On "dust specks", I think there are trivial dis-utilities whose infinite sum has an asymptote that is finite and small, and thus I disagree with the LW consensus on this.

I'm completely baffled by questions 26, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 on the iq test. (http://iqtest.dk) I think I must be missing something. Can anyone explain what the answers are and why?

Am I the only person who answered "100" on the cryonics question because "revived at some point in the future" was indefinite enough that a Boltzmann brain-like scenario inevitably occurring eventually seemed reasonable?

Also, I did all the extra credit questions. At twos in the morning.

I took it. No SAT scores or classical IQ scores, didn't take Myer-Briggs (because it's stupid) or Autism (because freakin' hell, amateur psychology diagnosis on the 'net).

Sbe PSNE dhrfgvba sbhe, V'z fgnyyrq orpnhfr vg frrzf gb zr gung zl nafjre fubhyq qrcraq ba ubj ybj vapbzr gur cngvrag vf. Vs gur cngvrag vf rzcyblrq ng nyy, gur qvssrerapr bs fvkgl ubhef bs urnqnpurf vf cebonoyl jbegu zber guna n qvssrerapr bs gjb uhaqerq svsgl qbyynef. Vs gur cngvrag vf harzcyblrq, vg znl abg or.

I've been a bit confused by the relationships question. I'm currently seeing three people romantically on a semi-regular basis, so I put in 3, but I wouldn't say any of those relations qualify as "relationships", so I selected 'single'. I hope that's the preferred method.

Any reason you removed the opinion on basilisk moderation question that was in the earlier one that initially went up? I'd have been interested in community opinion on that.

Took it, now give me karma.

done!

Re: cryonics, assume the following:

1) Any Agent that reconstructs my mind from a plasticized or frozen brain is very smart and well-informed. It is working its way through a whole warehouse of similar 21st century brains, and can reconstruct vast swathes of my mind with generic any-human or any-human-who-grew-up-watching-Sesame-Street boilerplate. This gets boring after the first few hundred.

2) I'm of no practical use in the post-Singularity world, with my obsolete work skills and mismatching social and moral behavior.

3) Frozen-brain reconstruction starts late enough that nobody remains alive who knows and loves me personally.

In this scenario, I expect the compressed mind reconstructions are just stored in an archive for research/entertainment purposes. Why bother ever running the reconstruction long enough for it to subjectively "wake up"?

I think that we need to let go of the idea of immortality as a continuation of our present self. The most we can hope for is that far in the future, some hyper-intelligent Agent has our memories. And probably the memories of thousands of other dead people as well.

Cryonics is most like writing a really detailed autobiography for future people to read after we're dead. This still seems worthwhile to me, but it's not the same thing as there being a living Charlie Davies in the 23rd century.

I took the survey.

All done! Surprised since my IQ's apparently dropped roughly 20 points in the last 2 years. But everyone knows the internet is reliable when it comes to that. Eagerly awaiting results, when can we expect them to appear on the site?

Also, please do not upvote this comment, as I want my karma to reflect when I've thought something insightful, and only taking a survey to recieve it does not properly reflect this. "By ancient tradition" makes that the most cultish thing I've ever heard lesswrong.

... Maybe topped by "we're a cult" or something of that effect, but still.

Taken.

As last year, I would prefer different wording on the P(religion) question. "More or less" is so vague as to allow for a lot of very different answers depending on how I interpret it, and I didn't even properly consider the "revealed" distinction noted in a comment here.

I appreciate the update on the singularity estimate for those of us whose P(singularity) is between epsilon and 50+epsilon.

I still wonder if we can tease out the differences between current logistical/political problems and the actual effectiveness of the science on the cryonics question. Once again I gave an extremely low probability even though I would give a reasonable (10-30%) probability that the science itself is sound or will be at some point in the near future. Or perhaps it is your intention to let a segment of the population here fall into a conjunctiveness trap?

