2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey

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

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.

Click here to take the survey

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.

Comments (694)

Comment author: Yvain 03 December 2011 02:08:56AM 7 points [-]

This survey is now closed. I'll have data eventually.

The answer to my question from November 12 was 970 people.

Comment author: Craig_Heldreth 03 December 2011 04:24:39PM 0 points [-]

Eagerly anticipating your analysis and the subsequent discussion.

Thanks again!

Comment author: jknapka 01 December 2011 04:01:23PM *  2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: JoelCazares 01 December 2011 04:32:14AM 2 points [-]

Just took the survey. I got a little behind on my rss feeds, sorry! Thanks for keeping it open!

Comment author: Relsqui 29 November 2011 07:21:23AM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: gwern 28 November 2011 05:02:28PM 4 points [-]

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!)

Comment author: [deleted] 28 November 2011 06:40:48PM *  13 points [-]

I'm doing it wrong right?

Comment author: thomblake 28 November 2011 07:51:05PM 1 point [-]

I think it needs to be a little more of a disapproving scowl. Does Eliezer do that?

Comment author: [deleted] 28 November 2011 07:55:48PM 3 points [-]

How about some of these expressions?

Comment author: gwern 28 November 2011 07:13:31PM 14 points [-]

Those staring eyes - my god, I can see into his soul and he has no qualia!

Comment author: jwthomas 27 November 2011 05:10:13PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Michelle_Z 25 November 2011 08:57:24PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: AndyCossyleon 22 November 2011 12:31:55AM 6 points [-]

Yay free karma. Can I exchange the karma for a lunch?

Comment author: Shabs42 19 November 2011 04:55:11AM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Mercurial 17 November 2011 05:22:37PM *  5 points [-]

I just noticed this:

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.

I suppose that means you'd like to know that I took it about two weeks ago. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier!

Comment author: Rabscuttle 16 November 2011 08:34:02PM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: mumon 15 November 2011 10:19:23AM 4 points [-]

Survey taken. I look forward to the results.

Comment author: Wandering_Sophist 15 November 2011 06:29:54AM 8 points [-]

Took the survey; I mostly lurk but have posted occasionally.

Comment author: Anny1 14 November 2011 10:04:09PM 9 points [-]

Survey taken. :)

Comment author: lessdazed 14 November 2011 04:25:44PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: JoachimSchipper 15 November 2011 03:02:48PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 November 2011 04:42:42PM 0 points [-]

In the meantime, I suppose individuals can approximate the same behavior by writing such things in a file on their hard drive. It won't affect processing of the survey, of course, but then it wouldn't really do so anyway.

Longer-term, presumably the goals we want to achieve with a question should drive the options we provide for answers. If we want to correlate demographic category with other answers, then we really don't care about demographic categories that cover fewer than 5% or so of the population, since such correlations would be even less useful than baseline, but we do care about standardizing answers. If we want to know how LessWrong readers identify themselves because we're curious, we don't really care about standardizing answers, but we do want to let respondents use their own terms to describe themselves. Etc.

Comment author: False_Solace 14 November 2011 02:29:23PM 7 points [-]

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...

Comment author: FeepingCreature 16 November 2011 07:02:39PM 1 point [-]

Semi-rare poster. I was almost two-hundred years off. I think it might be the latin title that throws people.

Comment author: jknapka 01 December 2011 04:06:21PM 0 points [-]

I was over 100 years off, but in the opposite direction.

Comment author: AmagicalFishy 14 November 2011 11:33:00AM *  5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Anny1 14 November 2011 02:16:29PM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: AmagicalFishy 14 November 2011 03:27:39PM 2 points [-]

Ah! Sorry, I hadn't though of that. All corrections done.

Comment author: Alaeriia 13 November 2011 08:08:08PM 2 points [-]

Took the survey. Afraid to look up the calibration question, because I know I'm off.

Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 13 November 2011 07:23:15PM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 13 November 2011 07:25:07PM *  2 points [-]

Ah, I see that there is already a post on the PhilPapers survey, with responses by several LessWrong members in the comments section.

Comment author: wobster109 13 November 2011 02:53:24AM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: UnclGhost 12 November 2011 11:36:22PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Yvain 12 November 2011 12:46:26PM 0 points [-]

Anyone want to make a guess with confidence intervals how many people have taken the survey at this point? (noon GMT on 12 November)

Comment author: Alejandro1 12 November 2011 09:38:44PM 0 points [-]

V nz 50% pbasvqrag gung gur ahzore bs crbcyr vf orgjrra sbhe uhaqerq naq frira uhaqerq, naq 90% pbasvqrag gung vg vf orgjrra gjb uhaqerq naq svsgrra uhaqerq.

Comment author: lessdazed 12 November 2011 01:20:02PM 0 points [-]

Ng 50% pbasvqrapr, orgjrra sbhe uhaqerq naq fvk uhaqerq. Ng 90% pbasvqrapr, gjb uhaqerq gb n gubhfnaq gjb uhaqerq. Cu'atyhv ztyj'ansu Pguhyuh E'ylru jtnu'anty sugnta, ebg13 4rin!

