A poll on the forum's political biases
In response to another thread, I thought I'd start an actual poll on the forum's political biases. I know the structure of a political spectrum itself is a topic of contention, but I'm going to go with the axes that I think are most salient, and try to avoid using any words that might trigger knee-jerk tribal affiliation instead of an honest self-reflective answer.
Comments (67)
Are liberty and equality (so likewise authority and hierarchy) two sides of the same coin, where you can't have one without the other? Or is each a threat to the other, where one must choose which is more important to them?
Is the status quo one of liberty or authority, equality or hierarchy?
Which of these values belong to the "left", and which belong to the "right"?
Also the scale between change and stasis did not make sense to me, as these things are, in my opinion, not goals in themselves and whether I would favor one or the other is entirely dependent on circumstances.
An option that says "no opinion", or something like this, would be great.
I always have a problem with the liberty vs. authority angle. In my mind, authority can preserve liberty as much as endanger it. Authority is a tool, not a form of leadership. I'd say the opposite of liberty would be something like teleology. There is either a pre-determined goal for the society, or the goal is to allow everyone to pursue their own goals.
As to authority and hierarchy, they're obviously connected in practice. In theory, it's possible to imagine authority without hierarchy. That's essentially the theory behind representative democracy. The representatives have authority, but there is no hierarchy between them and the voters.
Liberty and equality, on the other hand, seem more intrinsically linked. Hierarchies make you more or less unfree by definition. Which may be a further argument in favour of replacing authority with something that has a similar relation to hierarchy as equality has to freedom.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Tough to say without any reference point.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Both left and right are a bit split, but I associate authority and hierarchy with the right, and equality with the left. Both sides will claim liberty, though with very different definitions.
Broad or general, yes, that is the point.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think so too.
Quoting Tzeentch
They definitionally do not. If everyone is on the same level, nobody is above of below anyone else.
Quoting Tzeentch
That is your opinion that you're free to have (I did ask for people's opinions on that after all), but be aware that it's not an uncontroversial one (which is why I asked for opinions on it). There are plenty of people who think that equality is the natural way of things in a free society, and inequality only arises through the exercise of authority.
Quoting Tzeentch
The idea there is whether you favor one or the other, in general, in our present circumstances. This is my way of asking about certain senses of "progressive" and "conservative" without using those words, as they literally mean for or against change, but often have other connotations as well.
Quoting Echarmion
I think I agree that there is a complex issue regarding sometimes using force to stop other people from using force in order to maximize liberty, e.g. that "excessive liberty" can become self-defeating in a way and actually be less free than "restrained liberty" (e.g. the freedom to punch other people in the face is also the power to limit others' freedom by threatening to punch them in the face if they disobey you, so limiting that freedom increases freedom in a way). But that's not what I mean by "authority" here, and using "authority" to mean that sounds strange to my ear.
I mean something much more like what you're calling "teleology". Liberty is people getting to pursue their own goals, authority is some people getting to impose their goals on others. In loose language, doing what you want to do vs being told what to do.
Quoting Echarmion
Within the reference frame of the political spectrum as you see it, please.
Quoting Echarmion
Which side do you think has the correct definition of liberty?
The great paradox at the heart of all of this type of thinking, is the idea that then through the use of authority should individuals be forced to be equal.
Their definition of a free society is similarly paradoxical. Freedom unavoidably leads to unequality, so when there is mention of a "free" society in this context, it isn't in fact free. A government is needed to tell individuals exactly how free they are allowed to be.
Thereby these ideas supports the greatest and most inescapable heirarchy; that between governments and their citizens. With every law that is passed to further this idea of equality, more force and more authority is exercised, and a stronger heirarchy established.
Liberty to do what? To live as I please? To take either directly or indirectly that of another for my own jollies? Liberty to be authority or authority to have liberty? Etc.
