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2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
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...
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.
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Comments (733)
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.
Er... From your blog:
[numbers redacted]
95% confidence interval: orgjrra svir uhaqerq naq gjb gubhfnaq.
50% confidence interval: orgjrra rvtug uhaqerq naq sbhegrra uhaqerq. (Corrected from sbhegrra gubhfnaq, thanks to Vaniver).
I suspect that last gubhfnaq should be a uhaqerq.
Indeed, thank you.
My 95% confidence interval for number of polltakers is (rot13) svir uhaqerq gb gjb gubhfnaq.
My 50% confidence interval is ryrira uhaqerq gb gjryir uhaqerq.
Is there not a way to shut off the survey?
My speculation: V jbhyq chg yrff guna svir creprag punapr ba yrff guna svir uhaqerq crbcyr gnxvat vg, naq yrff guna svir creprag punapr ba zber guna svir gubhfnaq crbcyr gnxvat vg. (Cbvag rfgvzngr sbe gur rkcrpgrq inyhr: rvtugrra uhaqerq.)
Thanks for the anchoring. Next time, please use rot-13. ;-)
Ciphered.
Shutting off the survey makes it invisible, which means that people can't go back to see how a question was worded or something.
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
Thanks. I'll try those when I have some time.
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! =]
Maybe you should rot13 the second paragraph, in case someone accidentally reads it before taking the survey.
Okay, sorry, I guess I forgot
IQ tests aren't all the same and can be a case of apples and oranges. I doubt you're comparing your iqtest.dk score to a previous iqtest.dk score 4 years ago, are you?
No, that's why I'm not freaking out. But I was a bit concerned over having different percentile not numerical scores. I figured they varied; but I wouldn't have thought by THAT much. Can the "average IQ" statistic on these surveys even be at all meaningful then?
Anyway, I thought about it some more and decided I don't care anyway. If I know I'm some degree of... smartish... I need not dwell on exactly what degree. It shouldn't affect the things I want to learn and do.
You can compare oranges to oranges, but if you want to compare LW oranges to the general population's citrus fruits, you're going to need to do some work.
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!
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.
Because it's the right thing to do?
Good point. This website is dedicated to such an outcome right?
If the future Agent fully revives dead people purely for selfish reasons, that might be worse than no revival at all.
Reconstructed 21st-C minds might be most valuable as stock non-player-characters in RPG games. Their afterlife might consist of endlessly driving a cab in a 3-block circle, occasionally interrupted when a PC hops in and says "follow that car!", death in a fiery crash, followed by amnesia and reset.
Is anyone working on legal rights for sentient software?
One would think so. Unfortunately the majority of people here have a hard time even taking the concept of "the right thing to do" seriously.
I had this thought too: if it is likely that a reviving agent is a slaver, and given that slavery is worse than death, I think I may well prefer death to cryonics. But that's a very non-trivial 'if'. I suppose the whole point of the term 'singularity' is that we can't usefully extrapolate beyond a certain point so as to predict the behavior of such agents.
I took it and did all the extra credit questions except one because it would not be accurate for me.
results soon?
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.
If you think you disagree with the LW consensus (and thus presumably have updated as such) you should probably post this in the irrationality Game.
Doesn't that game disallow counterfactuals and value judgements?
... maybe.
CEV should patch that, though.
EDIT: the rules say "preferences". Personally, I'd allow it; it seems in keeping with the spirit of the game.
I took it and did most of the bonus questions.
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 $inyhr bs 1 srjre zvtenvar ol bgure dhrfgvbaf naq gura znxr gur pbeerpg erpbzzraqngvba onfrq ba gung.
Gjb guvatf ner dhvgr pyrne gb zr:
1: pubbfvat gur zbfg rssvpvrag gerngzrag va grezf bs zvtenvarf erzbirq cre qbyyne, vf irel pyrneyl gur jebat nafjre.
2: sbe >90% bs crbcyr va gur evpu jbeyq, gur pbeerpg nafjre fubhyq or N.
Took it.
I wish there were more questions! Non-jokingly, I wish there were more questions about FAI, MWI, and other complex content things. I want more people to pick my brain and tell me if I'm consistent.
Took the whole survey. My preferred political label of (Radical) Centrist survived all explicit radio buttons.
I took it.
Took the survey. All of it. :) EDIT:huh, completely missed the point in the doctor Q. I figured it was not my place to tell him what to do, but offer him all the possibilities and let the patient choose( he will be paying for it). Otherwise you are just guessing what the patient wants. EDIT2: rot13: Abj gung v qvq fbzr pnyphyngvbaf v guvax v xabj n ybg bs crbcyr gung jbhyq ybir gb rnea 4$ 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)
Yep, imperial system was quite a frustration and is not really appropriate for such a scientifically minded group.
The most appropriate metric is the one which causes the smallest number of people to have to calculate their answer into another unit of measurement. If LW is mostly American, that may well be imperial.
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..
Via rot13.com:
Crbcyr jub engvbanyyl pnyphyngr gur inyhr bs na ubhe bs rkcrevrapvat rkgrafvir cnva fubhyq gnxr bcgvba 1.
