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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.

A1987dM12y30

“Kind of want to avoid beating a dead basilisk.” (I guess that's because doing that might piss off EY and that would be bad.) Also, I guess the answers would be very strongly correlated with those to the “Troll Toll” question anyway.

See in context

94 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey

by Scott Alexander

3rd Nov 2012

2 min read

736

94

11/26: The survey is now closed. Please do not take the survey. Your results will not be counted.

It's that time of year again.

If you are reading this post, and have not been sent here by some sort of conspiracy trying to throw off the survey results, then you are the target population for the Less Wrong Census/Survey. Please take it. Doesn't matter if you don't post much. Doesn't matter if you're a lurker. Take the survey.

This year's census contains a "main survey" that should take about ten or fifteen minutes, as well as a bunch of "extra credit questions". You may do the extra credit questions if you want. You may skip all the extra credit questions if you want. They're pretty long and not all of them are very interesting. But it is very important that you not put off doing the survey or not do the survey at all because you're intimidated by the extra credit questions.

The survey will probably remain open for a month or so, but once again do not delay taking the survey just for the sake of the extra credit questions.

Please make things easier for my computer and by extension me by reading all the instructions and by answering any text questions in the most obvious possible way. For example, if it asks you "What language do you speak?" please answer "English" instead of "I speak English" or "It's English" or "English since I live in Canada" or "English (US)" or anything else. This will help me sort responses quickly and easily. Likewise, if a question asks for a number, please answer with a number such as "4", rather than "four".

Okay! Enough nitpicky rules! Time to take the...

2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey

Thanks to everyone who suggested questions and ideas for the 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey. I regret I was unable to take all of your suggestions into account, because some of them were contradictory, others were vague, and others would have required me to provide two dozen answers and a thesis paper worth of explanatory text for every question anyone might conceivably misunderstand. But I did make about twenty changes based on the feedback, and *most* of the suggested questions have found their way into the text.

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

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[-]gwern12y710

Muflax offers his feedback on some of the survey questions:

Treat the three digit number that you just wrote down as a length, in feet. Is the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world more or less than the number that you wrote down?: Feet! Fuck you, barbarians. I refuse to answer.

What is your best guess about the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world (in feet)?: Why not beard-seconds? Seriously, fuck you.

...Height: 185cm (oh, now you can use sane units, you stupid imperialist pig-dogs)

[-][anonymous]12y150

Upvoted for "beard-seconds."

2A1987dM12y

Sane units for someone's height are metres, not centimetres! :-)

1tut12y

Yeah, I also assumed that it was meters at first. That would have been a low guess.

[-]kimsia12y660

I took survey. Long time lurker 1St time poster

[-]daenerys12y190

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!

[-]A1987dM12y120

Have you seen the welcome thread?

6RobertLumley12y

Welcome!

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

(not a reply, putting my question here because there are so many 'I took it' comments that no one will ever see this if I just comment normally) 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?

[-]alanog12y620

Lurker, first time poster and done!

[-]A1987dM12y110

Feel free to introduce yourself in the welcome thread.

[-]Alicorn12y610

I took the survey before it was cool.

[-]TheOtherDave12y310

Some might claim that so did everyone else who took it. :-)

[-]richardlitt12y270

I took the survey before. It was cool.

Punctuation time!

9gjm12y

I took the survey. Before, it was cool. I took the survey before it was. Cool! See also, on a similar theme: The Uncertainty of the Poet, by Wendy Cope. [EDITED to add: I hadn't seen Jandila's comment when I wrote mine, of course.]

6[anonymous]12y

I took the survey. Before, it was cool.

4TraderJoe12y

I took the survey before. It. Was. Cool!

4jeremysalwen12y

Luckily it will remain possible for everyone to do so for the foreseeable future.

[-]richardlitt12y600

Survey: done. Learned about deontology/virtue ethics: done.

Thanks LW. First time poster. 8 month lurker.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

1Kindly12y

I took screenshots of 34, 37, and 39 and I'm hoping to figure them out eventually if I stare at them hard enough.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

Could you do the others? Are the answers obvious?

5VincentYu12y

There are many online posts with solutions to each question on the test (some with better explanations). E.g., [1] and [2].

0A1987dM12y

Okay, I now know that the answers to the questions I gave up with wouldn't have occurred to me even if I had thought about them for days, except possibly one of them.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

A bit the reverse for me! I'm looking at them thinking 'how on earth did I not see that?', and feeling really stupid. I think if someone had said 'composition of functions' and 'motion in reading order' before the test I'd have got almost all the answers right. I think I had all the necessary tools and failed to see where to use them, which is a pretty good definition of 'idiot'. I bet you haven't come into contact with much of this sort of thing before, and I further bet that if you practised doing this type of test for a while then you'd start to find them very easy. I'd dispute the test's claim to be 'not culturally biased'. Obviously it doesn't require native-speaker English or literary knowledge, but equally obviously your score will depend heavily on how much you've been previously exposed to ideas about symmetries and abstract mathematics. On the other hand, it seems that you can probably learn all these ideas fairly quickly. So what your score settles down to after long practice may well be both interesting and not-culturally-biased. Some of the puzzles at the end of the test do seem to be tickling the limits of working memory.

0A1987dM12y

As I said, IIRC such tests are only supposed to be accurate if you hadn't done them before. I mentioned that before, but how would you go about designing an IQ test even less culturally biased than that?

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

Sweet! Thanks Vincent, reading those pages has added 15 points to my IQ.