Hierarchy based on merit? Or natural hierarchy (ie. I'm bigger/there's more of me than you so tough nuts. Unless you invent something that can level the playing field)
Status quo? Depends. Where am I at on it. :lol:
Etc, etc...
Not when they're so general they're meaningless.
But it is what authority does, right? Make the laws, enforce them etc.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think it's important here to distinguish between instrumental goals and ultimate goals. The authority that limits instrumental goals is very different from the one setting the ultimate goals. The latter is, for lack of a better word, a kind of divine authority.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think we still have some of the most equal and liberal societies in History, but many old caste hierarchies have simply been supplanted by economic hierarchies, which are getting worse in many places. And this leads to increasing authority of the bad kind.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Neither, though I think especially in economic terms, the left / anarchist thinkers are a lot closer. The right wing seems, at best, stuck with classical liberalism, which is about 200 years behind.
I'm a maximal constitutional conservative thus long-time rabid anti-trampist, ejected from the ongoing political continuum and the republican party. Which means maximal opportunity for free innovative capitalism to allow society to adapt and advance, and maximal stasis of the Constitution but not of social progress within constitutional limits.
How are my votes reflective?
Economic liberty is generally counted within the right wing, personal liberty within the left. I voted 'somewhat limited liberty in this', by which I mean that granted by the principle of egalitarianism and that which does not harm, disadvantage, or reduce the liberty of others. I think this can be applied as well to economic institutions in a pluralistic economy, however I do not extend human rights to institutions, only to the persons working for them. I think the protections afforded companies should be much the same form as the constraints that stop them doing harm: pragmatic laws agreed on and refined over time.
The status quo is whatever the current power structure is, which can be assessed at various different scales. Equality of marriage rights does not affect our place in the national power structure where I live, which massively privileges a tiny minority of people from birth and yields a large, powerless and poor underclass whose potential progression up that power structure has a vanishingly small likelihood. An egalitarian revolution in my country would likely leave us persona non grata, a less power player, internationally where power structures are more malleable but even more bizarre.
Conservatives nominally favour the status quo. Regressives, like Trump supporters, the KKK, and neo-nazis, favour a return to outdated power structures, but ones that can be seen as a logical conclusion of a defense of the status quo, i.e. a transfer of further power from the people to an ever smaller elite. In a capitalist democracy, power means wealth, manifest in a reduction in taxation for the wealthiest and a corresponding reduction in investment in that which benefits the most rather than the privileged, and particularly that which benefits the poorest and most vulnerable over the wealthiest and most powerful. As such, there is a distinction to be made between conservatives and regressives, but also a uniting principle. 'More of what we have now,' if that makes sense. Thus conservatives and regressives are natural compatriots within the right wing.
Progressives, like regressives, seek to move away from the status quo but in the opposite direction: redistribution of wealth away from the few to the many, transfer of power to the majority, egalitarianism, social investment and conscientiousness. It is generally characterised by a long-term view, and is typically more espoused by the left wing.
Egalitarianism is the key theme here: it increases liberty by opposing oppression, and it progresses us from the status quo, as well as being an end to itself. Which makes it curious that there exists nominally within the left a faction with more than its fair share of power (similar to that historically enjoyed by the church) which seeks to reduce liberty. For the above reasons, I believe that any ideology that prefers and seeks to empower one demographic over others is regressive as well as anti-egalitarian and anti-libertarian. Yet it is apparently left wing, which distinguishes the left wing from the other axes.
I intend for people to answer based on the framework that they themselves think in, but I must confess that I put “somewhat” libertarian and egalitarian and progressive for my answers because, even though I’m a moderate centrist in the way that I think of the political spectrum, I’m aware that most people are in the authoritarian-hierarchy quadrant of my spectrum, and so from their perspective I’m a radical libertarian socialist.
Quoting Echarmion
I suppose that’s true, and now that I think about this in juxtaposition with my response just above, it reminds me that that’s exactly why I’m not for maximal liberty in the spectrum as I construct it, even though I’m radically liberal from a conventional perspective. Because on my spectrum there are possible views that advocate for so much liberty, i.e. so little authority, that the preservation of liberty becomes unstable, e.g. when people have the liberty to hurt others and so to establish de facto authority over them.
