Jayson_Virissimo comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (513)
Tags: survey community meta

Comments (513)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

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: Jayson_Virissimo 05 December 2011 11:15:51AM *  6 points [-]

I think using your stipulative definition of "supernatural" was a bad move. I would be very surprised if I asked a theologian to define "supernatural" and they replied "ontologically basic mental entities". Even as a rational reconstruction of their reply, it would be quite a stretch. Using such specific definitions of contentious concepts isn't a good idea, if you want to know what proportion of Less Wrongers self-identify as atheist/agnostic/deist/theist/polytheist.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 05 December 2011 03:05:54PM 1 point [-]

OTOH, using a vague definition isn't a good idea either, if you want to know something about what Less Wrongers believe about the world.

I had no problem with the question as worded; it was polling about LWers confidence in a specific belief, using terms from the LW Sequences. That the particular belief is irrelevant to what people who self-identify as various groups consider important about that identification is important to remember, but not in and of itself a problem with the question.

But, yeah... if we want to know what proportion of LWers self-identify as (e.g.) atheist, that question won't tell us.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit