Yvain comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Yvain 19 October 2012 01:12AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (479)
Tags: meta

Comments (479)

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

Comment author: [deleted] 19 October 2012 10:45:58AM 3 points [-]
  • What's the point of the Chromosomes question? Once you know someone is a cis male or a trans female, does knowing that they have a Y chromosome tell you that much more?
  • The “White (Hispanic)”--“White (non-Hispanic)” dichotomy is weird to non-Americans, and you may want to add an “Other” answer -- or what are (say) Arabs or Maori supposed to answer?
  • I'd split the Children question into “how many children you have” (write-in) and “do you hope to have more children in the future” (with answers “yes, soon”, “yes, later on in my life”, “no” and “not sure”).
  • If you don't want to add more options to “Political” (e.g. libertarian socialist), please add a “None of the above” answer. (Also, I'd say “most strongly identify or lean towards”.) BTW “liberal” and “libertarian” have other meanings (especially outside America), but that's not a big deal given you give examples.
  • As IIRC was suggested after the last survey, you might link to a non-amateur Internet IQ test, if such a thing exists.
  • Maybe ask both total karma and last-30-day karma?
  • What counts as “intelligent life” in P(Aliens)? I'm assuming that octopus/crow/dolphin/bonobo-level intelligence doesn't count, and that humans right after the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution do.
  • In P(Cryonics) you might want to replace “average” with “randomly chosen”, if you mean the average of the probabilities.
  • “Singularity” is ambiguous -- do you mean P(singularity before the year X|singularity ever) = P(singularity after the year X|singularity ever), or P(singularity before the year X) = P(singularity after the year X or never)?
Comment author: Yvain 19 October 2012 11:18:31AM *  1 point [-]

Chromosomes makes that info easier to process and is useful in case a bunch of people put their gender as "other" or don't understand the gender question.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 October 2012 12:34:16PM 6 points [-]

IIRC, a suggestion I saw and I liked was to ask “What sex were you assigned at birth?” (Male/Female/Other) and “What gender do you currently identify as?” (Male/Female/Other).

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 21 October 2012 10:53:05AM 1 point [-]

I support this. No need to bring chromosomes into this.

Comment author: thomblake 19 October 2012 02:51:00PM 4 points [-]

I don't know the answer to the chromosomes question. I could guess, and I would put over 95% on it, but it still seems weird.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 20 October 2012 01:44:12AM 2 points [-]

I would put over 95% on it

that seems low.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 October 2012 11:40:53AM *  1 point [-]

Not that low. (Unless he has children, at least.) EDIT: I'm pretty sure I read a longer version of that article, also mentioning Olympic sex tests etc., but I can't find it anymore.

In any event, that reminds me that having more than two X chromosomes, or more than one Y chromosome, doesn't matter much, so if the question is kept I'd specify that XY also includes XYY, XYYY etc. and XX also includes XXX, XXXX, etc.

Comment author: thomblake 22 October 2012 01:52:01PM 0 points [-]

What army1987 said. Naturally intersexed folks are about 1% of the population, though that number probably includes some non-chromosonal differences and excludes some chromosonal differences.

And I said "over 95%" because I knew it would be at least 95% if I thought about it, but I hadn't yet.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 19 October 2012 03:34:31PM 2 points [-]

Yep. Unless you have had your DNA sequenced or the like, you don't know your chromosomes; there are a number of unusual genotypes that are not obvious.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 October 2012 08:34:25PM 1 point [-]

Besides which, hormones matter a whole lot more for human sexual differentiation than chromosomes. Birds are different, and a lot more like the naive idea of "chromosomes > sex characteristics" (which is why you sometimes get bilaterally gynandromorphic birds when a pair of zygotes -- one male, one female -- fuse in the egg).

Comment author: Decius 19 October 2012 03:16:34PM 0 points [-]

Good point- without DNA sequencing, we're guessing about specific genes based only on their expression, when their expression can be muted by other factors.

Comment author: patrickscottshields 27 October 2012 03:12:57AM 0 points [-]

It also creates potential time cost for people looking up what XX and XY chromosomes refer to. If you leave this question in the survey, can you at least include a heuristic for the uninformed, such as "heuristic: biologically female => XX; biologically male => XY)"?

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit