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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)
Took it.
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.
Good question. I'm going with "no".
That is about the excluded middle I was thinking of on those questions. Reference Dan Savage's term "monogamish." This community seems more likely than average to have unusual degrees of relationships.
I was also wondering about "preferred" relationship style. I know several who would prefer polyamory in theory but in practice have never had it work out well in practice. Granted, I know several who have never had monogamy work out well in practice and more who have discovered that they were not in fact in strictly monogamous relationships.
I like you
And done. I look forward to the Big Five scores, personally.
Well, my big five scores were off. I was watching college football while I took the personality tests, which I think may have altered the results a bit. High emotions and whatnot.
Edit: I took the Meyers Briggs and three of the four letters were off, so I just used what I know my type is. It's been that type for like five years and I took a test about two weeks ago, and got the same results.
Took it and laughed several times.
I took the survey before it was cool.
Some might claim that so did everyone else who took it. :-)
I took the survey before. It was cool.
Punctuation time!
Luckily it will remain possible for everyone to do so for the foreseeable future.
Took the survey. Does the god question include simulators? I answered under the assumption that it did not.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't. At least, if it does I have no idea what the 'ontologically basic mental events' qualifiers were about...
I honestly considered answering "Mu" to the questions that mentioned 'ontologically basic mental events' since I don't think "ontologically basic" is a meaningful concept.
In a similar vein, I think the one about religious views should list ignosticism (and apatheism, for that matter).
I assumed the same, based on the definition of "god" as "supernatural" and the definition of "supernatural" as "involving ontologically basic mental entities."
(Oh, and for anyone who hasn't read the relevant post, the survey is quoting this.)
I, for one, answered assuming that it does include simulators. I do not know what ontologically basic mental events are and didn't bother to look it up.
I took it. Thanks for doing this every year, the results are very interesting.
Took it.
Two questions, as I take the survey:
According to this Google result, "spiritual" in this context seems to allude to a kind of private, iconoclastic, mystical religion, as opposed to public, creedal, classical religions like most sects of Christianity. I hope that helps.
For 2. - you could fill out the political compass survey (it comes up later in the survey under "unreasonably long and complicated questions"). Alternatively you could pick the political labels that you think might apply to you and then choose one at random.
For 1, I took it as meaning having a belief in some form of soul, afterlife, or karma.
But I absolutely believe in karma. I guess that makes me spiritual. The things you find out about yourself eh?
even if you interpret karma as reddit/lw karma, or social consequences, "absolutely" is too much.
don't bet your house on it.
I'd say, having the alief that, as IIRC someone on LW put it (I can't recall the exact wording and the search engine doesn't seem to help me), you are a timeless optimization process of which your current incarnation is a mere approximation.
That's not spiritual.
Took it - I hadn't taken an IQ test before, and I found it interesting (and, for the final few questions, quite difficult).
Hmm. I got 110. And then because that's ridiculous, and I have an ego, I took it a second--and third--time, subsequently scoring 126 and 140. (I reported 125 on the survey because I know 110 isn't right.)
And while I was trying harder on the second and third attempts (as a result of realizing 'oh, I guess most of these actually are easy to everyone else, not just me, so I shouldn't be so leisurely'), I wasn't superbly focused on any--for example, I became distracted on the third attempt with something in another tab for more than 10 minutes before remembering it.
All I'm saying is I'm dubious of this IQ test.
It suffers the usual problems of tests, among which are that test-taking is itself a skill.
That said, I don't think re-taking the test produces a valid result - a lot of the time I spent on the test was figuring out the rules of the puzzles as much as solving them. The problematic nature of the initial result is a reflection of the weakness of the test, as you noted, but re-taking the test simply introduces a new suite of problems.
Back in grade school, I took several real-life IQ tests and usually scored in the high 130's to low 140's. I'd heard of Raven's Progressive Matrices, but this was the first time I'd taken that type of test. It was quite humbling. I got 122 on iqtest.dk. From what I've heard in #lesswrong, most people score low on this test.
I opened the test again in a different browser, VPN'd from a different country. It gave the same questions. That means your subsequent tests aren't valid. You already knew many of the answers. Worse, you knew which questions had stumped you before. You were probably thinking about those questions before you started the test a second or third time.
