4 ms·

The survey behind this reminds me a lot of those internet "what's your political alignment" polls that go around from time, where you always end up discovering

The survey behind this reminds me a lot of those internet "what's your political alignment" polls that go around from time, where you always end up discovering that you're a Libertarian. Take a quick spin through the questions and look at how they're worded. It's no surprise that the results point to "Software Liberal". I don't doubt that you could spend a few minutes rewriting the quiz in such a way that the overwhelming majority of participants ends up on the other end of the scale.

cyborg 14y ago
Agreed. The questions (well they aren't actually questions - they're beliefs that you agree or disagree with) come from Steve Yegge's recent post on SWE: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSK...
- lindenr 14y ago
  For me, that is behind a login screen. I heard a little while ago about users who have a google account but aren't logged in being unable to access G+ pages; I'll edit after a cookie-clear and refresh (which may or may not help). EDIT: De-cookieing helped, and I can now read the article without problems. Screw you, Google. Observers be warned. EDIT 2: Is the downvote for any particular reason? My point was not unhelpful nor especially off topic; help, anyone?
Tooluka 14y ago
Point is not the absolute "liberalism" value but that relative values are the same through all ages. And if you'll reword the quiz than picture will be the same - age is irrelevant (for this topic).
- jasonkester 14y ago
  But that's not what it shows. It just shows that people of all ages give similar answers to a set of questions designed specifically to have only one answer. Similarly, if I gave a quiz with the question "I don't think it's right to run over kittens with my car. Strongly Agree ... Strongly Disagree", then gave that quiz to a broad spectrum of people across all age groups, you'd suddenly find that the overwhelming majority of them were all "cat people". But if you simply asked whether they liked cats better or dogs better, you'd get a more accurate and less skewed view on the situation.

cyborg 14y ago

Agreed. The questions (well they aren't actually questions - they're beliefs that you agree or disagree with) come from Steve Yegge's recent post on SWE: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz https://plus.google.com/u/0/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSK...

lindenr 14y ago
For me, that is behind a login screen. I heard a little while ago about users who have a google account but aren't logged in being unable to access G+ pages; I'll edit after a cookie-clear and refresh (which may or may not help). EDIT: De-cookieing helped, and I can now read the article without problems. Screw you, Google. Observers be warned. EDIT 2: Is the downvote for any particular reason? My point was not unhelpful nor especially off topic; help, anyone?

Tooluka 14y ago

Point is not the absolute "liberalism" value but that relative values are the same through all ages. And if you'll reword the quiz than picture will be the same - age is irrelevant (for this topic).

jasonkester 14y ago
But that's not what it shows. It just shows that people of all ages give similar answers to a set of questions designed specifically to have only one answer. Similarly, if I gave a quiz with the question "I don't think it's right to run over kittens with my car. Strongly Agree ... Strongly Disagree", then gave that quiz to a broad spectrum of people across all age groups, you'd suddenly find that the overwhelming majority of them were all "cat people". But if you simply asked whether they liked cats better or dogs better, you'd get a more accurate and less skewed view on the situation.