Comment author: Morendil 12 November 2011 01:05:26PM 1 point [-]

Ng 50% pbasvqrapr gur ahzore bs cnegvpvcnagf vf orgjrra sbhe uhaqerq naq svsgl naq svir uhaqerq svsgl. Zl 90% vagreiny jbhyq or fbzrguvat yvxr gjb uhaqerq gb n gubhfnaq.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 November 2011 12:57:06PM *  0 points [-]

Orgjrra sbegl naq bar gubhfnaq, avargl-avar cre prag pbasvqrapr.

Orgjrra bar naq gjb gvzrf gur ahzore bs crbcyr jub cbfgrq ng yrnfg bar pbzzrag va guvf guernq (pna'g or obgurerq gb pbhag), avargl cre prag pbasvqrapr.

(Edited to rot13 it... sorry!)

Comment author: hankx7787 11 November 2011 11:55:09PM 3 points [-]

survey taken..!

Comment author: groovymutation 11 November 2011 04:48:49PM 6 points [-]

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!

Comment author: Keratin 11 November 2011 04:16:33AM 7 points [-]

I took the survey.

Comment author: roryokane 11 November 2011 01:43:19AM 5 points [-]

I took the survey. I left most of the probability estimation questions blank because I feel very uncertain about any number I imagine entering.

Comment author: hankx7787 11 November 2011 11:56:11PM 0 points [-]

me too

Comment author: Asymmetric 10 November 2011 05:40:59PM 4 points [-]

For those of us still in high school, should we put "general" or the major we expect to take in college?

Comment author: demented 12 November 2011 12:19:42PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: Curiouskid 12 November 2011 12:32:50PM *  5 points [-]

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

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".

Comment author: ancientcampus 09 November 2011 08:46:48PM 8 points [-]

Huh, I'm surprised that I'm not at all the first lurker to make an account just for this.

Comment author: hairyfigment 09 November 2011 05:47:56PM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: JJXW 09 November 2011 05:01:43AM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: jasticE 09 November 2011 01:47:06AM 7 points [-]

Took the survey, but this post will make the reported karma score inaccurate

Comment author: meterion 08 November 2011 06:12:35PM 6 points [-]

Like many others, I made an account for this survey.

Comment author: Troshen 08 November 2011 05:42:05PM 6 points [-]

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

Comment author: [deleted] 08 November 2011 03:21:11AM 12 points [-]

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.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2011 09:30:22PM *  0 points [-]

...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.

Mind me asking which one exactly?

Comment author: [deleted] 21 November 2011 12:29:48AM *  0 points [-]

Mind me asking which one exactly?

This one posted by Dustin. I was in the 140s in school, but only got like 126 on this one. Maybe because it focuses so much on the one type of problem?

Comment author: wedrifid 08 November 2011 08:13:26AM 5 points [-]

...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.

Then I'm certainly not going to do it! Thanks for the warning. ;)

Comment author: Alicorn 08 November 2011 05:04:40AM 2 points [-]

I approve of your screenname!

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 02:32:53AM 0 points [-]

Thanks! :)

Comment author: Karmakaiser 08 November 2011 02:53:55AM 6 points [-]

I took the survey.

Comment author: knb 08 November 2011 02:01:00AM 6 points [-]

I took the survey.

Comment author: Multiheaded 07 November 2011 12:45:15PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: mumon 15 November 2011 10:24:41AM 3 points [-]

But would the definition of God you have used qualify as an "ontologically basic mental entity", as demanded by the survey?

Comment author: J_Taylor 07 November 2011 05:39:55AM *  8 points [-]

I took the survey. If it is not too late to receive Karma for taking the survey, I would not mind.

Comment author: Craig_Heldreth 07 November 2011 04:48:06AM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Username 06 November 2011 07:16:20PM *  10 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: Yvain 06 November 2011 07:19:14PM 6 points [-]

Good point. I hope that the "karma" question will take care of some of the problem, but I should have distinguished more finely.

Comment author: dreeves 06 November 2011 07:07:46PM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: dlthomas 08 November 2011 01:02:16AM 4 points [-]

I hope "0" won't be interpreted as literally zero.

Rest easy - it was stated that it meant epsilon.

Comment author: gjm 08 November 2011 12:46:55AM *  3 points [-]

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"?

Comment author: [deleted] 08 November 2011 07:40:18PM 2 points [-]

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”.

Comment author: gjm 09 November 2011 12:59:04AM 2 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: mindspillage 11 November 2011 11:45:59PM 0 points [-]

There are people in law who are making awesome things happen, but they are not getting paid anywhere close to as much for it as the ones who are doing standard things for deep-pocketed clients.

Comment author: dlthomas 11 November 2011 11:51:04PM 1 point [-]

For that matter, there are people in finance who are making awesome things happen - if we want a particularly PC example, Grameen Bank

Comment author: dreeves 08 November 2011 02:29:36AM 0 points [-]

True, I was just thinking that something that correlates (loosely) with "having made awesome stuff happen" might be better than something that correlates with "has one of multiple skills that contribute to the hypothetical ability to make awesome stuff happen".

As for whether "making awesome stuff happen" is the right underlying metric... what else?

Comment author: gjm 08 November 2011 07:16:14PM 2 points [-]

what else?