On the CFAR migraine treatment question I thought as follows:

Gur pbeerpg nafjre jbhyq qrcraq ba jung lbh xarj nobhg gur crefba. Sbe nalbar noyr gb cebprff naq haqrefgnaq gur hgvyvgl genqrbssf naq jub jnf fhssvpvragyl ybj vapbzr gung O pbhyq pbaprvinoyl or n orggre pubvfr, V jbhyq tvir gurz obgu bcgvba N naq O naq rkcynva gur genqrbss pnershyyl, be nggrzcg gb nfpregnva gurve $inyhr bs 1 srjre zvtenvar ol bgure dhrfgvbaf naq gura znxr gur pbeerpg erpbzzraqngvba onfrq ba gung.

Gjb guvatf ner dhvgr pyrne gb zr:

1: pubbfvat gur zbfg rssvpvrag gerngzrag va grezf bs zvtenvarf erzbirq cre qbyyne, vf irel pyrneyl gur jebat nafjre.

2: sbe >90% bs crbcyr va gur evpu jbeyq, gur pbeerpg nafjre fubhyq or N.

I liked this survey, but there was one minor annoyance: the "when will the Singularity happen?" question. "Singularity" in which sense? I decided to run with the weak version of the "event horizon" (Vernor Vinge) claim, but the question could have been clearer.

One suggestion: since IQ seems to be a big part in this survey and in LW, why not have an IQ test made for LW?

I took the survey.

As per ancient tradition (apparently) - give me karma

Did it.

The political question was dumb. why can't I pick "FAI" or "rational consequentialist".

I really liked the CFAR questions. MORE OF THOSE.

The political compass questions were very ADBOC and generally meaningless. Apparently I'm left libertarian, whatever that means.

The Big 5 test was suspect on some things. Am I really lowest quartile conscientiousness and agreeableness? I defy the data.

The iq test was fun and challenging. Got 133, which is also what I've gotten on previous iq tests.

The autism test was utterly without interpretation. What does 18 mean?

EDIT: sorry I'm being so negative, a good survey overall. Maybe this is where the low agreeableness comes from.

Whew, that was long! (Not that I wasn't warned.)

Incidentally, communism as invented has little in common with communism as practiced in the Soviet Union. Whether the former is possible (for humans) is debatable.

Took the survey, did most of the extra questions. IQ 122 apparently. I'm sceptical of what that actually means but it sounds quite good so next time someone asks me, that's what I'll say :)

Didn't do Myers-Briggs because I'm pretty sure it's bullshit.

Not too surprised to find that my political views are measurably left libertarian. Wasn't happy with a lot of the political policy questions though - most of them were phrased in a way that I wanted to answer "it depends" or "yes, BUT...", or even "mu".

I wonder if I am the only one who thought that this "Get a random three digit number (000-999) from goo.gl/x45un" question was in fact a hidden rationality test, sort of "are you irrational enough to follow a shortened url that can lead everywhere, including a potentially dangerous or at least annoying website" and skipped it.

I took the survey before it was cool.

On "having" children: should we be counting that as birth, raising, what you think of as "yours," something else? I am thinking of sperm donors, surrogate mothers, children given up for adoption, and adoptive parents. If I am the biological parent of X offspring and raise Y of them, should I be reporting X or X-Y? And if I have step/adopted/foster children, +Z? "Raise" might be bad too, as there are people who have (biological or not) children they think of as "theirs" without custody or visitation.

The count might be fuzzier than intended. I would expect upward bias.

Took the whole survey. My preferred political label of (Radical) Centrist survived all explicit radio buttons.

Took it and laughed several times.

Took it.

Took the survey. Delurking for the first time. I'm planning on posting to the welcome thread in a few days, when I'm less busy. Did most of the test except the IQ test, since I didn't have another forty minutes to spare.

I appreciate the expansiveness of the sex and gender options. It's nice to see some recognition of the complexities.

I was surprised at my intensely introverted results, other big five tests usually put me between average and moderately introverted. Nothing else noticably unusual, though.

