Sometime in the past, I ended up subscribed to a newsletter from this site. I usually skim past them in my "biz" folder without opening, but given the US election tomorrow, the headline caught my...
Sometime in the past, I ended up subscribed to a newsletter from this site. I usually skim past them in my "biz" folder without opening, but given the US election tomorrow, the headline caught my eye. I'll note that even though the US election is top of mind for me, the article is abstract and not oriented around a particular election or even a particular polity.
I think their framework for knowing what you value and voting to promote those values is helpful in an abstract sense, but difficult in a practical sense.
On the knowing what you value axis, I found their intrinsic values quiz to be helpful and interesting. It seems to be thoughtfully constructed, pretty clear in its terminology, and the analysis at the end was interesting in terms of showing me where I fall relative to others. Apparently my values are most aligned with people from Sweden. Note that you have to provide an email to get your results.
On the voting to promote those values axis, I find their suggestions pretty divorced from my own experience of politics. E.g. it seems like voting is one of the hardest things to link to real outcomes, given the unreliability of politicians, the uncertainty of their effectiveness, the time it would take to research candidates, and the difficulty of finding unbiased sources (or the even larger task of finding a variety of sources with a mix of biases). Again talking from my POV as an American here.
I find that in the least local elections, my vote on presidential and senate elections are clear without much research and generally along party lines, more because I have an understanding that if there's any progress to be made, having the party I am most aligned with generally in power is the best chance of those things happening.
By contrast, I think the local elections are where I'd likely deviate more from party lines because local politicians' sphere of influence affects me most directly. But then, I find it difficult to find out much about the candidates beyond a short, generic blurb. I think in last year's school board election, I couldn't find out anything about the candidates at all by googling, not even their party affiliations. They didn't even have websites and there were no local news sources (in search results) discussing them. The only signal I could get was correlating yard signs with candidates I do know the affiliation of.
I doubt this viewpoint or my experiences are unique. I'm wondering if people have strategies that differ significantly in terms of choosing candidates to vote for.
Local politics tends to be somewhat divorced from national politics, too. Depending (I think) on how politically-engaged the local population is, politicians sometimes have no solid affiliation...
Local politics tends to be somewhat divorced from national politics, too. Depending (I think) on how politically-engaged the local population is, politicians sometimes have no solid affiliation and will switch parties based on what they think will get them a win. As a consequence, I'm less bothered about voting R for local politicians. I still give a lot of value to a D next to someone's name, since I think the Republican party needs to be punished until it gives up on Trump, but I've voted R before in a case where I happened to know that the D candidate essentially used their office to terrorize people.
To my mind, associating with and showing support for the Republican party is, at best, a level of ignorance that would disqualify someone from an elected office. And that's being extremely...
To my mind, associating with and showing support for the Republican party is, at best, a level of ignorance that would disqualify someone from an elected office. And that's being extremely charitable. The reality is more that they are openly supporting a party with a stated goal of fascism and undermining democracy.
So, unfortunately, there is almost no possible way for me to vote for R. If it's between that and a literal child rapist or something, I'm at the point where I'd abstain. I recognize the hypocrisy in that - I'm more vocal than most that voting is the absolute minimum we can do to engage, and "lesser of two evils is always preferable to the worse of two evils", etc.. But jeeze.
There are corrupt Democratic parties. While the national party association is different nowadays, there are contrarian Republicans in local races in the US with values you'd probably support. I'm...
There are corrupt Democratic parties. While the national party association is different nowadays, there are contrarian Republicans in local races in the US with values you'd probably support. I'm not sure party association should really be the end-all-be-all for voting.
I hear you. I'm not saying everyone who calls themselves a Democrat is just and moral, and everyone who calls themselves a Republican is evil and corrupt. But like...okay, at some point, there was...
I hear you. I'm not saying everyone who calls themselves a Democrat is just and moral, and everyone who calls themselves a Republican is evil and corrupt.