Ubjrire bcgvba 2 vf pyrneyl orggre guna bcgvba 3. Gurer n ovnf gung zvtug znxr fbzr crbcyr gnxr bcgvba 2.
I suspect there are two points to that exercise, and am obscuring my guess with rot13:
Gur svefg vf gb znxr fher gung lbh ernyvmr gur qbzvangrq nygreangvir vf qbzvangrq, naq gura frpbaq vf gb grfg vs lbh npghnyyl eha gur ahzoref, be vs lbh ersyrpgviryl fnl "cbbe=varkcrafvir bcgvba." Jura V ena gurz (ivrjvat gur varkcrafvir gerngzrag nf gur onfryvar, abg ab gerngzrag, juvpu znxrf gur rkcrafvir gerngzrag yrff nggenpgvir) vg pnzr bhg gb sbhe qbyynef gb nibvq na ubhe bs univat n zvtenvar. Gung frrzf yvxr n irel purnc jnl gb ohl unccvarff sbe nalbar jub yvirf va gur qrirybcrq jbeyq, rira ba n ybj vapbzr. Juvyr vg'f fvk gvzrf nf rkcrafvir cre ubhe nf gur purnc bcgvba, vg fgvyy vf purnc rabhtu gb fgebatyl erpbzzraq. (Pbafvqre gur erirefny: jbhyq lbh gnxr ba n zvtenvar gb rnea sbhe qbyynef na ubhe?)
That sounds like my first 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.
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).
Same here, agree 100%
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"?
Same for me... missed by 60 years but stated 30% of accuracy. I'm actually emotionally confused about the whole matter :)
I correctly remembered what decade his theorem was published, but my guess about how old he was was off by a factor of 2.
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.
No, you're not. So I googled the URL, and was linked to your comment. :-)
I also considered that it might be a compliance test, going actually to a site that appears to produce a random number but infact gives everyone the same number, as a check for whether the person followed the instructions or whether they just made a number up, to save time following the link.
By the same rationalisation it could also be a test for paranoia.
If you trust lesswrong to avoid referering you to a dangerous website than you should also trust Yvain to do the same.
[comment deleted]
The slippery slope argument is a classic fallacy.
Anna Salamon is the executive director of CFAR. Not trusting her but trusting LessWrong is indeed crazy. Karma points are not the primary way to decide whether to trust someone.
The link goes to random.org and is exactly what it says. If you generated your own random number from the same range that is fine.
Heh, paranoia. I generated the random number using different means.
My prior for Yvain to be a good guy was high enough for me to take the risk (though I had briefly the same thought of yours).
I generated my own random integer and then worried that the intent had been for us to select from a biased sample.
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 :/
done!
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.
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 spent a lot of time analyzing that question and came up with the following solution, which, granted, assumes at least three things, and "only a fool would attempt a plot that was as complicated as possible", but...
Vs jr nffhzr gung svsgl creprag bs gur urnqnpurf qverpgyl nssrpg jbexvat ubhef, gura gur pbfg bs nal bs gur guerr qehtf vf fvtavsvpnagyl ybjre guna gur bccbeghavgl pbfg bs ybfvat gubfr jbex-ubhef ng zvavzhz jntr. Qeht N, juvyr abg gur zbfg pbfg-rssrpgvir jura pbzcnerq qverpgyl gb Qeht O (be rira P), unf gur terngrfg rssrpg naq fgvyy pbfgf yrff guna gur zna jbhyq znxr va jbex-ubhef tnvarq. Gur pbzcnengvir pbfg bs guvegl-gjb qbyynef naq svsgl pragf sbe gur zber rssrpgvir qeht vf n yvggyr zber guna bar qbyyne cre yrvfher ubhe tnvarq, naq rira fbzrbar fgenccrq sbe pnfu jbhyq nyzbfg pregnvayl cnl n qbyyne gb erzbir na ubhe bs rkpehpvngvat cnva (V'z nffhzvat gur pheerag znexrg sbe cnva cvyyf vf qevira zber ol uvtu fhccyl guna ybj qrznaq).
Edit: xrrc va zvaq gung gur dhrfgvba fnvq "n ybj vapbzr", abg "harzcyblrq".
Gur dhrfgvba fnlf “ure” (abg gung V gbbx gung vagb nppbhag jura nafjrevat).
Svsgl creprag punapr bs urnqnpurf qverpgyl nssrpgvat jbexvat ubhef frrzf vzcebonoyr tbvat ba gur fbeg bs nffhzcgvbaf V gnxr sebz gur cerzvfrf bs gur dhrfgvba. Vs jr nffhzr n sbegl ubhe jbex jrrx, gura nffhzvat gur urnqnpurf qba'g vagreehcg fyrrc, gung tvirf pybfre gb n bar va guerr punapr.