I took the IQ test in the extra questions section. I clicked "submit" long before the time ran out, even when I knew I was essentially guessing on some of the questions, because I had gotten sick of the damn thing. My score came back a 122, which pissed me off because I'm fairly sure my real IQ is higher than that.

Then I realized this may be a good metaphor for my life. In the future, when asked my IQ, I'll respond, "I don't know, but my lack-of-patience-adjusted IQ is about 120."

Survey taken.

Took the IQ test. Humbling. Score 110.

IQ test in high school, 156. SAT 793/800 verbal, 783/800 math. Cal Tech. Yatta yatta. But that was many years ago. It's pretty obvious what happened. Timed test. I only finished, in the time, about 2/3 - 3/4 of the questions, maybe a bit more, I didn't keep count. (I skipped questions that weren't popping up right away, thinking I'd come back. Didn't have time.)

I'm 68 years old. I used to be able to hold a conversation on the phone and read a book at the same time, about something completely different. That disappeared when I was in my late 40s. The test requires, for the more difficult problems, testing many different hypotheses, if a clear pattern doesn't pop up immediately. It's almost certain that this takes more time for me now than when I was younger.

This almost certainly impacts my communication skills, for starters.

I took it, but I skipped the IQ question, because the last time I took an IQ test I was, like, 12 years old.

Is there some reputable online IQ test that I can take today ?

Do casual sex partners count under the "Number of Current Partners" question?

The instructions tell me that higher numbers are for "polyamorous relationships" which makes it seem like a monogamous person who has multiple casual sex partners should answer 0 for that question.

I took the survey too. I can haz karma plz? Kthxbye.

I was about to kick myself for not checking last year's answers to all the probability questions (I don't feel I've received much new information or insights that should cause me to change my mind, so I felt I should have averaged my current subjective estimate with last year's).

But then I found that my subjective estimates were remarkably stable! (with possible slight drift towards 50%). Not sure what to make of that. Was going to post answers here to illustrate but wasn't sure if that violated protocol because of anchoring. (People should really take the survey before reading any of the comments in any case).

P.S. I took the survey.

Took it.

Done

Survey: taken.

I took it and threw in on the ground!

Took the survey. Somehow I've managed to lose a decent chunk of IQ over the past 15 years...

Entered.

Just took the survey. Out of curiosity, why is it ancient tradition to upvote for this?

During the part of the survey where you describe your gender and sexual orientation, I thought it might be a good idea to have another question asking to rate your libido on a numbered scale. Perhaps also another question asking your romantic disposition, as it is possible to be asexual but not aromantic.

Karma me!

I took the survey and participated in the complementary karma orgy!

Done.

Pretense for posting here:

How are the redwood tree questions relevant, don't they mostly test trivia knowledge?

Done.

I took the survey.

I took it, on a Saturday night, and scored 7 on Extroversion. Pardon me while I step out to go to a party.

Took the survey. Does the "Do you intend to have children" question refer to the immediate future, or in your lifetime?

Took it.

Took the survey, and a lot of the extra credit. I need a karma infusion, stat!

I assumed it was okay to use a pen and paper for the CFAR questions. For a few of the questions, I found it helpful to write down the given information and some rough calculations.

Also, on the probability estimates, I pretty much tried to translate my gut feelings about things into a number. (Contrary to the sequence posts that explicitly advise us against doing that.) I haven't worked to get a rigorous probability estimates for most (if any) of the questions posed. I imagine a lot of people are in the same position, and the conclusions drawn from the data should take this into account.

Took it!

Did any one else have trouble copy-pasting the links?

I normally score insanely high on Openness to experience (says she of the massive amounts of really weird hobbies), but for this test, I scored really low on Openness. Must be feeling particularly close-minded today. Weird.

Took it. Yvain is a gentleman and a scholar for putting so much time and effort into this.

Just a few comments:

It could be a little clearer that the Calibration IQ question in Section 8 should only be answered by those people who reported an IQ in Section 5.