But like...okay, at some point, there was an inflection where it was no longer okay to consider yourself a Nazi. Even if you "weren't like the other Nazis". I'm not saying we're there, but it is a gradient and we're closer to it than we are further from it IMO.
At a national level, I agree with you. At a local level, it's a lot more complicated. The Republican party of Mississippi is not the same as the Republican party of New York.
At a national level, I agree with you. At a local level, it's a lot more complicated. The Republican party of Mississippi is not the same as the Republican party of New York.
No, but you're still choosing to use the same label. And at least locally, the Republican party of Illinois contains some reasonable people and some "I quote Hitler and accidentally had a 3%er...
No, but you're still choosing to use the same label.
And at least locally, the Republican party of Illinois contains some reasonable people and some "I quote Hitler and accidentally had a 3%er logo, I swear" people.
The former still hangs out with the latter. Still associated with them. They're all opposed to my bodily autonomy, they just don't all have the power to impact it.
If they're really different, they could use a different name. Especially locally where many small elections are theoretically non-partisan and 3rd parties can actually get elected.
But no. They're not doing that. Whatever the reason, I don't see one that isn't corrupt.
It's not always easier to run third party or nonpartisan. Parties come with some infrastructure and funding assistance sometimes. I also can't agree that all local-level Republicans are guilty by...
It's not always easier to run third party or nonpartisan. Parties come with some infrastructure and funding assistance sometimes.
I also can't agree that all local-level Republicans are guilty by association. The vast majority of elected national Republicans are (especially post Jan 6th), complicit to some extent, but that's not the same for historical and local candidates. There are even Republicans that support bodily autonomy and have defended queer people. I'll grant you they're sadly a dying breed. Maybe things will change if Trump loses.
I meant that some of those races are legally if "technically" non-partisan. I'd love to see links to those Republicans you mention but in absence of that evidence ... Things can be hard and be the...
I meant that some of those races are legally if "technically" non-partisan.
I'd love to see links to those Republicans you mention but in absence of that evidence ...
Things can be hard and be the right thing to do.
Edit: to be clear I'm not indicating all Republicans back to Lincoln. "Historical" candidates are not on the table.
Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have moderate voting histories at the national level. Both have publicly supported LGBT and abortion rights. Their records aren't perfect, but they're more liberal...
Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have moderate voting histories at the national level. Both have publicly supported LGBT and abortion rights. Their records aren't perfect, but they're more liberal than some moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin (debated) or Amer Ghalib, a Democratic mayor who endorsed Trump and banned Pride flags. Principled conservatives can make good choices like the previous governor of Arkansas vetoing an HRT ban.
In a democracy, the right thing to do is win election if you actually want to affect change and implement policies. Choosing principled stands and protests over wielding the reigns of power is part of why many leftists fail to change anything. I'd rather a moderate or Democrat run as a Republican in a red county to successfully unseat a MAGA loonie.
Both have ok records on the topic, but they're not consistent. I was thinking local still at the time, so I wasn't thinking about them from the state but fair points. And I'm not saying a...
Both have ok records on the topic, but they're not consistent. I was thinking local still at the time, so I wasn't thinking about them from the state but fair points. And I'm not saying a principled person doesn't ever make the "right" call. I'll maintain that all of them remain associated with the party with a platform opposed to
FWIW Manchin is no longer a Dem.
In a democracy, the right thing to do is win election if you actually want to affect change and implement policies.
This logic can be used for voting for literally anything - because if you don't you won't get re-elected.
Someone deliberately pretending to be a Republican to get elected, while lying, is different than willingly associating with it.
I don't like logic that allows folks to stay associated with anything from cults to literal hate groups because it might let you get ahead which might let you help other people. Ultimately, it works for personal wealth, too, because if I get super wealthy, I could help lots of people. My values don't allow for that level of association.
As for the reins of power, the Dems should run a candidate in every election, not avoid the "Guaranteed losers." I think plenty could win in the local retail politics of that smaller election world. There are plenty of things folks could do that don't involve signing onto national party platforms that they theoretically hate.
