2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
The final straw was noticing a comment referring to "the most recent survey I know of" and realizing it was from May 2009. I think it is well past time for another survey, so here is one now.
I've tried to keep the structure of the last survey intact so it will be easy to compare results and see changes over time, but there were a few problems with the last survey that required changes, and a few questions from the last survey that just didn't apply as much anymore (how many people have strong feelings on Three Worlds Collide these days?)
Please try to give serious answers that are easy to process by computer (see the introduction). And please let me know as soon as possible if there are any security problems (people other than me who can access the data) or any absolutely awful questions.
I will probably run the survey for about a month unless new people stop responding well before that. Like the last survey, I'll try to calculate some results myself and release the raw data (minus the people who want to keep theirs private) for anyone else who wants to examine it.
Like the last survey, if you take it and post that you took it here, I will upvote you, and I hope other people will upvote you too.
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Comments (694)
Cooool... My karma has more than doubled since I took the survey.
ETA: I assign 50% probability to this comment having a score of -5 or less 24 hours from now. (It's at -2 right now.)
If there's any status in comparing excessive underconfidence, I think I take the cake - one year off with 20% confidence in the interval. Good survey.
That's not really underconfident if you're only right on about 20% of such estimates.
Wait, wouldn't it be "if you were right on about 20% of such estimates"? To be calibrated correctly with 20% confidence you should be wrong about 80% of the time, right?
I'm not trying to be obnoxious about what might be a typo, it's just that you have 3 upvotes so I'm worried I'm missing something obvious.
Nope, you're right.
Because so many people are talking about the Newton question, I'm curious, how many people got closer than 7 years? That's how far I was. Also, I put 93% confidence within 15 years.
2 years off, I believe. 45% confidence.
27 years early, 60% certain. Oops.
23 years late (got 2nd edition pretty close) with confidence of 15%.
I was 7 years off, with a confidence of 20% (I thought I might have had the wrong century).
I was 7 years off, and had 65% confidence of being within 15 years.
Exactly right, 95% confidence. I often remember facts, but underestimate my confidence in them but I'm getting better at overriding that, hence the choice of 95%.
You win! Nice job.
13 years off, 50% confidence.
Guvegrra lrnef bss, 60% pbasvqrapr. V rkcrpg va gur fnzr qverpgvba, fvapr ebhaqvat unq fbzrguvat gb qb jvgu vg - friragrra uhaqrerq frrzf zber yvxryl gb or pubfra guna fvkgrra friragl sbhe...
Survey complete. Had to answer "there's no such thing as morality" because I can't imagine a configuration of quarks that would make any of the other choices true. What would it even mean at a low level for one normative theory to be "correct?"
That's not the question. The question is which ideology you most identify with. So what you answered is "The philosophy I most identify with is that there is no such thing as morality." This seems like a nonsensical position since it would imply that concepts don't exist simply because they aren't physical. Morality is a very real part of the universe as it can be observed in the functioning of the human brain.
Admittedly, I did find the question somewhat odd, as what is asked is what I most identify with, and it's a very bad habit to make ideologies part of your identity. I interpreted the question as "which form of morality do you approve of the most", which for me was consequentialism since out of those three I believe it to be the most effective tool for improving human welfare.
The political question ought to have a “libertarian socialism” answer (green/southwestern quadrant in The Political Compass; extreme version described in An Anarchist FAQ). I answered “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries” because it was the least unsatisfactory one. (Or at least there should be a “None of the above” answer.)
ETA: BTW, that's probably the most common understanding of the word libertarian outside the US.
Likewise.
Og take survey. Og deny validity of single-factor, linearly ranked intelligence measurement, though. Og increasingly fond of Dr. Gould.
You do know Jay Gould is rather unpopular here right?
Edit: Yes on second thought this is clearly a joke.
I took the survey :3
I missed Newton by a horrendous ~25 years. If the publishing year of "On the Origin of Species" had been asked instead, I would have known the exact date. Occasionally I even celebrate it a little... jeez, exactly 3 more weeks until the day Darwin's explanation destroyed the single "good" argument religions ever had. A very fitting occasion to grab a beer and stick it to the invisible man.
Also, I was glad the input fields were large enough to accommodate enough zeroes regarding the superstition and religion questions. I also left out most other probability estimates because I couldn't answer them in any sensible fashion, which once again reminds me of all the blank spots on my map. I really should come back here more often...