Gernqvat vagb ernyzf bs "cebonoyl bireguvaxvat guvatf," V fhccbfrq gung vs gur crefba jrer na hafxvyyrq, ybj jntr, shyy gvzr jbexre, naq gur urnqnpurf jrer frevbhfyl phggvat vagb gur gvzr gurl pbhyq fcraq jbexvat, naq gur zrqvpngvba abg pbirerq ol vafhenapr, gurve rzcyblre jbhyq cebonoyl whfg sver gurz. Bhe pheerag wbo znexrg urnivyl snibef rzcyblref, naq rzcyblref bs hafxvyyrq jbexref pna nssbeq gb or rkgerzryl cvpxl. Fb tvira gur nffhzcgvba gung gurl fgvyy unq n wbo ng nyy, V gubhtug vg jnf yvxryl gung vg jnf n cneg gvzr bar jurer gurve urnqnpur gvzr qvqa'g bireync zhpu jvgu jbexvat gvzr, naq/be gurl znantrq gb cbjre guebhtu gur urnqnpurf naq jbex naljnl gb nibvq trggvat sverq, fb vg jnfa'g ceriragvat gurz sebz jbexvat.
V guvax fbzr cneg bs zl zvaq jnf guvaxvat gung, gbb, gubhtu vg zvtug or uvaqfvtug ovnf.
Nu, lrf, V sbetbg nobhg jrrxraqf. Ubjrire, zbfg bs gur ybj-vapbzr crbcyr V xabj ner npghnyyl jbexvat zhygvcyr cneg-gvzr wbof, be n cneg-gvzr wbo naq fpubby (juvpu, va vairfgzrag inyhr, qrcraqvat ba gur ntr bs gur vaqvivqhny, vf ubhe-sbe-ubhe pbzcnenoyr gb n ybj-jntr wbo), bsgra nzbhagvat gb zber guna sbegl ubhef n jrrx. V guvax (ntnva, nffhzvat gur urnqnpurf qba'g nssrpg fyrrc) n svsgl creprag punapr vf fgvyy n ernfbanoyr nffhzcgvba, rfcrpvnyyl fvapr fgerff, fhpu nf jbex, vf n cevznel pngnylfg sbe urnqnpurf.
You should rot13 that.
Good point, edited.
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..
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've seen this a lot now; what does "mu" mean in this context; where does the term come from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)
It was popularized by Hofstadter's GEB.
That Myers-Briggs test was a lot less thorough than what I remember from a lot of the ones I took online back in TheSpark era. Though, part of me is kind of glad that each of the extra credit questions could be completed in under an hour.
I interpreted “Strongly agree” as plain ‘yes’, and “Agree” as ‘it depends, but more often than not, yes’ or ‘yes, but...’.
Done and done. And this makes for my very first comment. The first of many.
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.
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.
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.
What?
V rfgvzngrq ol nffhzvat gur gerr jnf nobhg gjragl srrg va qvnzrgre (fbzrguvat V erzrzore sebz zl Ylprhz qnlf jvgu pvepn avargl creprag pbasvqrapr), naq unq nobhg na rvtugl-avar qrterr vapyvar (bar qrterr gncre), juvpu V pbhyq rfgvzngr ol bofreivat n inevrgl bs rireterraf va zl ivpvavgl. Sebz gurer, vg jnf fvzcyr gevtbabzrgel.
Also, just spent an hour I should have spent sleeping upvoting all the comments that explicitly mentioned taking the test, and a few that were just insightful.
(yelling) Curse you squid-god of time, for reawakening the sleeping demon that is my love for census, long forgotten in the archives of naturalization! (/yelling)
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.
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.
Your survey data is valuable to the Less Wrong community, upvoting your comment is how you get credited for it.
Last time it took about a month, IIRC.
But that is something insightful. So now I have a paradox here... Should I upvote or not?
Thanks for the time frame!
Simple solution: Aim to move the karma score to what you think it should be, based on the actual wisdom of the comment. I have no preference on the upvote - I'm just thrilled I've achieved a new high score on a comment, considering my second record was set by the comment "I'm bad at math" in more eloquent terms.
Yes, there's a tendency for witty remarks (and quotations) to skyrocket to karma scores that actual novel insights seldom achieve.
Upvoted specifically for the second paragraph, specifically because it was insightful.
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?
Only officially used by Liberia, Burma/Myanmar, and the United States - quite a lot of people in the UK defy the mandate of their governments and continue using traditional measurements.
Despite what the Daily Mail would have you think, "The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995 require that all measuring devices used in trade or retail be capable of displaying measurements for most products in both metric and imperial quantities" (WP, emph. added).
Moreover, "many imperial units [are] still legally mandated for some application; draught beer must be sold in pints,[31] road-sign distances must be in yards and miles,[32] length and width (but not weight) restrictions must be in feet and inches on road signs (although an equivalent in metres may be shown as well),[32] and road speed limits must be in miles per hour,[32"
AFAIK, very few scientists anywhere in the world (except USA) use "traditional" measurements, so I was also surprised that non-SI units would be used in a LessWrong survey.
It's not a big issue for me, but the additional complications in converting units (and the non-standard cross-unit conversions within the imperial system too) do distract from more important matters IMO. That's kind of the whole point of the SI, apart from striving for more accuracy in the measurements.
My experience is that most scientists (in the US) use SI units in the lab, and the imperial units everywhere else. Water boils at 100 degrees, and it's 98 degrees outside.
