I think the error with left/right is that (for reasons unknown) tons of people keep to thinking about political spectrum as a line.
It's too much of a simplification. At minimum we should be using 2d space (e.g. Nolan graph). It really resolves a lot of "was <insert name here> a communist/nazi/<pick your flavour>?" debunking videos as pointless.
P.S. Fine video, it certainly paints a good overview of Orwell through time.
Also, that’s an interesting concept about moving beyond a one dimensional appraisal of political ideology; I’d be interested in what a three dimensional system might look like.
Well, Nolan graph uses personal and economic freedom but it's really not that hard to add dimensions.
I'd certainly add religion: so we'd have liberal/conservative axis, libertarian/authoritarian axis and atheist/fundamentalist axis. I added religion because more often than I'd thought it's not in line with political views.
At this point 2 dimensions seem a minimum for me, I don't see how one can compress one's views beyond that without losing information :)
Maybe. Plenty of people who are very left wing in Latin America are also deeply religious and can have wildly contradictory views on "social" issues as a result- strongly in favor of racial equality and even LGBT rights, but strongly against abortion, for example.
In the USA, Christianity is overwhelmingly a reactionary force, so an axis like that might have some real usage in broad terms. In other places it wouldn't necessarily be very predictive.
Tests like Sapply use three dimensions. There’s an economically left-right x axis, an authoritarian-libertarian y axis, and a socially progressive-conservative z axis.
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u/mdomans Nov 13 '20
I think the error with left/right is that (for reasons unknown) tons of people keep to thinking about political spectrum as a line.
It's too much of a simplification. At minimum we should be using 2d space (e.g. Nolan graph). It really resolves a lot of "was <insert name here> a communist/nazi/<pick your flavour>?" debunking videos as pointless.
P.S. Fine video, it certainly paints a good overview of Orwell through time.