The PPPC

[Pandemoniak]

The Planetarian Project for Political Compass

I have been thinking about that before, but now, Im on my way to do it. First, Id like to ask everyone if they are interested to help me. The objective is to provide something like a quizz which could give an overview of someone's position in a political compass.
Maybe it would be helpful to let me know if you're just ready to help, or really willing to work on it. Most of the work will be made by e-mails or conference chat on yahoo.

The first problem to solve is how the compasa will be made : I though about giving two kinds of "results" to the test :
- first a position in the compass,
- second the two or three closest faction according to the tester ideology.

The compass could be delimited by the social engineering choices, making something like that :
Democracy is opposed to Police State
Fundamentalism is opposed to Knowledge
Free Market is opposed to Planned
Power is opposed to Wealth
Eudaimonia is opposed to Thought Control,

which leaves Cybernetic opposed to Green : this is quite coherent if we consider cybernetic opposed to nature, but not coherent if we take it like it was meant to be, with the +2 Planet Rating for Cybernetic, leaving Planet unharmed.
As well, the Planned economics could be opposed to green, since Domai cant switch green -that sounds unnatural to me, you can be marxist and green, im the proof.
AS well, the free market could be opposed to green, seeing its ruins trhe environment, thus planned would have to be opposed to cybernetic, which is not very coherent either...

I also though about simply ignoring Cybernetics and Green.

Feedbacks and sign in welcome.

[Drogue]

Sounds great .

If you want to see where you are in real life, go to The Political Compass and answer the questions. Although it is British based, it's quite accurate IMHO, and should work for most countries.

If you do it, please post or PM me you're result, be interesting to see.

[Pandemoniak]

I already did it before, im like -8.5 leftist, -9 libertarian. Archaic is around Margaret Tatcher IIRC

[Drogue]

Probably nearer Pinochet

I'm -1 leftist, -6 libertarian, btw.

[Aaron Blackwell]

And I am 4.80 leftist, 3.20 liberalist

[lucky22]

I don't recall my scores but I was fairly center-left. As far as our own, here, are the equations available for the original? I do a fair amount of work with statistical models and may be able to help.

[Pandemoniak]

No, lucky I dont think so. First question is still to be answered : on what compass are we gonna make this test ? A 2D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian?
A 3D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian; green/poluter ?

Anyone has suggestions ?

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
No, lucky I dont think so. First question is still to be answered : on what compass are we gonna make this test ? A 2D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian?
A 3D left/right; authoritarian/libertarian; green/poluter ?

Anyone has suggestions ?

That's actually one dimensional or two dimensional-

rather than lose the cybernetic aspect we could add a third dimension- "parsimonious/complex". The notion that on planet one's technological orientation is political really could make some sense. Actually the original five you posed look pretty good.
We could derive a single score from five measures using multiple regression and then do an analysis of variance to determine if each faction differs significantly in outcome on the score. From there we'd have to get a goodness-of-fit routine together for individuals' scores on our measurement instrument (questionnaire) which could place them in an appropriate faction. Just an idea. Much messy work would be required, but the outcome could be pretty slick.

[DeathByTheSword]

:relieved: i thought that we had an new branch of the CCCP on our hands

[DeathByTheSword]

Economic Left/Right: -2.00
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.46

not that far from gandhi

[lucky22]

Originally posted by lucky22


That's actually one dimensional or two dimensional-

unless I read it properly and see the "left/right" at the beginning of each list.

rather than lose the cybernetic aspect we could add a third dimension- "parsimonious/complex". The notion that on planet one's technological orientation is political really could make some sense.

Actually the original five you posed look pretty good.

If we want to leave out green and create other problems hence the two and three dimension soulutions Pan posed.

So... what I posed above could work with the FOUR dimensions "left/right" "authoritarian/libertarian" "green/polluter (or anthrocentric or whatever)" and "high tech (complex)/low tech (simple, parsimonious, etc.)"

[DeathByTheSword]

how would you show a 4D picture?

[lucky22]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
how would you show a 4D picture?

We wouldn't- we'd wind up getting an equation into which we could plug answers to a set of questions- it would probably be a "structural equation model" (perhaps you are familiar with LISREL) which would show an individuals "most likely faction tendency".

Graphs of 4d regressions are really really messy.

A "model" will show linear relationships of "factors" and is much easier to look at.

[Drogue]

I would go 3d, leave out high/low tech. Left/right, authoritarian/libertarian and green/environmentally unfriendly covers enough I think.