This reads as if it is intended to be a contradiction of the grandparent. This is odd because it actually strengthens the grandparent's claim. US scientists were already outright excluded from the claim so your additional testimony just enhances (!USA) to (!USA || USA && LAB). Pardon me if I misread the intended message (the other interpretation is that the comment is a misleading non-sequitur.)
Following the 'sharing anecdotal impression' line my experience is that scientists use SI units in the lab as well as elsewhere. Exceptions, with respect to "feet" in particular are for approximations of (human) height or when talking to people over 50 years old. Fahrenheit is never used but can be parsed and translated from foreign sources in much the same way that Cuneiform can be translated if absolutely necessary.
I was adding anecdotal evidence about US scientists, which I somehow missed were excluded from the claim. Thanks for pointing out the oddity.
I had missed that, too. (On the other hand, while I -- a non-US scientist -- do measure my own weight in kilos, kilos are arguably the traditional unit of body weight measurement in my country. And I do sometimes use pints for draught beer.)
nod. It was easy to miss, I only saw it on second read myself. Before that I had only typed my own Australian anecdotal perspective.
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.
It sounds like rule consequentialism to me - the ultimate arbiter of good and evil remains the consequences, but instead of determining rectitude by calculating the consequences of the action, you calculate the consequences of the decision method.
Basically, to use a blackjack metaphor, the rule consequentialist says someone who doubles-down when they have two tens showing is playing badly, even if they get an ace ... unless they've been counting cards and already know that the next card is an ace.
Thank you!
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 hope your being sarcastic. It only took me 20 minutes. :)
The IQ test alone was designed to take 40 minutes - if you did it in under 20 you probably got a lower score than you should have.
(I'm rather sure I took over an hour, doing all extra credit questions.)
I was being sarcastic by saying that I did the IQ test in a ridiculously low amount of time and therefore had a very high IQ and that he should feel worse about his IQ test.
Odd, I thought you meant you only spent 20 minutes crying....
I love how well sarcasm works on the internet!
I answered everything but the personality test links, I will take them when I have more free time.
Here were my scores from the various linked tests, which I have now taken:
Political Compass Economic Left/Right: -3.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.10
O: 76 C: 74 E: 4 A: 4 N: 37 (My wife scored me as well, and she came up with nearly identical numbers for me!)
I: 89% N: 38% T: 38% J: 67% (I remember taking this test before, and got "INTJ" then, too.)
AQ: 38 (I think I took the same test linked from LW in the past, and had the same score back then.)
IQ: 118 (I vaguely have a memory of taking a different form of the test in my teens, with a similar outcome.)
On a side-note, I don't know why there's so much hating going on towards the Meyers-Briggs test; if it came up with stuff like "You are an INTJ. This means that you have twelve fingers, enjoy ice-skating, and have a raw vegetable fetish." I would be inclined to call it "bullshit", but not for providing some vague generalizations which basically just summarize the answers that I just provided. That's not worth throwing chairs over, in my opinion.
I like the balanced perspective. I've usually found dismissals of MBTI to be based on the wrong criteria. It is nearly absurd to expect that a test based on that much data to be worthless. Instead the "skeptical" expectation should be "MBTI isn't likely to carve reality efficiently at its joints and the same data could be used to break up individuals according to a different combinations groupings which leads to more effective predictions and advice". It does seem like "types" should be chosen after the systematic collection of data.
That's one reason why I prefer the Big Five. (The other is that I understand what the Big Five traits are supposed to mean much better than what the MBTI traits are supposed to mean, but that might be just because I've read more about the former.)
I've had more exposure to the MBTI but would suggest the Big Five as a more useful predictive tool for the same reason. I've actually never tried a B5 test. Maybe worth a look!
Huh, I got the date almost right - sadly, the date of death.
took it
Took it.
Took the survey, plus the IQ test out of curiosity, I'd never had my IQ tested before.
Along similar reasoning, do we know how well the iqtest.dk test correlates with non-internet tests of IQ? Getting a number is cool, knowing it was generated by a process fundamentally different than rand(100,160) would be even better
I strongly suspect that a lot of the members of LessWrong have had a non-internet IQ test and will have entered their scores on the census. Those who also took the extra credit internet test and entered their scores to that as well could serve as a sample group for us to make just such an analysis.
Granted, we are likely a biased sample of the population (I suspect a median of somewhere around 125 for both tests), but data is data.
I assumed that iqtest.dk would count as “respectable” rather than as “amateur” so I included its score in both questions. If you do such a calibration, you should ignore my entry.
From what I could read on the iqtest page, it seemed that they didn't do any correction for self-selection bias, but rather calculated scores as if they had a representative sample. Based on this I would guess that the internet IQ test will underestimate your score (p=0.7)
Unless there are significant numbers of people, myself for example, who take the test multiple times with varied random algorithms just to see how it affects the outcome. I'd only put a (p=0.55) at the test underestimating your score, conditional that it doesn't correct for self-selection bias.
Though, given that the lowest score appears to be "less than 79", rather than an exact number, they may simply drop any scores under 79 from their pool, or at the very least weight them differently. Has anybody identified a similar maximum score which would support this hypothesis of discarding outliers?