See this comment of mine.
I got 135... Was I the only one who realized I could go back to previous questions, or something?
Calibration for other people looking at this comment: I took the test and got 10 points higher than my self-reported IQ. I think it picks up on a different kind of reasoning than the usual type of IQ test!
I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do that -- IIRC tests are designed to give reasonably accurate results in absence of practice effects. I had taken this same test one year ago and I'm pretty sure I answered certain questions faster than I would have if I had never seen them before (though this effect was almost exclusively in the easy, early questions, which took a very small part of the 40 minutes anyway -- I did score 9 points higher than last year but I had a headache (and hadn't realized I could go back to previous questions) back then so that sounds about right).
Also, I failed to answer quite a few questions when I got 110, thinking I'd be penalized for wrong answers... Apparently I failed at reading the directions which state you should answer all of them facepalm
I reported my first try answer (which also seemed unrealistically low to me). I think on balance it might be best for everyone to just report their first try answer accepting the test is normed low and then for macro analysis it can be adjusted / compared with another test like SAT scores
Survey taken while it was in stealth mode. Good to know it's officially out now!
A funny thing about the calibration question. Last year I gave myself (IIRC) a 35% probability of having the right answer within the interval asked, and got the answer right. This year I missed by two decades, at 55% confidence. Surprisingly that's actually progress - the Brier score tells me this year's is a better result than last year's.
Done!
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.
I scored really low on everything - in fact, I got 4th percentile Agreeableness. Not over-correcting for self-importance is hard!
ETA: I do actually have reason to believe that I'm not an extremely disagreeable person; I'm concerned that failing to acknowledge that or present those reasons made it look like I failed to consider that possibility.
I got similarly extreme results on C/E/A (not that I disagree with the direction) and lower-than-casually-expected O: link
(Edited to add: Very amused by the Myers-Briggs question "Your actions are frequently influenced by emotions". Um....)
I feel that my extroversion and agreeableness depend on who I'm with; the test scores were slightly higher than what I'd expect for when I am with average people and somewhat lower than I'd expect for when I am with people who I usually hang around with. (Both Big Five tests I took said I was below median extroversion, but the Myers-Briggs one says I'm E.) My conscientiousness score was somewhat less than I expected (okay, I do tend to procrastinate a lot, but when I do decide to take something as a matter of life and death, I fuckin' take it as a matter of life and death), and my neuroticism score was substantially lower than I expected (which strongly disfavours one of my latest hypotheses about the reasons of my lack of romantic success).
Oh golly, now I feel bad for using my OCEAN score from a recent test rather than re-taking it. This one was atypical? Sorry for adding noise to the data.
I reused my scores too. That shouldn't be a problem unless the linked test is weird...
I had recently taken both this one (linked to from here) and the same one as was in the survey, and the scores for all traits were within 6 percentiles of each other. (Stability is the opposite of neuroticism so I should compare N to 100-S, right?)
Links from Google Forms instructions often don't work, in my experience. They may work in some browsers but not others, and I am sure it does not help that I am often using an iPad for that sort of thing.
Selecting the URL, right-clicking it, and picking “Open in a new tab” worked in my version of Firefox.
In Google Chrome on the Mac, the URL text would simply not stay selected. The moment I let go of the mouse after drag-selecting, the text would un-select, and the question's text field would be focused.
I also got really low openness on that test. I'm suspicious.
Yeah, wouldn't stay selected.
the results of the big five test were highly suspect to me as well.
Muflax offers his feedback on some of the survey questions:
Yeah, I also assumed that it was meters at first. That would have been a low guess.
Sane units for someone's height are metres, not centimetres! :-)
The "income" question doesn't state pre- or post-tax — you should say you intend one or the other.
Also individual versus household. I went with individual.
Curious: I automatically assume all such questions to be pre-tax, as is the convention around here. Are there regions where post-tax is the default?
I interpreted the question as pre-tax, individual income.
Yeah, isn't that always the default assumption about 'income' unless one is involved in a taxation discussion?