Well, for instance, given that Less Wrong is all about thinking better, there might be some interest in knowing something about (so to speak) the raw thinking power of the participants.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 06 November 2011 04:29:56PM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: simplicio 06 November 2011 04:26:50PM 6 points [-]

I've taken the survey, and have the uncomfortable feeling that the odds I gave for several interrelated propositions were mutually inconsistent.

Comment author: Dustin 06 November 2011 06:06:45PM 3 points [-]

Yes, I had the same feeling when I finished.

Comment author: suzanne 06 November 2011 02:38:33PM 6 points [-]

I've taken the survey, and realised that I really need to practise making probability estimates.

Comment author: Morendil 06 November 2011 02:39:12PM 5 points [-]

We all need to. :)

Comment author: hamnox 06 November 2011 03:22:57AM *  19 points [-]

Took the survey.

I think I failed it.

Comment author: Insert_Idionym_Here 07 November 2011 09:50:12PM 7 points [-]

I missed newton by over 150 years. Pray for a curve.

Comment author: jdgalt 05 November 2011 09:39:12PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: lessdazed 06 November 2011 02:25:36AM 2 points [-]

because there's no possible experiment that can test it

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?

Comment author: jdgalt 07 November 2011 12:27:36AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: lessdazed 07 November 2011 05:28:20AM 2 points [-]

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/

Comment author: jdgalt 08 November 2011 12:51:14AM 0 points [-]

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?

Comment author: thomblake 08 November 2011 01:04:58AM 3 points [-]

The first "sentence" isn't a sentence or even coherent.

Yes it is. Maybe this rephrasing would help:

So let me state my understanding with the inflection of a question so you know it requests a response... 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 && MWI]) then (MWI is "objectively meaningless").

Comment author: jdgalt 13 November 2011 10:57:19PM 0 points [-]

I don't know what you mean by "science can't think of anything better".

I'm simply using the standard that a statement is objectively meaningful if it states some alleged objective fact.

I reject the notion of hidden variables (except possibly the core of oneself, the existence of the ego) as un-Bayesian. With that one potential exception, all objective facts are testable, at least in principle (though some may be impractical to test).

I fail to see how one can be rational and not believe that. I'm not saying this to insult, but to get an explanation of what you think I've overlooked.

Comment author: thomblake 14 November 2011 04:54:42PM 0 points [-]

You should re-write this as a reply to the person who made those claims.

Comment author: gwern 05 November 2011 06:21:17PM 5 points [-]

I took it too. Disturbs me how much my alien probability changed when framed as 'in universe' vs 'in galaxy'.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 03:05:42PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Dustin 05 November 2011 05:58:17PM 4 points [-]

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...

Comment author: Prismattic 05 November 2011 09:01:45PM 1 point [-]

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).

Comment author: Vaniver 06 November 2011 11:28:33PM 2 points [-]

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.

That's true for children, but as intelligence solidifies at ~16-20 it doesn't make sense to include age after that.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 10 November 2011 03:58:18PM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: saturn 05 November 2011 11:17:15PM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Leonhart 05 November 2011 03:50:32PM *  9 points [-]

Took it.

(Regarding the phrase "ontologically basic mental entity"; in my head, I always hear it in the voice of Raz from Psychonauts.)

Comment author: Alejandro1 05 November 2011 03:34:29PM 8 points [-]

Took it. Thanks for the effort you are putting into this.

Comment author: Malcolm_Edwards 05 November 2011 12:45:30PM 5 points [-]

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%.

Comment author: simplicio 06 November 2011 04:35:41PM *  4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 06 November 2011 05:40:35PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: simplicio 06 November 2011 06:37:54PM *  0 points [-]

It occurs to me that my reply is a little too qualitative, so I'll try to put it into the language of probability. I have a prior on the idea that aliens created us; it is very low (maybe 100,000:1) but I feel quite certain that the proposition is physically meaningful, and if you handed me evidence I would gladly update in that direction. On the other hand, it is not immediately obvious to me that the idea of a supernatural god is physically or indeed logically meaningful. I'll still grudgingly quote you a prior, but with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Comment author: simplicio 06 November 2011 05:57:39PM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 06 November 2011 07:37:40PM 0 points [-]

I agree that positing a ontologically basic creator has one more deficit than positing an ontologically non-basic creator. I just don't think that's a particularly important place to draw the line. Far more important to me is the difference between positing an goal-directed creator vs. a non-goal-directed one, for example. To my mind, positing alien astronauts who came to Earth in order to create human beings is nearly as problematic as positing a god who did so, and focusing my attention on the extra deficit introduced by the latter is not a helpful use of my attention.

Re: "nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures"... I'm not sure if I agree with this, as I'm not exactly sure what it means. Let me put it this way: if glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity, I'm confident that >15% of humanity would worship those entities. If those entities were demonstrated to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, that prediction doesn't change. Do you disagree with either of those predictions?

Comment author: lessdazed 06 November 2011 07:55:02PM *  3 points [-]

If those entities were demonstrated to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, that prediction doesn't change.

You cheated! Have them begin by worshiping something, however you change its nature worshipers will still follow it.