A GRE score question (as I requested in what is currently the fifth-most-upvoted top-level comment in the survey critiques thread) would have been nice. It was cool to see the Political Compass, AQ test, and iqtest.dk on there, though.

And done. I look forward to the Big Five scores, personally.

I took survey. Long time lurker 1St time poster

Muflax offers his feedback on some of the survey questions:

• Treat the three digit number that you just wrote down as a length, in feet. Is the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world more or less than the number that you wrote down?: Feet! Fuck you, barbarians. I refuse to answer.
• What is your best guess about the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world (in feet)?: Why not beard-seconds? Seriously, fuck you.
• ...Height: 185cm (oh, now you can use sane units, you stupid imperialist pig-dogs)

Did the entire thing weeks ago. Only commenting to log my prediction, I have high confidence that V nz gur bayl Svyvcvab ba YrffJebat.

This survey is now closed. I am working on analysis and will have the results in a while. Please do not take it.

Also, you may now begin speculating with 95% confidence intervals on how many people took the survey this year.

Took the survey + all the extra questions. I just noticed this thread today. In my opinion, it is underadvertised.

Concerning the IQ test, I've seen this one before and I know it's not reliable, because it is not based on a statistic and there's no reason to believe it's reliable in the first place. There are only two culture-fair free online IQ tests: JCTI and CFNSE. I am extremely curious to see the average score for LW.

Here's how to make sense out of your IQ score: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

One cool thing we could do to check the accuracy of the Big Five scores, Conscientiousness specifically, for each user is their item non-response rate, per http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/11/hedengrens_dog.html / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6776620/Papers/The%20dog%20that%20didnt%20bark%2011-8-2012.pdf

If it checks out, that'd give a way to infer Conscientiousness scores of the respondents who didn't report their Big Five.

What would we do with this Conscientiousness data per survey respondent? Dunno. Off the top of my head, we could construct a baseball-like index of 'most under-valued LWers by comparing their IQ and Conscientiousness against their self-reported salary & age' :)

EDIT: The technique seems to completely fail when I try it on the survey: http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/7xl5

Taken :)

Taken.

Taken, de lurked, most everything done because I was bored and curious. I hadn't felt like registering an account for a while because I don't know if I have much to add, but I figured.... you know, fuck it. I ought to have stuff to ask and I can always get another account if this one embarrasses me in the future.

V pna'g ernyyl qrpvqr onfrq ba gur vasbezngvba, ohg V jbhyq or yvxryl cvpx qeht N vs gur cngvrag jnf na rzcyblrr orvat cnvq nalguvat pybfr gb zvavzhz jntr. Vs bayl unys bs gur gjragl urnqnpurf ner zvffrq jbexqnlf gurer fgvyy jbhyq or uhaqerqf bs qbyynef bs ybfg jntrf vs zl ebhtu pnyphyngvbaf jrer frafvoyr. V jnf jnl bss ba gur gerr dhrfgvba. JUL V gubhtug gerrf pbhyq tebj rvtug uhaqerq srrg be zber, onssyrf zr, abj gung V guvax nobhg vg. Vg jnf whfg n pnpurq "snpg" V "yrnearq" va zl puvyqubbq, naq V unir ab vqrn jurer.

The political compass survey just made me think how little I've actually thought about politics. I kept saying "What? I don't know!" so I skipped that one.

One thing concerns me.... How the hell does IQ drop 20 points over four years without my having a concussion or stroke or something? I have at times subjected myself to gnarly sleep deprivation. Maybe my ADD is worse. Maybe the higher score reflects verbal aptitude. (And if so, should that count towards "true iq"?) Can anyone tell me what seems to them the most likely?

Definitely have a lot of research to do

Finally:

Hi everybody! =]

Taken!

Took the survey, but I didn't have time to finish most of the extra credit questions. I liked how the survey really made me think over a lot of my positions more critically than I otherwise would have. It will be interesting to see if I change much next year.