Please do not use this word in this way.
Survey = taken.
For the newton question, I got the thousands, tens and ones place correct, but flubbed the hundreds place. 60% confidence. Not sure if I should feel bad about that.
I took the survey.
Took it. Sort of embarrassed that I don't know my IQ.
If anything I feel like it's embarrassing to know it.
Are we as a community setting up social norms against knowledge now?
Why does that embarrass you?
Survey taken. Made me put hard numbers on fuzzy feelings, which is good.
I wonder how my answers compare to those I gave last time... is there any way to check?
survey taken..!
Survey take!
Thanks for doing this.
With respect to P(Warming), I took this to mean the probability that significant anthrogenic climate change is occurring or will occur.
Filled out.
I took it, but I would never post a content-free comment just for the sake of a few karma!
The results should be fun to see, so thanks for taking the time to do this.
I took it. Thanks for this, I'm excited about the results.
I took the survey. Thanks Yvain!
Took the test. I assigned 70-80% to "God creating the universe", as I strongly (80%) suspect that it's a simulation, it's being more or less actively controlled and manipulated by some outside entity/entities, and even if said entity is one of many and has comparatively little power over its native environment - even to the point of resembling a human scientist - it's pretty much pointless for us to call it anything but a god.
But would the definition of God you have used qualify as an "ontologically basic mental entity", as demanded by the survey?
I started trying to fill this out, but more than half I either don't know/remember, am to unsure about the supposed meaning of the question and would require clarification, or can't answer meaningfully because the USA centric assumptions of the question.
I may have just taken it twice... hitting enter seems to submit the form immediately. How inconvenient! I felt funny putting in "0"s and "100"s instead of 0+epsilon etc.
Took the survey.
Took it. It's been awhile since my last IQ test so I did not answer that one, and I don't think I'm gonna be in the top 50% at all.
Thanks Yvain. Just took the survey, can't wait for the results!
Survey taken. :)
I took the survey :)
Took it. I liked the calibration questions a lot.
I took the survey. You should too!
Taken. Thanks Yvain, I appreciate this effort!
Nitpick: why no "Other" categories for Participation and Expertise?
Taken.
Survey now completed.
EDIT:
Let the record reflect that this comment currently has a negative score! :-(
EDIT2: No longer the case, obviously! :-)
Filled out.
Came out of activity hibernation to take this. Thanks for seeing a thing that needed doing and choosing to do it!
Problems with the gender field have already been discussed; the sexuality question has some of the same issues. "Gay" and "straight" don't really make sense for people with nonbinary gender, and many people interpret "bisexual" as referring to "both" genders (male and female), as opposed to a more inclusive "queer" or "pansexual." I do honestly appreciate how much effort you've put into making the survey as inclusive as it already is, though.
Just finished the survey. I'm very much an LW lurker, who apparently succumbs to some type of self-confidence bias. Though I know nothing of probability theory (thus why a lot of the questions were left blank), I gave myself a 10% chance for the publishing-question. (Was that a randomized question?) After a bit of consideration, I said [YEAR]—it was first published in [YEAR + 37]. I wasn't too far off.
Maybe that same bias is what deters me from ever actually posting anything.
You should think about deleting the year, it screws with the calibration question. This question was put in to test the quality of your guesses, or more specifically the quality of the probabilities you assigned. I read your comment before taking the survey and was unable to give an honest guess.
Ah! Sorry, I hadn't though of that. All corrections done.
Took the survey, even though I've mostly only lurked.
I don't know what an "ontologically basic mental entity" is. Also, I only left the Singularity question blank because I think it's overall probability of happening is less that 50%.
Ontologically basic = at the lowest level of reality. For example, a table is not ontologically basic because there are no tables built into the laws of physics; but arguably, an electron is ontologically basic, since we can't explain electrons in terms of anything smaller or more basic.
A standard claim of "robust" supernaturalism is that there are minds (mental entities) which cannot be understood in terms of any more basic constituents of reality. E.g., your soul is not made of almitons, and god is not made of pixie dust. God is supposed to be ontologically basic - he is built right into the lowest level of reality, no moving parts.
The importance of making that caveat is that it might be defensible to say that perhaps some alien created us, but that is not really what most people mean by a god, since presumably the alien has a nice (evolutionary?) causal history.