Elections aren't free, so they would be wasting time and energy on minor justice of the peace and sheriff elections in towns we've never heard of. It makes the most sense to put time and money...
As for the reins of power, the Dems should run a candidate in every election, not avoid the "Guaranteed losers."
Elections aren't free, so they would be wasting time and energy on minor justice of the peace and sheriff elections in towns we've never heard of. It makes the most sense to put time and money where it has the greatest odds of swinging an election in favor of electing a Democrat or idealogical ally.
I'm not sure working within the system will always help people affect positive change, but we have to agree that Republicans have morphed and changed over the decades. Some people at some point must have joined a party they didn't quite agree with and took active steps to mold it towards their beliefs. My belief is Democrats will never win every district, and it'd be better if moderate Republicans beat far-right fascists.
It's not a waste if you win, and local races are where a Walz can win over folks who might otherwise be wary of the letter after their name, for example. But they're not even running for every...
It's not a waste if you win, and local races are where a Walz can win over folks who might otherwise be wary of the letter after their name, for example.
But they're not even running for every national office. And they definitely can't win if they're not running.
I've explicitly said I'm not talking about historical Republicans, and specifically talking about the ones of today choosing to stay aligned. If they're not massively pulling the rudder to change the party, ala a Liz Cheney, who fwiw I probably still fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of the time, they're just along for the ride.
A moderate is better, but if they vote not to impeach the fascist president, or vote with the fascists the vast majority of the time, I'm not sure how much better and certainly not good enough to not even bother running.
Depending on the size of your town, they may attend things like weekly farmers markets or festivals.
By contrast, I think the local elections are where I'd likely deviate more from party lines because local politicians' sphere of influence affects me most directly. But then, I find it difficult to find out much about the candidates beyond a short, generic blurb. I think in last year's school board election, I couldn't find out anything about the candidates at all by googling, not even their party affiliations. They didn't even have websites and there were no local news sources (in search results) discussing them. The only signal I could get was correlating yard signs with candidates I do know the affiliation of.
Depending on the size of your town, they may attend things like weekly farmers markets or festivals.
I have the same difficulties you voiced as far as finding enough info about the candidates to even decide if their values align with my own, so I was disappointed as well to find no advice on how...
I have the same difficulties you voiced as far as finding enough info about the candidates to even decide if their values align with my own, so I was disappointed as well to find no advice on how to put knowledge of your own intrinsic values into actual use during elections. However, I still found the topic pretty interesting and wanted to explore it.
I went to take their intrinsic values test and got stuck at the very beginning. They had an optional "learn more & be quizzed on it" section at the beginning I took, and the first question was "Could money be intrinsically valuable to some people?" Today I am not very clearheaded, so maybe it was because of that that I answered yes, after some debate with myself. Some people do value money so much that they hoard it and are very reluctant to use it for its intended purpose. I do realize that they wouldn't hoard it in the first place if it had no use otherwise, but also, collecting and keeping it informs a significant portion of their life choices. (And that's not even mentioning hobbies such as coin collecting or collecting money as travel souvenirs.)
I can't tell if they didn't go deep enough, or if I didn't. It's one of those days.
So I think it's a pretty well designed survey, but I can see why you got hung up. I had to get into it before I could see where they were going. Once I did, I found the task of thinking about a...
So I think it's a pretty well designed survey, but I can see why you got hung up. I had to get into it before I could see where they were going. Once I did, I found the task of thinking about a lot of different values as being valued intrinsically or extrinsically a very interesting exercise in self reflection.
I think they are trying to operationalize the definition of "intrinsic value" in a specific way. This is a recognized strategy to strengthen one's results from survey research.
If you go past money, there a couple more yeses and nos that add some dimension to their definition. The line their trying to draw is that almost no one values money as its own end, but because it gives them security, wealth, power, etc. Like if you have a pocket full of cash that you couldn't spend, its intrinsic value would be zero or nearly zero. The other one that tripped me up was food. Because I like food all on its own. But the little blurb after they told me I was "wrong" they pointed out that if food didn't give you pleasure or sustenance or anything else, it would be useless. This is contrasted with something like "people you know experience a lot of pleasure" which is something one values intrinsically because there's no follow-on thing that it gives you.
