lbo-talk-digest V1 #5319

Daniel Davies dsquared at al-islam.com
Wed Nov 21 03:03:16 PST 2001


chrikey this is better than a morning newspaper. More fun anyway.

Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 20:42:59 +0000 From: Many People Subject: Re: political compass


>
>Me:
>
>Economic Left/Right: N < -7
>Authoritarian/Libertarian: N < -6

My score was:

Economic Left/Right: -2.50 Authoritarian/Libertarian: -2.05

which makes me officially the most rightwing person on the list.

Or does it? A bit of poking about and trying to game the test seems to reveal that the main reason why I get such a low score is that I don't like ticking "Agree Strongly" with respect to anything, as all the statements they give are too general to command anything other than vague, qualified assent or dissent. Since all the LBO scores are in the same quadrant, I'd actually guess that differences in the interpretation of "Strongly Agree" versus "Agree" account for most of the in-group variation. Which rather pleases me as I have long been of the opinion that most of the differences between left groups are differences of stridency and diffidence rather than actual disagreements.

Oh yeh, someone asked why they had a question on "do you believe in astrology" -- it's probably because questions about the role of predestination versus free will were an important part of the Adorno F-test, the prototype for these little doodads.

Justin wrote:
> Pareto optimality is a state of affairs in which no
>transactions or transfers of utility can make anyone better >off.

Doug wrote:


>Pareto optimality is the condition in which no member of a >society
>can be made better off without making someone else >worse off.

Doug's definition is more likely to get you through your economics exams; the "without making someone else worse off" clause is important.


>Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 17:18:25 -0500
>From: Doug Henwood
>Subject: Re: Recipes and Prehistoric Schmeehistoric >Whatevers :)


>Hey, if you find living in caves, walking around in skins, not being
>able to read or write, and dying before your 40th birthday
attractive, who am I to roll my eyes?


>Doug

Oh come on, you techno-types were the ones who persuaded us to leave the oceans and look what a disaster that was :-)

d^2

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