Is it based on what you use (what you play best with) or what society you would rather live in?

[AdamTG02]

Even a 3d graph is sojmewhat unwieldy. Let's go with five dimensions, as Pande said to begin with. Sure, Eudaimonia could be merged with Democracy, and Police State with Thought Control, but do we really want to simplify it that much? Let's go with the option that ascertains and stores the most information.

With five dimensions, it should be trivial to take out any two of them and make a 2D graph on those two axes, showing where everyone stands. We could even take three axes and make a 3D graph, if we had the software to support such a graph.

Even if we don't want Pande's originial five dimensions, that's fine. But let's have something a little more elaborate than simply a three-dimensional or two-dimensional graph. What about Demo vs. Police State, Planned vs. Free Market, Green vs. Free Market, Knowledge vs. Fundamentalism, Power vs. Wealth? That's five axes as-is, without pulling Future Societies into the loop, and none of them are repeats of the others. (As someone who thinks the environment must be protected from exploitation may nonetheless be strongly against a centralized economy. Take your average pro-Green Morganite.)

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like more complexity, not less. We can always limit our view to two criteria, and simply looking at the five ratings on sliders next to one another gives a pretty good view of where we stand and what we care about.

[Drogue]

You could do questions on those 5 and end up with a 3d axis. In the actual political compass there are 6 sections, all leading to a 2d result.

[lucky22]

Originally posted by AdamTG02
Even a 3d graph is sojmewhat unwieldy. Let's go with five dimensions, as Pande said to begin with. Sure, Eudaimonia could be merged with Democracy, and Police State with Thought Control, but do we really want to simplify it that much? Let's go with the option that ascertains and stores the most information.

You may be making a similar leap to my own dismissal of Pan's second suggestion of 2 or 3 dimensions in favor of the original set of dichotomies. The second set are more generalized pairs of values, incorporating information about our political, economic and social preferences. I failed to distinguish that at first. This wouldn't be the first time you and I demonstrated similar patterns of thinking (no insult intended).

With five dimensions, it should be trivial to take out any two of them and make a 2D graph on those two axes, showing where everyone stands. We could even take three axes and make a 3D graph, if we had the software to support such a graph.

I'm afraid we'd have to rely on intuition to relate the various 2d fields and a 3d graph would give us a cloud around the "Z" axis that wouldn't look like much at all. I suppose this is where what Drogue mentions about the original comes in:

originally posted by Drogue
You could do questions on those 5 and end up with a 3d axis. In the actual political compass there are 6 sections, all leading to a 2d result.

We'll need to rely on a statistical solution to make sense out of more than two dimensions and even at two dimensions we'll probably want a concrete score of some kind, as in the original compass, which I recall gives seperate "X" and "Y" scores.

Even if we don't want Pande's originial five dimensions, that's fine. But let's have something a little more elaborate than simply a three-dimensional or two-dimensional graph. What about Demo vs. Police State, Planned vs. Free Market, Green vs. Free Market, Knowledge vs. Fundamentalism, Power vs. Wealth? That's five axes as-is, without pulling Future Societies into the loop, and none of them are repeats of the others. (As someone who thinks the environment must be protected from exploitation may nonetheless be strongly against a centralized economy. Take your average pro-Green Morganite.)

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like more complexity, not less. We can always limit our view to two criteria, and simply looking at the five ratings on sliders next to one another gives a pretty good view of where we stand and what we care about.

Again, my thought is that we don't want to have to rely on too much intuition- hence a factor analysis to suss out factional leanings. Don't worry- such a process will be PLENTY complex.

[Main_Brain]

I wouldnt oppose FM and Planned but instead FM and Green just as the AI's treat it in the Game.


P.s. Zeta9 hates Thought Control.. enhanced Brain vs controlled Brain would put Cybernetic vs Thought Control

[DarkCloud]

Or you could just have five different axes...

All the axes plot a different thing... and then each of the things are rated on a plot like the political compass' plot; giving you 2 data sets-

1- the 5 unrelated axes
2- the data set of the averaged sets (since the 5 sets will be averaged based on something- example: If someone is strong in power then he has money- therefore, he will rate high in a MONEY category; much like a free marketer will rate high in MONEY)
etc.

[Drogue]

Well, I'm not sure about that stats too much, but having:
x-axis - left to right - economic ideals
y-axis - authoritarian/liberal - political ideals
z-axis -social ideals
would be the way I would think looks best, and then get a co-ordinate, even possibly (if you have the software) do a 3d cube that you can zoom around to see your position. I was thinking if you remember the old Elite II, how the stars look when planning a journey. But then , I don't know the stats, that may not be possible.