Took it. I think the example of 0.5 being interpreted as 0.5% and not as 50% anchored me a bit, but don't see a way to circumvent it.
.X will be interpreted as 0.X% and not as X0% ?
Yes.
Took it.
Done.
Does "your country" refer to the country you were born in, are a citizen of, or are currently residing in?
Also: Took it. Karma me gentlemen :D
I presumed it refers to the currently residing country.
I presumed it was the country which you culturally identified most with.
It says,
That should coincide with the country you're a citizen of except in exceptional circumstances.
I don't really consider nationality to be part of my self identity - I'm not sure how unusual I am in this regard. I'd suggest changing next year's survey to include "what country are you in right now" (unambiguous so hopefully less noisy) plus another question about national identity which would permit non-state or non-officially recognized nations as answers and also permit none/not sure. Essentially giving nationality the same treatment already given to sex/gender.
Disagree. "What country do you most identify with" covers people who care about nationality, immigrants who care about the land they live in even if they aren't citizens, children of immigrants who identify most with their parents' origin country even if they don't live there and aren't citizens, expats who reject cultural assimilation, would-be immigrants that can't permanently live in their country of choice but have assimilated, angsty movie characters who are torn between two or more countries and make compromises, people who don't give a hoot but can't ignore where their culture comes from, or where they have ties, or where they were raised, or where they pay taxes. "What country are you in" covers native or assimilated members of a culture who are not vacationing abroad, expats visiting their home country, and you.
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.
I now have the whole set of Myers-Briggs letters. Something tells me this test is noisy.
You might want to look at North Americans and others separately for the redwood questions, to see if domain knowledge affects anchoring.
Perhaps a domain-knowledge question could be included in a future iteration of the survey. "North America" is a pretty big place, after all, and a Marylander is unlikely to know as much about redwoods as a Californian.
Perhaps a set of options might be along the lines of:
(because you always forget an option when making a list like this.)
I'm thinking of less knowledge than that; having seen redwoods at all (even on TV) and knowing they can get really big is knowledge, relative to "It's a kind of tree, right?".
Ooh, right. That could be captured by "one or more related questions", but it wouldn't be obvious to me that it was, were I answering the question. I certainly didn't know that Mount Elbrus was the highest in Europe three days ago - I imagine that would be analogous.
Well, that's because certain people define the borders of Europe so that Mount Elbrus is in Asia, and Mont Blanc is the highest in Europe.
I took the survey.
I am curious to know whether CFAR questions #2 and #4 are supposed to have a "right" answer.
I'm the CFAR person who is responsible for those questions, and I'll explain them and report on the results after the survey is closed. Until then... no comment.
ROT13ing the following due to Unnamed's concerns (do not decode unless you've already taken the survey):
Va Dhrfgvba Gjb, V'z cerggl fher gur “zber zbarl yngre” nafjre vf fhccbfrq gb or gur evtug nafjre sbe zbfg nqhygf, ohg V pna vzntvar cyragl bs fvghngvbaf jurer gur “yrff zbarl evtug abj” nafjre jbhyq znxr zber frafr, r.t. n grrantre yvivat jvgu gurve cneragf jub'f nyzbfg eha bhg bs cbpxrg zbarl guvf jrrx. V fhttrfg pbagebyyvat sbe jurgure gur erfcbaqrag'f nafjre gb gur “Vapbzr” dhrfgvba jnf cbfvgvir jura nanylfvat guvf.
Va Dhrfgvba Sbhe, jvgu Qeht O gur cngvrag jbhyq unir gjb uhaqerq svsgl srjre qbyynef ohg gjragl srjre urnqnpurf, fb gur dhrfgvba vf jurgure n ybj-vapbzr crefba fubhyq or jvyyvat gb cnl gjryir qbyynef naq n unys gb cerirag n urnqnpur. Hayrff jubrire jebgr gur dhrfgvba unq va zvaq n eryngviryl uvtu guerfubyq sbe jung pbhagf nf “ybj vapbzr”, V'q fnl gung gurl fubhyqa'g naq gung Qeht O vf orggre.