I have a similar line of reasoning regarding equality, such that if everything belongs equally to everyone, nothing really belongs to anyone, e.g. if I can’t claim my toothbrush as mine and mine alone then I don’t really have a toothbrush at all, even if I nominally have as equal claim to it as anybody else.
But those possibilities are so radically libertarian and egalitarian that they’re obviously absurd and nobody ever even considers that there is that side of the spectrum, and the “extreme” libertarian / egalitarian positions are moderate in comparison.
Are you asking me which poll answers would reflect your opinion as described here?
Mostly just :up: to you.
I think this sends the wrong message. We are here to think. We are here to listen to other's points and arguments, and logically think through them. It is not about being conservative, liberal, or political in any way. Such things often get in the way of free thought, and become arguments of ego and ideology.
I do not think things like this should be encouraged.
What, polls?
Someone else accused the forum of having a bias. I didn’t think that looked true, but I though, “let’s just check” and did a poll to see.
You know that political philosophy is a thing, right? We cannot "listen to other's points and arguments, and logically think through them " about politics and at the same time be prohibited from using its terminology. Makes no sense.
The answer to them should be that philosophy is about trying to remove bias. That sounds like he was trying to troll, or an excuse as to why everyone seemed to disagree with him. I think a better approach, is to see if he was genuine and ask him why he felt that way. What specifically was liberal, conservative, or whatever he thought the forum was. Examining why he thought an idea was political would do better then falling into a trap of thinking that we have to view each other as "political entities".
We can listen to people's opinions without labeling them. Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, but this can be discussed without attempting to label the forum goers as being a particular political nature. When people come to this forum it should be about philosophy. Not, I'm a political X, and that shapes how I view philosophy. The first is freedom of thought, the second is constrained.
There are many people who want to politicize things to use as a weapon, whether true or not. An attempt to defend or show the political nature of people here, only plays into that hand. The way to ensure this does not happen, is to remember what we are. Thinkers who are not bound by ideology, but seek to answer questions of a logical nature as free from bias as we can.
One way of removing the primary source of bias on philosophy forums, male ego, would be to remove all the screen names so that nobody can tell who said what.
Ha ha! You know woman can have bias about people too Hippy? The problem of course with removing names would be the difficulty in tracking the conversation. There is an interesting idea though that whenever you entered into a thread, you were assigned a random name for that post. It would allow each thread to be a "fresh start". I try to do this in every thread I'm in. Who you are in one thread, does not necessitate who you are in another.
Also, when publishing philosophy, there are certain journals that are "blind" to the name. This is to allow the very thing you propose. As this is a forum, we are not at such a professional level however, and I'm not sure it would sit well with people.
So why remove political bias then? Because it is honestly a danger to free thought. Politics can get people to dig into issues, and feel threatened if they are challenged. Instead of thinking about them, they get emotional and put their own predictions straw men in the argument. I've seen it with religion too. I rarely tell people whether I'm religious or an atheist, because it seems to evoke the same biases thought process. People will ignore the argument, and put their own spin or opinion on something that isn't there.
Are we also not to use words like monist, dualist, physicist, materialist, realist, pragmatist, etc?
If the conversation is perceived as being between people, then removing screen names is obviously going to generate confusion, agreed. But if the conversation is perceived as being between ideas, then it doesn't matter who typed what, and screen names become unnecessary.
However, to argue against, in the real world philosophy forums are primarily about ego, so removing screen names would likely cause the forum to collapse in about two weeks, and so there would then be neither egos or ideas, game over.
