Measuring the outcome is good, but I see a problem with the original data. How do you know who is really Green and who is really Blue?
By their self-reports, right?
Well, I see a problem here. What if someone insists on self-describing as a Blue, but most Blues disagree with him and say he is completely confused about what Blue-ness is? -- I know the definition of Blue is not exact, but it at least roughly corresponds to something in the idea-space, and a person can get it wrong and self-identify as a Blue despite being somewhere else. (Perhaps somewhere beyond both typical Blue and Green areas, so the person self-identifies as a Blue simply because they use Blue as a synonym for non-Green.) -- If other people fail to recognize such person as a Blue, is it really their fault?
The question is not exactly “whom to blame?”, but rather “if we use noisy inputs and then get noisy outputs, does it tell us something beyond the fact that there was a noise in input?”
(To be specific, I remember someone in the ideological test saying that they self-identify as both Christian and Atheist. And it was 1 person in 13, so that has a non-trivial impact on the results. I don’t think that majority of either Christians or Atheists would agree that an opinion like this is a valid representation of their opinions. So how exactly should guessing or not guessing this person’s self-description influence the ratings? And should it influence the ratings if the same person would be forced to choose only one of the descriptions?)
“Christ was not the Son of God, because there is no God, but we should follow his teachings anyways”?
I don’t remember, but most likely something like this. (Maybe with some “cosmic law” or “cosmic energy” added for better effect.)
Now this completely does not represent Christian viewpoint (we should follow Christ precisely because he told us what God wants) or atheist viewpoint (even if Christ was a good and smart person, it is unlikely he got everything right; and even he got something right, we can discover and prove it independently).
What if someone insists on self-describing as a Blue, but most Blues disagree with him and say he is completely confused about what Blue-ness is?
Sometimes there are many tinges of Blues. And for almost every tinge you pick, most other Blues will claim people of that tinge are not really Blue. (Religious and ideological movements get like this a lot.) But Greens have no problem classifying people as Blue and non-Blue, so it’s not a wholly useless concept.
(To be specific, I remember someone in the ideological test saying that they self-identify as both Christian and Atheist. And it was 1 person in 13, so that has a non-trivial impact on the results. I don’t think that majority of either Christians or Atheists would agree that an opinion like this is a valid representation of their opinions. So how exactly should guessing or not guessing this person’s self-description influence the ratings? And should it influence the ratings if the same person would be forced to choose only one of the descriptions?)
Well, that depends on what the test is testing for. If it’s about metaphysics, Atheist, if it’s about practice, Christian.
Measuring the outcome is good, but I see a problem with the original data. How do you know who is really Green and who is really Blue?
By their self-reports, right?
Well, I see a problem here. What if someone insists on self-describing as a Blue, but most Blues disagree with him and say he is completely confused about what Blue-ness is? -- I know the definition of Blue is not exact, but it at least roughly corresponds to something in the idea-space, and a person can get it wrong and self-identify as a Blue despite being somewhere else. (Perhaps somewhere beyond both typical Blue and Green areas, so the person self-identifies as a Blue simply because they use Blue as a synonym for non-Green.) -- If other people fail to recognize such person as a Blue, is it really their fault?
The question is not exactly “whom to blame?”, but rather “if we use noisy inputs and then get noisy outputs, does it tell us something beyond the fact that there was a noise in input?”
(To be specific, I remember someone in the ideological test saying that they self-identify as both Christian and Atheist. And it was 1 person in 13, so that has a non-trivial impact on the results. I don’t think that majority of either Christians or Atheists would agree that an opinion like this is a valid representation of their opinions. So how exactly should guessing or not guessing this person’s self-description influence the ratings? And should it influence the ratings if the same person would be forced to choose only one of the descriptions?)
“Christ was not the Son of God, because there is no God, but we should follow his teachings anyways”?
Maybe Christianity is hermeneuticly true.
I don’t remember, but most likely something like this. (Maybe with some “cosmic law” or “cosmic energy” added for better effect.)
Now this completely does not represent Christian viewpoint (we should follow Christ precisely because he told us what God wants) or atheist viewpoint (even if Christ was a good and smart person, it is unlikely he got everything right; and even he got something right, we can discover and prove it independently).
Sometimes there are many tinges of Blues. And for almost every tinge you pick, most other Blues will claim people of that tinge are not really Blue. (Religious and ideological movements get like this a lot.) But Greens have no problem classifying people as Blue and non-Blue, so it’s not a wholly useless concept.
Well, that depends on what the test is testing for. If it’s about metaphysics, Atheist, if it’s about practice, Christian.
puts on Hanson hat Atheism/theism isn’t about metaphysics.
There a 50% chance that God exists?