Talk:Pournelle chart

Similar to the Nolan Chart?

Is it indeed similar to the Nolan Chart? The only similarity I see is that they are both two dimensional.

That is the only similarity. That part needs to be revised. Harvestdancer 22:33, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)Harvestdancer

Vote for deletion

With a heavy heart I put this article on the "Votes for Deletion" page, because it is non-unique. All the information on this page is on the page Political Spectrum Harvestdancer 16:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

This page was up for VFD. I'm the one who nominated it. I'm glad to see it survived though. Harvestdancer 14:55, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Criticism

This page is in dire need of a criticism section. I'm sure at least leftist anarchists would feel insulted by the chart deeming their ideology "irrational" (many of whom would probably label rightist libertarianism irrational). It would seem that the chart is little more than propaganda for the right libertarian agenda. ——Quirk 13:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood the word "irrational" in this article. It doesn't mean that a political view of this sort is irrational, but that the people with these views do not believe that human rationality can turn society into a perfect world. Pournelle himself is towards the "irrational" end of this spectrum, so it certainly isn't meant as pejorative. I've edited it a bit to make this more clear. Lawrence King 05:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

2017

"This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources" This is without doubt the stupidest criticism I have ever read. The notion that secondary or tertiary sources improve an article is ridiculous. It is like saying that 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was improved by The New York Times review of it. Now that my spleen is vented, I think Pournelle's Axes lacks secondary material because it is not currently fashionable among political scientists, so no one writes about it. That's a pity. I find it useful. That is, I find it distinguishes political positions better than the Left-Right labels that came from the French Revolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.229.94.66 (talk) 05:59, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

The general policy should be discussed at the talk page of WP:PRIMARY. AnonMoos (talk) 14:57, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments by Jerry Pournelle

An anonymous IP claiming to be J.P. has criticized the criticism section right there in the text, apparently not realizing that such belongs on this talk page. I don't feel comfortable trying to integrate, so I request an expert. S Chapin 18:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• I find the above paragraph difficult to understand. This was a dissertation, and in it I claimed -- then and now for that matter -- that the standard one dimensional "left to right" model was inadequate in that it did not map different political positions to unique places, and the underlying spectrum of left and right was not definable. My model uses definable axes and maps each political position to a unique place. I have never claimed that these are the only relevant political axes; only that they will serve uniquely to map the political field. Note that the axes chosen are orthogonal; it is certainly possible to find other political positions, but they will generally be correlated and thus not orthogonal. [J. E. Pournelle]

• I do not believe I have used the word "irrational" in any discussion of this model. My sub-title for the vertical axis was "belief in planned social progress." For more on these matters, see Oakshott on Rationionalism in Politics. Rationalism has been important in American politics, although it is not usually debated as such. The New England Unitarian movement divided when Charles Francis Adams and others rejected the Transcendentalist notion of the perfectibility of man, and the notion that human action can bring about perfection has had profound impact on political life. Such things are not much studied now, but they remain important. One might also see Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium. [J. E. Pournelle]

The above paragraphs were added to the Criticism section. -Will Beback 21:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

It was Dr. Pournelle, he mentions it at [1].

I have three times tried to make a couple of points and edit it and each time someone else has removed what I said, so I pay no attention to Wikipedia any longer. It has some good information, but it is also full of errors that cannot be corrected because someone wants those errors to be there.

I don't know what Wikipedia policy says on this, but I would tend to think the author of a document has the right to fix errors an article on said document..? Stereoroid 22:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

He, or anyone, has the "right" to correct this article. However no one should insert their personal comments into an encyclopedia article. Pournelle is quite literate and internet savvy, so he should be able to discern the difference between an article and a comment page. In any case, please fix the article in whatever way it needs fixing. Please don't write your personal complaints about the article into it, no matter if you're John Doe or Jerry Pournelle. -Will Beback 09:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm writing to Dr. P about that. Don't make assumptions - Wikipedia's norms and procedures are not obvious if you don't spend a lot of time here, and it has changed a lot in the last year e.g. the emphasis on logging in. Wikipedia is not the Internet. For now, though, since we know it was Jerry Pournelle, I have retitled this section (no question mark any more), and I propose we remove these other extraneous comments (mine and yours). We don't need to dispute their authenticity any more. Stereoroid 12:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Please don't remove comments. They record the discussion. -Will Beback 19:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

How interesting that JP believed that his axes were properly orthogonal in some sense. Of course we can choose any two variables of interest and display them at right angles, as in the standard Cartesian fashion (although nothing compels us to) but what JP seems to be saying here is that he has chosen two that happen to be uncorrelated and therefore somehow especially... what? appropriate? apposite? adapted? ... to such a Cartesian treatment. The confused mixing and mangling of basic maths and stats is, I fear, characteristic of JP's "thinking." 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:F41D:502F:BDE9:C7BD (talk) 15:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