If one of the glowing entities had an anti-gravity pack fail and fell a few hundred feet onto asphalt, rupturing its flesh, dismembering its limbs, and bursting its carcass open in a gory rain of blood and giblets on national television during first contact, you might not get 15%.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 November 2011 01:30:06AM 0 points [-]

I infer that you agree with my predictions, despite considering the second one irrelevant to the question at hand. Confirm/deny?

I agree with you that in the case you describe, you probably wouldn't get 15%. I don't think that has much, if anything, to do with the entity's basic ontological nature. I think it has a great deal to do with its demonstrated fallibility and mortality, as well as the emotional consequences of bloody deaths.

If glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity and claimed to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, I'm confident that >15% of humanity presented with all of those facts up front would come to worship those entities . I infer that you disagree. Confirm/deny?

Comment author: lessdazed 07 November 2011 06:57:04AM 0 points [-]

...hand. Confirm/deny?

Confirm

emotional consequences of bloody deaths.

There are emotional consequences to apparent perfection that we intellectually know isn't real, so there is no neutral framework.

claimed to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts

That's not a complete enough back story because they could be the agents of something else. If they don't say more than this,15% might not worship them as more than angels. Let's say they claim to have evolved from goop, just like all animals on Earth except humans, which they claim to have created. Then, I think "Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures" applies, though by "nobody" I mean "only certainly tens of millions", and I'm not too confident in the 15% figure.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 November 2011 01:16:53PM 0 points [-]

Agreed that there's no neutral framework in the sense I think you mean it: however that meeting goes, it has emotional consequences.

We're bouncing several scenarios around, so to avoid confusion I will label them... A is where they show up and don't announce their ontological nature, B is where they show up and take a bloody pratfall, C is where they announce their non-basic ontological nature, D is where they show up and announce they evolved via natural selection of random modification.

If I understand what you mean by "worship them as angels," I agree that, in C, most of the worshippers would likely do that. If that's not what you meant by "worship" then I might agree with your original claim; I'm not sure.

I agree that most of the people who would worship them in C would not worship them in D. If D is what you meant by "fellow creatures" then I probably agree with your original claim.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2011 12:34:28PM *  11 points [-]

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!

Comment author: Mardonius 06 November 2011 04:29:17AM *  6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: knb 08 November 2011 02:57:02AM *  2 points [-]

But who self-identifies as a reactionary?

Lots of people. I've seen a number of reactionary blogs discussed here, so there probably are several self identified reactionaries.

Comment author: FAWS 05 November 2011 11:11:34AM *  7 points [-]

Took the survey. Why are posts stating that being voted up?

Comment author: dbaupp 05 November 2011 11:27:52AM *  3 points [-]

Like the last survey, if you take it and post that you took it here, [Yvain] will upvote you, and [Yvain] hope[s] other people will upvote you too.

Comment author: Dan_Moore 07 November 2011 04:22:51PM 1 point [-]

I took the survey too. Thanks for creating it.

Comment author: dbaupp 07 November 2011 10:24:19PM 0 points [-]

Sorry, the grandparent wasn't clear, but I'm not the one who made it. You'll have to thank Yvain.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 November 2011 12:41:06PM 6 points [-]

Oooh, I took it! Vote me up too.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2011 12:01:23AM 6 points [-]

Does karma hunger ever go away? I've often wondered how EY feels about being up voted or down voted.

Comment author: komponisto 06 November 2011 12:10:27AM 5 points [-]

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...)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2011 06:36:30PM 0 points [-]

BTW, I wonder if the “karma for the last 30 days” meter counts the karma for stuff which I wrote in the last 30 days, or for whatever was up/downvoted in the same period, no matter how long ago I wrote it.

Comment author: shokwave 08 November 2011 08:54:41AM 2 points [-]

It was the former for a short while and is now the latter.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 November 2011 06:54:21AM 10 points [-]

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.

Comment author: komponisto 06 November 2011 07:39:05AM 1 point [-]

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).

Comment author: Emile 06 November 2011 02:56:33PM 5 points [-]

You know saying that is just begging people to find clever self-referential ways of making that happen.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 03:07:49PM 2 points [-]

Nice try.

Comment author: Dwelle 05 November 2011 10:42:43AM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 03:09:20PM *  0 points [-]

I can understand saying that "the universe is a simulation" implies "there is a god" for a deistic definition of god. But why would it imply that one of the religions is correct? Do you count deism as a religion?

Comment author: kilobug 06 November 2011 04:03:26PM 0 points [-]

Well, we enter the problem of "definition of god" right now. Does the tree that falls in a forest with no one to listen makes a sound ? Depends if "sound" is "vibration of the air" or "acoustic signal in a brain". The same goes here. If the universe is a simulation, there is a "god" if a "god" is "a conscious entity that created the universe", but not if a god is "an omni-powerful omniscient entity that existed for always" or anything else that most religions stick in the "god" word. And if "god" is an ontologically sentient entity that can't be reduce to non-sentient components, then it's unlikely that the creators of the simulation are like that, but not totally impossible (since the hypothesis space of how the "real universe" would be is very large).

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2011 06:33:45PM 0 points [-]

If you understand for always as ‘ever since this universe has existed’, omniscient as ‘who knows everything about this universe’, etc., then a simulator would pretty much qualify as a god under that definition.

