Although these tests are pretty arbitrary and inaccurate, I decided to take one, just for the fun of it. I answered every question as honestly as I possibly could, rather than trying to rig the system or get a result that I wanted. The end result was not very surprising:
Two things to note about this particular test (which I'm sure are quite common to most if not all such tests):
Firstly, many of the questions are really vague and hard to answer, because they could mean anything.
For example: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This is way too vague to give any answer at all. There are so many completely different situations where this could apply that it's not possible to give just one definitive answer of "agree" or "disagree". I ended up answering "disagree" because the sentiment, as stated, would imply some kind of automatic thing: The enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, no questions asked. No.
Some questions would require a lot of studying to give a good answer. For example: "Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment." I'm not an economist, so I don't really have the expertise to state what would be the best for society. I answered "agree" because I have the gut feeling that an uncontrolled inflation would be much worse for everybody than some degree of unemployment.
Ironically, some questions, rather than being way too open-ended, are on the contrary too narrow to give a nuanced answer. For example: "First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country." The problem I have with this is that word "never". It's too absolute. From the literally millions of first-generation immigrants in this world, it would just be outright incorrect to say that they "never" fully integrate. Therefore the only possible intellectually honest and accurate answer is "disagree". There isn't much choice here.
The second problem I have with the final result, as shown, is that it doesn't depict in any way how varied one's positions are. The dot almost right in the middle could indicate someone who is extremely moderate in everything, never having strong opinions on anything. However, someone who has very strong opinions on many topics, but they are all over the place, left, right, up, down, would result in an average that's in the center. That graphic has too little information to distinguish between these two.
I would consider myself more of the latter category than the former. I am, sometimes, quite strongly on one side of the political spectrum. With some topics I'm on one side, with others I'm on the other. Sometimes I have very strongly liberal opinions (for example when it comes to tax-funded universal healthcare and education, for instance), while othertimes I have quite strongly conservative opinions (for example when it comes to capitalism, a nation's right to self-governance and autonomy, immigration policies and border control). This is not reflected in the end result at all.
Two things to note about this particular test (which I'm sure are quite common to most if not all such tests):
Firstly, many of the questions are really vague and hard to answer, because they could mean anything.
For example: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This is way too vague to give any answer at all. There are so many completely different situations where this could apply that it's not possible to give just one definitive answer of "agree" or "disagree". I ended up answering "disagree" because the sentiment, as stated, would imply some kind of automatic thing: The enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, no questions asked. No.
Some questions would require a lot of studying to give a good answer. For example: "Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment." I'm not an economist, so I don't really have the expertise to state what would be the best for society. I answered "agree" because I have the gut feeling that an uncontrolled inflation would be much worse for everybody than some degree of unemployment.
Ironically, some questions, rather than being way too open-ended, are on the contrary too narrow to give a nuanced answer. For example: "First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country." The problem I have with this is that word "never". It's too absolute. From the literally millions of first-generation immigrants in this world, it would just be outright incorrect to say that they "never" fully integrate. Therefore the only possible intellectually honest and accurate answer is "disagree". There isn't much choice here.
The second problem I have with the final result, as shown, is that it doesn't depict in any way how varied one's positions are. The dot almost right in the middle could indicate someone who is extremely moderate in everything, never having strong opinions on anything. However, someone who has very strong opinions on many topics, but they are all over the place, left, right, up, down, would result in an average that's in the center. That graphic has too little information to distinguish between these two.
I would consider myself more of the latter category than the former. I am, sometimes, quite strongly on one side of the political spectrum. With some topics I'm on one side, with others I'm on the other. Sometimes I have very strongly liberal opinions (for example when it comes to tax-funded universal healthcare and education, for instance), while othertimes I have quite strongly conservative opinions (for example when it comes to capitalism, a nation's right to self-governance and autonomy, immigration policies and border control). This is not reflected in the end result at all.
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