When I came across this in the 80s, I recall Nazism being associated with irrationality. So Pournelle may have used "belief in planned social progress" in his dissertation, but simplified it to rationalism elsewhere. With respect to "belief in planned social progress", I believe that this can be understood as Modernism vs Postmodernism to a large degree, Modernism representing a view that reason is powerful and postmodernism doubting its power, but with a teleological element such that Modernism posits a teleos (or an intentionality, perhaps?) and Postmodernism rejects that. Either way I don't think it makes an enormous difference to the general idea.Bdell555 (talk) 02:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, one cannot have it both ways. If the variable was always belief in planned social progress then it cannot be said that the Nazis were low on that (just, well, misguided in their application of their belief in planned social progress). On the other hand, at least in some sense of irrational, yes, we can all agree that the Nazi ideology had plenty of that. But that sense of rational/irrational cannot be the intended simplified sense of belief in planned social progress 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:F41D:502F:BDE9:C7BD (talk) 15:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement?

Based on Jerry Pournelle's comments, how can we improve the article? I think that it's inconsistent to move his initial comments to Discussion, but then to insert his latest comments in the article. That does even less to improve the article than his initial comments, so can we now start looking to improve the article, and drop the negativity? I've suggested to J.E.P. that he put up a web page with his definitive version, but he is busy and currently (as he says) does not pay any attention to Wikipedia. Can we improve the article and (respectfully) improve his attitude? Stereoroid 17:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I've left a note for the editor who created the chart with the term "irrational" in it. The other criticism is harder to address. We refer to "lefist idealogies", but only to indicate where they fit on the chart. The "criticisms" section is unsourced and I wouldn't mind seeing it removed entirely. -Will Beback · † · 19:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

2023

JP claims that his two variables are a particularly good choice because they are, he says, uncorrelated. He provides no proof for that position. Mulling over the weirdness of this all, it occurs to me that he is using uncorrelated in a rather loose sense, and all he really wanted to say is that positions everywhere in his diagram are tenable and in fact taken by some group or other. It is all very weak sauce with this fellow. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:F41D:502F:BDE9:C7BD (talk) 16:00, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Max StiRner misspelled in the chart

It´s Max Stirner, not Max Stiner. Would someone fix it?

I just noticed that myself. How can it be fixed? --RayBirks (talk) 05:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to mention this, but I see that others noticed first. You need someone who can edit the image. I'm StillStanding (24/7) (talk) 02:58, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

NPOV tag

I hope it doesn't upset anyone, but this page needs some sort of overhaul in terms of POV and/or accuracy. Just reading the article and judging by the discussion on this talk page, there is some disagreement over the wording of the chart--apparently with Jerry Pournelle himself? The criticism section in particular needs work--it seems at present to be more of an apology for misleading wording in the chart (specifically "irrational") rather than a clear explanation of what was meant by it or a good summary of notable criticisms of Pournelle's typology.--Pariah (talk) 02:01, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The Nazis didn't believe in utopian social planning? Are you kidding me?

