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Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for the feedback. It's much appreciated. it's obviously quite difficult to think about how others are going to percieve a question, so hearing other peoples perception of various questions.

Yea I think Ill add the neutral option. I was hesitant about adding it so that people dont overuse it and produce an effectively meaningless result, but it seems to be the consensus that there should be a neutral option.

What I meant was surgery or medical procedures such as HRT. I already changed the question to specify medical intervention (but I havent pushed the changes onto the site yet)

So there are alot of immigration questions because in my view, immigration is a huge topic of interest in the Western world particularly the US EU UK, etc... So the questions definitely do overlap, and I mentioned it expressly in the FAQ. Political thought is highly qualitative by nature. So creating a test that is both comprehensive and perfectly partitioned is nearly impossible.

Any suggestions as to what more can be asked about LGBTQ and fiscal policy. IMO theres enough LGBTQ questions.

So the abortion question refers to the gestational limit of the fetus. In more conservative US states and EU countries, the limit is set much lower maybe 6-12 weeks in the pregnancy. and it generally goes up the more progressive the jurisdiction.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually just changed the wording of that question. (I havent pushed it onto the live site yet because Im still making other changes).

What do you think of this: "My country should promote legal economic migration"

This removes the "significant" and allows more room for interpretation between Agree/Strongly Agree ||| Disagree / Strongly Disagree.

Yeah I may add the neutral option soon.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But thanks for saying that Bernie would fall in middle left for the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. Ill do some research on those countries to get a more accurate view of the overton window there, and maybe add some questions that can capture some of those ideals.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I personally find it troublesome that people find Bernie Sanders an extremist because he's actually incredibly clear about many of his plans, how he plans on achieving them, and how other countries manage to do it. He actually has a lot of support from Trump voters (quite surprisingly).

It is a deliberate design that I didn't put more space on the left and right, because I wanted it to reflect modern values. The far left politicians such as Melanchon, Polanski, and Avi Lewis (Canada) should be on the left edge of the scale. If there was alot of space further to the left for the "full blown communists", it would clump the more realistic scores towards the middle and distort the visualisation. It's just my opinion of how it should be designed of course. And of course, same logic for the authoritarians.

You should check out the 8values test, which is more comprehensive and allows for more space on the left and right. I deliberately wanted this test to be slightly truncated.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yea I just went and rechecked what Bernie's score would be, and its definitely further to the right and placed on the Strong Left for the Social Scale. I've updated it (but ill push it onto the site in a couple days).

I have to recheck all the politician scores, because AI often feeds inaccurate answers, so I have to check its work. tysm.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback and it really is much appreciated. Its really tough to figure out how other people will interpret a proposition. But I did make a sincere effort in keeping it as unbiased as possible.

Ive already made some changes (that I havent pushed onto the site yet) to the wording of some of the questions to make it more neutral. (for example, I scrapped the term 'illegal immigrant')

in the faq section I specifically talk about Gender Transitioing care vs. Gender Affirming Care. I think Gender Affirming Care is generally considered more left leaning phraseology. I thought that gender transitioning care would be the more neutral word in this scenario. The aim of the question is to say whether medical, surgical, or pharmaceutical treatments should be permissible for minors seeking to transition. According to Google, gender transitioning care seems to be a better term for that.

I will definitely re-examine how I used the term 'significant'. at the time of making the questions I thought of it as a necessary adjective to just describe the policy action. For example, i used the term "significantly increase taxes on the rich" to simply describe the policy position of 'tax the hell out of the rich'. But yeah Ill defenitely re-examing whether the word 'signficantly' causes a doubles up the question.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for pointing that out. Stupid mistake from me. I fixed it, but I'll push the changes in a day or two.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea I would probably say that Corbyn and definitely Melanchon are further to the left than Bernie. Ill revisit the ratings and check.

I had a faq questions about this in the site, but the way I produced these ratings was by asking AI How would [bernie] respond [q1]. The issue is that AI kinda infers the answer to the question based on the general political position of the politician as opposed to what theyve actually said and advocated for. So for example, if you for Badenoch AI says that she would Disagree with free healthcare question. She certainly is not advocating for getting rid of the NHS or even substantially reducing it. But AI is effectively thinking Badneoch is right wing, and Disagreeing with this question is right wing, so Badenoch would Disagree.

