Where are you on the political spectrum?

Started by Ephemerid, February 08, 2008, 10:37:42 AM

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SimonNZ

Quote from: Florestan on March 04, 2020, 11:44:15 PM
Yes, it's quite possible.

Cool.

Were we arguing about something a little while ago? I feel like we were bit i can't remember what.

Florestan

Quote from: SimonNZ on March 05, 2020, 01:41:43 AM
Cool.

Were we arguing about something a little while ago? I feel like we were bit i can't remember what.

I can't either. Nothing important probably.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

greg

Quote from: Jo498 on March 04, 2020, 11:42:44 PM
First, I have to admit that I apparently misunderstood some of the features of the "personality traits". An anarchist society never existed as others have said. But I grant that there have been societies with regions (literally or societally) where one could largely mind only his own business. However, overall most societies in history generally required far more cooperation because of the lack of machines and convenience products.
Look at Sherlock Holmes: He is a freelance detective with quirky personality who often does not "play by the rules". But he is de facto dependent on Mrs. Hudson's cooking and care as well as on all the other amenities of late Victorian London such as postal service several times a day, cabs waiting on the next street corner etc.
If you go further back in time, most societies were at the same time more anarchist AND more authoritarian than those in more "civilised times". You can mind your own business on your homestead being almost self-sufficient on your farm until the press gang comes along and takes your son away to the army or navy. Also consider the "unwritten rules and laws" that were much stronger in former times where a silly faux-pas sometimes could lead to a duel or in any case make you an outcast from polite society.

With the "flattening" I meant, that when you have 5 or how many dimension in your model, if it's a good model they have to conform to the analogy of mathematical dimensions, i.e. being linearly independent (ideally orthogonal). If C = xA + yB, get rid of C and have a model with n-1 dimensions.
I think the take away from this is the only way to live in an anarchist society is to have a society of one- yourself- in an isolated region where the government can't get you. But that's a joke. 😜

As for my dimensional model, the goal wasn't really to make a pretty mathematical model, just to read through/discover stuff for fun. So yeah, it isn't a good way of modelling. If someone rewrote the test with this and calculated it then it would turn into complicated nonsense, so I wouldn't suggest it.

The question it brings up about the diagonals (assuming people think it makes sense) is that can you get actual concepts as a sum of two concepts?



And as for me working out the personality traits like agreeableness, I think the way it would work is if the scope of agreeableness was limited to something like willingness to share or help others rather than being violent or not, while the 6th dimension which is actually something sometimes added to the Big 5, called honesty-humility were added. This dimension could include violent/revolutionary tendencies.

Then Agreeableness could be solely a liberal/conservative x-axis issue- all about who or who shouldn't be included in human rights or wealth distribution. Then the honesty-humility trait would probably be meaningless because anyone could be violent. But it would help describe the things I don't get about extreme left-wing thinking, like how can you be violent at the same time as wishing the best for everyone? They are separate traits, that's what it has to be...
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus


    What would it be like to think that while otherwise normal, you were not conscious? Everyone thinks they are, so there's nobody to ask. It's rare to find an opinion that's really unanimous.
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Jo498

QuoteBut it would help describe the things I don't get about extreme left-wing thinking, like how can you be violent at the same time as wishing the best for everyone?

But this is not hard to understand and does not seem to require the psychology of personality traits.
Isn't it simply that the ends justify the means? Everyone believes that some ends justify fairly brutal means. This is in no way limited to (left wing or any other) extremism. The question is rather which ones the highest ends and where the limits should be. Which is basically ends limiting each other in a kind of hierarchy.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

greg

Quote from: drogulus on March 05, 2020, 03:07:19 PM
    What would it be like to think that while otherwise normal, you were not conscious? Everyone thinks they are, so there's nobody to ask. It's rare to find an opinion that's really unanimous.
Idk but probably most people underestimate the power their subconscious has over their decisions.

There is a big difference between dream actions and waking actions which is because of the conscious mind, but all of the associations in the dream mind that are usually visually processed into a narrative is the same thing going on with a waking person's feelings and thought process. So it plays a big role.

For example, feeling fear if you are outside
and walk into something shaped like a snake, but you look down and it turns out to be a rope. In the dream it will just turn into a snake.