2johnlawrenceaspden12y

Having read the list of recipes for constructing these matrices, this reminds me of the structure of cryptic crosswords, but done with symbols. You've got the a similar list of possible tricks for the setter to use, and the same ability to combine tricks to make a harder question. You don't have the grid pattern, whereby solving one problem gives clues to the solutions of the others, so it would be more like trying to solve a list of crossword clues without a grid. If the analogy holds, then the ability to score on these things should be highly trainable, and your score at first would be a mix of how many you've done before and your ability to intuit the patterns used in construction, with a large random component, but later on it would sort of settle down to a "speed of mental Solomonoff induction". The classic cryptic is the one in the Times newspaper. Most people at first can only solve one or two clues, but with practice the time to solve gets lower and lower. There are people who can do it as quickly as they can write the answers in. Speed seems to top out after a couple of years of doing them, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the final speed was a correlate of whatever we mean by intelligence. The other thing one might be interested in is the speed of improvement. They might be measuring different things.

1Kindly12y

The third thing to ask about is your speed the very first time you solve one. But that's harder to analyze, since it depends on whether you've tried to solve similar problems before.

2johnlawrenceaspden12y

Well, we should certainly be interested in the ability to solve new problems, especially since it looks like 'the bit of intelligence that we don't know how to program', and so a way of measuring it would be a wonderful thing. But I suspect that 'your speed the first time you try to do the Times crossword' is a fairly useless measure of that. If someone's never seen anything like it before, then their score is likely to be something like 2 completed clues after 1 hour, and I'd imagine the number of completed clues is only weakly related to how good they are at that sort of thing in general, and has a large random component. If they can solve the whole thing on their first attempt, then I'd imagine they were either an unparallelled genius or had done quite a lot of something similar before. For the Raven's matrices in the IQ test, your first ever score is likely to tell you a lot about how much attention you've previously paid to symmetries and patterns, which isn't necessarily related to either mental speed or creativity. It should pick out the mathematicians and artists, but it will probably also pick out people who are very interested in wallpaper.

3fubarobfusco12y

I wonder if this critique can go further ... Let's say that what IQ tests such as RPM measured in the early 20th century is "pattern-fu"; and that pattern-fu has historically correlated with all sorts of nice things — business success, academic excellence, artistic significance, happiness in relationships, and so on. Well, that's fine, but once you start making policy decisions — hiring, college placement, military job assignment, eugenics, etc. — on the basis of pattern-fu, Campbell's law kicks in and weakens the correlation. You get people specializing and training pattern-fu, treating improving pattern-fu as causing nice things, without that causation actually being demonstrated.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

I'd be amazed if that sort of thing wasn't happening, but you see the same sort of effect on all sorts of things which correlate, like spelling and grammar and success in studying. Presumably the hope with IQ tests would be that the amount of training you'd need to do to top out would be low compared to, say, learning English spelling. Allowing you to get a reliable, but not terribly costly, indicator of how good you'd become at all the other things with practice.

[-]Dreaded_Anomaly12y600

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.

[-]gwern12y570

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

[-]VincentYu12y190

Commenting here because this is the highest voted comment mentioning the Big Five.

The Big Five personality test linked to in the survey is an online implementation of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). It was used in two studies: Srivastava et al. (2003) and Gosling et al. (2004.

The most recent canonical citation of the BFI is John et al. (2008). The BFI is very widely used in the literature, so descriptive statistics (i.e., mean and SD) for different populations are available from many studies.

The percentiles from the online test were approximated under a Gaussian assumption (scores on Big Five inventories are typically not well-approximated by Gaussians, so the percentile rankings are bound to be off). Everyone was normed to the same distribution (i.e., age, gender, etc. do not affect the results; only the 44 questions on the BFI do). The exact mean and SD used by the test to calculate percentile rankings are as follows (converted to the usual 5-point Likert scale):

E: mean = 3.30, SD = 0.88
A: mean = 3.66, SD = 0.70
C: mean = 3.40, SD = 0.76
N: mean = 3.15, SD = 0.85
O: mean = 3.85, SD = 0.65

In order to compare LW's results to norms in the literature, we need to convert the percen... (read more)

7RobertLumley12y

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.

[-]BlueSun12y550

I took it. Thanks for doing this every year, the results are very interesting.

[-]AzrgExplorers12y530

Did the survey! Also, this is my first comment, as a long-standing lurker!

7MBlume12y

Welcome ^_^

[-][anonymous]12y520

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

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

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

[-]A1987dM12y120

Also, on the probability estimates, I pretty much tried to translate my gut feelings about things into a number. (Contrary to the sequence posts that explicitly advise us against doing that.) I haven't worked to get a rigorous probability estimates for most (if any) of the questions posed.

Me too. In particular, in the ones about aliens, any calculation with reasonable (IMO) inputs would yield a number practically indistinguishable from 1, so I trusted my gut feelings instead as they would also consider confidence levels outside the argument.

8Davidmanheim12y

It seems strange to me that anyone would assume that it is normal to come up with reasonable estimates for some of the items asked. I have too little information, and feel that it's irresponsible to have/venture opinions when specifically ill-informed.

9A1987dM12y

Well, I guess that is the point. If they were questions to which all reasonable people, after five minutes of googling, would give more or less the same answers, the results wouldn't be terribly interesting.

2Sarokrae12y

Well, no-one can update on evidence without a prior, so I just assumed if I was ill-informed I was being asked for a prior.

[-]Maelin12y520

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.

3WingedViper12y

Same for me here. Most of them were surprisingly easy and some (about 3 or 4) were just plain bizarre.

2A1987dM12y

Fbzr bs gurz (r.t. gur bar jvgu gvp-gnp-gbr tevqf jvgu pebffrf, pvepyrf naq gevnatyrf) V sbhaq fb qribvq bs nal nccnerag ybtvp gung V jbhyqa'g or greevoyl fhecevfrq vs gurl jrer npghnyyl trarengrq ng enaqbz fb gung abg-fb-fzneg crbcyr jbhyq jnfgr cyragl bs gvzr gurl pbhyq fcraq ba bgure dhrfgvbaf vafgrnq.

1faul_sname12y

V guvax gung bar znl unir orra fbzr inevrgl bs gevanel nqqvgvba/fhogenpgvba/naq/be/kbe glcr bcrengvba. V tnir hc nsgre 20 zvahgrf bs gelvat (gur svefg 38 jrer nyy cerggl fgenvtugsbejneq, ohg gung bar tbg zr).

