Some objections / suggestions from a non-American, not-very-young white nerdy male:
Are you romantically involved with anyone?
I'm married for about 12 years – does this count as a romantic involvement?
How satisfied are you with your current romantic arrangements, or lack of arrangements?
Again, this question should be broadened to include marriages. (Actually, this block of questions could explore more interesting opportunities, such as "What is your ratio of the number of romantic / sexual partners you had before marriage to your self-perceived sexual attractiveness rated 1 to 10?")
How many friends have you talked to in the last week?
Is the purpose of this question to figure out how many friends do I have, or how much actual conversations did I have with my friends? What if I consciously cut back on chit-chat by switching my Skype / ICQ / etc to 'Do not disturb' or not even launching them on start-up?
Edit: Also, do you mean strictly personal friends? Are other kinds of conversation partners included? For example, I don't chat much with personal friends, but have a lot of friendly conversations with co-workers (actually employees) -- does this count?
Have you ever been in an auto accident?
Does this question imply that I was a driver? I don't drive (will explain later), but I have been in an auto accident.
Do you have a current driver's license? Do most people your age, who live where you live, have a driver's license?
Is having a driver license a universally good thing for a person in an environment where everyone else has one?
I don't drive because the traffic accident mortality per million of population in Russia is 2.5 times higher than that of Europe (the Europe has about three times as much cars as Russia, so the per-car number is even more scary). That's an official statistic (which traditionally gets lowered here, as showing real raw stats would ruin the public performance ratings of involved officials), and some sources give greater numbers like 15 to 16 times (which is pretty believable given how much morons and noobs I see on the roads every day).
Some anecdotal data points:
Three members of my (extended) family have been involved in traffic accidents that happened due to someone else's disregard for traffic rules. For example, a father of my wife has spent a month in a hospital after being hit by a car while walking through a marked pedestrian crossing on his green light.
Every one of my driving co-workers regularly sees high-status people (huge black SUVs with license plates like "A-001-AA") blatantly and openly violating traffic rules and getting away with that.
My co-worker has met an illiterate guy in a driving school. Yes, I mean that, the guy was illiterate and innumerate – he couldn't dial a number on a mobile phone!
To sum up, I consider driving in today's Russia to be too dangerous for me. I consciously minimize time I spend in proximity to cars and high-traffic roads, and when I need to get somewhere quick, I contact a tested driver or, if he is busy, my preferred taxi service (for which I also have some criteria).
As for my ability to obtain a driver's license, I could do that easily – my father always was a driver, so I'm familiar with the inner workings of combustion engines since childhood, and my hand-eye coordination is more than enough for driving (I used to dominate the score table in Team Fortress 2 as almost any class until the combined wisdom of Tim Ferris and PJ Eby has eliminated that addiction :).
How many times have you exercised in the last week?
A better definition of 'exercise' would be helpful. For example, does it include long daily walks?
BTW, the issue with driving I outlined above can be generalized and addressed in the test as follows:
Form a (worldwide? weighted?) list of top 3 / 7 / 10 mortality reasons.
Include some questions measuring the person's awareness and the effort spent on avoidance of these kinds of dangers (measuring the priorities would be good as well).
EDIT, 4/18: I'm closing the survey. I'll post analysis and a better anonymized version of the raw data in a day or so. 236 people responded; thanks very much to all who did.
For survey participants curious about the calibration questions, the answers are:
Number of republics the USSR broke up into, following the output of the cold war: 15.
The year in which the global population reached 1 billion: 1804.
The average percentage of a watermelon's weight that comes from water: 92.
The old post:
There has been much discussion of the extent to which rationality is or isn’t practically useful. There have also been many calls for better empirical evidence.
In an attempt to produce empirical evidence for or against rationality’s usefulness for LW-ers, I have here a rationality questionnaire. It takes about 15 minutes to complete, according to myself and to Katja Grace, who kindly helped me with it. I tried to hug the query of “Are there OB/LW-like techniques, or similar techniques, that actually help LW-ers achieve their goals?” This isn’t a test -- we’re not measuring individuals’ rationality -- we’re just looking for correlations and noisy indicators that may nevertheless tell us give us useful info in aggeragate, when used on groups.
Fill in the survey -- by following
this survey link [Survey is now closed. Though the link will still let you see the questions.]
-- and know your next 15 minutes will contribute to science, truth, rationality, and the future practical successes of LW-ers. =) (... at least as far as expected value is concerned, if you assign some probablity to this data being useful.)
ADDED: Please hold off on discussing the implications of different responses for a day or two, until the rate of survey-completions dies down. Unless you're sure your discussion won't prejudice others' answers.