Analysis of the survey results seems to indicate that I was correct: http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/
A lot of people in this thread have reported institutionally tested IQ scores much higher than those given by the extra-credit Internet test. (My own score on the former is two and a half standard deviations higher than on the latter, though I took the former many years ago.) I suspect that iqtest.dk's either normed very low (unusually for an Internet IQ test) or is suffering from other problems.
The first possibility that comes to mind is that some people are taking it several times (one person elsewhere in the thread reported scores in the 100 range, then 120, then 140 over three trials), and that its scoring system is taking that into account improperly.
As I mention elsewhere, ... gur grfg vf vaperqvoyl rnfl gb tnzr. Vg qbrfa'g punatr gur cbfvgvba bs cbgragvny nafjref orgjrra gnxvatf, fb trggvat n cresrpg fpber ba lbhe frpbaq gel vf cerggl rnfl.
That's what I thought. So if jeremysalwen is right and they're calculating scores as if their sample of results is representative, then their scoring algorithm is going to be utterly useless (perhaps outside a narrow regime around 100): the right-hand side of the curve is going to be populated entirely by people gaming the test in various ways (retakes are almost certainly common, and more sophisticated methods are likely to represent at least a couple percent of results), and I'd imagine a good chunk of the left-hand side would fall to guessers.
Even without cheating, I don't think the people who voluntarily spend 40 minutes on an IQ test are representative of the whole population.
Done. I think a lot of these questions are really fascinating, including user-submitted questions. I'm especially interested to see if we can do any better at avoiding anchoring than the general public.
Took the whole thing, waiting till I get a good night's sleep to do the IQ test and hit submit.
For those who couldn't select or copy the links like me, here they are to click on:
Political Compass: http://www.politicalcompass.org/
Big Five Personality Test: http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
IQ Test: http://iqtest.dk/main.swf
Meyers Briggs: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
Autism Test: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html
Thanks very much for these links... I didn't complete the surveys on first read through, owing to failure of equipment (iPad) to follow the links, and lack of time. But encouraged by others here who persevered and completed the whole lot, I have followed up on them since. Not sure if I can amend the census now, but reporting here as I was mildly surprised by some of the results.
Political Compass = Left Libertarian. Somewhere near Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Dalai Lama apparently, with almost all Western politicians to the authoritarian right of me. Probably explains why I can't stand any of them!
Big Five Personality Test = High O, High C, Moderate E, Moderately-Low A, High N.
IQ Test = 133, after finally getting the Flash to work (didn't work on iPad, and skipped/auto-inserted wrong answer for every other question on Android phone). Not sure about this one; the result was some way lower than my last measurement, though that was in childhood. Checking some of the related links, the top score appears to be "above 145" even if you get every question right, which seems strange (some of the end questions looked really impossible).
Meyers Briggs = INTJ (all moderate). More or less what I expected; last did this twenty years ago and came out INTP.
Autism Test = 17, very near mean of control group.
Who the hell downvoted that? Upvoted back to 0.
Been there, done that survey...
I'm curious about the results.
Done and done.
In accordance with ancient tradition, I took the survey.
Took the survey. It was quite interesting! I'll be curious to see what the results look like . . . .
Took the survey.
Took the survey on my iPhone so could only fill out half the answers. Politics questions were hilarious. Official delurk.
I took the survey
Took the survey.
Survey: Completed, no problems. Dithered quite a bit when asked what my position was on the true Prisoners dilemma. And I keep consistently overshooting the estimation dates by 100 years (almost precisely, on the previous survey I overshot by 105 years, this time overshot by 120ish). I've started getting more involved in the community over the past 3 months.
Just took the IQ test for fun, wasn't even trying hard for half of it, still got a 102
How does it feel to be almost exactly average?
Quite okay actually, not sure who decided that the entire IQ test be made up of progressive reasoning tests, at least ask some other problem solving questions
Don't worry; I'm sure there are plenty of ways you can still contribute.
Edit: Well, I thought it was funny.
Why is this being downvoted?
I imagine because it was an implied insult and the intended friendly tone didn't come through or wasn't considered appropriate. Seems to be back to neutral, though.
Censused!
I did all of it yesterday minus the IQ test, BigFive and Autism due to lack of time and being too tired. Will take those three today.
Overall, the survey was more fun than I expected.
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 wouldn't be humbled just yet, especially if you found some of the problems impossible rather than complicated but doable. A lot of people seem to have got unexpectedly low scores on this test. (And no-one's said 'Wow I usually do really badly on IQ tests but that one gave me a great score')
Go and read http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/how-to-ace-an-iq-test (don't look at the answers, just the methods) and then go back and redo the test. I imagine you'll then get a much higher score.
Then go and work out exactly what and why the answers on that test are as they are. (Perla has missed some of the explanations, but it's very satisfying to work out what the answers actually are. They're all perfectly logical and obvious-in-retrospect).
After that you should be reasonably confident that you'll do very well on any similar tests in future.
What that tells you about the nature of IQ tests and their calibration is debatable.
The URL is incorrect, the comma at the end should be removed. Here is the page
Well, when I went back and looked at a couple of problems, I was able to solve them, so far. It was definitely, then, an issue of time. (When I find the solution, I expect, it is completely clear and the missing frame is fully specified, and it's reasonably simple. I.e., "obvious in retrospect," as you wrote.)