[-]Kytael12y520

took it. It's interesting to see how the questions change every time I take one of these.

[-]GDC312y520

I took the survey and all the optional questions. I love answering multiple choice questions.

7somervta12y

I also love this.

[-]daenerys12y520

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.

[-]Scott Alexander12y100

I also got really low openness on that test. I'm suspicious.

8[anonymous]12y

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.

5A1987dM12y

Selecting the URL, right-clicking it, and picking “Open in a new tab” worked in my version of Firefox.

[-]Said Achmiz12y120

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.

4maia12y

Had the same problem using Chromium on Ubuntu. I hit Ctrl+C while still holding down the mouse, which worked after a couple of tries.

0thomblake12y

Also Chrome on Windows.

0blashimov12y

Yeah, I ended up just selecting to the end of the question: then it stayed selected. I would delete the extra words after copy paste. Obsolete point now probably, but worth looking into for next year.

7MBlume12y

Yeah, wouldn't stay selected.

5Rubix12y

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.

5Nick_Tarleton12y

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....)

0A1987dM12y

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).

2FourFire12y

I got 1th (1st?) percentile on agreeableness, and I disagree! (yes that sounds like High Fallacy) Infact all of my Big Five scores were quite low barring N which was a nicely high number.

3[anonymous]12y

the results of the big five test were highly suspect to me as well.

2Zubon12y

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.

4A1987dM12y

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?)

0kalium12y

I took both of those too, and for openness I got 74th percentile on the one you linked and 9th percentile on the one in the survey.

0A1987dM12y

To tell the whole story, I took the shorter test (the one in the survey) right after reading the results of the longer test, so priming effect might have caused the results to be closer that they would have been if I had taken the two tests several days apart.

0gwern12y

I reused my scores too. That shouldn't be a problem unless the linked test is weird...

0Oligopsony12y

Same here on O. I feel like the Openness questions featured a bizarrely high proportion of claims to the effect of "I am a brilliant and original thinker," and despite my attraction to weird ideas (I'm posting here, after all) I don't think I have the evidence to back up an assertion like that.

0magfrump12y

My suspicion is that the openness questions in that test are geared toward people who are also Myers-Briggs S's; I also predict that LWers will be almost entirely N's (50% confidence interval: at least 85% N), and so score significantly less openness.

2Michael_Sullivan12y

I am a massive N on the meyers briggs astrology test, yes I scored 96% for openness on the big-5. I suspect our responses to questions like "I am an original thinker" have a lot to do with our social context. Right now, the people I run into day to day are fairly representative of the general population with little to skew toward toward the intellectual or original other than "people who hold down decent jobs, or did so until they retired". It doesn't take a great lack of humility to realize that compared to most of these people, I am a brilliant and original thinker. OTOH, it's not like I'm Feynman or something. If I were working somewhere that filtered strongly for intelligence, like a hot tech startup or academe and had done so for long enough, I would probably feel relatively average and very focused on how to bridge the gap between me and those at the level or two above, vs. a dim awareness of the vast intellectual and originality gap between my associates and the typical person.

[-]BenPS12y510

I took the survey.

[-]Antisuji12y510

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

[-]maia12y510

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

[-]sanxiyn12y220

I interpreted that question as "in your lifetime".

6A1987dM12y

Me too.

2maia12y

Well crap. I didn't.

7A1987dM12y

That's why I had proposed to split "Yes" into "Yes, soon" and "Yes, eventually".

[-]Pesto12y510

Took it.

[-]adamisom12y500

I took the survey.

As per ancient tradition (apparently) - give me karma

[-]rocurley12y500

I took it!

[-]Anja12y500

Took the survey. Does the god question include simulators? I answered under the assumption that it did not.

[-]player_0312y150

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.)

8gwern12y

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...

3BlazeOrangeDeer12y

I think it meant "not made of smaller parts", for example ghosts would be disembodied consciousnesses not made of any atoms. I thought this was incredibly unlikely.

-3Eugine_Nier12y

For some types of entities it's not clear what that means. For example, are particles made of wave functions, or are wave functions made of particles.

3Eugine_Nier12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

In a similar vein, I think the one about religious views should list ignosticism (and apatheism, for that matter).

5tgb12y

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.

[-]Kawoomba12y490

Done.

Pretense for posting here:

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

[-]BrassLion12y150

Anchoring, thus random number generator a question earlier.

6tgb12y

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.

3Kawoomba12y

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.

2Pfft12y

I think part of the point is to make it manifestly obvious that the number is not related to the question. One of the famous early anchoring experiments had subjects watch a wheel pick a random number, and then guess how many African countries are represented in the UN.

0dbaupp12y

I think using a random number gives samples with low- and high-anchoring, and statistical trickery allows them to distinguish, especially since the sample size will be relatively large. (One way would be: group the samples based on random number (e.g. 0-333, 333-666, 666-999), then do a standard ANOVA with those groups as the factors.)

2Kindly12y

What I would do is compute a linear (or otherwise) regression between random number and height guessed. It would have also helped to have a control group to answer the question without anchoring, to determine what sort of background information people have, but that's not strictly necessary.

0A1987dM12y

I would only do that with respondents from the US -- having to convert from metres to feet is likely to weaken the anchoring effect for respondents from elsewhere.

4Kindly12y

Of course, I'm a respondent from the US and I answered the question by converting from meters. So this approach isn't foolproof.

