On the “Political” question: I identify with none of those. I understand the question is about which I identify with most, but all of the options have views on both social permissivity and economic redistribution. I am socially permissive, but have no belief one way or the other on redistribution/taxes. I simply have insufficient knowledge of that area to make a judgment. Perhaps it would be better to have two different questions—one for each of social views and economic views?
For “Religious views”: I am an atheist but would not self-identify as either “spiritual” or “not spiritual”. If a person asked me which I was, I would ask them what they meant by spiritual. I answered “Atheist but not spiritual”, on the very weak grounds that I suspect I do not satisfy most other people’s conceptions of spirituality; but really, the word is very ill-defined.
I second rntz remarks, I had very similar issues with both questions. As a side note I would have been also interested in knowing how many people here are from non-english speaking countries (or at least outside the US).
Anyways, this is a very interesting project, I’ll be looking forward for the results!
If there is a political self-description category in future surveys, another option possibly worth adding is “anarchist”. Yeah, it’s rare, but the closest option available was “socialist”, which is still very dissimilar.
Incidentally, for those who are interested in political categorizations that might translate better across countries (and who have an OkCupid account), check out the Political Objectives test. A caveat is that, as the test itself notes, it is still specific to the countries and centuries that constitute the modern world, as “The assumption behind this test is that the three most important objectives of all-issues political movements in the modern era have been Equality and Liberty and Stability.”
the three most important objectives of all-issues political movements in the modern era have been Equality and Liberty and Stability
Interesting. I wonder if this might be framing too much—it seems like if someone accepted this, then a political movement that valued only two of those might a priori be classified as not “all-issues”.
On the “Political” question: I identify with none of those. I understand the question is about which I identify with most, but all of the options have views on both social permissivity and economic redistribution. I am socially permissive, but have no belief one way or the other on redistribution/taxes. I simply have insufficient knowledge of that area to make a judgment. Perhaps it would be better to have two different questions—one for each of social views and economic views?
For “Religious views”: I am an atheist but would not self-identify as either “spiritual” or “not spiritual”. If a person asked me which I was, I would ask them what they meant by spiritual. I answered “Atheist but not spiritual”, on the very weak grounds that I suspect I do not satisfy most other people’s conceptions of spirituality; but really, the word is very ill-defined.
I second rntz remarks, I had very similar issues with both questions. As a side note I would have been also interested in knowing how many people here are from non-english speaking countries (or at least outside the US).
Anyways, this is a very interesting project, I’ll be looking forward for the results!
I chose not to answer the politics question for the simple reason that I didn’t want to do something that could hijack my thinking.
If there is a political self-description category in future surveys, another option possibly worth adding is “anarchist”. Yeah, it’s rare, but the closest option available was “socialist”, which is still very dissimilar.
Incidentally, for those who are interested in political categorizations that might translate better across countries (and who have an OkCupid account), check out the Political Objectives test. A caveat is that, as the test itself notes, it is still specific to the countries and centuries that constitute the modern world, as “The assumption behind this test is that the three most important objectives of all-issues political movements in the modern era have been Equality and Liberty and Stability.”
Interesting. I wonder if this might be framing too much—it seems like if someone accepted this, then a political movement that valued only two of those might a priori be classified as not “all-issues”.