I agree these examples are not perfect, but I think it's probably hard to find perfect examples.
They acknowledge this themselves in the very next part, because they say, "not everyone values the same things intrinsically, we want to know what you value intrinsically". Then for each option in the survey, they give you a "0. I value this but not instrinsically", i.e. you value it for some follow on effect, and an additional option which is "-1. I don't value this".
I had the exact same thought, I got to that question and answered yes, and when it told me that was incorrect I immediately thought about how they listed "achievement" as one of the possible...
I had the exact same thought, I got to that question and answered yes, and when it told me that was incorrect I immediately thought about how they listed "achievement" as one of the possible intrinsic values, and becoming rich could certainly be considered achievement to some.
But that's the very definition of intrinsic vs extrinsic values. If "achievement" is the intrinsic value and becoming rich is a type of achievement, the money holds extrinsic value because its...
But that's the very definition of intrinsic vs extrinsic values. If "achievement" is the intrinsic value and becoming rich is a type of achievement, the money holds extrinsic value because its value is as a means to that achievement.
I don't necessarily think this level of abstraction is particularly useful for voting in the way this page describes, fwiw. I think paying attention to the material facts and the impacts of policies, as they describe, is more important, and I don't think you need to figure out what you value intrinsically vs extrinsically to vote in a way that aligns with your values. But if you're going to dig into intrinsic vs extrinsic value as a concept, money is the textbook example for a reason.
Yeah but drawing that distinction in the way they did came off as both arrogant and pedantic to me. It had "well akshually" vibes and it put me off from completing it until today... where it told...
Yeah but drawing that distinction in the way they did came off as both arrogant and pedantic to me. It had "well akshually" vibes and it put me off from completing it until today... where it told me I had 69 intrinsic values (heh) and that I had to spend a bunch of time ranking my top 18 because I misunderstood that they wanted me to pick apart every word they threw my way and call most of these not intrinsic values rather than abstracting away from the top level to the intrinsic value behind it. I didn't find it a particularly well designed quiz, but I also don't struggle with understanding what I value and was mostly doing it to out of curiosity.
Yeah, I agree that it's not really a useful distinction at this level -- it's pedantic and distracts from what I see to be the more important parts of assessing how well the material effects of...
Yeah, I agree that it's not really a useful distinction at this level -- it's pedantic and distracts from what I see to be the more important parts of assessing how well the material effects of various policies reflect your values.
They specifically said cash, and cash has intrinsic values (anonymity, privacy, etc). Got the "Sorry, you're wrong" message and closed the tab. They didn't think carefully about the question.
They specifically said cash, and cash has intrinsic values (anonymity, privacy, etc). Got the "Sorry, you're wrong" message and closed the tab. They didn't think carefully about the question.
Privacy could be an intrinsic for you and the cash might help you achieve that but it's not a piece of privacy paper. That's just extrinsic value again.
Privacy could be an intrinsic for you and the cash might help you achieve that but it's not a piece of privacy paper. That's just extrinsic value again.
Honestly, given that they don't consider "food" something of intrinsic value, I'd wager anonymity and privacy don't fit the bill either. People generally don't want anonymity or privacy for their...
Honestly, given that they don't consider "food" something of intrinsic value, I'd wager anonymity and privacy don't fit the bill either. People generally don't want anonymity or privacy for their own sake, but because those things give them certain types of freedom (by my understanding typically subsets of what would be called "negative liberty" in some schools of philosophy -- that is, freedom from external restraint) that they do value intrinsically.
I didn't go through the list of values they had, and it's worth digging through the "value" to see if there's actually something underlying it, but ultimately it'll come down to the individual's...
I didn't go through the list of values they had, and it's worth digging through the "value" to see if there's actually something underlying it, but ultimately it'll come down to the individual's perception. But yeah privacy might have intrinsic value, or it might not depending on the person.