In reality this can play out in many ways for politics... a highly neurotic person might overestimate the threat of the opposite side sometimes and then take the opposing extremist ideology.



Quote from: Jo498 on March 06, 2020, 12:08:33 AM
But this is not hard to understand and does not seem to require the psychology of personality traits.
Isn't it simply that the ends justify the means? Everyone believes that some ends justify fairly brutal means. This is in no way limited to (left wing or any other) extremism. The question is rather which ones the highest ends and where the limits should be. Which is basically ends limiting each other in a kind of hierarchy.
Totally.
Reminds me of the first manga I had, about 18 or so years ago my dad bought me this Gundam manga. It was about this force trying to wage war in order to create peace, so I found it amusing. (Also had a male feminist character, so my first awareness of that at the time).

I think the factor of literally every action being a gamble for the future is something to keep in mind if you want to determine whether it's worth doing harm in the short term to profit in the long term. It's easier when it's determining what to do for college in order to make money in the future. But messier when it's sacrificing others involuntarily to create your dream society.
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus

Quote from: greg on March 06, 2020, 07:29:30 AM
Idk but probably most people underestimate the power their subconscious has over their decisions.



     
     I didn't put that very well. I was trying to imagine someone who had not formed an opinion about consciousness, so there wouldn't be anything not to have.
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drogulus


    What's called the mainstream is constructed with parts once thought radical. Ideas have to come from somewhere. They don't come from the center and spread out.

     
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greg

Quote from: drogulus on March 06, 2020, 07:00:55 PM
    What's called the mainstream is constructed with parts once thought radical. Ideas have to come from somewhere. They don't come from the center and spread out.

   
Depends on the ideas, and if you can combine them in a way that works. You could end up with something ridiculous like Nazbols (Nazism + Communism)...

And also the ideas will come from philosophers/radical thinkers way ahead of their time but you don't want a shock to the system. People have to warm up to the idea over time. Revolutions to force extreme ideas generally aren't good... so the implementation of radical ideas has to start from the center and move gradually over time to that distant place.
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

Jo498

In the "West" the backdrop of all ideas (and usually also the source of new ones) are about two millenia of Graeco-Roman-Christian history and Tradition. So everything that is politically or socially more equalitarian than an aristocratic "republic" (like Venice in the middle ages) or some proportional representation of groups/classes like the "estates generals" in France was "radical" at some stage.
At the same time, the idea of some (rather remote or abstract) equality of all humans was present since St. Paul (Now there is neither Greek nor Jew etc. but all are equal before G*d and in Christ) or maybe even among the Stoics but I think people tend to underestimate the de facto elitism of all the ancient philosophies; Nietzsche was wildly exaggerating (as with everything), but he does have a point about the anti-elitist "slave morals" of Christianity, and this was really new back then.

When people are nowadays shocked about apparent ethnic and social IQ (and similar, like educational/academic achievement) differences (that seem genetic or otherwise fairly stable) I tend to think that many of the radical reformers and enlightenment thinkers of the 17th or 18th century would be more surprised that so many people can successfully be taught to read/write (really almost everyone without strong learning disabilities) and be educated up to something like an 8 year school level than at the apparent failure to bring almost everyone to the equivalent of a college degree or something like 12+3 years of education/training.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

drogulus

Quote from: greg on March 06, 2020, 08:56:08 PM
Depends on the ideas, and if you can combine them in a way that works. You could end up with something ridiculous like Nazbols (Nazism + Communism)...

And also the ideas will come from philosophers/radical thinkers way ahead of their time but you don't want a shock to the system. People have to warm up to the idea over time. Revolutions to force extreme ideas generally aren't good... so the implementation of radical ideas has to start from the center and move gradually over time to that distant place.

     What looks like a revolution close up looks less like that when you take a more distant view. The idea that Medicare for all is radical means very little beyond opposition to its implementation. Radicality is not an argument, though the perception of radicality is a valid argument in a judgment of the political viability of the program.

     Likewise (I think) a furious opposition to paying in any manner for a big program is not an item in its so called affordability. Genuine affordability is about whether resources can be made available by the process of making payments, not about whether "payment" will run out. If "payment" could run out on its own, it would have happened before we built the 20th century with all of those not running out dollars.
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drogulus


     Returning to spectrum analysis, it's like the observer position in the Universe. In order for the laws of physics to be the same everywhere, wherever you are, you're in the middle.