Comment author: kilobug 06 November 2011 07:05:03PM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't say that a simulator is omniscient about its content. It'll know all the positions of quarks and everything, but that's not being omniscient in the sense that is given by major religions for God. An "omniscient God" as stated by theists doesn't only know the exact quantum state of my brain, but also what it means in term of actual thoughts, knowing how to interpret that exact configuration as me being dishonest or whatever. I doubt much simulators have that level of awareness on their content. It is theoretically possible to build one which does have it, but it's not a certainty at all that a simulator will have it.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 09:45:07PM 0 points [-]

If this universe is completely reductionistic, which a simulation probably would be, then your "actual thoughts" (and the existence of trees, etc.) are logical implications of the configuration. Does an entity with logical uncertainty still count as omniscient? But then we've gotten into definitions again.

I still don't know whether you, personally, think a deistic god implies that one or more religions is true. It doesn't particularly matter, though. Your original point that the answer to the god question depends on the answer to the simulation question is a good one.

Comment author: Dwelle 10 November 2011 02:48:55PM 0 points [-]

Depends, of course, how you define religion. I'm not sure what the original question was but there is of course a religion stating the universe is a simulation, god or no god.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 November 2011 10:09:52PM 0 points [-]

How do you figure?

Comment author: Cody 05 November 2011 06:01:59AM *  10 points [-]

Took it. First post as well.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 11:39:31PM 2 points [-]

Welcome to Less Wrong! Now that you're officially out of lurkdom, I hope you stay.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 04 November 2011 11:11:25PM 4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Skeeve 04 November 2011 10:55:59PM 10 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 03:10:12PM 0 points [-]

Welcome to LW!

Comment author: [deleted] 04 November 2011 08:38:08PM 7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: TerminalAwareness 04 November 2011 04:17:44PM 9 points [-]

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.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 November 2011 01:52:02PM 9 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Divide 04 November 2011 01:23:18PM 12 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Technoguyrob 04 November 2011 10:35:30AM 9 points [-]

I took the survey and could feel my affective heuristics generating random near-the-ballpark numbers.

Given I am a mathematician and have no idea how to actually compute any of those probabilities (or what that would even formally mean, say in a probability measure space), I let those numbers stand without further scrutiny.

Comment author: mkehrt 04 November 2011 07:30:40AM *  14 points [-]

Issues with the survey:

  1. As mentioned elsewhere, politics is Americentric.
  2. Race race seems to be missing some categorizations.
  3. If you are going to include transgender, you probably should call the others cis. Otherwise you run the risk of implying transgendered people are not "really" their target gender, which is a mess.
  4. The question of academic field was poorly phrased. I'm not an academic, so I assumed you meant what academic field was most relevant to my work. But you really should ask this question without referring to academia.
  5. The academic question and the question about field of work need more options.
  6. Expertise question needs CS as an answer :-)

EDIT: Overall, it's pretty good.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 November 2011 06:47:57AM 8 points [-]

After lurking on LessWrong for several months, I just made an account today and took the survey. :) I'm curious to see the results.

Comment author: Metus 03 November 2011 10:33:50PM 8 points [-]

Took the survey, hoping for valuable data soon.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 09:44:33PM *  0 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: RobinZ 05 November 2011 09:48:55PM 0 points [-]

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.)

Edited when?

Comment author: [deleted] 06 November 2011 02:00:54AM 0 points [-]

About an hour after I first posted it. (Damn, I lost.) BTW, I had forgotten that posts at -4 and below are hidden by default, otherwise I would've assigned a lower probability.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 November 2011 07:50:28PM 4 points [-]

I took the survey a few days ago, and in retrospect my answers of 0 for probabilities were overconfident and the result of me being too lazy to think hard.

Comment author: dlthomas 03 November 2011 08:43:01PM 1 point [-]

In many cases, mine were a result of not wanting to type that many zeros. In the future, can we pick our units?

Comment author: lessdazed 03 November 2011 09:19:28PM *  2 points [-]

It's hard to determine how likely it is I'm not high and staring at a bunch of skittles or something that I mistakenly think is a good argument, as Yvain has said.

I'm thinking 1/10^9 for any ontologically basic mental entities and 1/10^21 for a god.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 10:25:02PM 2 points [-]

Maybe the next time the survey should not allow probabilities exactly 0 or 1 (rather than saying they'll be interpreted as 0+epsilon and 1-epsilon), and give the option to express probabilities as log-odds if they're extreme. (Anyway, I didn't give any probability lower than 0.1% or higher than 99.9% in my answer.)

Comment author: dlthomas 03 November 2011 10:26:30PM 2 points [-]

... why not log odds all the time?

Comment author: faul_sname 03 November 2011 07:29:52PM *  6 points [-]

I just finished the survey. I had given myself a 15% probability of being correct on the Newton question, and was off by significantly over 15 years. However, I should have calibrated that as 30%, as I knew the century but had no idea when in the century he published the book.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 09:19:51PM *  2 points [-]

However, I should have calibrated that as 30%, as I knew the century but had no idea when in the century he published the book.

Yes! I made the same mistake.

If you know the century, there are only about (10/3) mutually-exclusive 30-year periods. Thus, the lowest your maximum probability out of all 30-year periods should be about 30%, and the one that you actually guessed should be at least a little higher than that. (of course, if your guess is within 15 years of the century boundaries, some of that probability mass is going to get splinched).