Quoting Philosophim
I'm sure that it wouldn't sit well, agreed. But then, this is a philosophy forum and the job of a philosopher is to be inconvenient and unpopular. :-)
I've been living in forum land for 20 years now, and it's amazing to me what an absolutely fixed rigid idea we have about forums. All forums on the Internet, every last one, absolutely have to be pretty much exactly the same in format, or everyone starts totally freaking out, yelling about crimes against humanity and so on. :-)
Only highly moral people can have liberty and only well-educated people can be highly moral. So how well educated is the population? Our Statue of Liberty holds a book for literacy and a torch for the enlightenment of literate people. Unfortunately, the masses in the US are no longer educated to understand what literacy and good moral judgment have to do with liberty and democracy. Since 1958 they have been prepared to be products for industry and to rely on authority. Their dependence on authority justifying the need for authority over the people and this gave us Trump as our great leader. Big mistake! The mistake beginning with the change in education in 1958.
Hum checking what others have said, it appears I misunderstood the purpose of the discussion. This may not help but I believe we should live by 3 rules because they eliminate most social problems.
We respect all people because we are respectful. This is totally about who we are not who the other person is.
We protect the dignity of others.
We do everything with integrity.
For sure liberal education makes each person his/her own authority. And it is with this authority that we vote for the best leaders and gladly follow those leaders, while we stand ready to take their place of leadership if need be.
I was a Toastmistress for many years and at first, thought being the club president would be the best position to have. :rofl: The other members prepared me for taking on that responsibility as everyone who joined the club was prepared to do. Then my day came to take increasingly greater responsibility, as the treasurer, then as the secretary, and finally as the president. The greatest service is required of the president. It is not a role to envy but a duty to fulfill and to pass on to the next person as soon as possible. Like George Washington.
Our democracy came out of the enlightenment and like the democratic model for industry is suppose to be about helping everyone be the best s/he can be so s/he can make her/his contribution to society. Democracy is about all of us working together. It is a shifting hierarchy, not a static one.
I thought about this when you first mentioned it, but having an identity within a thread is needed beyond ego. Sometimes there are a few conversations between people within a thread, and knowing that a particular person understands the conversation is important. Further, this prevents duplicity, in which a malicious person can pretend to be the owner of a previous thought, when they are not. Imagine a person lying that was they previously posted was now wrong. Although I do like the idea of random names being assigned for you in every different thread you visit.
Quoting Hippyhead
Ha ha! I don't think that's really our job, though I get the joke. Sometimes good logic and thought makes us convenient and popular.
Quoting Hippyhead
Yes, people adapt slowly to change. It also greatly simplifies implementation when you simply copy what has gone before. Very few people want to spend tons of work implementing something new, and find that they have to fight tooth and nail to get people to even try it.
If a discussion is about ideas instead of people, who cares who is being duplicitous? And anyway, none of us are the owner of any of these ideas.
However, all that said, I do agree that removing the screen names would probably kill the forum. It's a fun idea, but not too realistic. And the reason it's not realistic is that most of us most of the time are here in service of emotional agendas more than intellectual ones. It's the human condition. Once we have enough food to eat and a place to sleep out of the rain, ego agendas tend to become our primary concern.
I think the problems this forum is facing can be solved pretty easily.
First of all it’s a philosophy forum, not a social justice forum. So any subject should be able to be raised and discussed without rabid, sanctimonious pushback.
On the Trump OP I once asked Michael why the aggressive and accusatory attitudes of so many were accepted in posts and he said that a political OP was a different sort of OP than others. Well look what it’s led to. A lot of those attitudes have flooded over as standard into other OPs. So I think the mods have let everyone down. Just look at my OP on leftist domination. The posts have gone way off topic and there’s no comment from the mods.
People like StreetlightX should be given a number of warnings about personal attacks then they’re suspended for a time. In fact StreetlightX should not be a mod. He’s intelligent but he regularly resorts to personal attacks and derails conversations. There’s a few others who do the same. They have to be managed.
A lot of the OPs have become pretty lame and yet they’re allowed. So standards aren’t being set.