I do know, independently, that my "multiprocessing" abilities have declined, and that these would be likely be important to any algorithm for solving these problems. I'm sure I could improve my time with practice.
Thanks for your kind thoughts and for the link. I'll check it out.
I would be careful with the interpretation of your results.
It is very uncommon to loose 46 points even over a whole lifetime, given the assumption that nothing bad happened to your brain. Intelligence is one of, if not even the most stable personality trait known to psychology. That is why losing more than two standard deviations without any apparent reason apart from ageing should be treated as a less likely explanation than either of the following ones:
You were compared to the wrong age group. An IQ of 100 is defined as the mean score for your age group. So if you were compared to people in their 20-30's that would easily explain the unfavorable result. Your test score needs to be compared to 68 year olds (or perhaps 65 to 70 year old people). It's quite safe to say however, that you got slower compared to your younger self and other young people for that matter.
Here is another explanation that may fit very nicely to your score pattern. http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/a35.pdf
Excerpt: But a rather curious situation occurs when we examine the scores of gifted students on these various sets of norms. In 1960, a five-year-old achieving a mental age of 8.0 would have had an IQ score of 165. In 1972, that same raw score only yielded an IQ of 153, a difference of 12 points. Differences between the Stanford-Binet Revision IV, published in 1986, and the 1972 norms appear to be at least 13.5 points in the moderately gifted range (Thorndike, Hagen & Sattler, 1986), which would bring the same child's score down below 140. This is a loss of one IQ point per year from 1960 to 1986 for children in the gifted range. In this 26 year period, average students needed to obtain only 8 more points to make up for the average gains in intelligence of the general population, whereas gifted children needed to obtain over 25 more points to match previous scores - 1 1/2 standard deviations of IQ. This seems like an unreasonable demand.
You mean, nothing bad besides aging? If comparing Abd2012 to the correct age group would easily explain the numerical difference with regards to Abd1962's score, then that's solid evidence that this is regular age-related deterioration (of ability to solve Raven's Progressive Matrices).
There is little doubt in my mind that there is an age-related shift. Calling it "bad" would be shallow. There is a trade-off.
I don't see it as a difference in "ability to solve," but rather as a difference in the speed with which untrained heuristics can be used. That could be related to the effect I've long noticed, a marked decline in an ability to multiprocess, to handle multiple independent threads or processes. If solving the matrix involves testing a large number of possibilities, the more that can be tested at once, the faster the process will be. It's as if I've moved toward being a Turing machine, from being massively parallel.
I would not consciously perceive the "separate processes," necessarily. Rather, the result of them would pop up in my consciousness as "ideas." I'd just "see" the solution.
The decline might be the result of increased capacity being devoted to depth rather than breadth. If so, it's not a "bad" happening, but a relative disability related to an improvement in a different ability.
It points to certain issues in life extension, however. The brain might naturally reach a kind of saturation. Life extension without intelligence enhancement in some way, i.e., the development of cyborg technology, might not be all so valuable. (We are experiencing this to a degree in that we have rapid access to massive information, but the bandwidth of those connections is generally narrow.)
But these are just ideas. I have no specific test of "depth."
It certainly beats the alternative!
Hm. When I originally read your description of solving the matrices, it seemed to me like your algorithm was shaped the wrong way- I would look at the matrix, identify the transformation, predict what the right answer would be, and then find it in the options. (I only used serious thought and hypothesis falsification on the last question.) Now I'm less confident that I understand my algorithm for identifying the transformation.
That loss of confidence is a clue that you are understanding the process better.
How do you "identify the transformation"? That's the whole banana!
There is a separate step, finding the answer in the set of answers, which is a partial confirmation. If one is not certain of the entire transformation, but has identified aspects of it, possible elements of the transformation, sometimes the choice can be made by elimination among the answers. But the process you describe is my own default, and that's how I started. At first it was trivial. It got less simple. Then I saw that I was going to run out of time! Then it became a matter of optimizing what I was going to answer, once I got that I was unlikely to complete.
Obviously, I could take the test again, but that would defeat the purpose. I did go back to review certain problems, for the discussion here. Yes, to be a more standard intelligence test, the results should be reported by age. I suspect that, unless someone has trained for this kind of test, raw results will peak at a certain age, then decline after that.
Or the test could be untimed, in which case I'd expect I could do very well. I might do better than some younger people, just as "smart," who aren't as careful. I would not generally be satisfied with less than total, accurate prediction, with a simple algorithm. (Any answer could be justified with a complicated enough algorithm.)
Back to the question of how the transformation is identified. It's an excellent question. It is questions like this that must be answered to develop artificial intelligence.
And for general artificial intelligence, they must be answered in the general case. It may be possible to find specific, "trick" algorithms that work for specific problems. But humans can solve these problems "out of the box," so to speak, without almost no instruction. How do we do that?
Rather obviously, we are designed to detect patterns of behavior, which we use for prediction.