0Kawoomba12y

For anyone whose number is close to the correct answer, and who chooses a number in the vicinity as his/her own answer, the information whether that answer was picked because of anchoring effects or because of being an expert in dendrology is lost. The sample size is probably large enough to still have reasonable predictive power without these cases, but the problem could have been circumvented by e.g. providing biased numbers, both too low and too high. Any statistical trickery can only lead to a prediction about how likely people in the above scenario are to choose their answer based on anchoring versus based on knowledge, but that is using information from the other samples to speculate about the causal factors of our special cases, our special cases from above wouldn't have added any information gain. Saying "From the data, I can speculate that person A who chose a number close to the correct result and close to his random number did so because of anchoring / knowing the answer" doesn't add to the strength of your result, it's like saying that "Hypothetically, if a person A chose a number close to the correct result and close to his random number, I would expect that he would do so for reason X".

[-]BenjaminB12y490

Took it. And I answered all the extra-credit questions that were applicable to me.

[-]MSchmahl12y490

Took the survey, and all the extra questions.

[-]jbeshir12y490

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.

[-]Ezekiel12y490

Two questions, as I take the survey:

What does "spiritual" mean, in the context of "Atheist [but | and not] spiritual"?
I genuinely have no idea whether I'd prefer low or high redistribution of wealth. What do I tick for my political opinion?

6RobinZ12y

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.

5arborealhominid12y

I had both of these questions as well. I've always been confused about the word "spiritual," as some people seem to use it to mean "having feelings of awe or reverence that are cognitively similar to those expressed in religious worship" while others use it to mean "actually believing in spirits." I consider myself spiritual by the first definition, but not the second. On the survey, I described myself as "atheist but spiritual," but now I'm not sure this was the most accurate description, since it falsely implies that I believe in the supernatural. As far as redistribution of wealth goes, I don't know what you should mark. I chose "Libertarian" because I am rather distrustful of centralized government, and redistribution of wealth generally depends on some sort of centralization. But I know very little about what sort of consequences redistribution of wealth would actually have, so my views on the subject are quite tentative. (I recall hearing somewhere that the Scandinavian countries scored highest on a survey of self-reported happiness, which would suggest that redistribution of wealth at least doesn't prevent a society from being largely happy. If anyone can confirm or deny this, I would much appreciate it.)

3[anonymous]12y

I took "spiritual" to mean in this context that you don't believe in ontologically basic mental entities, but still embrace feelings of wonder, majesty, euphoria, etc. typically associated with religions when contemplating/experiencing the natural world. Do you not have a preference for low/high redistribution of wealth because you haven't studied enough economics, or because you have studied economics and haven't found a satisfying answer? (Alternatively, trying to answer this one question might just not be worth your time. If that's the case, I'd leave it blank. Or if you're otherwise choosing between two positions, flip a coin)

2Ezekiel12y

Notice that other people answering my question had different interpretations. I left it blank. Because I haven't studied economics beyond the Wikipedia level, and systems with large numbers of humans involved are really, really complicated. Why so many democratic citizens feel qualified to intuit their way to an opinion is beyond me.

1[anonymous]12y

Systematic human irrationality? If learning about economics is something worthwhile for you, then I recommend picking up a good macroeconomics textbook and working through it. A good 101 textbook will outline simple but useful models that can help us understand the economy. (This is like how statistical mechanics can help us understand thermodynamic systems without knowing information about each individual particle.) Alternatively, there should be open online courses from MIT, Harvard, etc. if that is more your style.

2Giles12y

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.

-2faul_sname12y

That one didn't seem to have slanted questions at all. (e.g. "It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.").

1Jakeness12y

For 1, I took it as meaning having a belief in some form of soul, afterlife, or karma.

3adamisom12y

But I absolutely believe in karma. I guess that makes me spiritual. The things you find out about yourself eh?

1[anonymous]12y

even if you interpret karma as reddit/lw karma, or social consequences, "absolutely" is too much. don't bet your house on it.

4adamisom12y

I mean LW karma (plus I'm a Redditor too) - from my study of human societies, I believe my remark is called a "joke" - though I admit some people are bad at making jokes :p

0A1987dM12y

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.

4[anonymous]12y

That's not spiritual.

[-]BrassLion12y480

Took it.

[-]Jakeness12y480

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.

[-]Morendil12y150

Out of curiosity, why is it ancient tradition to upvote for this?

The underlying reasons are set forth in the Sequences, as you'd expect. :)

[-]adamisom12y130

No. Stop. The only reason necessary is because we want more of that behavior, right?

[-]Morendil12y140

You're entirely correct. And if you read that post, you'll see why your reply is funny. :)

5Decius12y

The behavior of posting comments to the effect that we have taken the survey?

3adamisom12y

Yes. Haha... Obviously it's not the target behavior, but I, at least, assume that almost everyone who has commented to that effect has actually done it.

3FourFire12y

Yes I was wanting for a libido rate question too.

[-][anonymous]12y480

I took the survey! Including some but not all of the extra credit.

[-]beoShaffer12y480

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.

[-]FourFire12y480

Well... that was a tense couple of hours (damn long survey) I answered every question except for the last.

[-]tim12y480

Took the survey. Called it a day at the "unreasonable" extra credit questions.

[-][anonymous]12y480

Done.

[-]palladias12y480

Done!

-2blashimov12y

I am amused that the "I'm done" comments seem to be random karma generators.

[-]Nectanebo12y470

Took the survey. Feels like I only very recently took the last one.

[-]somervta12y470

Took the survey and all extra questions bar IQ test.

[-]BayesianCoward12y470

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

2adamisom12y

The best kind! (except not really)

[-]Nornagest12y470

Entered.

[-]moridinamael12y470

Took it. Nothing like a census/survey to make you feel like part of a community.

FYI

Advisory: RANDOM.ORG will be temporarily unavailable on Sunday 2012-11-04 due to a system upgrade.

Also, in retrospect, I misremembered my own age. It's been ... a busy year.

[-]John_Maxwell12y470

Karma me!

[-]pscriber12y470

Took the survey.

[-]Said Achmiz12y470

I took the survey.

I am curious to know whether CFAR questions #2 and #4 are supposed to have a "right" answer.

[-]Unnamed12y210

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.

4A1987dM12y

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.

[-]RobertLumley12y120

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.