This attitude often puzzles me.
For my part, I have the same problem with "A vastly powerful God intentionally created human life" that I do with "A vastly powerful alien race intentionally created human life"; that "God" is ontologically basic and an alien race isn't doesn't particularly matter to how seriously I take those claims. For me to object to "God created human life" on the grounds that God is an ontologically basic mental entity would be to ignore what seems to me the much more important problem of purporting to explain phenomena by positing conveniently powerful entities for whom no other evidence exists.
Indeed both views have the problem you just spoke of, but the supernatural view has still another deficit, which we might call a failure to explain. When we posit aliens, we posit something which we presume has a causal history in terms of more fundamental parts, but when we posit a supernatural god or the like, we posit something vastly complex yet with no parts. It is as if the entire text of "Finnegans Wake" were the 3rd letter of the alphabet, or as if particle physics tried to explain the universe in terms of quarks, leptons, and dinner tables.
There is yet another point, which is that the alien "gods" are not what one might call "religiously adequate." Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures, no matter that they might have created us.
I took the survey. Props to Yvain for putting in the effort on this (again).
(I really ought to take a legitimate IQ test one of these days.)
Done. Seemed like a pretty good survey overall. Like others, I was confused by some questions though. Didn't know how to answer family religion, especially since I wasn't sure how far back I was supposed to look. Also, how exactly would it be determined when the singularity occurs? The moment human-level ai is reached? Seems to me that it would be more of a gradual (though still relatively sudden, all things considered) process.
The probability questions were interesting. I guess the questions about Newton and IQ relative to the average were there to account for less wrong over/underconfidence? Either way, since I didn't have an IQ score handy there was only one question, which I could have gotten right by accident. Would have liked to see a few more along those lines. (Heck, I would really like to see a "judge your own rationality" test on Less Wrong, period. Anyone done this yet?)
I took it again after the changes. Please delete the old one (I used the same karma each time, so it should be easily identified).
I disliked the moral philosophy question. I felt comfortable putting down "consequentialist," but I can see how someone might feel none of the answers suited them well. I would have made the fourth option simply "other," and maybe added a moral realism vs. anti-realism question.
See the <a href="http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl">Phil Papers</a> survey. On the normative ethics question, "other" beat out the three "standard" moral philosophies, and there's no indication that everyone in that category is a moral anti-realist.
Also, for the Newton question:
My answer: friragrra bu svir
Correct answer: fvkgrra rvtugl frira
Now I feel dumb for putting such a high confidence in my answer. Should I feel dumb?
I guess if I had thought about it more, I would have realized that my confidence that my 30 year range was not too low exceeded my confidence that it was not too high, and adjusted my answer downwards a few years, accordingly.
Done. Was out by only 17 years on the Principia Mathematica.
Some of the questions made me feel a bit stupid, which is probably a good thing now and then. Had to answer Deist/etc. for the religious identity question, because there wasn't an option for epistemic untheist with Christian ethical heuristics and an admittedly indefensible level of wishful thinking. But "etc." will do :)
Here's hoping we all live to 2100 and find out whether we were right about that stuff.
I think the probability of 90% die-off by 2100 attributable to a single cause is low, but let's face it, an interconnected cascading clusterfuck of 5%-fatal catastrophes would be bad enough, and sadly I think that's more likely. Or I've been reading too much Jared Diamond.
Like all the cool kids, I took the survey. You should too!
Scientia potentia est!
Survey taken, looking forward to the results.
Took it.
My family is of mixed religious background, so I just arbitrarily used my mother's religious background for those questions. You might want to make the answer choices a little more flexible.
I know "male, female, FTM, MTF, other" is a standard gender/sex question, but I don't know why. A problem is that it implies that "FTM" is a distinct category from, rather than a subset of, "male" (ditto for female). This would be better if other questions had answers that were subsets of other answers, but you seem to try hard not to do that. This could be fixed by phrasing it as "cis male", but then you'd get people complaining about "cis" and "trans" not being a perfect dichotomy and complaining about the confusing word and so on. This could also be fixed by splitting the question into "gender (male/female/other)" and "Are you trans? (yes/no)", but then you'd get other complaints.
I wouldn't have been too far off on the Newton question if I had been able to remember the mapping between century numbering and year numbering. I ended up two centuries off. Fortunately I took that into account when calibrating.
