A bit the reverse for me! I'm looking at them thinking 'how on earth did I not see that?', and feeling really stupid. I think if someone had said 'composition of functions' and 'motion in reading order' before the test I'd have got almost all the answers right. I think I had all the necessary tools and failed to see where to use them, which is a pretty good definition of 'idiot'.
I bet you haven't come into contact with much of this sort of thing before, and I further bet that if you practised doing this type of test for a while then you'd start to find them very easy.
I'd dispute the test's claim to be 'not culturally biased'. Obviously it doesn't require native-speaker English or literary knowledge, but equally obviously your score will depend heavily on how much you've been previously exposed to ideas about symmetries and abstract mathematics.
On the other hand, it seems that you can probably learn all these ideas fairly quickly. So what your score settles down to after long practice may well be both interesting and not-culturally-biased. Some of the puzzles at the end of the test do seem to be tickling the limits of working memory.
I bet you haven't come into contact with much of this sort of thing before, and I further bet that if you practised doing this type of test for a while then you'd start to find them very easy.
As I said, IIRC such tests are only supposed to be accurate if you hadn't done them before.
...I'd dispute the test's claim to be 'not culturally biased'. Obviously it doesn't require native-speaker English or literary knowledge, but equally obviously your score will depend heavily on how much you've been previously exposed to ideas about symmetries and abstract math
11/26: The survey is now closed. Please do not take the survey. Your results will not be counted.
It's that time of year again.
If you are reading this post, and have not been sent here by some sort of conspiracy trying to throw off the survey results, then you are the target population for the Less Wrong Census/Survey. Please take it. Doesn't matter if you don't post much. Doesn't matter if you're a lurker. Take the survey.
This year's census contains a "main survey" that should take about ten or fifteen minutes, as well as a bunch of "extra credit questions". You may do the extra credit questions if you want. You may skip all the extra credit questions if you want. They're pretty long and not all of them are very interesting. But it is very important that you not put off doing the survey or not do the survey at all because you're intimidated by the extra credit questions.
The survey will probably remain open for a month or so, but once again do not delay taking the survey just for the sake of the extra credit questions.
Please make things easier for my computer and by extension me by reading all the instructions and by answering any text questions in the most obvious possible way. For example, if it asks you "What language do you speak?" please answer "English" instead of "I speak English" or "It's English" or "English since I live in Canada" or "English (US)" or anything else. This will help me sort responses quickly and easily. Likewise, if a question asks for a number, please answer with a number such as "4", rather than "four".
Okay! Enough nitpicky rules! Time to take the...
2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Thanks to everyone who suggested questions and ideas for the 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey. I regret I was unable to take all of your suggestions into account, because some of them were contradictory, others were vague, and others would have required me to provide two dozen answers and a thesis paper worth of explanatory text for every question anyone might conceivably misunderstand. But I did make about twenty changes based on the feedback, and *most* of the suggested questions have found their way into the text.
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.