Sometime in the past, I ended up subscribed to a newsletter from this site. I usually skim past them in my "biz" folder without opening, but given the US election tomorrow, the headline caught my eye. I'll note that even though the US election is top of mind for me, the article is abstract and not oriented around a particular election or even a particular polity.
I think their framework for knowing what you value and voting to promote those values is helpful in an abstract sense, but difficult in a practical sense.
On the knowing what you value axis, I found their intrinsic values quiz to be helpful and interesting. It seems to be thoughtfully constructed, pretty clear in its terminology, and the analysis at the end was interesting in terms of showing me where I fall relative to others. Apparently my values are most aligned with people from Sweden. Note that you have to provide an email to get your results.
On the voting to promote those values axis, I find their suggestions pretty divorced from my own experience of politics. E.g. it seems like voting is one of the hardest things to link to real outcomes, given the unreliability of politicians, the uncertainty of their effectiveness, the time it would take to research candidates, and the difficulty of finding unbiased sources (or the even larger task of finding a variety of sources with a mix of biases). Again talking from my POV as an American here.
I find that in the least local elections, my vote on presidential and senate elections are clear without much research and generally along party lines, more because I have an understanding that if there's any progress to be made, having the party I am most aligned with generally in power is the best chance of those things happening.
By contrast, I think the local elections are where I'd likely deviate more from party lines because local politicians' sphere of influence affects me most directly. But then, I find it difficult to find out much about the candidates beyond a short, generic blurb. I think in last year's school board election, I couldn't find out anything about the candidates at all by googling, not even their party affiliations. They didn't even have websites and there were no local news sources (in search results) discussing them. The only signal I could get was correlating yard signs with candidates I do know the affiliation of.
I doubt this viewpoint or my experiences are unique. I'm wondering if people have strategies that differ significantly in terms of choosing candidates to vote for.
Local politics tends to be somewhat divorced from national politics, too. Depending (I think) on how politically-engaged the local population is, politicians sometimes have no solid affiliation and will switch parties based on what they think will get them a win. As a consequence, I'm less bothered about voting R for local politicians. I still give a lot of value to a D next to someone's name, since I think the Republican party needs to be punished until it gives up on Trump, but I've voted R before in a case where I happened to know that the D candidate essentially used their office to terrorize people.
To my mind, associating with and showing support for the Republican party is, at best, a level of ignorance that would disqualify someone from an elected office. And that's being extremely charitable. The reality is more that they are openly supporting a party with a stated goal of fascism and undermining democracy.
So, unfortunately, there is almost no possible way for me to vote for R. If it's between that and a literal child rapist or something, I'm at the point where I'd abstain. I recognize the hypocrisy in that - I'm more vocal than most that voting is the absolute minimum we can do to engage, and "lesser of two evils is always preferable to the worse of two evils", etc.. But jeeze.
There are corrupt Democratic parties. While the national party association is different nowadays, there are contrarian Republicans in local races in the US with values you'd probably support. I'm not sure party association should really be the end-all-be-all for voting.
I hear you. I'm not saying everyone who calls themselves a Democrat is just and moral, and everyone who calls themselves a Republican is evil and corrupt.
But like...okay, at some point, there was an inflection where it was no longer okay to consider yourself a Nazi. Even if you "weren't like the other Nazis". I'm not saying we're there, but it is a gradient and we're closer to it than we are further from it IMO.
At a national level, I agree with you. At a local level, it's a lot more complicated. The Republican party of Mississippi is not the same as the Republican party of New York.
No, but you're still choosing to use the same label.
And at least locally, the Republican party of Illinois contains some reasonable people and some "I quote Hitler and accidentally had a 3%er logo, I swear" people.
The former still hangs out with the latter. Still associated with them. They're all opposed to my bodily autonomy, they just don't all have the power to impact it.
If they're really different, they could use a different name. Especially locally where many small elections are theoretically non-partisan and 3rd parties can actually get elected.
But no. They're not doing that. Whatever the reason, I don't see one that isn't corrupt.