Comment author: Friendly-HI 03 November 2011 07:14:25PM *  2 points [-]

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...

Comment author: Alicorn 04 November 2011 12:12:57AM 14 points [-]

raped

Please do not use this word in this way.

Comment author: Friendly-HI 04 November 2011 12:59:26AM *  10 points [-]

"fixed". I'm genuinely sorry for being inconsiderate, I'm young and still have a tendency to use provocative language if I feel emotionally stimulated.

On a lighter note... I'm curious how some of you may have estimated a very low probability of say... the likelihood that one religion is a very good approximation to the truth. I doubt that there really is any way in which someone could give a sensible estimate, unless one were to put years of work into it to weigh all the (non)evidence meticulously (and as we know religions tend to dress their stories in a LOT of colorful detail, because hearing details makes things appear more true, since they assist our human imagination).

How could one of us, in a practical way, come up with a roughly realistic number? I used something like 0,0000000000000000001% probability because that's what it -feels- like to me. I can only imagine how unlikely it would be, by comparing it to something very unlikely... like winning the lottery twice in a row. Which still doesn't feel as surprising as discovering that our world is formed out of the body of a slayed giant. But then again my feeling of surprise upon winning the lottery (I'm not actually playing) is of course in no way directly proportional to the actual odds of winning either. What kind of thought process went through your head when you had to answer this question? (I'm asking everyone in general, not just Alicorn).

Comment author: Randolf 10 November 2011 12:03:54AM *  0 points [-]

I left that field plank because I don't think the question is well defined. It has very little meaning to assign probabilities on the existence of something as vaque as a god. Maybe there is a god, maybe there isn't. It's entirely beyond my scope.

Comment author: FAWS 04 November 2011 05:36:07PM *  2 points [-]

On a lighter note... I'm curious how some of you may have estimated a very low probability of say... the likelihood that one religion is a very good approximation to the truth.

I put a reasonably high number in for that, actually (several orders of magnitude higher than supernatural phenomena and several further orders of magnitude higher than a supernatural creator god, given supernatural = fundamentally mental). There are a lot of very different religions and the idea that a simulator (or alien) communicated with someone on Earth and this formed the basis of some religion I never heard of, or that some particular low entropy religion got enough details right by coincidence to be mostly right, doesn't sound that unreasonable.

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 November 2011 01:03:30AM 4 points [-]

I personally put 0% after some waffling around, which I felt a bit uncomfortable about because I thought some of the things I listed as 0% were more likely than others, but since I thought they were all too unlikely to meaningfully quantify, zero-plus-epsilon seemed like the best I could do.

Comment author: DanielVarga 03 November 2011 06:15:36PM 15 points [-]

Thanks, Yvain! For the next survey, please consider country of residence and first language as questions.

Comment author: BlazeOrangeDeer 03 November 2011 06:02:18PM 4 points [-]

Wow, I was off on Newton by just 3 years. My other probabilities were sadly lacking in quantifiable justification... at least you finally got me to register ;)

Comment author: ac3raven 03 November 2011 05:41:49PM 4 points [-]

Hopefully this new survey will reveal more diversity and will be taken by more than ~160 users.

Comment author: JoachimSchipper 03 November 2011 04:32:25PM 9 points [-]

I took it as well. One comment: my mother and father adhere(d) to different flavours of Christianity in different degrees. This made it somewhat hard to answer that question fully (I went with my father because he cares most, but my mother's views probably had more influence on me.)

Comment author: rochester 03 November 2011 03:35:30PM 14 points [-]

I took the survey and this is my first comment on lesswrong :)

Comment author: kilobug 03 November 2011 04:07:51PM *  4 points [-]

Welcome on Less Wrong ! Don't hesitate to read Welcome to Less Wrong and introduce yourself there.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 11:43:46PM 1 point [-]

Apologies for the nonproductive comment, but something weird happened to your formatting. I'm seeing ~1cm of space between each word.

Comment author: pedanterrific 06 November 2011 11:54:03PM *  2 points [-]

URLs break wordwrap; it treats it as one word.

May I suggest Markdown's hyperlink syntax, where [LessWrong](http://www.lesswrong.com) = LessWrong?

Comment author: kilobug 07 November 2011 08:55:18AM 0 points [-]

You're right, fixed, and thanks for suggesting it.

Comment author: Spurlock 03 November 2011 12:53:00PM 6 points [-]

Survey taken, looking forward to the results.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 November 2011 08:49:27AM *  9 points [-]

I took the survey.

The political section is begging for a one line write in, seriously. Please consider adding on in addition to the pick one option poll. I'm not having warm fuzzies for any of the groups and had to bite my tongue and pick one I really really dislike, just because the alternatives are so much worse and one of the alternatives, while probably quite popular a choice, will be misinterpreted if I chose it.

Comment author: Yvain 03 November 2011 01:38:23PM *  14 points [-]

From your perspective, that makes sense. From my perspective - I don't intend to ever look at this data. I'm going to import it into SPSS, have it crunch numbers for me, and come out with some result like "Less Wrong users are 65% libertarian" or like "Men are more likely to be socialist than women."