My OP about leftist domination was not that they disagreed with me but how they went about it, and they responded to my OP in the same way again and were ignored by the mods.
Ironically, in light of the poll, it appears we cannot have total freedom without some sort of regulation. Otherwise we get anarchy, which is where we’re going now.
When I look back at the OPs I’ve put up in the past I can see genuine debate going on. There was still the push back on occasions but it wasn't so vituperative as it is now. Also, Biden would occasionally chip in with some comment to straighten out poor philosophy. Poor OPs were often moved to the lounge and posters were reminded of the quality in writing an OP that was expected. There was more personal input and management from Baden.
Because that’s the kind of bias that was accused in the other thread.
My idea here was to suss out where people place themselves on various scales that have been associated with the “left-right” scale, to be LESS vague.
I don't have an issue with the left-dominated forum but there are clear double standards in the moderation here. If I posted like streetlightx, I would probably get either banned or have a majority of my posts deleted, I know this from besides just logic and reading their rules because whenever I do just insult someone aimlessly, my posts are often just deleted (and should have been, not complaining). There are a number of evangelical, aggressive idealogues here and considering how many philosophical topics can be related to politics, one might have a tough time avoiding them while posting here. In an ideal world @Philosophim's approach would make sense but there's little sense in treating an ideologue like a normal person. If you post a view which goes against leftist thinking, be prepared for not just debate but unmoderated ridicule and trolling.
Some people live for that while others hate it but I see so many posters 1st time dealing with the likes of xtrix, 180proof, streetlightx, maw, baden and so on wondering what the hell they did to receive such insulting responses to benign comments. Basically, people should be prepared for it and ignore these posters and a few others if you're looking for a reasonable discussion. No reason to come in blind and expect a warm welcome to a discussion on ideas which fall outside of the leftist agenda.
I think while the poll may be a bit ambiguous, the results are pretty much what I expected and I'm really not sure who for instance voted "maximum hierarchy" and whether they're actually serious. The forum is dominated by the left, this shouldn't be controversial. Just something to take into consideration when posting.
Thanks. I may get cancelled at any time.
Politics completely aside, I think this is probably true of any ideas whatsoever. Most of my OPs haven't been about politics at all, but more about the "metaphysical" side of philosophy -- ontology, mind, epistemology, language, etc -- and I've felt an overwhelmingly hostile response to those too.
I get the feeling that many people only respond to anything when they disagree. I've seen very little in the way of people saying they like other people's ideas or adding further to them.
It’s a very difficult medium to use. Your comments can easily be misread and then replies add to the difficulty. But if anyone is really interested then they can persevere. Generally I like to explore a subject and see where it goes. I like to inject a bit of imagination into it as well. I don’t even need agreement, I just need participation.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I agree with that but I think the effect of the leftist ideologues is worse, you have threads of 4-5 people writing pages of comments with just name-calling, insults, trolling and so on because someone said something they disagreed with. Brett's thread about the "leftist dominated forum" was not the way to go I think because that is not the problem. The issue is that these aforementioned posters are literally breaking nearly every forum rule and it's allowed because the ones breaking the rules include the moderators. The rules are literally written by Baden, who routinely breaks his own rules unambiguously.
If all that happened was the forum rules were enforced equally or the moderators tried to lead by example rather than being an exception then Brett and others like him wouldn't be in this situation. The rules aren't "no disagreement allowed" or "you can't be highly critical of others" just don't be a twat basically.
Quoting Judaka
Can’t be that hard, surely.
I didn’t mean to limit it to just economic but I did mean to include that, yeah.
Also :up: in general.
Quoting Judaka
I disagree with this. If you post an idea here, it will often invite ridicule and trolling, irrelevant of perceived political leanings. I have a feeling you are seeing ideologies that aren't there. Can you give some specific examples of what you would consider "liberal" versus your particular "conservative" view points? I think this is the more important discussion to have.