[Pandemoniak]

After reading all your posts I had the idea of summing things up like this :
We can make a five dimensions test

First dimension would be
Political ideology :Police State against Democracy, using axis Z

Second dimension would be
Humanistic ideology:Eudaimonia is opposed to Thought Control, using axis Y

Third dimension would be
Education policy : Fundamentalism is opposed to Knowledge, that would be on Axis X

Fourth Dimension would be
Economic ideologyFree Market is opposed to Planned, represented by the colour of the dot in the cube, from dark red to bright red when in favour of planned, from bright blue to dark blue when in favour of Free Market.
I thought about making it only red/blue, with no "interference" with the white for center, but thought that would be more easily readable with the white.

Fifth Dimension would be
Sovereignty Policy Power is opposed to Wealth (taking wealth as internal prosperity, and power as aggressive behavior). This fifth dimension would be using a number varying from -100 to +100, for example.

That system sounds coherent to me. Feedbacks welcome.

[lucky22]

I think that if clarity of graphical representation is what we are after, three dimensions may be better than five, but if we are trying to accurately capture an individual's "factional leaning" then the more information the better. I have used color to represent a third dimension in 2d scatterplots and have had some problems visualizing the plane of depth and intuiting the meaning of the information. A 3d image will do the trick for three distinct measures, and if that is all we are after then we are basically set once we figure out how to poll a 5-7 item scale for each plane.

On the other hand, it isn't very clear to me right now how we can map 14 (!!) factions into that cube in any kind of cohesive manner- even if we included five dimensions of measurement through the use of color, it would be a topographical nightmare- little fields of each faction would blob and intermingle throughout.

Since Pan's original mission had two aspects, maybe we can go with three simpler dimensions for visual representation and gather enough relevant information to develop a reasonable factor model of "factional identity". No stats necessary for visual representation.

I still predict a cloud of dots with no apparent meaning though...

[Pandemoniak]

Well, first, we wont map 14 factions, but only 12, since we'd rather leave the aliens ideology out of the story. Moreover, I dont intend to give a "region" of the panel fo answers, to each faction.

To name the favourite factions, I was rather thinking of calculating one result (results being five values, Political, Humanistic, Education, etc...) per faction, and calculate the distance between the tester's results, and the faction predefined results.

For example, lets say Yang is
P, Political : -10 (totally pro PS)
H, Humanistic : -10 (totally pro TC)
E, Education : -3 (rather fundamentalist than knowledgeable)
C, Economic : +4 (planned better than Free Market)
S, Sovereignty : -8 (all your bases belong to yang, he thinks)

And a tester is :
P, Political : +8
H, Humanistic : +10
E, Education : -3
C, Economic : +2
S, Sovereignty : -2

After that, all we need is applying the results to know the square of the distance between them, according to the cartesian formula :
(PYang-PTester)² +(HYang-HTester)² +(EYang-ETester)² +(CYang-CTester)² +(SYang-STester)²

There, it would be 764, out of a maximum of 2000.

Such an equation could sometimes find some wierd results, but I think it would give better results most of the time.

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
Well, first, we wont map 14 factions, but only 12, since we'd rather leave the aliens ideology out of the story. Moreover, I dont intend to give a "region" of the panel fo answers, to each faction.

To name the favourite factions, I was rather thinking of calculating one result (results being five values, Political, Humanistic, Education, etc...) per faction, and calculate the distance between the tester's results, and the faction predefined results.

For example, lets say Yang is
P, Political : -10 (totally pro PS)
H, Humanistic : -10 (totally pro TC)
E, Education : -3 (rather fundamentalist than knowledgeable)
C, Economic : +4 (planned better than Free Market)
S, Sovereignty : -8 (all your bases belong to yang, he thinks)

And a tester is :
P, Political : +8
H, Humanistic : +10
E, Education : -3
C, Economic : +2
S, Sovereignty : -2

After that, all we need is applying the results to know the square of the distance between them, according to the cartesian formula :
(PYang-PTester)² +(HYang-HTester)² +(EYang-ETester)² +(CYang-CTester)² +(SYang-STester)²

There, it would be 764, out of a maximum of 2000.

Such an equation could sometimes find some wierd results, but I think it would give better results most of the time.

Solid.