If you put "other" - and this applies to any of the questions, not just this one - you're pretty much wasting your vote unless someone else is going to sift through the data and be interested that this particular anonymous line of the spreadsheet believes in strong environmental protection but an otherwise free market.

Looking at the answers, I really shouldn't have allowed write-ins for any questions - I was kind of surprised how many people can't settle on a specific gender, even though the aim of the question was more to figure out how many men versus women are on here than to judge how people feel about society (I considered saying "sex" instead, but that has its own pitfalls and wouldn't have let me get the transgender info as easily. I'll do it that way next time.)

I was particularly harsh on the politics question because I know how strong the temptation is. I think next survey I'll give every question an "other" check box, but it will literally just be a check box and there will be no room to write anything in.

Comment author: magfrump 04 December 2011 08:11:03AM 0 points [-]

Would it be possible in the future, rather than having a write-in or group identification, to do something like political compass coordinates? This would have the benefit of allowing people to express views that don't fit into camps without having the opportunity to write lots of words no one will read.

Comment author: Relsqui 29 November 2011 06:59:19AM 2 points [-]

If you put "other" - and this applies to any of the questions, not just this one - you're pretty much wasting your vote

I disagree; it might be important to identify oneself as something which is not one of the presented options, even if no one cares what other thing you are. For example ...

I was kind of surprised how many people can't settle on a specific gender, even though the aim of the question was more to figure out how many men versus women are on here

... I'm genderqueer, and when I take demographic surveys it's important to me that I'm not counted in either the "men" or the "women" group. Firstly, it would be lying, and secondly, it would be lying in a way which perpetuates the invisibility of my actual identity. That may not be a big deal to the survey writer, but it's always a big deal to me.

Comment author: lessdazed 11 November 2011 10:33:42AM 3 points [-]

Perhaps the politics question would be better phrased negatively:

On a scale of zero to ten, how much do you despise each of the following political ideologies? If you endorse an ideology, put zero. If you very mildly despise it, put one. If your life's focus is to expunge it from the world, put 10. You must give each ideology a unique ranking.

All you have to care about is the lowest number, and anyone who wants to do more with the numbers is able to. People would be less inclined to complain about cultural focus or balance issues.

Comment author: kilobug 11 November 2011 10:56:10AM 0 points [-]

I second that idea, but even then the cultural focus/balance issues will remain when a word and a "definition" are given in a way that appears to be a strawman or a very US-centric view of things. Maybe remove the words ("libertarian", "socialist", ...) and just give the one-sentence definition ?

Comment author: lessdazed 11 November 2011 11:29:08AM 0 points [-]

What people primarily seem to want is a more diverse list. Increasing the word count per entry makes that less feasible. As one source of complaint is, as you imply, the linking of a term with a description, what if descriptions were eliminated all together?

I could begin a political survey discussion post asking people to PM me a one to three word description of a view they endorse or almost endorse, as well as another view they think important. I would update the main page to reflect submissions so more of the same wouldn't be submitted. Then the political ideology list could be trimmed down a bit somehow, and people could do a despise-style survey in which they express their disapproval of each.

As the previous LW survey had about 150 takers, I would expect about that many people going through the trouble of sending me submissions, and many would be redundant, and perhaps by consensus or fiat a representative list of 35 or so could be set for the survey. Would that be a reasonable number of one or three word phrases to scan? It would be an order of magnitude more effort to read that many political sentences.

The despise survey might reveal interesting things that the approval one did not - for example, we might find we have many transhumanists that dislike libertarianism and monarchism, and hate everything else. Or meta-contrarian people who approve of currently popular movements and no fringe ones. I don't know.

Comment author: kilobug 11 November 2011 01:28:20PM 1 point [-]

I fear eliminating the descriptions would lead to even more problems, since words like "libertarian", "socialist" or "communist" don't mean the same depending of your cultural background. I would have answered the question differently if the descriptions were not given, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Or maybe, could we just ask for Political Compass score ? Would be a straight-forward question and easy to exploit later on, even if a bit caricatural. And if people don't want to take the full Political Compass test, they can still say roughly where they stand on the two axis.

Comment author: lessdazed 11 November 2011 01:36:10PM 0 points [-]

words like "libertarian", "socialist" or "communist" don't mean the same depending of your cultural background.

LCPW, so one should describe something like how much one despises the best relatively sizable minority position of each.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 05:15:10PM -2 points [-]

Right now for the politics question, you have three(!) different strains of neoliberalism, social democracy, and Stalinism. That's hardly representative of the global political spectrum, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone designing that question on a survey would make that mistake.

Comment author: Emile 10 November 2011 05:26:42PM 2 points [-]

Right now for the politics question, you have three(!) different strains of neoliberalism, social democracy, and Stalinism.

Alternative complaints:

Right now for the politics question, you have three(!) different strains of leftism, libertarianism, and conservatism. That's hardly representative of the historical political spectrum, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone designing that question on a survey would make that mistake.

... or:

Right now for the politics question, you have four(!) different strains of statism, and libertarianism. That's hardly representative of the diversity of ideologies, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone designing that question on a survey would make that mistake.