Zl guvaxvat ba gur qeht dhrfgvba jnf gung gur urnqnpurf frrzrq fb qrovyvgngvat gung gurl jbhyq or ceriragvat fbzrbar sebz jbexvat. Juvyr O vf boivbhfyl gur zbfg rssvpvrag, N fgvyy fnirf 20 urnqnpurf cre lrne. V pbasrff gung V qvqa'g npghnyyl qb gur zngu ng gur gvzr, ohg rira vs ur'f jbexvat ng zvavzhz jntr (va gur HF), vg fgvyy znxrf frafr gb ohl N: guerr ubhe zvtenvarf, gvzrf gjragl urnqnpurf cre lrne gvzrf frira qbyynef naq gjragl svir pragf cre ubhe (zvavzhz jntr) pbzrf bhg gb or sbhe uhaqerq naq guvegl svir qbyynef, juvpu vf nyzbfg gjvpr nf zhpu nf gur qvssrerapr va pbfg.
Gur dhrfgvba fnlf gur cngvrag vf vapncnpvgngrq ol rnpu zvtenvar urnqnpur sbe guerr ubhef. Gur HF zvavzhz jntr vf $7.25. Guvf jbexf bhg gb gjragl-gjb qbyynef cre zvtenvar urnqnpur, orsber gnxvat vagb nppbhag gung gubfr fhpx vafnaryl. Gur cngvrag znl or cbbere guna gung be hanoyr gb jbex (zber), gubhtu. Vs V jrer gur qbpgbe V'q bssre gur pubvpr orgjrra N naq O, abg zragvba P orpnhfr bs gur rssrpg guvf dhrfgvba grfgf, naq erpbzzraq N vs nfxrq.
V gubhtug gur dhrfgvba jnf naablvat naq pbagevirq, nf vg znxrf ab frafr gb unir zr gel gb jrvtu gur qvfhgvyvgl bs gur cngvrag'f cnlvat if. fhssrevat jura V pbhyq whfg unir nfxrq uvz. Gung fnvq, gur zvtenvarf fbhaqrq dhvgr uryyvfu, naq V svtherq gung vs gur cngvrag jnf fb cbbe gung gur qvssrerapr va cevpr jbhyq unir orra n ernyyl urnil oheqra ba uvf svanaprf, gur qrfpevcgvba jbhyq unir hfrq fbzr zber rkgerzr jbeq guna whfg "ybj-vapbzr". Fb V jrag jvgu gur zbfg rkcrafvir bcgvba.
V nterr gung univat gur qbpgbe qrpvqr (orgjrra N naq O, lrf), engure guna whfg nfx gur cngvrag, frrzf cbvagyrff. Vg'f n znggre bs gur cngvrag'f cersreraprf.
Nf n fvqr abgr, V qba'g guvax jr pna nffhzr gung gur qvfhgvyvgl gb gur cngvrag bs gur urnqnpurf vf fvzcyl rdhny gb gur vapbzr ybfg.
Not affiliated with CFAR, but in my view
V’z abg fher vs gur crefba jub jebgr gur dhrfgvba unf unq erny pynffvp zvtenvarf be abg. Sbe nalbar jub unf rire unq zvtenvarf, gur dhrfgvba unf na hanzovthbhf evtug nafjre.
V nz dhvgr flzcngurgvp gb guvf fragvzrag (frr zl pbzzrag urer), ohg V srry gur arrq gb cynl qrivy'f nqibpngr urer: ubj ynetr jbhyq gur qvssrerapr va cevpr unir gb or sbe gur pubvpr gb ab ybatre or boivbhf?
P.S. Should we edit these posts to de-rot13 them after the survey closes (for the benefit of future people reading them)?
Took the survey. Does the "Do you intend to have children" question refer to the immediate future, or in your lifetime?
I interpreted that question as "in your lifetime".
Me too.
Took the survey; doing all the extra tests for the last few extra questions was fairly interesting, not having done many personality tests or taken online IQ tests before.
Took the survey, and all the extra questions.
Took the survey. Called it a day at the "unreasonable" extra credit questions.
Well... that was a tense couple of hours (damn long survey) I answered every question except for the last.
I took it and threw in on the ground!
