1. A question posed simply in terms of "the best level" would be measuring some sort of tangled-up combination of respondents' values and their opinions about facts. That might be a bad thing (though I note that the question about political affiliation, at least, has the same feature). Instead, one could ask something like "what level of aid do you think would maximize Africa's GDP after 20 years?" or "what level of aid do you think would maximize average expected QALYs at birth over the whole human population".
2. When considering an individual's charitable activity, of course we should think in terms of marginal efficiencies. That's not so clear when considering the question of the total amount of aid that might go from the affluent West to the Third World.
3. You mean (unless you have relevant information I don't, which is eminently possible) that some African economists are saying that the aid is harmful. It would be much more interesting to know typical African economists' opinions. If nothing else, there is obvious sampling bias here: if two African economists approach an American publisher, one proposing to write a book saying "Aid is actively harmful; stop it now" and one proposing to write one saying "Aid is useful; please do a bit more of it", which one is going to get the contract? It seems to me that there are multiple different factors making it far more likely to be the first one that have scarcely any correlation with the actual truth of the matter.
4. Yes, of course, actual decisions need to be made project by project. That doesn't mean that one can't hold an opinion about the approximate gross amount of aid there should be. (Such as, for instance, "none", which is an opinion you don't seem to object to even though it's the ultimate in not-project-by-project answers since it necessarily returns the same answer for every project.)
How would everyone feel about a question phrased something like:
"True or false: the marginal effect of extra money being given to aid in Africa through a charity like UNICEF is generally positive."
Related to: Practical Rationality Questionnaire
Here among this community of prior-using, Aumann-believing rationalists, it is a bit strange that we don't have any good measure of what the community thinks about certain things.
I no longer place much credence in raw majoritarianism: the majority is too uneducated, too susceptible to the Dark Arts, and too vulnerable to cognitive biases. If I had to choose the people whose mean opinion I trusted most, it would be - all of you.
So, at the risk of people getting surveyed-out, I'd like to run a survey on the stuff Anna Salamon didn't. Part on demographics, part on opinions, and part on the interactions between the two.
I've already put up an incomplete rough draft of the survey I'd like to use, but I'll post it here again. Remember, this is an incomplete rough draft survey. DO NOT FILL IT OUT YET. YOUR SURVEY WILL NOT BE COUNTED.
Incomplete rough draft of survey
Right now what I want from people is more interesting questions that you want asked. Any question that you want to know the Less Wrong consensus on. Please post each question as a separate comment, and upvote any question that you're also interested in. I'll include as many of the top-scoring questions as I think people can be bothered to answer.
No need to include questions already on the survey, although if you really hate them you can suggest their un-inclusion or re-phrasing.
Also important: how concerned are you about privacy? I was thinking about releasing the raw data later in case other people wanted to perform their own analyses, but it might be possible to identify specific people if you knew enough about them. Are there any people who would be comfortable giving such data if only one person were to see the data, but uncomfortable with it if the data were publically accessible?