Also, for the record: I'm not "considering cryonics". I'm cryocrastinating. Cryonics is obviously the best choice, and I should be signing up for it in the next five seconds. I will probably die while not signed up for cryonics, and that will be death by stupidity, and you will all get to point and laugh at my corpse.
I don't really understand why divorced would be separate from single and looking (or single and not looking, if the marriage was especially traumatizing). Also, one could be married and looking if one is polyamorous.
Took the survey, but this post will make the reported karma score inaccurate
I took the survey.
I didn't like it because some of the questions offered too narrow a range of answers for my taste. Example: I consider the "many worlds" hypothesis to be objectively meaningless (because there's no possible experiment that can test it). The same goes for "this universe is a simulation."
As for the "singularity", I see it as nearly meaningless too. Every definition of it I've seen amounts to a horizon, beyond which the future (or some aspects of it) will be unimaginable -- but from how far past? Like a physical horizon, if such a "limit of vision" exists it must recede as you approach it. Even a cliff can be looked over.
Is this an explicit premise of MWI, or is it a logical consequence of the premises, or is it based on current technology and understanding?
Even if it is one of the first two, suppose all other interpretations made testable predictions. Would the question asking one to estimate the chances MWI is correct be useful?
It's a logical consequence of the premises. The instant there's a split, all branches except the one you're in become totally and permanently unreachable by any means whatever. If they did not, the conservation laws would be violated.
If all other interpretations made testable predictions, it wouldn't be enough unless you could somehow eliminate any possibility that didn't make the list because nobody's thought of it yet. It's like the fallacy in Pascal's Wager: all possible religions belong in the hat.
So if for thousands of years science can't think of anything better than hidden variables of the gaps, collapse at a level we can't detect because of its scale, and MWI, MWI is "objectively meaningless"? If somehow the room for hidden variables is eliminated, and the collapse is falsified, it's still "objectively meaningless"?
It's scientifically meaningless, maybe, but that's like saying evidence is inadmissible in court because it results from a search conducted without a warrant. It doesn't imply the crime wasn't committed by the culprit. http://lesswrong.com/lw/in/scientific_evidence_legal_evidence_rational/
I can't make sense of your reply. The first "sentence" isn't a sentence or even coherent.
But perhaps I myself could have been clearer by saying: The instant there's a split, all branches except the one you're in effectively cease to exist, forever. Does that help?
Yes it is. Maybe this rephrasing would help:
Took the survey. Why are posts stating that being voted up?
Oooh, I took it! Vote me up too.
Does karma hunger ever go away? I've often wondered how EY feels about being up voted or down voted.
I think it's the derivative of one's karma that really matters.
(Even more specifically in my case, it appears to be something like the logarithmic derivative of individual comments that I really care about...)
The comparative karma of my comments to the surrounding comments also seems to matter to me. Specifically if am arguing with someone who is saying something transparently logically absurd and their comments are higher than mine it invokes both disgust and contempt.
Yes, that too.
In fact, since the default tendency is for descendant comments to score lower than their parents, I find it particularly insulting whenever a direct reply to one of my comments has a higher score (if there is any challenge or disagreement involved).
You know saying that is just begging people to find clever self-referential ways of making that happen.
Nice try.
I took the survey too. Thanks for creating it.
I took the survey and this is my first comment on lesswrong :)
I took the survey. Thanks for putting this together.
Took the survey
Took survey. Boy was I wrong about Newton!
I praise Yvain for this.
Re the politics question, I'm not a communist but I don't think any sane modern communists would use the soviet union as an example of communist government. They officially claimed the government was a transitional stage towards self governing collective utopia.
I'm very happy that this survey is being retaken! Looking forward to seeing the results.
Taken. My two cents as everyone's:
Under academic field, there were specific fields for statistics and "other hard sciences" but not a specific field for abstract mathematics, which I was surprised by.
agree with others that the political categories were too linear and a libertarian socialist option would have been nice.
My estimate for Newton's Principia was off by 27 years... so my confidence was a bit high but not too much.
None for physics either.
I took this survey.
I didn't like the ethics question, because it could be interpreted as asking about one's theoretical position on metaethics, or about one's actual values, and the two can diverge. Specifically: I bet there are quite a lot of people on LW for whom something like the following is true: "I don't believe that moral judgements have actual truth values separate from the values of the people or institutions that make them. But I do have values, and I do make moral judgements, and the way I do so is: [...]".