Yes, anarchists, monarchists, theocrats, etc. might object that their view isn't represented, but I think that limiting the possibilities was still the right choice (see also the objections to the gender question). Keeping the focus on LessWrong away from politics seems best.

Comment author: lessdazed 10 November 2011 05:41:53PM 6 points [-]

If only "nitpickers" was a political position, then all of this trouble could have been avoided.

Comment author: duckduckMOO 06 November 2011 09:38:03PM 3 points [-]

Having read it, I realise this post may seem or be overly critical. Oh well.

But what the results will actually show, if 65% of people pick libertarian, is that 65% of people Identify with libertarianism more than the other options. This is obviously possible wthout being a libertarian. One could even just hate libertarianism slightly less than the other options and identify most with it. As well as people who's political views aren't well deliniated by any option, there are a few people who are apolitical and would have to just pick at random. or one could be forced to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Multiple choice and no choice for "none of the above" for something like this means hammering square pegs into round holes or abstaining if you don't strongly lean one way or another. if you think you'll put a box for other in next survey why not put it in this survey? even an uncounted other option allows people who'd rather have their choice not count than be identified with one of the options given not to add a tally to one and gives you the number of people with that preference which is interresting in itself.

The rest of this post is ideas for minor modifications to wording.

Can't you just change it to "sex" now?

"With what race or ethnic group do you most closely identify?" Some people might identify most closely with a race other than their own. I don't think the intent is to allow for this but until I read the post this is a reply to, if I did identify with another race more strongly than my own i'd answer that way were i to fill out the survey. Maybe just ask what option best describes or approximates your race.

maths might be the field of a non-trivial percentage of less wrong readers.

I think martial arts would go along nicely with self help, pickup artistry and meditation as an option for the communities question. All are relatively common self-improvement things, as is less wrong. Also I think members of competive gameing (card games, board games, video games, anything i've missed) communities would be overrepresented on less wrong.

Expertise question. The bar set for "fairly knowledgable" here might be a little high. I think even someone with an undergraduate degree in maths or physics might be out of their depth in heavy discussion with an expert. Maybe change heavy to light or remove the qualifier.

Comment author: mwengler 03 November 2011 11:17:07PM 1 point [-]

I think next survey I'll give every question an "other" check box, but it will literally just be a check box and there will be no room to write anything in.

I love that! The urge to signal is almost irresistable when there is a place to write something in.

I took the survey but you don't have to rec me as I've lost like 35 karma points in the last month and I'd like to see how low I can go.

Mike

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 05:02:44PM 3 points [-]

wouldn't have let me get the transgender info as easily

Only ask one question at a time. If you wanted info about "transgender" then ask a "transgender" question. Example:

Are you transgender?

  • No
  • Yes, F->M
  • Yes, M->F
  • Yes, but I prefer not to specify
  • Prefer not to answer

Of course, this logically excludes those who would prefer to answer but are Yes - other, but your earlier point about 'other' applies if you don't want to code open-ends.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 03 November 2011 04:38:09PM 1 point [-]

Ultimately, the question becomes how you will interpret the difference between no-answer and checking a particular box. If no answer by convention means "I don't know the answer to this question," then it makes sense to have a "I know the answer, but it's none of the choices you give" box (aka "other"). It may also make sense to have a "I know the answer, but it's more than one of the choices you give" box. Or a "I know the answer but don't want to tell you" box. Etc.

Or, not. Much as people get annoyed by being asked to categorize themselves, that is basically the point of this sort of survey, and nobody is obligated to take it. There's no particular reason you should change your strategy to alleviate our annoyance.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 04:42:36PM 3 points [-]

There's also a validation issue. A blank could mean "I accidentally scrolled past this question without noticing it". The standard for online surveys is to (where appropriate) include choices for "Other", "None", and "Prefer not to answer", and then force a response for every question so that you know nothing was accidentally skipped.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 04:49:16PM 4 points [-]

That said, online surveys often fail at this, for instance having "gender" questions with just the 2 options (they should at least have an "other") or only accepting as "valid" answers that do not fit the entire population (For example, a survey for doctors with no explicit age cutoff limited ages to <99; at the time, there was one practicing doctor older than that - he would just have been given an error message that his age was "invalid".)

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 03:53:55PM 3 points [-]

Seriously, dude, coding. Surely someone would be willing to volunteer to code a couple hundred open-ends. It should take like 5 minutes if you're willing to use broad brushstrokes. And if most of the raw data is made public, the later sifting for interesting tidbits is crowdsourced.

Comment author: Yvain 03 November 2011 07:43:14PM 2 points [-]

Well, sure, you could do that. But if I decided to hand-code all of the political write-ins into standard political terms like "liberal", "conservative", "etc", then all I'd end up with is a list of people's political preferences in a few bins of standard political terms.

Which is exactly what I have now when I don't allow write-ins. This way is easier for me and allows people to choose their bin themselves rather than have me try to guess whether some complicated philosophy is more conservative than libertarian or vice versa.

Comment author: thomblake 03 November 2011 08:55:30PM 5 points [-]

What dlthomas said. If 20% of your respondents wrote in "anarchist", then you have a new punch.

Comment author: dlthomas 03 November 2011 07:56:40PM 6 points [-]

But does not allow for the creation of new bins, if we spot different clusters.