4A1987dM12y

Jryy, abg nyy gur urnqnpurf jbhyq bpphe qhevat jbex ubhef; fbzr bs gurz jbhyq bpphe qhevat gvzr fur jnfa'g tbvat gb jbex naljnl, fhpu nf riravatf naq jrrxraqf. Fb lbh jbhyq unir gb pbafvqre ubj zhpu fur inyhrf yrvfher gvzr, gbb. Gur nccebkvzngvba gung gvzr vf shatvoyr vf cnegvphyneyl cbbe sbe ybj-vapbzr crbcyr, nf cbvagrq bhg (naq va fbzr zber frevbhf cynpr gbb, ohg V qba'g erzrzore jurer evtug abj).

4Kaj_Sotala12y

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.

4A1987dM12y

Ba gur bgure unaq, V unq gnxra “ybj-vapbzr” gb or n rhcurzvfz sbe ‘vaqvtrag’, fb V jrag jvgu O. Gurl fubhyqa'g unir zvkrq n dhnyvgngvir jbeq yvxr gung jvgu dhnagvgngvir qngn nobhg cevprf naq ahzore bs urnqnpurf.

0Eugine_Nier12y

Gurer znl or n qvssrerapr va pbzzba hfntr orgjrra gur HF naq Vgnyl.

0A1987dM12y

Gur yvgreny genafyngvba bs “ybj vapbzr” vfa'g irel pbzzba va Vgnyvna (rkprcg va arjfcncref/GI arjf, juvpu V ernq/jngpu irel fryqbz gurfr qnlf, jurer V guvax vg zrnaf fbzrguvat nccebkvzngryl yvxr ‘obggbz dhvagvyr va Vgnyl’ ohg V'z abg fher).

-4Eugine_Nier12y

Jryy, gung'f ybjre guna gur obggbz dhvagvyr va gur HF, rfcrpvnyyl gurfr qnlf.

3maia12y

Vg vf qrsvavgryl pbagevirq, naq frrzrq yvxr n jrveq 'engvbanyvgl' dhrfgvba, orpnhfr vg nccrnef gb ernyyl whfg or nobhg genqrbssf onfrq ba gur cngvrag'f cersreraprf. Ohg, gubhtu V qba'g xabj gur 'evtug' nafjre, V fhfcrpg vg zvtug unir gb qb jvgu guvf ovnf, ubjrire: uggc://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Qrpbl_rssrpg

0A1987dM12y

Nterrq. Lrnu, gung znxrf frafr.

2Said Achmiz12y

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.

0MBlume12y

Qbrfa'g frrz jebat gb fnl gung vg'f ng yrnfg gur vapbzr ybfg, gubhtu, juvpu vf nyy lbh arrq gb bireqrgrezvar na nafjre.

2Said Achmiz12y

Gb bireqrgrezvar gur nafjre? Qb rkcynva! Abgr gung gur vapbzr pnyphyngvba nffhzrf gung n guerr ubhe urnqnpur erfhygf va gur crefba jbexvat guerr ubhef yrff guna ur bgurejvfr jbhyq; guvf vf uneqyl n whfgvsvrq nffhzcgvba. Creuncf gur urnqnpurf ner qvfgevohgrq enaqbzyl guebhtubhg gur qnl, va juvpu pnfr gurl znl qrgenpg sebz jbex, sebz yrvfher gvzr, sebz fyrrc... be creuncf ur zbfgyl trgf gurz jura ur pbzrf ubzr sebz jbex (zl zbgure unf unq fhpu rkcrevraprf). V guvax fbzr inevnag bs fhpu fvghngvbaf (naq gur erfhygvat ybj inyhr cynprq ba crefbany fhssrevat) znl rkcynva gur nggvghqr gung ybj-vapbzr crbcyr (ng yrnfg, gubfr fhpu nf V nz npdhnvagrq jvgu, zlfrys vapyhqrq) gnxr gbjneq zrqvpny rkcraqvgherf.

0A1987dM12y

Lrf, gung gbb. V'ir arire unq n frevbhf urnqnpur qhevat bssvpr ubhef va jrrxqnlf gung V pna erzrzore (hayrff V nyfb unq fbzr bgure vyyarff fhpu nf n syh), cebonoyl nf n erfhyg bs gur snpg gung V qevax ybgf bs fghss jvgu pnssrvar qhevat gubfr gvzrf naq irel yvggyr qhevat bgure gvzrf, naq jnf fhopbafpvbhfyl Trarenyvmvat Sebz Bar Rknzcyr.

4MixedNuts12y

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.

1A1987dM12y

Lrf, gung'f jung V jbhyq npghnyyl qb, gbb. Cbffvoyl V'q rkcyvpvgyl gryy ure gung vs fur jbhyq cnl gjryir qbyynef svsgl gb nibvq bar urnqnpur fur fubhyq pubbfr N naq bgurejvfr fur fubhyq pubbfr O. Lbh xabj jul P vf gurer? V ubarfgyl qba'g unir n pyhr; V nffhzrq gung rvgure vg jnf n glcb be gurl jrer grfgvat jurgure jr jrer cnlvat nggragvba. V pna'g vzntvar nal ernfba jungfbrire jul nalobql jub unf npghnyyl ernq gur dhrfgvba jbhyq cersre P gb O.

3MixedNuts12y

uggc://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Qrpbl_rssrpg Rkvfgf va nzbron synibe! uggc://efco.eblnyfbpvrglchoyvfuvat.bet/pbagrag/rneyl/2010/08/05/efco.2010.1045.shyy.ugzy

4pengvado12y

V erwrpg gung rkprcgvba. Gurer vf ab "guvf jrrx" va "eha bhg bs cbpxrg zbarl". Vs lbh'er ehaavat bhg, gura bar jrrx jnfa'g n ybat rabhtu cynaavat ubevmba. V xabj zbfg crbcyr yvir jvgu n onax onynapr arne mreb, ohg zbfg crbcyr ner vafnar. Vs lbh qba'g unir rabhtu bs n ohssre gb cerirag lbh sebz fhqqrayl orvat oebxr, gura lbh'er yvivat orlbaq lbhe zrnaf. Naq vs lbh jnag gb vapernfr lbhe zrnaf, gura gnxr gur "zber zbarl yngre". Gur bayl jnl gur rkprcgvba jbhyq jbex vf vs lbh'er pbasvqrag gung lbh'yy arire or guvf pnfu-fgenccrq ntnva.

