Alright, this is a thread on why these political tests kinda suck

I do have to say, I agree with @TheInnerMoon (sorry, can't find that one tweet) in which he says that, while political alignments along one axis are flawed, they are better to conceptually visualize ideological thinking as opposed to multiple axis.

And that's were the questions come in. They ask you a question ("Do you believe we should have open boarders", for example) with a rank based system from strong agreement to strong disagreement, usually (if it's rigged it'll usually leave out an emotional indicator as a choice).

However, the problem with this is that, because of the answers being laid out in a diametrically opposed way, it doesn't take into account overlapping means of disagreement/agreement/neutrality.

As to the previous question, I would like to have answered "strongly disagree"...

...because my view is the abolishment of boarders, not the passive opening of them. An anarchist position would seem to have the same answer as a conservative (anything to the right of it). While this could be solved with context, you are not given that option, and are told to...

...usually answer each question "individually to the best of your ability".

Now, it may be the case that your political test can differentiate your responses based on the context from other answers. Asking more and more questions allows more differentiation from a supposed...

...incorrect assessment (which is probably why these damn things have 100+ questions in them). But even so, one cannot but help to imagine how the test itself might view their answers.

I know I've felt that way with every political test I've taken, even one in private...

...Why is that? It might have something to do with a psychological drive to self-fulfill your political tendencies as you go along (Or I might be the only one who does this and is instead talking on deaf ears at this point).

If anyone else seems to do this, the best way to...

...imagine how such a test is to be constructed is to imagine it in an apolitical setting. But since a test based in empirical data entry is situated in the material world programmed by real people, the only "apologizing" agent we can ascribe to such a test is to imagine it in...

...the status quo. Hence, when I see a question that asks "Do you believe we should have open borders", my gut instinct is to say "no", but not knowing the contents ascribed to the question, I imagine it being asked by an affiliate in the "Overton Window", and answer that...

...would best approximate my views. In this case, I'd answer "yes" as to hopefully tell the algorithm that I have more "left-leaning" views.

Now let's say that you suppress this urge (I sure as heck can't), your test comprised contextual question answers, and it had an...

...extensive knowledge on many political ideologies (and their peripheries) to prevent any unknown errors in affiliation...

So what?

I legitimately ask what is even the point of these tests other than testing an algorithm or for occasional fun?

These political tests (like the 8values one going around) shouldn't really tell you something that you already know of. If you're a Council Communist and get something similar out, then the best you did was assure yourself you are a Council Communist.

Same w/ other affiliations

(Now there might be cases in which you don't know the best language to describe your views, in which case these tests can definitely be used as an orientation heuristic, but in the problems I've outlines above, you should definitely consider these with a grain of salt)

In my understanding, it's (albeit haphazardly) under the same umbrella as conventional fortune telling, which uses barnum statements (or in the case of these quizzes, barnum questions) in order to get a vague sense of what you follow (or are close to following) (anti-)politically

A better metaphor would be to use IQ tests, which give an arbitrary metric to figure out something about you that is so nebulous that even contemporary academics can't pinpoint it (namely, intelligence).

IQ Tests are liars, but because of the process, makes it seem official.

That's not to say that these political alignment tests aren't useful at all (see my earlier tweets in this thread), I just don't want to see them paraded around as fixed as if your alignment doesn't change or as if these tests come close to the thing they are saying they measure

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.