I took the survey and really enjoyed it. Thanks! It was mostly clear but I'm not gonna lie -- had to look up the morality definitions (except consequentialism). Perhaps a very brief definition would help.
One problem with the political question: Socialism is not what they have in Scandinavia. That would be social democracy (technically a form of government that's supposed to evolve towards full socialism, but they don't seem to have done that). It's unclear what option one is supposed to choose to mean "What they have in Scandinavia" rather than actual socialism.
I took the survey and was annoyed to realize that I didn't have a strong enough background to have informed answers to several questions.
Only an American could have written something like that... Political "ideologies" apparently do not translate between countries in any way. It's like asking Muslims if they feel closer to Catholics or Lutherans.
The test has also a problem with extremely low "probability" events like "God existing". There's really no meaningful number between a vague "theoretically possibly just extremely unlikely" (and number of 0s you put there doesn't really mean anything) and "literally impossible 0%" here.
I took the survey. Sorry I asked you to keep my data private, but I precommitted to doing so in order to improve the quality of my responses.
Filled out the survey. Neat!
I didn't know those versions of morality. There wasn't an option for "don't know" but I guess leaving it blank is the same thing.
I took the survey, I found the "Moral Views" question very hard to answer to, folding "moral views" in one of 4 broad categories is surhuman effort for me ;) but I did my best.
Also, not wanting to enter a political debate here and now, but your definition of "communism" seems a strawman to me.
The definition of communism is certainly a straw man. It's not surprising that LWers don't know the difference between Stalinism, Social Democracy, and don't know about Anarchism at all, but I was still disappointed.
I took the survey. I'd really have liked an "other/no affiliation" option on the politics question, though, or a finer-grained scale. I suppose I could just have left it blank, but that seems not to transmit the right information.
I took it a few hours ago, and only just then realized that I apparently can get karma from saying so.
I took it.
I think some of the "pick one" options were too broadly grouped, though any multiple-choice is going to be. I'd have preferred a "no preference" for "relationship style", for example, and more political options. Also I'm not sure what counts as "participates actively" in other groups--I've been a member of transhumanism-related groups for over a decade, for example, but am mostly a lurker; I did not check the box.
I would have been interested in seeing a question about involvement in offline activities like local meetups, or participation in IRC/other LW venues.
Thanks for running the survey!
I completed the survey. Thanks, Yvain, for doing it!
The option "Atheist but spiritual" gave me a pause. What does it actually mean?
Issues with the survey:
EDIT: Overall, it's pretty good.
For the gender question it may make sense to have a generic "other" option. The monogamous/polygamous question should also maybe have a no preference option also.
Edit: And finished.
Agree, especially with regard to mono/poly question.
Nearly forgot; I did complete it. Thanks for your work, Yvain!
Thanks for doing this, I just took it. With the gender question, in addition to the transgender questions, it's maximally inclusive to include a non-binary "genderqueer" option.
Done. Definitely went through the whole "check the publication date"--whoop of victory--worry I was underconfident routine. Except silently because there's a sleeping person less than a foot away.
I'm amazed at the range of possibilities I considered for some of those probabilities. I definitely do not have a solid grasp of reality.
I've been lurking on here for a long time, and just now registered to get a free karma point for taking the survey.
On the "Political" question: I identify with none of those. I understand the question is about which I identify with most, but all of the options have views on both social permissivity and economic redistribution. I am socially permissive, but have no belief one way or the other on redistribution/taxes. I simply have insufficient knowledge of that area to make a judgment. Perhaps it would be better to have two different questions - one for each of social views and economic views?
For "Religious views": I am an atheist but would not self-identify as either "spiritual" or "not spiritual". If a person asked me which I was, I would ask them what they meant by spiritual. I answered "Atheist but not spiritual", on the very weak grounds that I suspect I do not satisfy most other people's conceptions of spirituality; but really, the word is very ill-defined.
Shouldn't you ask when the respondent thinks the Singularity will occur before mentioning the year 2100, to avoid anchoring?
If the survey is still going on, might want to remove your mention of the year 2100 as well, also to avoid anchoring.
This survey is now closed. I'll have data eventually.