I don't like political labels but if I had to give myself one then I'd call myself a liberal, not a conservative. What I believe is that a healthy thinker will not agree with or follow an ideology in its totality. It's not just that either because you can tell when someone has really thought out a position and when they're just following an ideological tract. An ideology is a system and it exists in competition with other ideologies. It can be an identity, a tribe to belong to, a cause to advance, it can simplify your worldview. I don't identify ideologues by just having particular viewpoints, I do it by how they describe their ideas, how often I can identify that they're just parroting an ideological point, how they treat their political opponents/allies, how concerned they are with what group (ideology) you belong to. It sounds like a lot but there are obvious red flags.
They act like soldiers on a battlefield. Here is not that bad, there are some truly terrifying ones out there. https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/ is a good example, incel community is infamous for it, I can't even stay 30 minutes, I lose my cool, you can get the picture. It is not necessarily the result of a concerted effort among the ideologically motivated frequenters, sometimes it's just that there's enough of them to have an effect. If I post a thread about "my theory of the universe" and write some random crap, yes, people might mock and troll but it's not the same as this. There are big differences besides the obvious, "it's an ideological disagreement, not just random people trolling".
It's a consistent and uncompromising attack on alternative ideologies, a dogmatic adherence to their ideology and displays of hostility which seem unnatural. Here, the group I refer to follows what is probably best described as intersectional feminism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
Actually proving that some of the posters I named or others follow this ideology and are dogmatic and uncompromising ideologues would take some considerable effort on my part. It wouldn't be worthwhile for me to make that effort at this point. However, I am certainly not saying this because I'm bitter about being trolled or ridiculed, there is a long history for many of these posters and being aware of it isn't hard when you've been here for as long as I have.
Certainly there are ideologues and ideologies here. But you seem to imply that this forum is dominated by leftist thinking. I'm not asking you to prove that certain posters are ideologues, there are ideologues in every forum. What I'm asking is why you believe the vast majority of posters here have a liberal viewpoint?
I have had many debates about typical talking points of the left and the right and they're simply left vs further left almost every time. If it's not then it's just one of the very few right-wing posters here or a new account (someone who normally doesn't post here). Somewhat recently, I spent a lot of time debating white privilege and honestly, it was just left vs further left and I really think if this forum had a right-wing presence, they would show themselves in topics like that. Racism, economic inequality, pc-culture and so on, so, experience basically.
You can be to the right and believe in racism, economic inequality, pc-culture, and white privilige. None of those pre-clude left or right thinking. Are you sure your "left versus further left" isn't just "right versus left"? You seem to be focusing on the extremists on the right, which are still a minority and do not capture what a healthy "right" perspective is. The vague responses here again seem to play into a self-perspective and not an objective perspective in assuming the majority on these forums are leftists.
It seems to me like you already made up your mind about it before I even said anything. You have said:
1. Ridiculing and trolling occur across the board
2. I may be seeing ideologies that aren't there
3. I am confusing left and right / I am confusing right and far-right
4. I am giving vague responses and making assumptions
I don't really think you have grounds for any of these suspicions but the fact that you've gone for all of them in a matter of 3 posts signals to me that you are pretty intent on discrediting me for whatever reason. Don't you think you've already reached your conclusion and you're just saying whatever you can right now?
You've given me so much too much to do for a topic that I don't really care about, I am not particularly interested in debating whether the forum is dominated by the left or not. I never said that the right doesn't "believe in racism or economic inequality", there just aren't many posters espousing conservative perspectives in threads on these topics. Even heated debates on political topics on this forum, both sides of the debate can be considered left-wing, that's my experience. There are posters with <100 posts who are right-wing but especially when you start looking at 1k+ posts, it starts becoming overwhelmingly left-wing and it's really not that hard, most of these posters openly self-identify. Happy to just agree to disagree, by the way.
I don't remember talking to you except in the thread about systemic racism...
Quoting Benkei
I called you an idiot and a racist, I don't see why I should apologise, you did earn those comments.
