pedanterrific comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: ataftoti 04 December 2011 08:50:52PM 1 point [-]

801 people (73.5%) were atheist and not spiritual, 108 (9.9%) were atheist and spiritual

I'm curious as to how people interpreted this. Does the latter mean that one believes in the supernatural but without a god figure, e.g. buddism, new age? This question looked confusing to me at first glance.

People who believed in high existential risk were more likely to believe in global warming, more likely to believe they had a higher IQ than average, and more likely to believe in aliens (I found that same result last time, and it puzzled me then too.)

Why does it puzzle you?

Comment author: pedanterrific 05 December 2011 09:23:30AM 3 points [-]

People who believed in high existential risk were more likely to believe in global warming, more likely to believe they had a higher IQ than average, and more likely to believe in aliens (I found that same result last time, and it puzzled me then too.)

Why does it puzzle you?

I assume because higher existential risk would seem to generalize to lower chances of aliens existing (because they had the same or similar existential risk as us).

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 05 December 2011 01:29:01PM 1 point [-]

A more subtle interpretation, and one that I expect accounts for at least some of the people in this category, is that high existential risk makes it more likely that relatively nearby aliens exist but will never reach the point where they can contact us.

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