The answer to my question from November 12 was 970 people.
I took the survey, sometime last week I think. EDIT: I think I may also have messed up the "two-digit probabilities" formatting requirement. I can't recall specifically any answer that might have violated it, but I also don't recall paying attention to that requirement while answering the survey.
Just took the survey. I got a little behind on my rss feeds, sorry! Thanks for keeping it open!
Surveys always need more respondents. When Wikipedia or Reddit want to publicize things, we/they use a bar at the top of the page. Can we do that? (It doesn't have to be as obnoxious as the donation fundraiser ones WP uses!)
I'm doing it wrong right?
Those staring eyes - my god, I can see into his soul and he has no qualia!
I think it needs to be a little more of a disapproving scowl. Does Eliezer do that?
How about some of these expressions?
I took the survey late last night after first noticing the posting here. Unfortunately, I was so tired that I forgot the instruction to use double digit answers and remembered it a few minutes after hitting the "Submit" button. (Here come the down votes.) If Yvain can identify my submission, put a "0" before all single digit answers. If not, contact me privately and I'll provide some help identifying it. I lurk and never comment here because frankly you are all more intelligent than I am. But I do want to improve my rational thinking skills so here I am.
I took the survey. Thanksgiving break at the family house gives me plenty of time to relax and catch up on all of the reading here that I have been avoiding since I started college.
Yay free karma. Can I exchange the karma for a lunch?
One more long time lurker (over RSS) who just created an account to take the survey and comment. Probably my favorite survey I've ever taken, I'll direct a few friends to it as well and try to get them to start reading the site.
I just noticed this:
I suppose that means you'd like to know that I took it about two weeks ago. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier!
Took the survey; lurk lots and should probably get more involved. First steps can be going to the London meetup. +-10 on publishing yeah, but overestimated my uncertainty to be safe.
Survey taken. I look forward to the results.
Took the survey; I mostly lurk but have posted occasionally.
Survey taken. :)
Perhaps future surveys should have exhaust valves channeling people's need to express themselves:
1) In any number of words, what is your theory of gender? (essay section)
2) On unsophisticated government forms that only have the options "male" and "female", which do you select? (multiple choice, two options)
3) Sex with people who gave the same answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)
4) Sex with people who gave a different answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)
5) In any number of words, what are your political views? (essay section)
6) Which nine of the following ten political terms most poorly describe that position (multiple choice, ten options).
etc.
Another proof that survey design is hard: should I answer "yay male/male sex, I strongly support same-sex <everything>" or "boo male/male sex, I am not interested?" Or, taking a page from Alicorn's book, what about those who say "yay male/male sex, I'd like to be interested in men?" (I'd expect this to be a statistically detectable portion of test-takers.)
Also, making people write essays just to throw them away is not a terribly productive use of anyone's time.
Another lurker who took the survey. I suppose I should go find the newbie thread and introduce myself.
I was extra wrong on Principia. Almost disturbing to think how recent it was...
Semi-rare poster. I was almost two-hundred years off. I think it might be the latin title that throws people.
Took the survey. Afraid to look up the calibration question, because I know I'm off.
Thanks for conducting this new survey, Yvain. I eagerly await the results.
Slightly off-topic, it would be interesting to see how members of this community respond to the PhilPapers survey. (You must be registered to take the survey.) My own responses can be found here.
Ah, I see that there is already a post on the PhilPapers survey, with responses by several LessWrong members in the comments section.
Grargh argh grr! The first thing I did afterwards was go to Wikipedia and see when [the thing identified] was actually [verbed], and I was off by a hundred or so years. Blech.
Anyways, survey taken.
Just took it, but I think I might have given an overelaborate answer for "Religious Background," in order to give more information than "Family Religion" provided.
I took the survey! I also assumed the probabilities were meant to be first-glance intuitive. I wish I'd known people were actually doing research, for I would have done the calculations!
I took the survey.
I took the survey. I left most of the probability estimation questions blank because I feel very uncertain about any number I imagine entering.
For those of us still in high school, should we put "general" or the major we expect to take in college?
I'm in high school(12th year) and I put the major I'm expecting to take in college. Good to see that there are other high school students here! And you're a far lot more active than me too.
We should make a thread in the discussion forum for all high school students to introduce themselves and get advice on how to navigate the idiocy that is our education system and advice on what to study in order to get more involved with transhumanism. I need one more karma to make the post...
