portrayed, and I think that's a great direction to go for the series and company, but nevertheless I think it went too far forcing immoral acts on the player in an otherwise open world. I don't care if the moral choices came with a penalty/burden that the immoral choices didn't. I would have made them anyway. I think that they could also accomplish more of the "evil" bits during cutscenes/FMV sequences without the player having to play such a forced part in them, as I think was done effectively in previous titles.

I will say this though: the Trevor character from GTA 5 not only saved that dumpster fire game from sucking, but also pushed my own morality and helped me to better understand myself. There are some things that you can't know about yourself until you let go of societal expectations and allow yourself to just be free. I think that's why Trevor was so refreshing, particularly in the political climate that we've been swimming in. He breaks all of the rules, and is beyond anyone's reason. He is primitive and he is raw, but he's still calculated and cunning. I loved it.

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Some questions felt a bit misleading, but result seems about as expected. I grew up with no TV and not caring about politics so I always answer these more from a "good vs evil" perspective instead of left/right

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IIRC, the three characters in GTA V are meant to be the three types of GTA players. I can't remember the details of how it broke down, however.

I don't understand!! this game is stupid!!!! I do not like it...

It's more easier to handle the AD&D alignment table...

https://www.politicalcompass.org/chart?ec=3.5&soc=-0.87

I don't know why that link won't display, if I copy it into another tab it shows up fine, but OTOH it doesn't end in an image format extension.

I also wished for a neutral option, and probably would have selected it maybe 20% of the time.

If someone had been watching over my shoulder, they probably would have exclaimed "What??!? Why did you click that answer when you clicked <some other answer> earlier?"

I think I'm getting old-timers disease.

Curious.

Economic Left/Right: 2.0
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.05
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There is also 8values, with four axes instead of just two.

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Economic Axis: Socialist
  Equality: 86.5%
  Markets: 13.5%

Diplomatic Axis: Internationalist
  Nation: 21.1%
  World: 78.9%

Civil Axis: Liberal
  Liberty: 71.0%
  Authority: 29.0%

Societal Axis: Very Progressive
  Tradition: 24.0%
  Progress: 76.0%

Not surprised.

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Far-Left libertarians: people that think that Robin Hood is a scaleable scenario

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How the questions are worded can make too big of a difference though in these types of tests. If someone asks me a question like "foo should always be bar" then I'm likely to strongly disagree regardless of the statement even though I may strongly agree to "foo should usually or sometimes be bar".

I prefer scenario questions where you pick which outcome you prefer as it makes you actually think through and go beyond a general pithy saying that you think you agree with but may not actually in practice.

I think a general problem is that people assume that the Western world is the whole world, while it's really a minority, at least in terms of population. If you look at what dominates in the rest of the world, it's a nice mix of dictatorships and just people trying to survive any way they can. And democracies like Japan, South Korea, Japan, Israel, and several countries in Africa being surrounded by totalitarian regimes.

Right. I would view these types of classifications within the lens of the "western world".

Yes, because the people who made them live in the Western world, like you do.

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Apparently I am not unique.

Try the 8values test, it's more useful

Okay, where am I now?

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I've always considered myself a moderate, but both tests put me in the liberal column. At least I'm progressive. Some of the questions had gray areas. For example, "it is always important to maintain law and order". But shouldn't it apply to officers on the job? For example Shooting a man 31 times, and a bystander was also wounded by the officers.

Literally Hitler, I'd say

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Yes, I like this one better. Not in the least because it has a neutral option. Only downside is that it's a bit US-centric. For example, questions about guns are going to be a lot more controversial in the US than pretty much anywhere else.

It's silly to put everything down to a single left/right axis. The two-party system in the US pushes people to define themselves along this one axis, when there is a lot more variety of ideas out there.

edit: although I have no idea what "Libertarian socialism" is. I thought libertarians are against market regulations and any restriction on freedom?

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Patriotic??? me??? HA!!!

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Agree that the questions can sometimes be ambiguous. E.g. "Quality education is a right of all people.", to which I agree with.

However, I fear the test scoring may choose to put me in the "equality" category instead of the "market" category: I think anyone should be able to obtain any level of quality education they can convince someone else to provide; in that respect, it's their right.

I don't take it to mean that a coercive arrangement should be made, either by forcing educators to provide education by force, or by taking resources from others to give to the educators, etc.

Similar concerns with the other questions.

Anyway, here are my results, because why not.

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Conservatives: people that think when a corporation is granted tax relief that it'll trickle down to savings for poor people.

I'm disappointed in you.

Why not? If they reduce the cost of production, the invisible hand of Adam Smith kicks in and they cut the retail price to attract more buyers through competition. OTOH, fanboys of a particular brand <cough>Apple<cough> aren't nearly so susceptible to such a thing, but hard drives? yeah.

And Robin Hood wasn't stealing from the rich to give to the poor, he was taking back that which had been stolen from the poor. Today's situation is considerably more complicated, but ultimately the price of freedom (of any kind) is eternal vigilance.