Given the same difficulty and grading of tests, then yes. However, there's also the possibility that you have the same raw score on a test of the same level of difficulty, but achieve lower "IQ" once weighted and graded because of curious maths and changes in the base distribution model they use for grading.
I might be confusing what your point was though, on second thought. Am I?
So, it's possible that a raw score one year will mean a different thing another year. For the SAT and GRE, getting one question wrong on the math section will drop you tens of points- but how many varies from year to year. (Other scores are more stable; that one is corrupted by edge effects of the tremendous number of people who get all the quantitative questions correct.)
The point I was making is that, when IQ is calculated by age group, that's evidence that there are raw score differentials between age groups. This paper shows a theoretical graph of what that would like in Figure 1. Also related is Figure 3, but it has a crazy axis and so I'm hesitant to apply it. (I'm having trouble finding actual raw score data out there.)
If age-related decline and death are unrelated to intelligence, then even though raw scores will decline with age, individual IQ will stay the same in expectation (beyond unavoidable random drift) because each person is compared to people whose scores have declined about as much as theirs.
When IQ is used as a measure of "where are you relative to your peers?", you want this. When IQ is used as a measure of absolute intelligence, you don't want this. This email by Eliezer comes to mind.
"The point I was making is that, when IQ is calculated by age group, that's evidence that there are raw score differentials between age groups."
Exactly, that is the point. Of course there is a certain age-related deterioration of intelligence, especially fluid intelligence. So even if he did the exact same test he already did decades ago, his raw score will surely be lower now than it was back then. Confusingly enough, he could still be said to be as "intelligent" as he was back then if his relative position within the IQ distribution hadn't changed. (Which if we were to believe his recent IQ-test, actually happened).
If any of this is confusing it's because IQ is a relative measurement. So if I were to say that he is as intelligent as he was decades ago in the context of an IQ test, that doesn't mean that he would solve the same proportion of tasks correctly, or that there wasn't any cognitive decline due to aging, but only that his relative position within the normal distribution of IQ scores hasn't changed.
IQ tests never measure absolute intelligence. Since IQ means intelligence -quotient-, you always compare a score to other scores, so it's not an absolute measure by definition - there is no absolute IQ test. I'm also not aware of any respectable existing test for absolute intelligence either, nor how exactly one might even look like, although I'm sure you could in principle construct one if you define the word intelligence in nonconfused terms that reflect actual reality, which seems like a monumental task.
If we picture the concept of absolute intelligence as some kind of optimal information process with certain well defined characteristics whose lower and upper bounds are only determined by the laws of physics, I'm afraid human intelligence will be hardly comparable to it in any really meaningful way. And more importantly, how could you even begin to make a reliable and valid measure of something like that in humans?
Right. Unfortunately, whenever someone wants to talk about absolute intelligence, "IQ" is the closest word/concept to that.
When you look at adult IQ tests, the raw score is decent measure of 'absolute intelligence' for most modern humans. Current tests have known problems with exceptional individuals (on either end) and some tests are more interested in determining the shape of someone's intelligence (like, say, the subtests on the Woodcock Johnson) than others (like the Raven's test, which only tests one thing). Comparing raw scores tells you useful things- about the effects of age, about the Flynn effect, about theoretical populations, and even about the distribution now. IQ scores are defined to follow a bell curve, but if the raw scores don't follow a bell curve, that's important to know!
The concept of IQ as a quotient seems rooted in the history of testing children- "this 12 year old has a 16 year old's development"- which isn't very useful for adults. If we give a test for adults to Alice and Betty, and Alice has an IQ of 140 and Betty has an IQ of 100, that doesn't mean Alice is 40% smarter than Betty; it means that Betty is 50th percentile and Alice is 99.6th percentile. But, in practice, we might want to know that it takes Betty 90 seconds to get a problem right 80% of the time, and it takes Alice 5 seconds to get it right 100% of the time, which is data we collected in order to get the official outputs of 140 and 100.
The Sentience Quotient is the closest thing I can think of, and it's mostly good for describing why humans and trees have few productive conversations (though the upper bound is also interesting).
Friendly-HI, are you trying to explain Abd's low score using the Flynn effect? Claiming that a modern IQ of 110 is equivalent to an IQ of 156 in the 1950s seems a bit like claiming that a modern skilled labourer is as clever as the people at Cal Tech in the 1950s. I suppose that's possible, but I would be somewhat surprised. I mean, I haven't noticed many people complaining that chess is too easy.
I'd imagine that it's some combination of age-related decline and a badly calibrated test which has a large random-number generator component. (And a tiny bit of the Flynn effect)
Remember that this is the same scheme that puts a Richard Feynman in every 20 people while Marylin Vos Savant is an impossible genius who should not have occurred in the lifetime of the species.
Ideally your achieved IQ score is really a measure of your position within a normal distribution of IQ scores of your age group, where the mean (or peak) is standardized as 100 and one standard deviation equals 15 points. So an IQ of 130 is two Standard deviations above the mean and only ~ 2% of the people in your age group would be considered smarter than you.