It'd also be a great place to find a chavruta
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).
Huh, I'm surprised that I'm not at all the first lurker to make an account just for this.
Took the survey. My probabilities sometimes contradict each other because I tried to take the outside view into account, and found no consistent way to do so before giving up.
I did get Newton almost exactly right.
Took they survey. Interested in the results. Interestingly enough, I have had an account for a month or two now, but have not posted anything until now. Thanks for putting this together Yvain.
Like many others, I made an account for this survey.
Thanks for putting together the survey. It prompted me to do a couple things, including start posting here.
I was about 100 years off with Newton. Dang it!
Troshen
Took the survey and finally created an account on here.
Looking at the comments, it seems like I am not the only one who used the survey as an impetus to create an account or a first post. I would be interested to see if there was a significant increase in the number of new accounts while the survey is running (as opposed to the average number of new accounts when there is no current survey).
...Also I took the IQ test posted in the comments.. Yeah, it has me as a good 15 points lower than what I was tested as in school also.
I approve of your screenname!
Then I'm certainly not going to do it! Thanks for the warning. ;)
I took the survey.
I took the survey.
I took the survey. If it is not too late to receive Karma for taking the survey, I would not mind.
I took your survey. There may be small errors in a couple of my answers. I can hardly wait to see your explanation of what you are doing with those "calibration questions" like "what is your estimate of the probability that your answer to Newton's Principia publication date is within 15 years of the correct answer"?
Also if there is some sort of sampling theory surveying practice FAQ that explains the use of such questions I would be interested in reading it.
Yvain, one very important question that I think you missed: Do you currently have an account on Lesswrong?
I personally don't, and glancing through the number of 'first post' comments here, I believe that the ratio of lurkers to active users may be significant. (This is a throwaway account, and I am making an exception this once because there would be no other way to get information from the lurkers.)
Good point. I hope that the "karma" question will take care of some of the problem, but I should have distinguished more finely.
I took the survey and I agree with some other comments about the difficulty of assigning probabilities to distant events. I decided to just round to either 0 or 1% for a few things. I hope "0" won't be interpreted as literally zero.
Something bugs me about the IQ question. It's easy to call sour grapes on those complaining about that metric but it seems like such a poor proxy for what matters, namely, making awesome stuff happen. Not denying a correlation, just that I think we can do much better. Even income in dollars might be a better proxy despite the obvious problems with that.
Rest easy - it was stated that it meant epsilon.
I think income in dollars is a much worse proxy for most things that matter than IQ, because it depends so much on age and career choice and where you live and so forth. And how do you know that what Yvain was after was a measure of "making awesome stuff happen"?
I think “age and career choice and where you live and so forth” also correlate with “making awesome stuff happen”, and in very similar ways. OTOH, I think IQ is probably a decent predictor of “making awesome stuff happen” among people with same “age and career choice and where you live and so forth”.
Age is correlated in two different ways with making awesome stuff happen. (1) There's presumably some peak period of life in which you're more likely to do awesome things. (2) The likelihood of having made something awesome happen is monotonically increasing with age. If Yvain were wanting to measure awesomeness -- and let me repeat that I see no particular reason to assume that was his goal -- then #1 would be of some interest. But what you get by looking at income is more like #2.
Career choice is certainly correlated both with making awesome things happen and with income. But, again, in different ways. For instance, if you're a very clever technically-inclined new graduate wanting to get rich, then finance and law are pretty good choices of career. Both offer, especially if you're both good and lucky, the opportunity to get hold of very large amounts of money. But if those are careers that tend to produce a lot of awesomeness, I seem to have failed to notice. (Handwavy explanation: To get a lot of money, you need to do things that others find very valuable. You can do that by creating new value, which is hard; or by steering value towards the people who pay you, which is often easier. When someone working in finance makes his clients rich, it's usually mostly at other people's expense: to buy low and sell high, you require others to sell low and buy high. Law is somewhat similar, though I think it tends to be more about steering anti-value away from your clients.)
I took the survey. Got Newton wrong by over 50 years. At least my confidence was appropriately low.
I would suggest requesting probabilities in a simple, exception-less way. Why not just ask for a number from 0 to 1? "Use percentages, but don't put down the percentage sign, unless you're going below 1%, then put the percentage sign so I know it's not a mistake" looks to me like asking for trouble.