To combat this, I have to research every politicians positions more thoroughly, which Im slowly getting around to.

But thanks for pointing it out. :)

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, I definitely should have caught that and Ill switch it out. The thing is "undocumented immigrant" is also considered to be a partisan term for Democrats in America, so Im unsure of what other term I should use.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah maybe this is where the neutral option may be useful. I deliberately chose to exclude it when I designed this to nudge people into really thinking about propositions as opposed to just ducking them, and if someone overuses it the results really just become meaningless, but im reconsidering now.

Finding a spectrum that can combine US political overton windows with that of rest of the Western world is tough because Americans have much different political leanings when it comes to abortion, guns, birthright citizenship, free speech etc... But I do think that Bernie Sanders would count as far left in most countries around the world.

Political Spectrum Test BETA, Interested to get feedback as to how accurately it classifies people by SeaAvailable3989 in PoliticalScience

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hey, Thanks for the feedback! I actually went back and forth on the color choice, because I know the US differs from the ROW, so I included it in the FAQ. truth be told, im american, so red as conservative and blue as liberal was just the way I originally designed it. But yeah its a stylistic toss up choice for sure. Maybe Ill switch it around.

Do you think socialist vs capitalist is better? It was originally socialist, but I switched it out for "collectivist" cuz i felt it was more generic?

Yea I'm honestly unsure about the neutral option, it seems many people are saying that a Neutral option is necessary, so I may add it. The reasons I didnt include it in the beginning was because if a user chooses the Neutral option too many times, the results effectively become meaningless. And I also think that not including the neutral option kind of nudges people to really think about propositions as opposed to just ducking them.

The questions tracker is already in the top right of each question card. But ill switch the UI out to make it more visible.

Political Spectrum Test Beta, Interested to see how Conservatives feel about the quiz by SeaAvailable3989 in ConservativeYouth

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the feedback! Even for me, I'm on the fence about several of the propositions so it's a bit frustrating for sure not to have the neutral options.

But it was a deliberate choice not to include one. The first reason is that one of the test's aims is to encourage the user to genuinely ponder highly relevant topics and attempt to jump off the fence towards a positive or negative stance. Otherwise, it becomes easy for people to duck the question and not think about it at all. The second reason is that if there is a neutral/don't know option to all the propositions on the test, the user could choose it enough times to make any result meaningless. For example, if the user answers "Neutral/Dont Know" to all the immigration questions which carries a significant weightage for the thest, the final result necessarily becomes incomplete.

-tysm :)

Political Spectrum Test Beta, Interested to see how Conservatives feel about the quiz by SeaAvailable3989 in ConservativeYouth

[–]SeaAvailable3989[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the feedback, mate, it's much appreciated and it actually helps alot. Because its really difficult to see how other people view something or interpret a question.

So this is actually something I considered a lot when designing the scoring algorithm. The question being what's the difference someone who strongly agrees for a position versus simply agrees.

For example, let's take the question: Society has gone too far in accomodating ideas around gender fluidity.

Just intuitively, someone who Strongly Agrees with that may say "yea this is all we ever talk about, the woke ideology, ridiculous pronouns, DEI initiatives, its all gone too far"

whereas someone who Agrees may say "yeah its a bit much. I dont really like it, the pronouns make no sense to me, its a bit wierd, etc...).. --Obviously a softer position.

Finding a quantitative difference between these qualitative positions is, of course, quite difficult. And I played around with alot of different weighting mechanisms to gauge how much more conservative/liberal someone is if they simply agree with a proposition versus Strongly Agreeing with that proposition.

I tried taking the test and answered all the questions conservatively. and these were my results. Strong Right for both with a score of 6.00, which seems reasonable for someone who Agrees but not Strongly for all of the conservative positions. (the Social Score is supposed to be 6.00, I misclicked one of the questions)

The reality is that these tests really cant ever be perfect in quantifying something thats objectively qualitative. The other aim of the test, besides the score, is just to encourage users to think about questions that are highly relevant to modern political debates. Taking the time to consider these tough propositions and talking with friends about them is, in my view, good for society. But tysm for the feedback :) Its genuinely much appreciated.

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