Right now for the politics question, you have three(!) different strains of neoliberalism, social democracy, and Stalinism.
Alternative complaints:
Right now for the politics question, you have three(!) different strains of leftism, libertarianism, and conservatism. That’s hardly representative of the historical political spectrum, and I’m honestly surprised that anyone designing that question on a survey would make that mistake.
… or:
Right now for the politics question, you have four(!) different strains of statism, and libertarianism. That’s hardly representative of the diversity of ideologies, and I’m honestly surprised that anyone designing that question on a survey would make that mistake.
Yes, anarchists, monarchists, theocrats, etc. might object that their view isn’t represented, but I think that limiting the possibilities was still the right choice (see also the objections to the gender question). Keeping the focus on LessWrong away from politics seems best.
The current limitation of possibilities doesn’t keep the focus on LessWrong away from politics. It focuses on certain types of politics.
Further, if you’re calling Labor or the Democrats leftist, or the Libertarian party anti-state, you’re just wrong by almost any metric worth caring about.
It wouldn’t have been hard to have one option for each of capitalist/pro-state, leftist/pro-state, capitalist/anti-state, and leftist/anti-state. That would have captured all modern political alignments, and anything more specific could be another option.
As it stands, that question is totally useless to me, and probably to most other leftists. So any conclusion like “women are more likely to be socialists” will be equally meaningless. Most socialists don’t even consider European social democracies to be socialist.
Alternative complaints:
… or:
Yes, anarchists, monarchists, theocrats, etc. might object that their view isn’t represented, but I think that limiting the possibilities was still the right choice (see also the objections to the gender question). Keeping the focus on LessWrong away from politics seems best.
If only “nitpickers” was a political position, then all of this trouble could have been avoided.
The current limitation of possibilities doesn’t keep the focus on LessWrong away from politics. It focuses on certain types of politics.
Further, if you’re calling Labor or the Democrats leftist, or the Libertarian party anti-state, you’re just wrong by almost any metric worth caring about.
It wouldn’t have been hard to have one option for each of capitalist/pro-state, leftist/pro-state, capitalist/anti-state, and leftist/anti-state. That would have captured all modern political alignments, and anything more specific could be another option.
As it stands, that question is totally useless to me, and probably to most other leftists. So any conclusion like “women are more likely to be socialists” will be equally meaningless. Most socialists don’t even consider European social democracies to be socialist.