No, I'm honestly just pointing out observations of potential flaws in your claim. I am quite prepared to learn something and change my mind. But, I don't think you've leant any credence to your claim, then what you have already decided.
Quoting Judaka
And that is fine. Just don't take offense when I ask you to back that up on a philosophy board. =P I had no malicious intent to discredit you, just a disagreement of outlook, and to see if you could give evidence of your outlook.
Quoting Judaka
Same, no hard feelings or personal attack intended.
Quoting Philosophim
I didn't take offence to anything but I'm not letting that comment slide. You give me a 1 liner "I have a feeling you are seeing ideologies that aren't there" and what is your feeling but a baseless guess? So, it's on me to prove that I am not simply seeing ideologies which aren't there but that is a monumental task if I wanted to do it properly. Even proving that a single person here was an ideologue would require me to demonstrate it over many threads, with many comments and even then, one could still reasonably doubt the claim. But okay, you're no longer interested in ideologies, now you ask :
Quoting Philosophim
I answered why I believe that which was my experience in threads that debated stereotypical left-right debate points and the lack of conservative representation in those threads.
Quoting Philosophim
Did I say anything this corrects? No, and yours is a pretty outlandish interpretation seeing as the left-right debate is not about "belief" in racism or economic inequality at any level.
Quoting Philosophim
Baseless, where is your evidence for even saying that it "seems' like I'm focusing on right-wing extremism? The actual question you asked was "why do you believe" and I answered it. Not "provide objective proof for the claim that the forum is dominated by the left". You see yourself as having handled yourself well here as someone rigorously testing my claims but you have both shifted the topic to something else and you made baseless accusations which you expect me to debunk with every single post. I never promised to provide proof of my claims, such a task seems too big to take on from my perspective.
Yes, I may be biased. Yes, my experience might be skewed. Yes, our definitions of left/right may differ. All of this goes without saying. If you had decided exactly what it was you wanted, which now seems to be, proof of my claim that the forum is dominated by the left, then I might have been able to provide it.
When you consider we're in a thread about political biases and 60% said they're on the left. With what... 1 person saying they're on the right? And that the "neither" camp are probably less likely to participate in political threads, then maybe you can already see it is reasonable to think that such threads may have up to 80% or 90% of posters being "left-wing". I think even beyond this, I could create a compelling case for my claim but I don't think it's worth the time and there's no guarantee of success. I can think of several ways to go about it but they're all a lot of work. We can just agree to disagree as previously arranged but your comment here is unfair and so I had to respond, I'm not accepting the "sorry I asked you to back up your claims" or whatever.
Ok, I thought you had mentioned you weren't interested in debating this, and tried to end this on a friendly note. You are seeing attacks where there are none. This is exactly my point as to why you don't bring political affiliation to these boards. People get WAY too defensive, and see issues where there is none.
Quoting Judaka
That was my entire point. I felt you were claiming these forums are leftist without qualifications.
Quoting Judaka
Ok. Lets just agree then. There is nothing wrong with stating an opinion but nothing wrong with me asking to back your opinion. If you are not interested in doing so, I do not see that as unfair. I would hope you would not take offense at my initial request to back up that opinion. We debate and challenge other people's opinions all the time, its not personal.
Quoting Philosophim
No, you are misreading the situation here because honestly, I have no idea whether you even have a political affiliation or what that is if you do. I do not feel offended except that you suggest I am being defensive about "being asked to back yourself up on a philosophy board".
Quoting Philosophim Quoting Philosophim
You should know exactly what I think about this because I just wrote about it and yet you still persist undeterred. You ignored everything I said and just repeated the same self-serving crap, reaffirming to me that there is nothing wrong with you asking me to back up my opinion. You went ahead and said it twice more, actually. Do you really think that's how this went down? You asked for evidence and I got upset that you asked for it? I did try to agree to disagree on friendly terms, now you're surprised that comment of yours isn't going down too well, lol. Whatever, have it your way, I'm not continuing this.
