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Dagon comments on Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 14 March 2016 08:02AM

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Comment author: Dagon 14 March 2016 04:08:59PM 1 point [-]

The reason to think in terms of ideological Turing test is that "opposite" is almost never correct. Almost nothing can be usefully simplified to a simple one-dimensional aspect where both ends are reasonable and common.

In the mulidimensional space of different personal influences (genetics, upbringing, current social environment, governmental and non-governmental support and constraint networks), there are likely multiple points of belief in the balance of choice vs non-choice. It's just not useful to characterize one cluster as "opposite" of the other.

Personally, I find the three-axis model fairly compelling - it's not that different political leanings come from different points on a dimension, it's that they are focusing on completely different dimensions . Progressives tend to think of oppressor/oppressed, Conservatives about Barbarism/Civilisation, and Libertarians about Coercion/Freedom.

This does get accepted (to some extent - it's still massively oversimple) by both liberal and conservative friends of mine, so passes at least one level of test.