Many of the questions were USA-centric, assuming people grew up with some religion or political climate common in the US. I didn't get indoctrinated to republicans or democrats, I got indoctrinated to environmentalism, and there's just no way to map that onto American politics where it's an issue rather than a faction. And it might in some ways be the closest match on the religion question as well, being a question of fact that I later had to try to de-bias myself on.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2011 04:01:12PM 4 points [-]

The US-centricity is real problem, and probably worth a discussion post. Do political beliefs tell us something important about LW posters, and if so, are there general ways not tied to a particular country to ask about them. If there isn't a general way, how can this be handled?

Question I'd like to see added: how much attention do you give to politics? That question should probably be split between attention to theory, attention to news, and attention to trying to make things happen.

Comment author: kilobug 05 December 2011 04:21:17PM 2 points [-]

I suggested in the survey thread to ask for Political Compass scores instead of a liberal/conservative/libertarian/socialist question. The Compass is slightly US-biased, but it contains enough questions for the end result to be significant even so. How much attention to politics would be an interesting question, I second that.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2011 04:27:16PM 5 points [-]

I suspect the compass is very US-based, though better than a short list or a single dimension.

there's one more thing about interest in politics that I had trouble phrasing. There's a thing that I call practical politics which I don't do, but it's working for particular candidates or being one yourself or knowing in some detail about the right place to push to get something to happen or not happen. It's the step beyond voting and emailing your representative and signing petitions.

I'd be surprised if very many LWers do practical politics, but that might just be typical mind fallacy.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 December 2011 07:12:53PM 4 points [-]

They do admit they're biased, but the bias is not exactly American (indeed, they are British). And given that LW has lots of readers from non-US western countries but few from (say) China, while not ideal, it would be a lot better than the very US-centric answers in the last survey. (For example, I'd bet that a lot of people would have self-identified as socialist libertarians if given the chance.)

Comment author: MixedNuts 06 December 2011 11:06:10AM 0 points [-]

Amusingly, Yvain is not American. Though he probably absorbed US culture anyway.

Comment author: Emile 06 December 2011 11:45:24AM 2 points [-]

I'm pretty sure Yvain is American, just studying abroad.

Comment author: MixedNuts 06 December 2011 12:00:16PM 0 points [-]

Uh, you're right. I had him as Irish moving to the US, rather than the other way around.

NancyLebovitz comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

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