0A1987dM12y

Be znlor vs sbe fbzr ernfba lbh qb arrq gung zbarl evtug abj (fnl, lbh jnag gb ohl n gvpxrg sbe n pbapreg be fbzrguvat).

0pengvado12y

Fher, vs lbh jba'g or zvffvat na rdhnyyl tbbq bccbeghavgl gb ghea qbyynef vagb hgvybaf arkg gvzr lbh eha bhg. Urapr V fnvq "guvf pnfu-fgenccrq".

3William_Quixote12y

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.

[-]gjm12y100

Sbe nalbar ng nyy, gur dhrfgvba unf na hanzovthbhf evtug nafjre, naq vg vf: Lbh fubhyq gryy gur cngvrag nobhg qehtf N naq O naq yrg gurz qrpvqr ubj gb znxr gur genqrbss orgjrra zbarl naq cnva/gvzr/vapbairavrapr. Hasbeghangryl guvf jnfa'g bar bs gur bcgvbaf.

1A1987dM12y

V jbhyq unir cvpxrq gung bar gbb.

0Bugmaster12y

V cvpxrq gur frpbaq qeht, orpnhfr V nffhzrq gung zl tbny jnf gb zvavzvmr urnqnpurf, abg gb bcgvzvmr pbfg/urnqnpur erqhpgvba. Gurer'f n tbbq punapr gung n ybj-vapbzr cngvrag fvzcyl jbhyq abg or noyr gb nssbeq gur zber rkcrafvir qeht, ab znggre ubj zhpu zber rssvpvrag vg jnf va gur ybat grez. Gung fnvq, lrf, cerfragvat gur cngvrag jvgu n pubvpr vf pyrneyl n orggre bcgvba.

0William_Quixote12y

Lrnu, nterr gung vs lbh pna tvir gur cngvrag gur pubvpr gurer vf ab ernfba gb gnxr vg njnl sebz gurz.

4A1987dM12y

Rira vs gurl yvir ba yrff guna gjryir uhaqerq svsgl-svir qbyynef cre lrne, yvxr unys gur jbeyq'f cbchyngvba?

2[anonymous]12y

Vs lbh yvir va gung yvggyr, arvgure vf nssbeqnoyr. V yvir ba sbhe qvtvgf HFQ cre lrne naq V cvpxrq gur zbfg rkcrafvir bcgvba, univat unq ybgf bs gebhoyr jvgu zvtenvarf. Znxr bs gung jung lbh jvyy.

0Said Achmiz12y

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)?

0faul_sname12y

Sbe zr, gur cevpr qvssrerapr jbhyq unir gb or ba gur beqre bs n gubhfnaq qbyynef n lrne be fb, naq nobhg bar guveq gb bar unys bs gung gb n zvavzhz-jntr Nzrevpna. Sbe n ybj-vapbzr crefba ryfrjurer va gur jbeyq, gur nafjre jbhyq or qvssrerag. Va trareny, gjragl zvtenvarf gvzrf 3 ubhef cre zvtenvar gvzrf gur znetvany ubheyl inyhr bs abg univat n zvtenvar.a Either way, I think. It's not that hard to de-rot13 them. I'm sure someone has written a browser extension that makes it even more trivial than the already easy rot13.com (and if not, I can write one).

[-]fowlertm12y470

Took it.

[-]Morendil12y470

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.

[-]lukeprog12y470

Took it.

0Epiphany12y

(nevermind)

[-]woodside12y450

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.

[-]biased_tracer12y450

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.

[-]sanxiyn12y450

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.

9Eugine_Nier12y

That's the thing about traditionalism. A lot of it depends on which tradition you're from.

[-]RobinZ12y450

Took it - I hadn't taken an IQ test before, and I found it interesting (and, for the final few questions, quite difficult).

-2RobinZ12y

Addendum: I don't recall seeing the question about the "troll toll" when I took the survey; my response would be that V snibe vg, ohg thneqrqyl.

-2adamisom12y

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.

[-]AngryParsley12y200

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.

5A1987dM12y

I got 135... Was I the only one who realized I could go back to previous questions, or something?

4Richard_Kennaway12y

Does anyone know what IQ it gives to a perfect set of answers? Its picture of a bell curve superimposed on a scale tops out at about 140.

1faul_sname12y

I got 138, and I'm fairly certain I got one question wrong. I don't think it tops out at 140.

4A1987dM12y

See this comment of mine.

1AngryParsley12y

SD was 15 and the tests were geared for high-IQ people. I've taken tests meant for average people and gotten hilarious results (163).

3A1987dM12y

Errr... Did you notice that on iqtest.dk you were allowed to skip to earlier and later questions by clicking on the numbers on the left? The first time I took that test, about a year ago, I didn't, so I wasted plenty of time on certain difficult questions before giving up.

1AngryParsley12y

Yes, I noticed I could skip around. I mostly did the questions in order, since they got progressively harder. Still, I ran out of time and had to guess on the last two.

-8adamisom12y

[-]RobinZ12y160

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.

9A1987dM12y

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).

2adamisom12y

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

7William_Quixote12y

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

3Sarokrae12y

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!

[-]Speed12y440

Took survey, not yet contributed to the site, had lurked a lot over the past few months.

[-]DuncanF12y440

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.

6RobinZ12y

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.

4DuncanF12y

Ah. I took the explicit rules for section 7 and my natural tendencies and didn't pick up on the intent for section 8 until it was too late.

