MixedNuts comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

94 Post author: Yvain 05 December 2011 10:49AM

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Comment author: Yvain 04 December 2011 07:14:42PM *  40 points [-]

Running list of changes for next year's survey:

  1. Ask who's a poster versus a lurker!
  2. A non-write-in "Other" for most questions
  3. Replace "gender" with "sex" to avoid complaints/philosophizing.
  4. Very very clear instructions to use percent probabilities and not decimal probabilities
  5. Singularity year question should have explicit instructions for people who don't believe in singularity
  6. Separate out "relationship status" and "looking for new relationships" questions to account for polys
  7. Clarify that research is allowed on the probability questions
  8. Clarify possible destruction of humanity in cryonics/antiagathics questions.
  9. What does it mean for aliens to "exist in the universe"? Light cone?
  10. Make sure people write down "0" if they have 0 karma.
  11. Add "want to sign up, but not available" as cryonics option.
  12. Birth order.
  13. Have children?
  14. Country of origin?
  15. Consider asking about SAT scores for Americans to have something to correlate IQs with.
  16. Consider changing morality to PhilPapers version.
Comment author: MixedNuts 04 December 2011 07:30:56PM 10 points [-]

You are aware that if you ask people for their sex but not their gender, and say something like "we have more women now", you will be philosophized into a pulp, right?

Comment author: FiftyTwo 05 December 2011 10:19:33PM 4 points [-]

Why not ask for both?

Comment author: Emile 06 December 2011 11:58:50AM *  3 points [-]

Because the two are so highly correlated that having both would give us almost no extra information. One goal of the survey should be to maximize the useful-info-extracted / time-spent-on-it ratio, hence also the avoidance of write-ins for many questions (which make people spend more time on the survey, to get results that are less exploitable) (a write-in for gender works because people are less likely to write a manifesto for that than for politics).

Comment author: MixedNuts 06 December 2011 11:07:19AM 1 point [-]

Because having a "gender" question causes complaints and philosophizing, which Yvain wants to avoid.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 December 2011 10:53:05AM 5 points [-]

You are aware that if you ask people for their sex but not their gender, and say something like "we have more women now", you will be philosophized into a pulp, right?

Only if people here are less interested in applying probability theory than they are in philosophizing about gender... Oh.

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 06 December 2011 08:49:24AM 0 points [-]

How about, "It's highly likely that we have more women now"?

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