It's not always easier to run third party or nonpartisan. Parties come with some infrastructure and funding assistance sometimes.
I also can't agree that all local-level Republicans are guilty by association. The vast majority of elected national Republicans are (especially post Jan 6th), complicit to some extent, but that's not the same for historical and local candidates. There are even Republicans that support bodily autonomy and have defended queer people. I'll grant you they're sadly a dying breed. Maybe things will change if Trump loses.
I meant that some of those races are legally if "technically" non-partisan.
I'd love to see links to those Republicans you mention but in absence of that evidence ...
Things can be hard and be the right thing to do.
Edit: to be clear I'm not indicating all Republicans back to Lincoln. "Historical" candidates are not on the table.
Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have moderate voting histories at the national level. Both have publicly supported LGBT and abortion rights. Their records aren't perfect, but they're more liberal than some moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin (debated) or Amer Ghalib, a Democratic mayor who endorsed Trump and banned Pride flags. Principled conservatives can make good choices like the previous governor of Arkansas vetoing an HRT ban.
In a democracy, the right thing to do is win election if you actually want to affect change and implement policies. Choosing principled stands and protests over wielding the reigns of power is part of why many leftists fail to change anything. I'd rather a moderate or Democrat run as a Republican in a red county to successfully unseat a MAGA loonie.
Both have ok records on the topic, but they're not consistent. I was thinking local still at the time, so I wasn't thinking about them from the state but fair points. And I'm not saying a principled person doesn't ever make the "right" call. I'll maintain that all of them remain associated with the party with a platform opposed to
FWIW Manchin is no longer a Dem.
This logic can be used for voting for literally anything - because if you don't you won't get re-elected.
Someone deliberately pretending to be a Republican to get elected, while lying, is different than willingly associating with it.
I don't like logic that allows folks to stay associated with anything from cults to literal hate groups because it might let you get ahead which might let you help other people. Ultimately, it works for personal wealth, too, because if I get super wealthy, I could help lots of people. My values don't allow for that level of association.
As for the reins of power, the Dems should run a candidate in every election, not avoid the "Guaranteed losers." I think plenty could win in the local retail politics of that smaller election world. There are plenty of things folks could do that don't involve signing onto national party platforms that they theoretically hate.
Elections aren't free, so they would be wasting time and energy on minor justice of the peace and sheriff elections in towns we've never heard of. It makes the most sense to put time and money where it has the greatest odds of swinging an election in favor of electing a Democrat or idealogical ally.
I'm not sure working within the system will always help people affect positive change, but we have to agree that Republicans have morphed and changed over the decades. Some people at some point must have joined a party they didn't quite agree with and took active steps to mold it towards their beliefs. My belief is Democrats will never win every district, and it'd be better if moderate Republicans beat far-right fascists.
It's not a waste if you win, and local races are where a Walz can win over folks who might otherwise be wary of the letter after their name, for example.
But they're not even running for every national office. And they definitely can't win if they're not running.
I've explicitly said I'm not talking about historical Republicans, and specifically talking about the ones of today choosing to stay aligned. If they're not massively pulling the rudder to change the party, ala a Liz Cheney, who fwiw I probably still fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of the time, they're just along for the ride.
A moderate is better, but if they vote not to impeach the fascist president, or vote with the fascists the vast majority of the time, I'm not sure how much better and certainly not good enough to not even bother running.
Depending on the size of your town, they may attend things like weekly farmers markets or festivals.
I have the same difficulties you voiced as far as finding enough info about the candidates to even decide if their values align with my own, so I was disappointed as well to find no advice on how to put knowledge of your own intrinsic values into actual use during elections. However, I still found the topic pretty interesting and wanted to explore it.
I went to take their intrinsic values test and got stuck at the very beginning. They had an optional "learn more & be quizzed on it" section at the beginning I took, and the first question was "Could money be intrinsically valuable to some people?" Today I am not very clearheaded, so maybe it was because of that that I answered yes, after some debate with myself. Some people do value money so much that they hoard it and are very reluctant to use it for its intended purpose. I do realize that they wouldn't hoard it in the first place if it had no use otherwise, but also, collecting and keeping it informs a significant portion of their life choices. (And that's not even mentioning hobbies such as coin collecting or collecting money as travel souvenirs.)
I can't tell if they didn't go deep enough, or if I didn't. It's one of those days.
So I think it's a pretty well designed survey, but I can see why you got hung up. I had to get into it before I could see where they were going. Once I did, I found the task of thinking about a lot of different values as being valued intrinsically or extrinsically a very interesting exercise in self reflection.
I think they are trying to operationalize the definition of "intrinsic value" in a specific way. This is a recognized strategy to strengthen one's results from survey research.
If you go past money, there a couple more yeses and nos that add some dimension to their definition. The line their trying to draw is that almost no one values money as its own end, but because it gives them security, wealth, power, etc. Like if you have a pocket full of cash that you couldn't spend, its intrinsic value would be zero or nearly zero. The other one that tripped me up was food. Because I like food all on its own. But the little blurb after they told me I was "wrong" they pointed out that if food didn't give you pleasure or sustenance or anything else, it would be useless. This is contrasted with something like "people you know experience a lot of pleasure" which is something one values intrinsically because there's no follow-on thing that it gives you.
I agree these examples are not perfect, but I think it's probably hard to find perfect examples.
They acknowledge this themselves in the very next part, because they say, "not everyone values the same things intrinsically, we want to know what you value intrinsically". Then for each option in the survey, they give you a "0. I value this but not instrinsically", i.e. you value it for some follow on effect, and an additional option which is "-1. I don't value this".
I had the exact same thought, I got to that question and answered yes, and when it told me that was incorrect I immediately thought about how they listed "achievement" as one of the possible intrinsic values, and becoming rich could certainly be considered achievement to some.
But that's the very definition of intrinsic vs extrinsic values. If "achievement" is the intrinsic value and becoming rich is a type of achievement, the money holds extrinsic value because its value is as a means to that achievement.
I don't necessarily think this level of abstraction is particularly useful for voting in the way this page describes, fwiw. I think paying attention to the material facts and the impacts of policies, as they describe, is more important, and I don't think you need to figure out what you value intrinsically vs extrinsically to vote in a way that aligns with your values. But if you're going to dig into intrinsic vs extrinsic value as a concept, money is the textbook example for a reason.
Yeah but drawing that distinction in the way they did came off as both arrogant and pedantic to me. It had "well akshually" vibes and it put me off from completing it until today... where it told me I had 69 intrinsic values (heh) and that I had to spend a bunch of time ranking my top 18 because I misunderstood that they wanted me to pick apart every word they threw my way and call most of these not intrinsic values rather than abstracting away from the top level to the intrinsic value behind it. I didn't find it a particularly well designed quiz, but I also don't struggle with understanding what I value and was mostly doing it to out of curiosity.
Yeah, I agree that it's not really a useful distinction at this level -- it's pedantic and distracts from what I see to be the more important parts of assessing how well the material effects of various policies reflect your values.
They specifically said cash, and cash has intrinsic values (anonymity, privacy, etc). Got the "Sorry, you're wrong" message and closed the tab. They didn't think carefully about the question.
Privacy could be an intrinsic for you and the cash might help you achieve that but it's not a piece of privacy paper. That's just extrinsic value again.
Honestly, given that they don't consider "food" something of intrinsic value, I'd wager anonymity and privacy don't fit the bill either. People generally don't want anonymity or privacy for their own sake, but because those things give them certain types of freedom (by my understanding typically subsets of what would be called "negative liberty" in some schools of philosophy -- that is, freedom from external restraint) that they do value intrinsically.
I didn't go through the list of values they had, and it's worth digging through the "value" to see if there's actually something underlying it, but ultimately it'll come down to the individual's perception. But yeah privacy might have intrinsic value, or it might not depending on the person.
I think when you get this granular about intrinsic vs extrinsic values, it ultimately becomes more philosophical than practical.
Agreed!