Egregoros

@sicp @eighthbell @MK2boogaloo @histoire3 @sampler I had basically the same answers as @f0x, it says we are libertarian militarists. (I hated the test, though, I feel like the questions were all pretty slanted towards minor tweaks to the status quo and a bad mix of practical questions versus philosophical questions and there was no question that was like "What government?" Nobody making these quizzes has heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_response_theory and I will punch them with both of my hands at the same time.)

@sampler @p @MK2boogaloo @eighthbell @f0x @histoire3 Fwiw I think it does a better job than similar tests separating questions into different axes like liberty/nationalism/autocracy/federalism where a lot of ones I've done before would conflate them, maybe that's why it gives better answers. Irrelevant status quo bullshit could maybe be an option, if abortion or gay marriage is an important part of your politics you can choose to answer questions about it but otherwise I'd like to be able to say "I don't care about these classes of questions".

@p @f0x @MK2boogaloo @sampler @sicp @histoire3 If you want better questions, I find that this one (https://prismquiz.github.io/) is solid though it's a bit short which can lead to oddball results sometimes. But yeah these things are give and take. I liked the results for this one but not so much the questions, whereas the one I've linked I like the questions and answers but not so much the results. Even so, being good at one thing automatically makes it better than like 90% of the alternatives IMO (hence my recommendation to those who are test junkies). Most of these things just suck at everything frankly.

@sampler @plague @MK2boogaloo @eighthbell @f0x @p My hypothesis is that lefties have better cohesion and tend to agree on the basic arrangement of things more, whereas rightwingers are a broader paintbrush that disagree on the specifics of how things get implemented, like whether religion is important or how property gets handled etc. Socialists are closer to left anarchists who are closer to libertarians, but after that is where things tend to diverge. I've long held that the divide between liberty/authority is a better compatibility metric than left/right, but a lot of people don't see it that way. Also going off experience most people who are into political autism are probably right-leaning anyway lol

@sicp @sampler @MK2boogaloo @f0x @p @plague I like individualism vs collectivism as a barometer the most, though any such binary will be overly simplistic in nature. The issue with liberty/authority as the determinant is that left libs and right libs disagree on what actually creates liberty (ancaps champion negative liberty while ancoms champion positive liberty) and consequently both basically accuse the opposite side of being tyrants in a sheep's clothing. I think that to some extent the fact that both pre-eminently distrust/oppose authority shows that they agree on at least a basic life outlook though. By the way, check your XMPP.

@eighthbell @MK2boogaloo @f0x @p @plague @sampler The negative vs. positive liberty approach is kind of a nebulous concept in practicum, at least I don't think we'd be at each other's throats if the lefties and libertarians in this thread had to work something out in a village council. But it can inform you of what it means to be at a certain rung in society, and I if you think of society as a cone that's flatter or sharper according to how rigid it is, then your height from the bottom determines how much "liberty" you have: for collectivists it's how important you are to helping the society achieve its goals, and for individualists it's how much ability you have to realize your will. This is, in essence a philosophical difference instead of a practical one. I think talking about the shape of something versus what it's filled with are two different discussions, and the shape of a container is easier to reason about from the outside (there are no flat circles or infinitely narrow spikes in the world, but we can imagine how they might look if there were). Similarly, the practical difference between authoritarian ideologies which are outwardly collectivist and individualist (say, Maoism and fascism) are more nuanced (and tend to carry their own sets of trojan horses), but from the ground it's relatively easy to simulate (and to create!) an anarchist society because we already know how those principles play out from our own lived experience.

@sicp @eighthbell @MK2boogaloo @f0x @plague @sampler

> negative vs. positive liberty approach is kind of a nebulous concept

It's a reframing based on French misunderstanding of the natural rights of man. (Two things are worth noting: first that the French Revolution created so much democracy that they started executing scientists and ended up with an emperor. Second, you can draw a really thick, straight line from French positivism through "scientific governance" to the FDR technocratic clusterfuck that managed to result in the WBG, IMF, UN, CIA, US public school system, etc.)

> authoritarian ideologies which are outwardly collectivist and individualist (say, Maoism and fascism)

Fascism was pretty outwardly collectivist, at least in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program . There was the heroic individual ideal but it basically only applied to Hitler's cult of personality; it was essentially subservience to the state as a collective. Collectivism tends to be used to sell people on a mandatory collective for the sake of someone that has plans to extract, and if not, someone figures out how to extract value pretty quickly. The only way to manage collectivism is a voluntary structure at or below Dunbar's number.

> it's relatively easy to simulate (and to create!) an anarchist society

Wouldn't know anything about that.

@sampler @amerika @MK2boogaloo @f0x @p @plague @sicp Kind of, but more of a natural aristocracy (or "natural order", as Hoppe would put it) as opposed to the artificial aristocracy where idiots inherited positions solely because of their birthright or chumminess with the king. This is less likely to happen in Ancapistan because the government is nonexistent and thus theoretically rising to power would be more merit-based since the state can't just subsidise cronies/parasites, and private entities will generally want to do whatever generates the most profit (Bureaucratic Rule of Two).

Personally anarcho-capitalism is a bit too oligarchic and urbanite for my taste and I am more of a minarchist as a result, but it is a very misunderstood ideology and the whole "McNuke" characterisation, while funny, is a bit unfair I believe. Like most ancaps want intellectual "property" abolished, and that right there would solve a lot of the issues with our present megacorps because they are basically just big IP rackets when you really get down to it.