[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 129, Issue 19

[Omar Rahman]

> Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 02:30:01 -0400
> From: Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] be nice to leftists
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAAc1gFh7LL33CtA-0s-m1KXeS9hK2QLVEFO2V5-NNe4rZFLrGg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 2:37 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> So whether one can give examples of leftists who are 'obsessed with power
>> and status' by the tens or by the thousands, it doesn't prove anything at
>> all as to whether they are any different from people on the right.  One
>> would expect that a very high proportion of both leftists and rightists fit
>> the description. Which is to say that they are typical, and successful
>> examples of the human race as it now exists.
>> 
> 
> ### Over 90% of the wielders of power in our society (Federal employees,
> elite university faculty and administrators, mainstream journalists, public
> intellectuals) are culturally leftist.

If this 'statistic' is anywhere near to being accurate, could you please explain why the US 'defence' budget, foreign policy, environmental policy, etc. etc. etc. are as they are? 

> And yes, those who have power are
> different from us - they got where they are because of being obsessed with
> power and status, and skilled at gaining power. Since non-leftists (whom
> leftists sloppily classify as "right") have much less power than cultural
> leftists, yes, this implies they are different - either less interested or
> less skilled at obtaining power.
> 
> Rafal

1. 	A certain TV network features stories about 'the right' as an oppressed minority which is actually the majority.
2.	Do you know what circular reasoning is?

I recently took the 'political compass' quiz that some others had recommended here. It had some interesting questions and some difficult choices to make considering you only had to decide between 4 things, strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree.

One of the things that I took away from that experience was when they graphed me against some well known people (as their positions were estimated by the website's staff I think) I had a bit of a left/right, authoritarian/libertarian epiphany. With my little data point up there on a quasi-scientific graph it actually promoted in me a kind of subjective definition of left and right when I compared it to the other data points. The 'objective' comparison depends on where you put the axes though, a sort of 0 Celsius vs. 0 Kelvin kind of thing.

Regards,

Omar Rahman

P.S. 		Libertarians of the list....according to the 'political compass'....I'm one of you! Why do we argue so often? (I thought I'd be rather neutral on the authoritarian/libertarian axis actually.) 

P.P.S	Economic Left/Right: -4.25 	Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.18


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