• Nath@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    It’s fascinating how some of these questions are phrased.

    Should Australia spend more or less on its military?

    I have no idea what Australia spends on its military. I don’t know whether it’s too much or insufficient. I wouldn’t feel qualified to answer this question, so I abstained.

    But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as “about the same”. Which isn’t what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.

    I used to think of myself as fairly central. Only “central” has seemed to move over the past 20 years and while I don’t think I’ve changed all that much, I’m considered more left these days than I used to be.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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      2 days ago

      But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as “about the same”. Which isn’t what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.

      Yeah I noticed that once or twice too. I would have thought saying “I don’t know” should have made it disregard that question, but it doesn’t seem to.

      I don’t know if that’s because they’re explicitly treating it like “about the same”, or if it’s just that the way it works is you start in the centre and each answer adds or subtracts a certain value from your score, which has the side effect of it being the same as “about the same”. A better system IMO would be a sort of weighted average of your non-idk answers, if that’s what they’re doing.

    • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, not a great question. I answered somewhat more, assuming we had a roughly right spend before Trump 2.0 started unfolding.

      And I’m pro nuclear fusion, but assumed they meant fission given that’s what’s on the table.