     What about self described radical something-ists? They are agreeing with the rest of the spectrum on their relative position. The map goes out of date quickly so in order to stay radical one has to adjust like everyone else.
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greg

Quote from: drogulus on March 07, 2020, 07:37:48 AM
     Returning to spectrum analysis, it's like the observer position in the Universe. In order for the laws of physics to be the same everywhere, wherever you are, you're in the middle.

     What about self described radical something-ists? They are agreeing with the rest of the spectrum on their relative position. The map goes out of date quickly so in order to stay radical one has to adjust like everyone else.
I think you could build a fixed average of what is considered "center" by looking throughout history, and keep it stable so it never goes out of date. You can only get so radical. Once you start killing your population in the name of your ideology, where do you even go from there? It means you are on the far edge somewhere, and it would be a fixed point.
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus

Quote from: greg on March 07, 2020, 07:50:59 AM
I think you could build a fixed average of what is considered "center" by looking throughout history, and keep it stable so it never goes out of date.

     I don't think so. What's the fixed average of Mycenae 1500 BCE and mid-23nd century Luna IV? The idea of stability is as much about forgetting what the old paradigm was as it is remembering pieces of it and trying to make sense of it within a historical perspective. What was the center of a feudal perspective? How did it evolve over the centuries? Were people making it up as they went along, like we seem to be doing now?
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greg

Quote from: drogulus on March 07, 2020, 08:06:24 AM
     I don't think so. What's the fixed average of Mycenae 1500 BCE and mid-23nd century Luna IV? The idea of stability is as much about forgetting what the old paradigm was as it is remembering pieces of it and trying to make sense of it within a historical perspective. What was the center of a feudal perspective? How did it evolve over the centuries? Were people making it up as they went along, like we seem to be doing now?
People were clueless about where they actually were on the political spectrum, that's the answer. Not everything is relative. Unless you can convince me that it's possible to be more authoritarian right than Nazism (and do so by playing by the rules- just using those two dimensions as Nazism does).
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus

Quote from: greg on March 07, 2020, 08:47:02 AM
People were clueless about where they actually were on the political spectrum, that's the answer. Not everything is relative. Unless you can convince me that it's possible to be more authoritarian right than Nazism (and do so by playing by the rules- just using those two dimensions as Nazism does).

     You are treating the maps as though they are, or one of them is, the terrain itself.
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Florestan

Hair-splitting, navel-gazing, argle-bargle philosophizing is drogulus' middle name on whatever topic one might imagine except music --- and that's only because he never ever posts about music.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

drogulus

#377
Quote from: Florestan on March 07, 2020, 09:21:05 AM
Hair-splitting, navel-gazing, argle-bargle philosophizing is drogulus' middle name on whatever topic one might imagine except music --- and that's only because he never ever posts about music.

     The series of posts here is an alternative to that, not that. Ideas don't just correspond to the world because we will them to do that. Instead we should be a little more humble and let the world tell us what it's like. The navel gazers are the one who think the world must conform to their ideas instead of trying a little bit to make their map conform to the world, as imperfect as it will always be.
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greg

Quote from: drogulus on March 07, 2020, 09:10:20 AM
     You are treating the maps as though they are, or one of them is, the terrain itself.
Quote from: drogulus on March 07, 2020, 09:35:50 AM
     The series of posts here is an alternative to that, not that. Ideas don't just correspond to the world because we will them to do that. Instead we should be a little more humble and let the world tell us what it's like. The navel gazers are the one who think the world must conform to their ideas instead of trying a little bit to make their map conform to the world, as imperfect as it will always be.
I was glad that I was able to actually understand your previous posts, but now this.  ;D

Honestly there are too many ways to interpret what you're saying that I have no idea how to respond.
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

drogulus

Quote from: greg on March 07, 2020, 10:10:47 AM
I was glad that I was able to actually understand your previous posts, but now this.  ;D

Honestly there are too many ways to interpret what you're saying that I have no idea how to respond.

    The best ones makes it easier to learn new things. So, absolutism has got to go. Such views weren't designed to mirror the world, they were designed to tell the world how naughty and disappointing it is that it doesn't obey instructions.
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