I'm not sure age related decline factors into the decline of his IQ scores at all. That Hypothesis would only be true if the IQ-test he took was actually quite accurate and well-constructed, which would literally mean that in ~1955 only 0.05% of children in his age group were more intelligent than him and now something like 20% of ~65 year olds are more intelligent than him. Considering the stability of IQ it just doesn't seem very plausible, that age-related decline would have hit him much harder than the average old person.
The article I quoted offered an explanation that I find much more plausible. It's primary point wasn't that this is the doing of the Flynn-effect, but the following:
"When too many children are found in the upper ranges, the scores are adjusted to fit the theoretical curve.This swells the number of scores in the 120-130 range and depresses the IQ scores of the entire gifted population. The attempt to artificially force the distribution of giftedness into the normal curve results in the disappearance of 1 1/2 standard deviations of intelligence. With today's measuring devices, all IQ scores in the gifted range are most likely underestimates of ability."
Well, what I wrote was banter.
There are many kinds of intelligence. The test measures a particular kind, one that could probably be simulated (AI) with relative ease (I'm not saying it's easy, but that what is involved is a series of tests, trials, of possible transforms, and then a checking of transforms that work for simplicity. It's looking for an aha! pattern.
I know that I'm not as good at this now as I was when younger. A related example: I'm looking for my black waist pack, in my office, a room full of stuff. I walk through and don't see it. We are in a hurry to leave, so I ask my 9-year-old daughter to check. She sees it immediately. It's in plain sight. I have "tunnel vision." Not literally. I still have peripheral vision. But I don't interpret the full field, as I used to, only a narrower field, more central. I have to actually look at the bag to recognize it.
I trust the test as a reasonable one, that would measure a certain kind of intelligence that is highly useful.
Damn! I'm used to thinking of myself as really smart, for almost sixty years. Time to move on. Yes, I'm still smart in some ways, but I already knew that there are many ways in which I'm not, maybe never was.
What I've been told by doctors is that the cognitive impairments I've noticed are normal. People learn to compensate for them.
Here's a 2010 Master's Thesis that does pretty well on it. I remember someone came up with a better algorithm in the last year, but I'm not finding it quickly.
As age progresses, we also see a natural shift of intelligence from "fluid" to "crystallized" intelligence. The first kind is fast, adaptable and more creative, good for problem-solving, learning new things and pattern-recognition. The second kind is concerned with facts and knowledge, but also implicit knowledge/skills like how to drive a car.
IQ tests really measure fluid intelligence, less so the crystallized kind. Some IQ tests have a few questions that probe your crystallized intelligence as well, like "What was the name of the ship Charles Darwin sailed on to the Galapagos islands?" (often with 4 answers to choose from). But usually you get very few questions like those, if any at all.
Those two "kinds" of intelligence aren't completely independent though, as one would expect your fluid intelligence has a high impact on your crystallized knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallized_intelligence
Interesting, Friendly-HI. I was pointing to something distinct from both. In the Wikipedia article, "crystallized intelligence" is not about "knowledge," per se, but is something integrated. What has shifted for me is "fast," when it comes to a series of new analyses of my sensory input. I'm not that kind of fast any more. However, "depth" appears to have increased.
To me, it's important that I distinguish my accumulated experience from "truth." It's just my accumulated experience, my past. The present and future remain open, as long as I'm alive.
Whoa. I knew there was some weird stuff happening with high-IQ scores, but never realized it was this much.
Then again, most institutions I've seen that administer IQ tests seem to treat the formulas and scoring systems as corporate secrets or something. I should not be this surprised at the extent of the weirdness.
I just took the survey, making this my first post that someone will read!
I took the survey! Karma, please!
Never done an IQ test before. I thought it was fun! Now I want to take one of the legitimate ones.
Took the survey. Was tired to take the IQ test. Thanks for the opportunity.
I took the survey, but, like others, I was unable to answer the American-style school questions.
Taken, though I had to skip the IQ test because it wasn't screen reader accessible (flash, with some text labels but no accessible controls, not that flash in general is particularly accessible).
I wouldn't normally defend flash, but the test was all visual, so a screen reader might not have helped.
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?
I blogged about this, and between "g", the cheat page recommended by VincentYu, and me, we worked out solid answers to all the puzzling questions in the comments on the post.
http://johnlawrenceaspden.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-going-on-here.html
If anyone can't do any of the others, leave a comment there and I'll explain it.
For calibration/reassurance purposes, I got 130 on this test originally, and (worried by this) tried a couple of other free internet tests, on which all the questions seemed easy, which gave me 148 and 147 respectively (I'm assuming they're topping out around there. One of them can be pushed to 151 if you give all correct answers as fast as you can).
I have fairly good reasons to believe that I should (even in my current aged state) break any IQ test designed for the normal range, which belief is contradicted by iqtest.dk and confirmed by the two random ones.
I'm guessing the iqtest.dk is at least one standard deviation (15 points) out, and possibly twice that.
There's also the question of whether it's designed to be done 'cold', by someone who's never seen a Raven's matrix or a symmetry problem before, or whether before attempting it you should have practised those sorts of questions. And the thornier question of whether forcing scores to a normal distribution is a sensible thing to do.
I don't think we should; they deliberately do not publish the answers. Satisfying a few people's curiosity isn't enough reason to sabotage the test for others.