MixedNuts comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

65 Post author: Yvain 03 November 2012 11:00PM

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Comment author: MixedNuts 04 November 2012 01:32:38AM 26 points [-]

I now have the whole set of Myers-Briggs letters. Something tells me this test is noisy.

You might want to look at North Americans and others separately for the redwood questions, to see if domain knowledge affects anchoring.

Comment author: RobinZ 04 November 2012 01:48:48AM 7 points [-]

Perhaps a domain-knowledge question could be included in a future iteration of the survey. "North America" is a pretty big place, after all, and a Marylander is unlikely to know as much about redwoods as a Californian.

Perhaps a set of options might be along the lines of:

  • I knew the answer to the question.
  • I knew the answer to one or more related questions, on which I based my estimate.
  • I once knew the answer to this or a related question.
  • I had no prior relevant knowledge.
  • Other

(because you always forget an option when making a list like this.)

Comment author: MixedNuts 04 November 2012 02:01:41AM 6 points [-]

I'm thinking of less knowledge than that; having seen redwoods at all (even on TV) and knowing they can get really big is knowledge, relative to "It's a kind of tree, right?".

Comment author: RobinZ 04 November 2012 02:19:29AM 2 points [-]

Ooh, right. That could be captured by "one or more related questions", but it wouldn't be obvious to me that it was, were I answering the question. I certainly didn't know that Mount Elbrus was the highest in Europe three days ago - I imagine that would be analogous.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 November 2012 03:38:14PM 3 points [-]

Well, that's because certain people define the borders of Europe so that Mount Elbrus is in Asia, and Mont Blanc is the highest in Europe.