Took it, did most of the extra credit questions. I think that a mixture of already being familiar with the test, and being used to consciously correcting for some bias about self perception may have thrown off my personality stuff.
I took survey. Long time lurker 1St time poster
Welcome!
Welcome! A year ago I was in your exact same position, having just created an account in order to take the survey and get free karma. Hope you continue posting!
Have you seen the welcome thread?
Took the survey.
I took the survey! Including some but not all of the extra credit.
Took it. And I answered all the extra-credit questions that were applicable to me.
Karma me!
I answered every question, and enjoyed doing so. Thank you for putting this together. (c:
I took it!
Done
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.
What about rot13'ing them? (You'd have to spell numbers out, of course.)
There's one additional spoiler here not related to the probability questions. ROT13'd:
Nyfb, (nqqvgvbany fcbvyre) PSNE gevpxrq zr jvgu dhrfgvba sbhe! V guvax gur pbeerpg nafjre vf N vs lbh jbhyq fcraq gjryir qbyynef svsgl gb nibvq n urnqnpur, juvpu fbhaqf yvxr n tbbq ohl gb zr.
EDIT: removed a couple of numbers that I missed
Spell out the numbers, or ROT-13 leaves them alone...
Took the survey! :)
Thank you Yvain!
Took it. Nothing like a census/survey to make you feel like part of a community.
FYI
Also, in retrospect, I misremembered my own age. It's been ... a busy year.
Minor points on survey phrasing...
P(Global catastrophic risk) should be P(Not Global catastrophic risk)
You say in part 7 that research is allowed, but don't say that research is disallowed in part 8, calibration year.
In the true prisoner's dilemma article, it doesn't appear to give any information about the cognitive algorithms the opponent is running. For this reason I answered noncommittally, and I'm not sure how useful the question is for distinguishing people with CDTish versus TDTish intuitions.
Similarly in torture versus dust specks I answered not sure, not so much due to moral uncertainty but because the problem is underspecified. What's the baseline? Is everybody's life perfect except for the torture or dust specks specified, or is the distribution more like today's world with a broad range of experiences ranging from basically OK to torture?
I might have given an inflated answer for "Hours on the Internet", as I'm on the computer and the computer is on the Internet but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm actively using the Internet at all times.
I assumed it wouldn't be a True prisoners dillemma if the payoff matrix is actually just (C,C) and (D,D), and therefor that my opponent was running some arbitrary not UDT theory.
I interpreted the word "True" simply to mean that the utility payoffs in the table are correct, and presented in such a way as to prevent people's empathy instinct from causing one player's utility to leak across to the other player.
So did I. Also, in that particular scenario, I'd rather call for a referendum than decide for humanity by myself. I've thought about replacing saving 0/1/2/3 billion lives with receiving 3/2/1/0 kicks in the groin, but that would trigger near-mode thinking in me. Being given 0/500/1000/1500 dollars? Then I would definitely cooperate if I was convinced my opponent's cognitive algorithms aren't too different from mine.
I managed to keep myself up after several days of sleep deprivation to complete all that I could but the very last part.
Did the survey! Also, this is my first comment, as a long-standing lurker!
I took it, on a Saturday night, and scored 7 on Extroversion. Pardon me while I step out to go to a party.
I took the survey.
As per ancient tradition (apparently) - give me karma
Survey: taken.
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.
The underlying reasons are set forth in the Sequences, as you'd expect. :)
No. Stop. The only reason necessary is because we want more of that behavior, right?
You're entirely correct. And if you read that post, you'll see why your reply is funny. :)
Done
Done.
Pretense for posting here:
How are the redwood tree questions relevant, don't they mostly test trivia knowledge?
Anchoring, thus random number generator a question earlier.
Ah, I see.
So this question (CFAR 6) ...
... just serves to reinforce the anchoring effect, I take it.
All a setup for CFAR question 7 then, "best guess about the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world (in feet)?"
If that is so, then unfortunately for people who get a random number close to the actual height of that redwood tree, and who also have some background information on redwood trees, the anchoring effect would be impossible to tell apart from actually knowing (within bounds) the answer.
A number that is purposefully far off may have discriminated knowledge versus anchoring better, e.g. by using a random number from 500 to 1500 instead.
I think I messed this part up; random.org was down when I took it so I skipped that question and the next, then answered my best guess for redwood height, then realized that I could just make a random number by other means (python), and used that instead. I realized afterwards that it was probably about anchoring, but there was no obvious way to undo that section. Oh well; I was off by more than a factor of 2 regardless, despite having visited redwood national park.
Took it.
Entered.
If you're using Chrome, the Big 5 site is much more tolerable if you open console and run this line of javascript:
That sets the background color to white for everything instead of their hideous color scheme.
I took the survey and all the optional questions. I love answering multiple choice questions.
I also love this.
I took the survey.
took it. It's interesting to see how the questions change every time I take one of these.
Done. I did all of the extra credit except the Myers-Briggs. The IQ test was the most interesting but three or four questions towards the ends were frustratingly difficult and refused to yield their secrets to me; even now I can feel lingering annoyance at the fact that I eventually gave up on them instead of wrestling with them for longer. Oh well.
Same for me here. Most of them were surprisingly easy and some (about 3 or 4) were just plain bizarre.
I took the survey. I did Political Compass for the first time, and I found its questions and results rather baffling. Political Compass themselves admit it is culturally biased and mainly for western democracies.
Done.
I took the survey and participated in the complementary karma orgy!
My first census at LW is done. I gave up on the questions requiring to answer other surveys before, apart from the political compass one which I already did. Looking forward for the results.
Took the survey. Somehow I've managed to lose a decent chunk of IQ over the past 15 years...
IIRC, some tests are designed to have a standard deviation of 24 rather than 15; perhaps the test you took 15 years ago was one of those, so that a 148 on that scale would correspond to a 130 on this one.
I took the survey. Skipped out at the "unreasonably long" section. Will it handle things properly if I return to it another day?
Note, if you ask me question that I can look up in two seconds flat, and the next question is "without checking sources, assess the probability of the last answer being correct" then I'm not sure you're going to get the results you're looking for. I consider the Internet as part of my partly trustable memory that I reference when I want to achieve success in the world I.e. all the time - but its not clear that's a commonly held opinion.
As a general rule, when taking surveys to test your knowledge, I believe you are supposed to not look up anything unless specifically instructed. It's like crossword puzzles in that way.
Lurker, first time poster and done!
Feel free to introduce yourself in the welcome thread.
I accidentally hit the enter key before I was done and my answers were submitted. I'm dumb.
Took it.
My browser was unable to copy/past most of the links which led to less than initially intended participation on my part. For instance, I took the big 5 quiz because the address was easy to glance at and type into another tab but didn't take other surveys/tests in the bonus question sections because i didn't feel like tabbing back and forth to get the web address correct.
Took the survey and all extra questions bar IQ test.
Took the survey. Feels like I only very recently took the last one.
I took the survey too. I can haz karma plz? Kthxbye.
Took it.
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.
Easy and entertaining. Done!
Took it, now give me karma.
Survey: done. Learned about deontology/virtue ethics: done.
Thanks LW. First time poster. 8 month lurker.
Took survey, not yet contributed to the site, had lurked a lot over the past few months.
Thanks for the test Yvain! I did all of it and wasted too much time in the surveys (didn't want to fill in with an existing one in case of calibration errors. In addition to everyone else's comments, I personally didn't find any of the quizzes problematic, got a similar Big Five score to usual, and actually got 10 points more in my IQ test than my self-reported IQ. Looking forward to the results!
Took it.
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 assumed it was supposed to mean ‘revived in a way that wouldn't have been possible if the patient hadn't been cryopreserved’.
Taken!
Taken. Comments:
In the “More Children” question, I interpreted “planning” very broadly -- I definitely want to have children some day, but not in the next few years. And I'm assuming that finding a girlfriend (which I'm kinda working on) counts as the first step in the “plan”. ;-)
In the “Work Status” question, I interpreted “currently” broadly -- I graduated last month, and know I've been accepted for a PhD even though I'm not officially starting until later this month, so I didn't pick “Unemployed” even though I technically am right now, because that would only mean that you opened the survey in the wrong month.