here are a couple of pretty "utopian", if you will, things that they planned and more or less carried out: massacre and/or sterilization of the mentally ill, encouragement of migration of urban youth to rural areas (to escape "corrupting" influence of cities), massive road building campaign, anti-smoking propaganda campaign, pro-natalist program of an intensity unseen before or since, large scale population transfers (especially in Poland). Where do you see any belief in "irrationality" of social planning here? They were no less activist in terms of planning and social engineering than contemporary Socialists and Communists. It's just that their activism was in a somewhat different direction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.24.104.52 (talk) 06:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I was just reading this page and thought the exact same thing, the Nazi's were the ultimate rationalists. They were also classic utopian's at least in the beginning - things like the final solution were actually designed/intended to clear the world to make it ready for their future utopia. Although they were 'anti-communist' this largely stems from political rivalry, the two ideologies were really very similar in many ways. Nazi is a contraction of National Socialist - they called themselves socialists because they were socialists. Of course they do also belong on the bottom of the chart - they were fascists. It doesn't really affect the article but like all such models I guess this one kind of breaks down here. Lucien86 (talk) 12:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The Nazis were socialists like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democratic republic of the people. The rhetoric of socialism has been used from the beginning by authoritarians seeking approval from the people. If I want to sell you a bill of goods, I'll learn to speak your language and tell you what you want to hear. That doesn't mean I actually give a flip about you, or want what's best for you, or believe anything I'm telling you. Socialism, above all else, means worker control of the means of production. Any ideology that doesn't entail that critical ideological nugget can be called whatever its proponents wish to call it, but it isn't socialism. Since the ideological nugget of Nazism (and all other strains of fascism) is authoritarianism, it isn't socialism, no matter what it's called. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.218.107 (talk) 05:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You can define "socialism" any way you want to define it, comrade, no skin off my back. However, as you might have noticed, I am not arguing here that Nazis were or were not socialists. I am arguing that they were UTOPIAN and believed in SOCIAL ENGINEERING. See my point, Mr. worker controlled means of production? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.24.104.52 (talk) 01:23, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I like Roderick Long's argument that capitalism is an anti-concept because it means two incompatible things simultaneously, and socialism is also an anti-concept because it mostly is defined as the opposite of capitalism. I don't know where that leaves fascism! —Tamfang (talk) 21:27, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I like elements of this chart as a Spectrum diagram for a very hard to define subject. It seems to have better placement of examples than the Nolan chart. Might I suggest that substituting either "Intuitive" or "Emotive" for the word "irrational" might diffuse- and even better describe the intent of that end - axis in opposition to "High-Rationality". In other words, the domains of Anarchy or Romantic-Nationalism (Nazi) as having stronger roots in gut- or emotional appeal as opposed to having to withstand critical & empirical examination. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? 71.6.81.62 (talk) 05:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)--MBD--71.6.81.62 (talk) 05:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think "Intuitive" or "Emotive" are appropriate descriptors at all. This is not an issue of one extreme being more or less rational, or more or less scientific, or more or less meticulous in their experimentation and peer review. "Irrational" thinking simply means that the (still rational) individual SEES progress as an INHERENTLY irrational or chaotic process, one that cannot be engineered or planned. These people wouldn't necessarily be any less strict about critical and empirical examination, but they would likely design their strategies around a chaotic model. For the Nazi example, they might have strategically chosen to manipulate demographics and exterminate people in order to limit negative chaotic effects, or something like that. The fact that they enacted social policies doesn't mean they believed in rationally planned social progress (social engineering does NOT mean "progress" engineering), they could have just believed in eliminating obstacles that made natural progress more difficult for (gentile) citizens. I would propose labeling the two ends "Progress is Rational" and "Progress is Chaotic/Irrational" to make this clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.230.232.184 (talk) 07:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

1) The Nazi worldview wasn't utopian at all. E.g. Hitler believed the German people were in an 11th hour existential crisis and his actions were in his mind a desperate last minute gamble to advert their effective extinction.

2) They obviously did believe in "social progress", but it wasn't on the basis of rationality, on a rational planning basis. Cf. Marx claiming that he had the one true scientific study of history and that if you were in X situation and did Y action you would get Z result. To take one particularly useful example from the posting that started this section, encouraging the "migration of urban youth to rural areas (to escape "corrupting" influence of cities)" was a counter to cities, one of the greatest examples of rational thinking and organization. And what's rational about exiling or killing many of your best scientists and later pushing a theory of "German Physics" in direct opposition to "Jewish Physics". If Heisenberg hadn't attended school with Himmler, allowing his mother to phone Himmler's and ask "if she would please tell the SS to give "Werner" a break" one wonders what would have happened.

3) In the Imperial Stars ("There Will Be Government") essay that introduces the chart, the Führerprinzip, "that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and that governmental policies, decisions, and offices ought to work toward the realization of this end" is explicitly cited as an example of the Nazi's non-rational approach to things. Hga (talk) 15:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

You're using the word 'rational' as a synonym for 'sane', or some such, which is NOT the sense meant by 'rational' in Pournelle's article, nor this article (q.v.), nor the previous comments. —Tamfang (talk) 23:24, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. How might I clarify my words? Hga (talk) 14:27, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Has there been reliable 3rd party analysis of this chart in political science? Apart from Wikipedia mirrors and some bloggers, who seem to have largely based their understanding on this article, I see no significant results in any form of Google search. The first external link is an appendix by Pournelle in one of his sci-fi novels, the second is a 404 blog post. The AFD debate says it should be expanded as its own topic. That's tricky when you can't find sources. —Mrwojo (talk) 17:20, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I can not find any NPOV third-party political science analysis of this chart as of July 13, 2012. But, keep it anyway. Geraldshields11 (talk) 14:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

1963?

1. I changed “Stiner” to “Stirner” in File:Pournelle chart color.gif. I do not know which font settings the original creator has used, but hope it looks fitting.
2. While Pournelle commented “I do not believe I have used the word "irrational" in any discussion of this model”, the chart appeared with the word irrational in Destinies (vol. 2, no. 2) (see also here), though I do not know whether it was designed this way by him (maybe it was the editor Jim Baen?). We could write antirational instead.
3. The article says “in his 1963 political science Ph.D. dissertation”, but here (UW Libraries Search) the publication date of the thesis (The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political "isms.") is given as 1964.

-- IvanP (talk) 01:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Curious thing

Has anybody else noticed that you could flip this chart left-for-right and have an alignment chart for AD&D?2602:30A:2CFA:6360:A5A6:AC2A:1D91:951 (talk) 19:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)