That would be deflation, and deflation is a bad thing. But don't worry, executive compensation rises to combat the problem. As for trickle down, it does not exist.

So since the original IBM PC with 16KB of RAM, a 4.77 Mhz 16 bit processor with an 8 bit bus and a single floppy drive, which cost $1600 ($4500 in 2020 dollars) compared to a $600 3Ghz 64 bit machine with a couple of terabytes of hard disk and 8 gigs of ram and performs several thousand times faster is a bad thing?

The (a designation I dare not mention here, but control the Federal Reserve among other things) puts such nonsense in your head.

Tax savings are a temporary measure. If every business slashed their prices to pass on the savings they'd be putting themselves into precarious waters if the tax cuts are lifted. Suddenly the price has to jump back up again, and the business needs to restructure again to compensate. And now you risk your customers being irate at the price increase. It's safer to reinvest the money elsewhere, and never affect the consumer. For example, if any equipment has been neglected now you have an easy way to replace it on the taxpayer's dime. Or if there's any mandatory training (e.g., anti-discrimination or safety or something else) that you have to give to your employees then you can pay for it that way. Or you can invest the money for a rainy day. Or reward yourself and your partners in crime with a big bonus.

Trickle down economics doesn't work. We know this. It has never worked. Instead, the corporations get even richer, and the people get even poorer. The gap between the classes grows. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

If you want to stimulate an economy you give the money to the people. If people don't have money they can't go spend it. If people do have money they will go spend it. Especially poor people. You stimulate the economy by giving money to the people that need to spend it, not the corporations whose role is providing products or services for money. If you just give them the money then they don't need the consumer at all. Goal accomplished.

Any time somebody acquires significantly more wealth than his neighbors you can bet he's either exploiting the community or exploiting some community resource that he's claimed as his own.

Like Nestle drying up a fresh water supply, bottling it, and then charging the town stupid prices for bottled water. The difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" is mostly luck and corruption.

Unfortunately, America is in love with the idea that if you work hard you will succeed. You've been indoctrinated with that idea all of your life so that when you work hard and you don't get ahead you don't come to your senses and confront the system. Instead, you double down, and you work twice as hard just to scrape by, proud of how good of a citizen you are. It's very convenient for the people running the system when the system runs itself. No need to fix it when it's broken. The people aren't complaining.

Well look at that Bob. We're pretty much the same on 3 out of 4 axes.

I see your confusion. I forgot to use the proper html tags. <sarcasm> </sarcasm> Better?

some of the questions I could have clicked agree and disagree on at the same time, depending on the situation. When it said the religious section should be a breeze for me, I started to laugh out loud...

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There seems to be some common ground here in that the "authoritarian" part of the axis is not represented well, it seems to be capped at the center (0 / 50%).

Yes, I wonder what that means.

We're too politically homogeneous! Imagine all the interesting discussions we could be having if there were more authoritarians on allegro.cc!

HAI ALLEGRO!!! o/

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The hilarity is that left authoritarians don't realize they are. Do you think art and communications should be censored? Congrats, you're authoritarian. You believe there is one authority and it should control anyone who doesn't follow it.

The right-wing authoritarians wanted to ban books.

Now the left-wing authoritarians want to ban books.

"Dangerous ideas!" is the biggest lie anyone has ever sold the public.

They banned a physiologist book that has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with personal responsibility... because... of islamic attacks.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/jordan-petersons-popular-12-rules-book-banned-by-new-zealand-booksellers-because-of-christchurch-mosque-massacre

They want to ban the same guys second book after the publishers own staff "broke into tears". TEARS? Over a BOOK!? What's the title? "Kill everyone who is transgender"? ... " Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life" Oh... how terrible!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8985983/Random-House-Canada-try-ban-Jordan-Petersons-new-book.html

Book banning is a bipartisan game

Anyone who thinks you have to control ideas means those people have power and are afraid that if people think too much, they might lose that power.

The reason we have gay marriage now is because the logic was on their side. ("who gives a crap it's none of your business.") But the second logic isn't on the left or rights side, they shut down discussion because they're terrified.

It should be noted that neither book is banned in either country and that it is a single company in each instance deciding to not sell it. Since both companies are mostly motivated by money, it's entirely possible that despite what reasons they give for not selling it, they're really just afraid of the financial implications of the backlash selling the book could cause.

The backlash is the problem.

A practicing clinical psychologist with a ph.d. having a book should not threaten anyone. The reason there's backlash is because his writing of scientifically backed truths represents a threat to establishment. It's no different than a bunch of Catholics being pissed that Kevin Smith's Dogma film might "brain wash" people out of believing in in God.

You don't have to have government censorship to have suppression of ideas. You can self-censor. Likewise, you can be racist on an individual level even if it's not systemic. Most black people don't hold "systemic power" to oppress others in the USA, but to say no black person has ever been racist on an individual level (e.g. toward Mexicans) is absurd. Further, a government is just an organization. Other organizations such as media companies will restrict, or punish their affiliates for publishing information they don't approve of. That's... corporate censorship.

