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

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

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Comment author: michaelsullivan 09 November 2011 09:59:32PM 6 points [-]

I took the survey, but didn't read anything after "Click Here to take the survey" in this post until afterwards.

So my apologies for being extremely program-hostile in my answers (explicitly saying "epsilon" instead of 0, for instance, and giving a range for IQ since I had multiple tests). Perhaps I should retake it and ask you to throw out the original.

I did have one other large problem. I wasn't really clear on the religion question. When you say "more or less right" are you talking about cosmology, moral philosophy, historical accuracy? Do you consider the ancient texts, the historical traditions, or what the most rational (or most extreme) modern adherents tend to believe and practice? If ancient texts and historical traditions, judging relative to their context or relative to what is known now? My judgement of the probability would vary anywhere from epsilon to 100-epsilon depending on the standard chosen, so it was very hard to pick a number. I ended up going with what I considered less wrong convention and chose to judge religions under the harshest reasonable terms, which resulted in a low number but not epsilon (I considered judging ancient texts, or the most reactionary believers by modern standards, to be unreasonably strict).

Comment author: [deleted] 12 November 2011 12:18:53AM 0 points [-]

Same here about the religion question. I deliberately entered a completely useless answer to it for that very reason.

Comment author: michaelsullivan 14 November 2011 04:11:14PM 0 points [-]

Perhaps I should have entered "mu".