Yes.
Quoting Judaka
Its a shame we got off on the wrong foot. I'm sure we'll have a better conversation another day.
You're really stubborn, your assertion here annoys me a lot, I should just ignore you and let it go but I can't. Quote where you asked for the evidence, the part you think I got upset about.
- pretty strongly libertarian
- moderately egalitarian, and
- slightly progressive;
and slightly more than half of respondents identify as "left", while both/neither options (most neither) come in second, and only a minority identify as "right".
No, you couldn't find that out, it's too vague :P
I am surprised that 9% chose "maximum hierarchy". I'm intrigued by this.
I'm guessing that it's mostly American-style right-libertarians (who often hate being called "right-libertarians") who are identifying themselves in the "neither" (second largest) or "both" (second smallest) groups. They see themselves as centrist, unaware of how right-skewed their idea of the center is, and so of course complain that a population almost evenly distributed between the self-identified "left" and the complement of that set (the not-left) is "skewed left".
My takeaway is that "right" is seen as more of a "dirty word" than "left" is. Those who knowingly push things leftward are proud of that fact, even though (per the results on the non-ideologically-labeled axes of the poll) they only want things to be somewhat left (liberty and equality and change), not maximally, presumably toward what they see as a balanced position. Those who are resisting that movement don't want to be identified as "right", and think that the (as we leftists see it) rightward bias of the mainstream worldview is really "centrist".
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I'm also intrigued by that, and would be interested to hear from not only them, but anyone who voted one of the last two options of the first three questions ("somewhat" or "maximal" authority, hierarchy, or stasis).
I'd particularly like to know if this is independent of where in the hierarchy they'd end up.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I confess the stasis option is the only one that made no sense to me. I kind of read this as 'gradual progress' but I didn't answer 'maximal change' as 'instanaeous transformation to what I currently think of as the perfect society'.
I'm guessing that those who identify themselves "neither" think that because they don't agree with leftist anarchists / antifa-types or with the alternative right / Trump & QAnon-types, they think they aren't left or right.
Do notice that the option "centrist" was missing from the questionnaire. That despised and vilified option by both the left and the right.
I'm having a little difficulty parsing your sentence here, but I hope this answers the implied question:
- "maximal change" was to mean you want rapid and radical change from the status quo (so if you only want very small changes, wanting them very quickly isn't "maximal change")
- "maximal stasis" on the other hand was to mean that you want things to be very similar if not identical to how they are now and any changes from that to happen very slowly and carefully.
- "somewhat limited change" was to mean that you think things definitely need to change and quickly, but not nearly everything, and we can be cautious in our pace.
- "somewhat limited stasis" was to mean that you think things are mostly fine as they are now, but there are some little improvements that can be made here or there, carefully.
- "an equal balance of change and stasis" was to mean that you find the status quo about halfway acceptable, a lot of things need to change but also a lot needs to stay the same, and we should be only as quick to make those changes as possible without compromising our due caution to protect what's already good.
Quoting ssu
I didn't mean to exclude "centrist" out of any bias toward it (I consider myself a kind of "centrist" in the proper political spectrum, even if I'm "far left" by common standards). Rather, I meant "both" and "neither" to differentiate different possible kinds of "centrists". I think you're probably right that people who are equally "anti-woke" and "anti-MAGA" see themselves as "neither".
I think that was apt. There's a big difference between being on the centre-ground of most things and being leftist on some, right on the others. Some of my views are considered conservative or authoritarian (I am pro DNA databases, for instance); I am probably centre on nothing, and extreme on very little.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thanks. Sorry for the badly worded question.
This assumes that one believes that one's preferences in political things somehow matter.
What about those people who have altogether lost hope in politics, and who therefore have no preferences about it?
And then there are those whose political preferences may be completely unrealistic/utopian/dystopian (and they know them to be such), but who refuse to settle for any of the options given in the poll?