There will not be a meaningful one-dimensional relationship between factions, though. That is to say no one faction will clearly occupy 764 on a scale of 0 to 1500 (or whatever). We will need to begin by getting a matrix of the covariances (mutual squared distances from the mean) between each pair of the 5 measures and proceed to relate the tester to the proper faction from there.

Have you worked out more than just Yang? As it is, I am in awe of your industriousness.

[Pandemoniak]

There will not be a meaningful one-dimensional relationship between factions, though. That is to say no one faction will clearly occupy 764 on a scale of 0 to 1500 (or whatever).

That, I understand.

I also thought of putting barycenter to calculate distance.
IE, factions that have special agenda choices relative to one of the five categories will have a +0.5 coefficient for this category. IE: Yang hate Democracy and wants Police State, he gets a +0.5 coefficient for hating demo, and another +0.5 coefficient for wanting PS. Therefore, the formula between yang and the tester becomes [(PYang-PTester)²] x 2
If it had been for Deirdre, "economic distance" would have been doubled.
If it had been for Domai, both economic and humanitarian would have received a +50% increase.

Thus, the distance between a tester and the faction is subjective to the faction itself, unlike the position in the political compass. Like Children's Creche in a planned economy, it doesnt totally solve the problem, but it helps a lot.

We will need to begin by getting a matrix of the covariances (mutual squared distances from the mean) between each pair of the 5 measures and proceed to relate the tester to the proper faction from there.

That, I dont understand. I dont know whats a matrix of covariances.

Have you worked out more than just Yang? As it is, I am in awe of your industriousness.

No, but that shouldnt be too hard to make. Ill post a list really soon.

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak


That, I understand.

I also thought of putting barycenter to calculate distance.
IE, factions that have special agenda choices relative to one of the five categories will have a +0.5 coefficient for this category. IE: Yang hate Democracy and wants Police State, he gets a +0.5 coefficient for hating demo, and another +0.5 coefficient for wanting PS. Therefore, the formula between yang and the tester becomes [(PYang-PTester)²] x 2

In this case the "center of mass" is determined by the 12 objects in the system- as long as the unique relationship among the five measures for each faction is distinct (which is fairly likely) then a correction to remove distortion is not necessary- testing could prove me wrong. A tester's relative distance from each faction should be pretty straight-forward.

A variance for a variable is defined as the sum of squares of that variable's distances from the mean divided by the total N minus 1- "sum(meanX-X)^2/(N-1)"

A covariance is defined as the sum of one variable's distances from the mean times the other variable's distances from the mean divided by the total N-1.
"sum(meanY-Y)(meanX-X)/(N-1)"

A matrix of covariances would be the upper or lower diagonal of a table with all five measures across the top and down the left and the covariance of the two variables at each position on the table. "Matrix algebra" is used to relate such fixed-position groupings to each other mathematically, so the use of the word "matrix"

[Maniac]

Perhaps we could also include some questions regarding Centralism <-> Confederalism?? I presume Lal and Yang would be in the first group, and Deirdre and Santiago in the second group. This slider isn't represented in the SMAC SE choices, but in multicultural countries it is a rather important factor in real-life politics. The same could count for SMAC multifactional empires. Are conquered faction allowed to keep their original identity?

[Drogue]

Personally, I would take out sovereignty, and combine humanistic and education, as IMHO, fundamentalism is virtually the same as TC, but to a lesser extent, in that it is trying to force people into a belief, and as such showing them what and how to think. So have FM vs Planned, Police State vs Democracy and Eudai/Knowledge vs TC. We can put questions on other topics, as most other ideals lie upon one of those lines. And hey presto - 3d

I would also stick the first 7 faction leaders. In terms of politics, the other 7 have little to offer, save possibly the Drones. Data Angels would be covered by the University and Peacekeepers (freedom of info), Conciousness would be hard without Cybernetic, Pirates have little direct political ideals and Cult are covered by Gaians and Believers.

[AdamTG02]

Pandemoniak's plan is solid. While I'd like to see an environmentalist vs. humanist dimension, I really doubt I can persuade you all to make six axes. So five it is. Should we make Eudaimonia / Thought Control use one of the later viewing schemes, though, since it's likely to collate pretty closely with Democracy / Police State?

[moomin]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
Second dimension would be
Humanistic ideology:Eudaimonia is opposed to Thought Control, using axis Y

Do you really need to use a precious axis for this? I always thought of Eudamonia and TC as improved versions of Democracy and Police State/Fundamentalism respectively.