Deeply amused by the section "Alternative Alternative Politics: Okay fine, knock yourself out identifying with as tiny and finely-grained a subcategory as you want" still missing my desired response. :-) (I put Other:Authoritarian as distinct from Totalitarian. My view of these is that the former concerns the power of the ruling body to hypothetically put its fingers in any given pie, while the latter concerns the propensity of the ruling body to have its fingers in a great many pies.)

Took it.

Doing the Political Compass survey reminded me of what an awful survey it is. Most of the questions cannot be given a truthful "agree or disagree" answer without serious qualification, so the only way to take the survey is to figure out for each question which side will you be interpreted as cheering/booing the most with each answer, and choose which side to cheer/boo.

Lurker, first time poster. Did all the extra credit. Time to research it all :)

Took it.

Took it.

Glad the religion question specified revealed religion. Lao-Zhuang Daoism is objectively true, but not revealed (and only true because it makes no assertions).

Done. I, too, took the bait to come out of long-time-lurker status and post after this. :)

Answered everything, including the extra credit questions, except for the official IQ question and the question concerning income (I'm a student in highschool and I don't have paid work, although I do volunteer).

I also hope that the what the quiz means by "progressive" is also what I mean by "progressive".

Anyhow, excited to see the results!

Took the entire survey and all extra credit questions in one go; minus ACT, SAT2400 and Respectable(tm) IQ scores since I don't have them, and </=140 character LW description because I was starting to get tired after the 40 min. IQ test.

So much fun! I'm very curious to see the results.

Survey:Completed. Extra credit as well!

I took it and did all the extra credit questions except one because it would not be accurate for me.

results soon?

I took it and did most of the bonus questions.

Took it.

I wish there were more questions! Non-jokingly, I wish there were more questions about FAI, MWI, and other complex content things. I want more people to pick my brain and tell me if I'm consistent.

I took it.

Took the survey. All of it. :) EDIT:huh, completely missed the point in the doctor Q. I figured it was not my place to tell him what to do, but offer him all the possibilities and let the patient choose( he will be paying for it). Otherwise you are just guessing what the patient wants. EDIT2: rot13: Abj gung v qvq fbzr pnyphyngvbaf v guvax v xabj n ybg bs crbcyr gung jbhyq ybir gb rnea 4$ na ubhe whfg univat n zvtenvar.8 gb 10 u n qnl, 5 qnlf n jrrx, pbzrf bhg gb 800$ n zbagu.(juvfgyr). jbj. Npghnyyl v jbhyq abg zvaq fhpu n wbo. Fb v thrff vg pbzrf qbja gb jurer lbh ner yvivat. Jurer v yvir, zbfg snzvyl'f bs 4 trg ba jvgu yrff zbarl. Nobhg 550$ n zbagu.

I took a survey.

I took the survey.

Guys, you are seriously need to start using metric system or at least include the necessary number in the meters. Going to Google twice in order to calculate the relevant numbers was... frustrating.

(By the way, I have never donated to any charity before, but I sworn in a grand manner that it will be in the list of the first five things I will do with my PayPal account when I get one)

Survey taken.

I took the survey, and did all of the extra credit work too!

That IQ test seemed really silly, but I've never taken one before, so who knows?

The doctor recommending medicine one threw me. Why not offer more than one, explain that one gives the best bang for the buck, but also let them decide whether the $350 for 30 headaches is still worth it despite being an increased cost per headache prevented. I can easily imagine a rational scenario where 20 less headaches is still worth increased payment per headache prevented, especially if it costs you wages at your theoretical low-income job..

Done, except for the unreasonably long extra credit section, mostly due to not having time to take the tests now and not knowing when I could possibly manage to do it in the future.

Good work Yvain, it's been a pleasure to take the survey, and it will be a plesure to see the results.

Kudos to the one who formulated the questions. I found them unusually easy to answer, at large.

I'm only puzzled at the lack of an umbrella option for the humanities in the question on profession. Were they meant to fall into the category of social sciences?

Just taken - my first LessWrong census!