1RobinZ12y

I didn't notice that, there - that's probably a significant flaw in the methodology.

[-][anonymous]12y440

Took the survey! :)

Thank you Yvain!

[-]WrongBot12y440

Took it and laughed several times.

[-]Stabilizer12y430

Took it.

[-]Nominull12y430

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

6A1987dM12y

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.

4KrisC12y

IQ does normalize with increasing age.

4faul_sname12y

Also normalizes with decreasing age.

[-]Solvent12y430

Done.

[-][anonymous]12y430

I managed to keep myself up after several days of sleep deprivation to complete all that I could but the very last part.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

[-]EricHerboso12y430

I answered every question, and enjoyed doing so. Thank you for putting this together. (c:

[-]Rubix12y430

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.

7beoShaffer12y

.X will be interpreted as 0.X% and not as X0% ?

5A1987dM12y

Yes.

[-]Metus12y420

Done

[-]Nick_Tarleton12y420

The "income" question doesn't state pre- or post-tax — you should say you intend one or the other.

[-]Zubon12y180

Also individual versus household. I went with individual.

[-]sanxiyn12y110

I interpreted the question as pre-tax, individual income.

0gwern12y

Yeah, isn't that always the default assumption about 'income' unless one is involved in a taxation discussion?

2thomblake12y

I always interpret it as pre-tax household, but that happens to give me the same result most years.

8Kaj_Sotala12y

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?

[-]Suryc1112y410

Took it!

I am impressed with Yvain's thoroughness overall in drafting this survey.

[-]William_Quixote12y410

Yay! Test taken including all extra questions

[-]Zando12y410

Easy and entertaining. Done!

[-]Sabiola12y400

Ì took it. ALL of it.

[-]Cinnia12y400

Took it and decided to de-lurk for the first time. (Hello!) I found the experience rather humbling.

[-]jooyous12y240

I also de-lurked for the first time to take the survey!

I'm too intimidated to post anything else. :(

[-]Epiphany12y100

Aww.

8A1987dM12y

I suggest starting from the welcome thread. :-)

[-][anonymous]12y400

Survey: taken.

[-]radical_negative_one12y390

I finished the survey! Including the Unreasonably Long and Complicated part which i admit took even longer than i expected.

[-][anonymous]12y390

Took the survey, completed all applicable questions. I'm surprised at how many de-lurkers are a direct consequence of this survey. Welcome, everyone :)

[-]KrisC12y390

I really enjoyed taking the survey. Akrasia! Hope we weren't testing the RNG site. Since it was down I used a more local randomizer.

1A1987dM12y

??? (Did you procrastinate something else more important to take it?)

3KrisC12y

It wouldn't be procrastinating if I didn't. Raises the question: try to write a witty response or get back to work?

[-]MBlume12y390

Done

[-]kannd12y380

Done. All of it!

(Also, first LW comment: check.)

6beoShaffer12y

Hi kannd, welcome to less wrong. You might want to take a look at the welcome thread, especially if you haven't read much LW yet.

[-]Ben Pace12y380

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...

[-]dstap12y380

Hello all! Test taken, first post / de-lurking complete. I really enjoy the site and the discussions, and will contribute fairly soon...

[-]luff12y380

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?

[-]gwern12y160

That's actually probably my favorite single question: when I first took the survey I went 'universe: dunno, maybe 60%, Milky Way: eh, 30%.....wait a second aren't there more than 2 galaxies‽'

5gjm12y

(Nice interrobang.) There's only something wrong with holding both "Pr(intelligent life in Milky Way) non-negligible" and "Pr(intelligent life in observable universe) not-almost-1" if the events "life in galaxy 1", "life in galaxy 2", etc., are independent or approximately so. So if you assign substantial probability to propositions like "intelligent life basically can't actually emerge naturally at all, but we were put here by a god" or "subtle variations in the laws of physics across the universe mean that our galaxy is suitable for intelligent life but most others aren't" then you can consistently give such answers. I can't think of any reason for the right sort of intergalactic correlation that's likely to be thought probable by many LWers, though.

-1Eugine_Nier12y

See my comment here.

2wedrifid12y

In which case your probability estimates would seem to suggest exogenesis.

-4Eugine_Nier12y

See my comment here.

1simplicio12y

I was pretty sure there were about 100 billion galaxies so I just divided by that factor.

5Eugine_Nier12y

That assumes aliens arising in each galaxy is an independent event when conditioning on your uncertainty.

3simplicio12y

...why yes, yes it does. Dur.

-4Eugine_Nier12y

As I pointed out here that logic doesn't work.

3gwern12y

There's >170 billion galaxies in the observable universe; you need to make some pretty strong assumptions to overcome a 1:170,000,000,000 difference.

8Eugine_Nier12y

Actually you don't. Consider the following highly simplified toy model. You're not sure where the great filter is but you think there is a 50% chance it's before evolving intelligence (scenario A), and 50% that it's afterward (scenario B). In scenario A each galaxy only has a 0.1% chance of having intelligent life. (Note that nevertheless the observable universe will still have life somewhere since 0.1% is a lot more than 1/170,000,000,000.) In scenario B each galaxy has (multiple) planets with intelligent life in it. Combining these two scenarios gives 100% for life in the universe and 50.1% for life in the galaxy. By changing these numbers and adding more scenarios you can get different but similar results. You should try this yourself, it's a good way to get an intuition for how Bayesian probabilities work. For example, try adding a scenario C where intelligent life is extremely rare and we exist only due to the anthropic principal. What happens when you assign scenario C 40% and keep scenarios A and B equally likely?

4gwern12y

I'm mentally tired from banging my head against R and can't think through this, so I'm dropping it here.

1Eugine_Nier12y

Feel free to try tomorrow.

6jooyous12y

I found that section SO hard to answer without wishful thinking getting in the way. So I just left them all blank. I WANT smart alien friends! =/

1Kawoomba12y

There are good justifications for putting down very similar probabilities, to the point that they round to the same number.