I've taken the survey, and have the uncomfortable feeling that the odds I gave for several interrelated propositions were mutually inconsistent.
Yes, I had the same feeling when I finished.
I've taken the survey, and realised that I really need to practise making probability estimates.
We all need to. :)
Took the survey.
I think I failed it.
I missed newton by over 150 years. Pray for a curve.
I took it too. Disturbs me how much my alien probability changed when framed as 'in universe' vs 'in galaxy'.
I'm not sure why it should disturb you. If the probability of intelligent life evolving in galaxy x is the same for all x, and there are about 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe, then the chance of intelligent life in the observable universe is about 1-(1-x)^100 billion. This assumes that whether life evolves in any one galaxy is independent of whether it evolved in another.
I wish I had remembered to use this formula when I took the survey.
Took the survey.
After taking it and reading these comments I took this IQ test mentioned in this comment.
If it is accurate I've lost 20 IQ points since I was 17 (the date of my one and only IQ test). That's kind of depressing. Then again, I feel like I'm a much better thinker now...
I had been under the impression that IQ = mental age / physical age. I'm not sure how to understand a test that doesn't ask how old one is.
I also just tried that test and got a score that I am pretty sure is ~20 lower than the one I took as a small child (though I can't be sure since my parents declined to tell me exactly how I scored at the time).
That's true for children, but as intelligence solidifies at ~16-20 it doesn't make sense to include age after that.
Depends on the test. E.g. some IQ tests measure the size of your vocabulary. IIRC, the reason why this works is that people with a higher IQ tend be to quicker at learning the meaning of a word from its context, and therefore accumulate a larger vocabulary. That makes the size of your vocabulary adequate as a rough proxy for IQ - but only within your age group, since people older than you have had more time to accumulate a large vocabulary.
Different tests have used different definitions of IQ. Lately most tests use 15 IQ points = 1 standard deviation. You can't compare IQ scores without converting them to the same standard.
Took it.
(Regarding the phrase "ontologically basic mental entity"; in my head, I always hear it in the voice of Raz from Psychonauts.)
Took it. Thanks for the effort you are putting into this.
Took the survey.
Thought you might have included an option for "reactionary" on the political orientation question. The distinction between reactionary, and libertarian or conservative is substantial even given the fact that the match isn't supposed to be perfect.
The global warming question might be more discriminating if the question were whether someone thinks that the mainstream view on AGW is scientifically valid within reason. The question as it stands is vague, hinging on the interpretation of "significant".
Otherwise a good survey!
But who self-identifies as a reactionary? That said, there are a number of large holes in the political question. A Left Anarchist is going to feel severely pissed off with having to choose between state socialism and anarcho capitalism.
Lots of people. I've seen a number of reactionary blogs discussed here, so there probably are several self identified reactionaries.
Took the survey and was quite unsure how to answer the god questions... If we took it, for example, that there's 30% chance of universe being simulated then the same probability should be assigned to P(God) too and to P(one of the religions is correct) as well.
Took it. First post as well.
Welcome to Less Wrong! Now that you're officially out of lurkdom, I hope you stay.
I'm not sure what it is about a survey that gets me to stop lurking at a community and actually create an account, but there you have it. Maybe it's just the chance to tell my 'story' anonymously.
Took it. It might be worth differentiating between people who identify with a particular political group and people who just happen to skew a little more in one direction than another.
Some of my probabilities might be a bit off, too, as I'm not entirely sure about factoring x-risks into the lifespan questions. A better way of specifying various very small probabilities would also be appreciated.
Alright, I finally made an account. Thanks for the push, though this had little to do with why I've joined. I liked the probability parts of the survey, though I know I need to improve my estimates. Political section might be better done with a full-fledged Question section just devoted to it. Perhaps a later survey? I can't wait to see the results.
Took it. Though I had a hard time answering what religion my family would abide to, my dad is an agnostic I think, but I'm not even sure what my mother believes in . . . No one I know very well practice religion (not just believing) either so it has never been a big part of my life, might be because I'm from Sweden.
Just took it.
About the probability questions: I thought you were supposed to answer them instantly for your intuitive stance at the moment, without additional research, though I see some of responders apparently did research. Perhaps it should be better specified what is meant.