As usually, in the “Political” question I'm nearly totally disregarding the labels and mostly disregarding the examples, focusing on the descriptions instead.
In the “Religious Views” question, what do apatheism and ignosticism (essentially fancy words for ‘don't care’ and ‘don't understand’ respectively) count as? I'm assuming as “Agnostic” (essentially a fancy word for ‘don't know’).
In “Moral Views”, I'm counting rule consequentialism as a form of consequentialism, rather than as a form of deontology.
iqtest.dk does count as a “respectable test”, right?
“you may do so using any resource EXCEPT the answers to previous Less Wrong surveys” -- I've already read them; how do I erase them from my memory? ;-) (especially for the IQ calibration question...)
I'm lumping into Many Worlds all interpretations not experimentally distinguishable from it even in principle. Is that right?
In the questions about aliens, I'm taking “intelligent” to mean ‘at least as intelligent as a typical human right after the Upper Paleolithic Revolution’; if octopuses/crows/dolphins/gorillas would also count as “intelligent”, my answers would be much closer to 100. (And if you're asking the question for Great Filter-related purposes, I think asking about “civilizations” --i.e. cultures at least as advanced as humans right after the agricultural revolution-- would be more interesting and my answers would be somewhat lower.)
In the question about cryonics, I'm assuming that reconstructions in which a Bayesian superintelligence guesses your brain state from all available evidence including your writings, pictures/videos/living people's memories of you, etc. (I can't remember what they are called) don't count. (Also, I'm interpreting “frozen today” as “staying frozen today”, rather than “getting frozen today” -- the preservation techniques were likely worse in the past than they are now, so the latter would be a higher number.)
In CFAR Question 4, is there a typo in Drug C? Otherwise it's completely obviously worse than B, and I can't see the point of including it unless it's to make sure we're paying attention.
In CFAR Questions 5-7, I think in metres, not feet, and I think that having to do mental conversions may have destroyed whatever anchoring effect I might have gotten from the random number (much like people tend to do better in the Cognitive Reflection Test when forced to activate their System 2 e.g. by taking the test in a language they're not fluent in).
My answer to the “Charity” question is a lower bound, though it's definitely within a factor of 2 of the true amount (unless you use a ridiculously broad definition for “charity”).
In the “SRS” question, does “do you use” mean ‘do you ever use’, or ‘do you currently use’? I used SRSs before but I haven't in months, though I'm very likely to use them again some day in the future. (Given that “Never heard of these” is listed separately, I'm guessing you mean ‘do you currently use’ and answering “No”.)
I'm assuming that searching for a LW wiki article for the purpose of linking to it in a comment and skimming it to make sure I got to the right one doesn't count as “read[ing] the LW wiki”.
My answers to “Hours Reading”, “Hours Writing” and “Hours Online” are very rough estimates. They could be off by a factor of 2.
I'd want the answer “Rarely / only tried a few times” for the “Smoking” question too. “No, I have never smoked” is not literally true so I answered “No, I used to but I quit”, but it's misleading because 1. I've never had a habit of smoking, and 2. it's not like I have committed to never smoke a single cigarette again.
I have solved the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom before, but if I tried to do that now on my own I think I'm very likely (85%) to make some mistake on the first attempt. But if I guess the spirit of the question correctly, I ought to say “Yes”.
In “Number of Languages”, I'm counting as a “language” any dialect with its own ISO 639-1, 639-2, or 639-3 code (the way the Italian Wikipedia does), and as “fluent” any language in which I think I would qualify for the C1 or C2 level on the CEFRL. In my case, for a pair of definitions to yield a lower/higher number they'd have to be unreasonably narrow/broad IMO, but I wanted to point this out anyway.
In “Income”, I answered with the yearly grant I'm going to be given for my PhD -- my income for the past year was practically zero.
In “Anonymity”, following whoever it was who proposed that question, I'm taking “easy” to mean ‘trivial’, so I'm picking the third answer -- but I don't think it would be much harder for (say) EY to find out my full name than it was for me to find out what Roko's basilisk was about.
