I’ve been studying you guys, trying to empirically map out the opinion space here (using a method that I’m working on for my master’s thesis). What I’ve got so far looks REALLY interesting. I will say that traditional political categories are not dominant, and that studying you guys is a pain in the ass. Congrats I guess for being so infuriatingly complicated. So I officially give up on doing it “unobtrusively,” and so I’m hereby “obtruding” and asking for your help.
Please take a minute to post whether you agree with each of these statements (mined from posts in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142499). You don’t have to answer each question, but please just answer agree or disagree to the ones you do answer.
People shouldn’t automatically have the right to reproduce
Abolish private ownership of income-generating property
Most prisons should be closed; give the inmates jobs and counseling
Armies should be replaced by lightly armed border guards
Fortunes over a million dollars should be confiscated
National forests should be offlimits to logging
Move to a hydrogen economy
People should be allowed to bill companies for time spent on hold
Kids of convicts should receive mentoring, tutoring, scholarships, etc
Low income seniors should get free drugs
The world’s institutions are patriarchal (based on male authority)
There is no such thing as “mental illness”
There’s no need for a hierarchy of people having authority over others
We are weakening our species by allowing defective specimens to survive
Spend $ on expansion (into space, oceans) not internal problems
Reach out toward the stars before the earth is rendered unlivable
Guns should be encouraged, and shooting skills should be taught in schools
Property tax should be abolished
Intellectual property laws hurt humanity as a whole
I enjoy riding on public transportation
It’s valid to not want to work
God exists
Homosexual behavior is a sin
Heaven and Hell exist
Underage drinking is wrong
Prisons are too luxurious - make them do more hard labor
Affirmative Action is racist
There is no place for guns in a civilized society
Communism has some promise with a few tweaks here and there
Socialism has some promise with a few tweaks here and there
Ararchism has some promise with a few tweaks here and there
Libertarianism has some promise with a few tweaks here and there
These are many complex issues in this list and “agreeing or disagreeing” with the stand alone statements will yield nothing but facile and useless data about people’s opinions and perspectives. I’d think we’d be much more interested in the assumptions of this indexing methodology you’re using. Please tell us all about it.
Astro I mostly agree with what you said. I think agree/disagree is mostly useless with respect to individual opinions, but potentially useful to relate opinions to each other and place them in a map.
Just don’t vote on the ones that aren’t phrased well enough to yield an agree or disagree vote.
My program clusters opinions together based on the people who share them. So you might expect two big clusters easily identifiable as “left” and “right,” but that’s not what I’ve found so far. Details of how it works are still changing daily. I will post a better explanation soon though.
I left a good number blank - in some cases, I didn’t know exactly what the question meant, while in a couple I didn’t know what it was that the question referred to (a hydrogen economy, for example. I have no real idea what it is - I can make assumptions, but they may or may not be right).
[list=1]
[li]Agree[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Agree I guess, but this is not something that politics can create. We did not vote the industrial revolution into being. We cannot with the hydrogen revolution, if it comes.[/li][li]Disagree. How does this really reflect your politics? This would just be dumb and impractical.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree. They are not “free”. Someone is paying for them.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree. Again, what does this have to do with politics?[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Mu.[/li][li]Agree I guess. What do you mean by expansion and who will do the expanding?[/li][li]Meh. Agree, I guess.[/li][li]Uncertain.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Reply hazy, ask question later.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]See #23.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Some are, some aren’t.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Disagree. But you will amazed at the differences of opinion on what justifies it. [/li][li]See #38.[/li][li]Disagree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]Agree.[/li][li]I have no idea what this means or implies.[/li][/list=1]
Man, I just completed all my school work for this semester, so what do I do? Somebody else’s homework. I must be nuts. But anyway . . .
Disagree.
Disagree.
Disagree. Big time.
Disagree.
Agree, depending . . .
Agree.
Agree.
Are you crazy? I disagree.
Disagree.
Disagree.
Agree.
Agree.
Disagree.
Disagree.
Disagree.
Disagree.
Disagree.
Agree.
The answers to the twenty-odd questions I didn’t answer are things like “I don’t know” or “It depends.” Sorry I couldn’t be more thorough. Good luck with your project. Let us know how it turns out.
So I officially give up on doing it “unobtrusively,” and so I’m hereby “obtruding” and asking for your help.