So people can be a-holes. Companies and religions can be a-holes. Governments can be a-holes. If people were "encouraging" a company to ban books that were pro gay marriage, all a sudden liberals would care--and in the 90's that happened all the time.

This idea, that ideas are dangerous, is a gigantic fallacy. That somehow, you and I seeing an idea will somehow turn us into monsters. Racists will find material to support their racism. That doesn't mean reading Mein Kampf to understand Hitler's brain will turn you into a nazi. Nutjobs don't need any help in being nutjobs, and normal people don't need to be protected from ideas. We might as well ban all drugs because some people get addicted. And ban gays because some gay people will raise bad kids. Further, there's no evidence to even prove that stopping nutjobs from seeing nutjob-idea-ammunition will prevent them. The very act of suppressing things like "flat earthers" seems to turn them into martyrs and verify their idea that "the government is trying to control them."

The only time I'd be okay with suppression of "bad" ideas (bad according to whom? Those in power today.) is with imminent, immediate dangers. Like telling people vaccines cause autism or cancer. But it's a huge huge huge stretch to think that "bad memes got trump elected" or "bad words on the internet" turn good, moral, upstanding people into lone wolf killers.

Seeing communist manifestos from X-G every day did not turn me into a communist.

Backlash may be the problem, but it's not an issue of authoritarianism.

If anything I'd say it's the opposite. The general masses, who until recently had no real power, can now wield significant power with their cancel culture.

The problem is collective groupthink. Not a single authoritarian rule.

Are you from China or something?

What power do you think you have?

I can vote, I can parttake in public discourse, I can start an organization that works for some cause I think is worthwhile, etc. I can even become a corrupt, power-hungry politician if I really want to :p

• Your vote is worthless. Disagree: try to vote for the best candidate, usually independent or tiny, and see how often they win.

  
  

• Everybody can participate in public discourse so that's not powerful. It's only powerful if you manipulate enough people to back you.

  
  

• An organization isn't implicitly powerful either. Power in our society is money. Only a successful organization will be powerful, and even then only in comparison to the other organizations around it (if you're lucky you might get local power, but no chance at the state and national levels).

  
  

• Politicians are not powerful either. Only the party is powerful. The individuals are controlled by the party, and that's where the power comes from. Channeling many voices into one.

The same effect is true of cancel culture. Individually we are weak, but if you organize enough of us together to act as one we become very powerful. Only as a group though. An individual is always weak. It only takes a bullet to stop one. It's even easier than that though. You just need to kick them out of the group and they'll no longer have any power.

Right. Maybe this seems more hopeless in the US, I'm Norwegian. A lot of bad politicians working for themselves and their networks here too, and the media is mostly occupied with propaganda and click bait. But I think that if an outsider candidate like Trump can win in the US, there is still hope for change through democratic means.

And none of those things give you much power against companies, if you don't have public support, and that was much harder to get back before the internet.

So, how do you think the winner gets selected?

I voted in the municipal election and my candidate won, both for my riding and the mayor I selected. I voted in the provincial election and my candidate won. I voted in the federal election, and my candidate didn't win, but the one that did win (Trudeau) won with the smallest minority in the nation's history, so it was a step forward. Nothing is perfect and it won't always go my way, but such is life. If everyone voted, we would have better outcomes, no matter who wins. The problem is, too many people don't think voting makes a difference, and so some don't bother to vote and then complain about who wins.

But the people who voted in the current prime minister knew their vote did count, and it did.

In the past four federal elections, my candidate won all but once. Actually, make that five, but one election I didn't vote (well, I did but) because there was nobody I wanted to put my name behind. I still voted, I just spoiled my ballot. And after working in all aspects of the elections I know that spoiled ballots still get counted.

Anyhow... it makes a difference. You just don't always win, such is life. I know of a large church organization that teaches their congregation NOT to vote, which is utterly ridiculous. Each person in that may not think it matters, but imagine if the millions of members all went out and voted? It would make a difference. Big time.

I always thought that I was on the z axis, but it seems the site has labeled me as a left libtard. What can I say, human error?

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The test isn't exactly rigorous so it may have mislabeled you. Or, you've been led by rightwing authoritarian media to believe that anyone who has a leftwing or libertarian bent is a nut-job extremist, when the truth is that most people are smattered around the middle of the graph and are pretty similar when it all comes down to it.

Perhaps both. I am supporting farmers who are protesting against the contract farming and crop hoarding bill. I have seen most of my trusted media outlets calling them terrorist for questioning government and it's intentions. I now think that I was a fool for believing in them for anything, I'm now reconsidering all my opinions now. Maybe trusting someone with your future, hoping that they will make best of the change that you gave them is utterly foolish.

I will carve my own future now, will not expect a bit from any political party, after-all they are there for their own benefit, not ours.

Well said, Doctor Cop!