In “P(Space)”, I'm counting as “space” anywhere over 100 km above mean sea level (so Felix Baumgartner doesn't count); also, my answer is a Fermi estimate, and if I were to spend half an hour making it more precise it could change by as much as an order of magnitude.
If it doesn't, then my answer to the question is off by my answer to the question.
Mine too.
(Actually I was just too lazy to wade through my user page to find out how many times I did that last month.)
Dear Diary, Today I found a girlfriend. I will now commence Phase 2 of my master plan to reproduce.
Took all of them.
Took the survey.
I hope this question isn't used the way I worry it will be used:
This question was easy for me to answer by pattern-matching to the Law of Small Numbers, as outlined in Thinking, Fast and Slow. If I hadn't read that, it's hard to say whether I would have reasoned it out correctly. So if many respondents answer this question correctly, I hope that the survey authors don't claim evidence that LW readers are better at statistical reasoning -- it'd be more accurate to say that LW readers are more likely to have seen this very particular question before.
(I could, naturally, be assuming too much about the intents of the survey authors.)
I don't understand the distinction you are making here. If you can answer correctly more statistical questions, how is that not being 'better at statistical reasoning'? Every area of thought draws heavily on memorization and caching.
Those are related abilities, but there's being able to answer specific questions and then there's being able to apply what you've learned more generally. For me, this particular question triggered more "aha! I've seen this one before!" than it triggered statistical thought. A correct answer to the question might give you a smidgen of information on whether the answerer can reason about statistics, but it probably gives you a lot more information about whether the answerer has seen the question before.
One superficial example of dealing with this problem is how, in my college discrete math class, the professor gave us a problem involving placing pigeons in holes, with the solution having nothing to do with the pigeonhole principle. Even better than obfuscating a problem, of course, is stating a novel one that exercises the skills you're testing for.
Intuitive answer:
Picture a horizontal line and points scattered around it. If there are many points, the line will be dark and there'll be a cloud around it. If there are few points, you'll get a vague shape and it won't be easy to tell where the line originally was.
Rigorous answer:
Thoughtful answer: Why would I bother thinking? Fetch me an apple.
Edit: For copulation's sake, whose kneecaps do I have to break to make Markdown leave my indentation the Christian Underworld alone, and who wrote those filthy blatant lies masquerading as comment formatting help?
EDIT: Apparently not. Very likely a bug then.
The usual kludge is to replace spaces with full stops.
Took most of it. I pressed enter accidentally after the charity questions. I would like to fill out the remainder. Is there a way I can do that without messing up the data?
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.
On my chrome 22 in Ubuntu, the 'links' were neither links nor selectable (whenever I selected one, it would immediately unselect it), which made accessing any of those questions rather annoying. I ended up opening the survey in FireFox to get the links.
Took it. Note for people on iOS device--iqtest.dk requires Flash, and doesn't tell you what's wrong if you load it on an iPhone /iPad/iPod.
I too have taken the survey, it's been some time since I commented.
Why do I get the feeling that you will tease me about the discrepancy between my probability estimates on aliens in the milky way contra the rest of the universe?
Hello all! Test taken, first post / de-lurking complete. I really enjoy the site and the discussions, and will contribute fairly soon...
I took the first survey. Everything seemed great! Thanks a lot Yvain. Unfortunately, I couldn't do the last extra questions. Sorry :( The results should be interesting...
Took the survey.
Took it and decided to de-lurk for the first time. (Hello!) I found the experience rather humbling.
Took it.
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 wonder whether there are visible conversion effects on the redwood question for native metric users? Estimates slightly on the short side and neatly divisible by three because the quick and dirty meter -> feet conversion is multiplying by three?
I rounded my guess to the nearest hundred, to cancel that effect.
Yay! Test taken including all extra questions
Longtime lurker that finally signed up in July. All questions except for the last ones with the tests. (did the IQ test though)
Took it!
I am impressed with Yvain's thoroughness overall in drafting this survey.
Is income before or after taxes?
Took it. The autism test makes it seem like it is easy for people to get more or less autistic with time. I would have scored much higher 10 years ago.
Took the poll. Thanks Yvain!
Took the survey!