Interesting questions, though as a committed Bayesian I was very embarrassed that I couldn't even remember which century he was born! Guessed at about 20% chance of my estimate being within 20 years of the true date which it wasn't. So I was wrong, but at least right that I was wrong. I suppose that is "less wrong"?

Been a lurker for a relatively short time, took the survey.

I had some concerns over the extra credit questions and one thing in particular that prompted me to respond. I agree it seems there was meant to be no right answer to a couple of the questions, and the babies in the hospital was at least a clear statistical problem. I also had an admittedly whimsical objection to the lack of details on one question, thanks to the level of specificity seen in riddles, puzzles, and so on here, and maybe due to a programmer background thinking of pointers and assignments. The first CFAR question should have specified to start something like there are three people in a room. Then it's clear there's not a person looking at himself in a mirror, or more than three people with some having the same first name, or creatively a statue or painting, with one human looking at the artwork which is facing another human. (Would be a good one with Lisa implying the Mona Lisa, but connotations of names shouldn't be relevant)

However, what I was really curious about was the redwood question. Surprisingly, I knew the answer pretty much exactly and later noticed the complaints about using feet as a unit which was rather strange. I remembered this exact question was from a recent study in a psychology journal on cognitive biases.

It seems likely the question was written with knowledge of the study in mind, to test for anchoring bias, considering many other things could have been chosen other than the height of redwood trees in feet. I really hope the intention was not to take these results to say, "LW readers conclusively have less anchoring bias than people in the psychology study." As the maximum number that could possibly be generated by the RNG (999) iirc is lower than an anchoring number given in the study (1000), presumably few survey participants if any would answer the tree height is greater than that. Due to the RNG anchor likely being much closer to the true value anchoring bias will be less than in the psychology study by nature of how the question was presented.

DONE, sweet fancy moses. No flash on tablet=no IQ test for me :/

Nice job writing the survey - fun times. I kind of want to hand it out to my non-LW friends, but I don't want to corrupt the data.

Did it. Was enjoyable for me!

Completed every last question.

Also, I've noticed that on different IQ tests (real ones, not fake ones) my scores vary by as much as 40 points. Hmm.

Done. I hope this data help LW/CFAR.

Done. Finished most of it, stalled for days waiting for time to do the extra credit, noticed I was doing that, submitted. I'll look forward to the results.

Took it, lurker who just broke ones position on not posting on the net. Had to skip last questions and tests thou, going to try them next..

Done and done. And this makes for my very first comment. The first of many.

Survey taken: check! Account finally registered: check, please!

I was off by 50%ish on the two estimation questions, but I forgive myself Bayes' age since I really know nothing about history in "space-of-time" context. The redwood tree on the other hand was a geometry problem for me, more than anything else, and I misjudged its incline by half a degree.

I took most of the survey, except for the (aptly named) “Unreasonably Long and Complicated Questions” at the end.

I did everything except the IQ test. I took that test before and retook it until I figured out how to solve all the problems. I could not recall what I got on it the first time. Strangely in the survey I said staying anonymous is important to me and then I created an account with my real name.

Done with the entire thing. :)

Took it minus the three personality tests and minus the very last few questions. I still know my IQ from a former test and I had my NEO-FFI results already stored somewhere but couldn't find the right hard-drive quick enough. Autism... don't think I would score very high on that but my fallible intuition says lesswrong seems like quite the paradise for autistic personalities.

Sincerely curious about the results :)

I also guessed the size of the biggest redwood tree incredibly well :) By converting my guesstimate in meters to some form of archaic measurement only used by cavemen and Americans. What's up with that?

If the right thing to do is the consequentialist thing to do, and an outcome turns out bad, but it was still the best choice with the information one knew at the time, would that be consequentialism or virtue ethics?

edit: Ok, I completed the survey and just guessed. Would still like to know the answer though.

DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!DONE!

Only cost me an hour of my time!

(Minus, of course, the two additional hours spent staring at a corner, crying and lamenting my various emotional insecurities brought up by the IQ and personality tests)

I answered everything but the personality test links, I will take them when I have more free time.