15 Comments
Mar 11·edited Mar 12Liked by Evan Riggs

This is really good, and I plan to revisit it.

One suggestion is that I think re-appropriating the old terms might cause confusion. It might be better to label the axes of 2.0 differently: something like "innovation" and "tradition" for the Y axis, and "equity" and "hierarchy" for the X axis.

Admittedly, that would make the X axis a little more one-dimensional, but you seem to be using "left" as mostly synonymous with equity and "right" as mostly synonymous with hierarchy anyway.

Again, great piece.

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Mar 6·edited Mar 6Liked by Evan Riggs

Very interesting reading! I definitely also agree that the original "Political Compass" is outdated and quite biased. There was another attempt made by John Nerst to update the Political Compass, which I also found interesting to read :

https://everythingstudies.com/2019/03/01/the-tilted-political-compass-part-1-left-and-right/

https://everythingstudies.com/2019/03/25/the-tilted-political-compass-part-2-up-and-down/

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Thanks! I'll check these out

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Mar 5Liked by Evan Riggs

I think this is an interesting way of classifying people but I am not sure it is the most useful way. I think the worst aspect of these scales is that too many people confuse the map for the territory and think of these things as reality instead of as a lens to try and understand reality. Reality is too complicated to fit on a 2d graph, as I suspect you know, but many people seem blissfully unaware.

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Definitly. Just meant to be a quick orientating tool for our new era.

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Remarkably thoughtful piece! Love the term “right-wing progressive”, because it encompasses truly new ideas such as the Network State of Balaji Srinivasan, more than alternatives such as “neo-reactionary”.

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t's a pretty good map. I really wish commentators would be more precise with the terms they use, and I hope this chart helps.

I wonder where George Galloway (Workers Party in the UK) would be. He is economically on the left, and he explicitly says he hates liberalism. But he is also vehemently "anti-woke" on almost all issues, dismissing it as stupid nonsense. However, he is deeply committed to the "oppressed-oppressor narrative" in relation to Islam.

The bottom two quadrants are terrified by him. The top-right quadrant has really gone on the warpath against him, and the top-left one hasn't said much, partly because they think he is one of them, which he really is not.

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This was a great read! Where did you source the plot of LLMs on the political compass?

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Mar 5Liked by Evan Riggs

What of Thomas Sowells constrained vs unconstrained ?

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author

A great heurtisitc to find where someone is on the left-right scale

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Mar 5Liked by Evan Riggs

So you would say that your liberals were unconstrained?

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I would say unconstrained maps more closely with being leftwing, but could see how someone might say it maps with progressivism in general

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