TheOtherDave comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: lavalamp 05 December 2011 08:31:01PM *  10 points [-]

Suggestion: "Which of the following did you change your mind about after reading the sequences? (check all that apply)"

  • [] Religion
  • [] Cryonics
  • [] Politics
  • [] Nothing
  • [] et cetera.

Many other things could be listed here.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 05 December 2011 09:27:55PM 2 points [-]

I'm curious, what would you do with the results of such a question?

For my part, I suspect I would merely stare at them and be unsure what to make of a statistical result that aggregates "No, I already held the belief that the sequences attempted to convince me of" with "No, I held a contrary belief and the sequences failed to convince me otherwise." (That it also aggregates "Yes, I held a contrary belief and the sequences convinced me otherwise." and "Yes, I initially held the belief that the sequences attempted to convince me of, and the sequences convinced me otherwise" is less of a concern, since I expect the latter group to be pretty small.)

Comment author: lavalamp 05 December 2011 10:14:14PM 2 points [-]

Originally I was going to suggest asking, "what were your religious beliefs before reading the sequences?"-- and then I succumbed to the programmer's urge to solve the general problem.

However, I guess measuring how effective the sequences are at causing people to change their mind is something that a LW survey can't do, anyway (you'd need to also ask people who read the sequences but didn't stick around to accurately answer that).

Mainly I was curious how many deconversions the sequences caused or hastened.

Comment author: taryneast 06 December 2011 05:34:09PM 0 points [-]

Ok, so use radio-buttons: "believed before, still believe" "believed before, changed my mind now" "didn't believe before, changed my mind now" "never believed, still don't"

Comment author: TheOtherDave 06 December 2011 07:25:17PM 1 point [-]

...and "believed something before, believe something different now"