SilasBarta comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Yvain 01 November 2011 06:28PM

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Comment author: Yvain 01 November 2011 08:04:35AM 28 points [-]

After reading the feedback I've made the following changes (after the first 104 entries so that anyone who has access to the data can check if there are significant differences before and after these changes):

  • Added an "other" option in gender
  • Moved "date of singularity" above question mentioning 2100 to avoid anchoring. Really I should also move the Newton question for the same reason, but I'm not going to.
  • changed wording of anti-agathics question to "at least one person"
  • added a "don't know / no preference" to relationship style
  • clarified to answer probability as percent and not decimal; I'll go back and fix anyone who got this wrong, though. If you seriously mean a very low percent, like ".05%", please end with a percent mark so I know not to change it. Otherwise, leave the percent mark out.
  • Added a "government work" option.
  • Deleted "divorced". Divorced people can just put "single"
  • Added "economic/political collapse" to xrisk
  • Added "other" to xrisk
  • Added a question "Have you ever been to a Less Wrong meetup?" Please do NOT retake the survey to answer this question. I'll just grab statistics from the people who answered this after it was put up, while recognizing it might be flawed.

I did NOT add an "Other" to politics despite requests to do so, because I tried this last time and ended up with people sending me manifestos. I want to encourage people to choose whichever of those categories they're closest to. If you really don't identify at all with any of those categories, just leave it blank.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 November 2011 12:36:28AM *  4 points [-]

Also, do I understand you correctly that the beings (conceivably) running the universe as a simulation do not count as supernatural/gods for purposes of the supernatural/gods questions?

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 04 November 2011 02:41:22PM *  3 points [-]

Yeah, I thought the theism question was the worst of all. Have you ever met a theist that answered "ontologically basic mind-stuff" when asked what God is? Me neither.

Other than that, thanks Yvain!

Comment author: feanor1600 02 November 2011 02:24:52AM 1 point [-]

I assumed when taking the survey that those running the simulation are outside our universe and so ontologically basic.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 02 November 2011 04:54:37PM 4 points [-]

Those people outside the simulation could exist with or without ontologically basic mental features. The questions are totally orthogonal.

Comment author: taw 02 November 2011 10:44:26AM 0 points [-]

Is there even theoretical way of distinguishing these two cases? I'd assume the only possible answer is "they" do.