0[anonymous]12y

Any answer is consistent as long as P(aliens in universe) > P(aliens in milky way), but the ratio implicitly depends on how densely populated you think the universe is conditional on aliens existing at all, assuming aliens are distributed randomly among galaxies.

[-]ygert12y380

Took it.

[-]Giles12y380

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.

0A1987dM12y

What about rot13'ing them? (You'd have to spell numbers out, of course.)

0Giles12y

There's one additional spoiler here not related to the probability questions. ROT13'd: * Znal Jbeyqf: fvkglsvir (jnf friragl) * Nyvraf: gjraglsvir (jnf gjraglsvir) * Nyvraf va zvyxl jnl: svsgrra (jnf gra) * Fhcreangheny: svir (jnf gjb) * Tbq: sbhe (jnf bar) * Eryvtvba: guerr (jnf bar) * Pelbavpf: gra (jnf guvegl) * Nagv-ntnguvpf: rvtug (jnf frira) * Fvzhyngvba: svsglsvir (jnf friragl) * Jnezvat: rvtuglsvir (jnf rvtuglsvir) * Ab TPE orsber gjraglbar uhaqerq: sbegl (jnf sbegl) 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

0A1987dM12y

Spell out the numbers, or ROT-13 leaves them alone...

[-]fizzfaldt12y370

Took the survey; Did everything but the IQ test. I recognized some of the questions, and I decided I didn't have an extra 40 minutes to spare.

[-]adavies4212y370

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.

[-]roland12y370

Taken!

[-]tut12y370

Took it.

[-]Sarokrae12y370

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!

[-]aelephant12y370

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

5adamisom12y

I'm hoping that this survey reveals that it is incorrect to refer to us LessWrongers as "gentlemen" ... And yes, you may take that either way. After all, there were questions on both our gender and our # of sexual partners.

4A1987dM12y

It says, That should coincide with the country you're a citizen of except in exceptional circumstances.

5Giles12y

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.

4MixedNuts12y

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.

3A1987dM12y

I'm starting to think that different people interpret “identify” in different ways, also from discussion in the Call For Critiques/Questions thread. If I'm asked whether I'm male or female, I answer I'm male, with no hesitation whatsoever. This is what I'd call “identifying as male”. OTOH this doesn't mean that I'm proud of being male, that I endorse maleness (whatever that would mean), that I think males are more awesome than females¹ or even that I try to conform to any cultural stereotype of maleness solely because it's a cultural stereotype of maleness.² ISTM that certain people understand “identify” this latter way. “What country do you currently live in” would be better IMO; with your version, someone who happens to be on holiday abroad when taking the test would have to give a somewhat irrelevant answer, whereas “currently” could be interpreted more broadly as I did for the employment question. Or if you really want to operationalize it, “in what country would it be the most convenient for you to attend a LW meetup in the next few months”. ---------------------------------------- 1. In fact, I find the majority of males to be pretty boring. 2. Indeed, my latest Facebook status was “I wish Facebook had a way to automatically hide all posts about football (soccer)” (but in Italian), and it has been liked by 11 females and 3 males so far.

0aelephant12y

I see what you're saying, but I don't really identify with any country. My country of birth was an accident & the country I live in now is governed by Communists. If you do identify with a country, you might want to take a close look at that. Are you cheering for that team just because of an accident of birth, or because it is really worth cheering for?

3A1987dM12y

I don't cheer for it. I identify with it because I've spent most of my life in it, natively speak its language, am more intimately familiar with its culture than with that of any other country, and so are most of my friends. But it's not like I'm proud of being from here or anything like that. See my reply to Giles.

0aelephant12y

I understand that & I agree. I saw your reply, I just wanted to clarify, not necessarily for you, but for any other people who happened to be reading the thread.

0A1987dM12y

Yes. Using “identify” in a survey would be no improvement, if so many people would interpret it the wrong way. Maybe it should use “consider yourself to be” or something like that.

0richardlitt12y

I presumed it was the country which you culturally identified most with.

0biased_tracer12y

I presumed it refers to the currently residing country.

[-]brahmaneya12y360

Took the survey!

[-]feanor160012y360

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.

[-]Salutator12y360

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

[-]zplesivcak12y350

Took the survey. I've accidentally submitted unfinished one, before answering to all the questions I wanted to answer. Please ignore that submission.

[-][anonymous]12y350

I took the survey, and I answered the first extra credit question, but not the others. When I realized it would take THAT long (I hadn't yet scrolled down to reveal each Extra Credit Question was going to be as long as the first), I thought it would take too much time.

[-]Xece12y350

Thanks for doing this once again Yvain.

Edit: survey taken.

[-]vardan12y350

All done. Can I has points please?

[-][anonymous]12y350

Did it.

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

I really liked the CFAR questions. MORE OF THOSE.

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

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

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

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

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

8Nornagest12y

The Political Compass isn't that great for handling nuanced opinions. It mostly seems to test agreement with partisan slogans, some of them quite far out of date, and the wording subtly favors the libertarian interpretation in a lot of cases; as such it's a decent metric of ideological affiliation, especially if you're somewhere on the libertarian spectrum, but it gets a lot noisier as soon as you start forming your own opinions. The tendency to use absolute phrasing ("must", "every", etc.) is especially problematic for a consequentialist. If this is normed like the last autism-spectrum test I saw, the cutoff point for autistic tendencies (bearing in mind the usual caveats about Internet self-testing) is somewhere in the low to mid-20s. Lower means you're more likely to be considered neurotypical along that spectrum, higher means an autism (or, historically, AS) diagnosis is more likely.

3tetsuo5512y

How to read the autism score was explained on the test page itself. quote: "Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives." So a score above 32 means you are highly likely of being autistic.

8beoShaffer12y

I noticed that my conscientiousness and agreeableness score were significantly lower than the last time I took the big five test (slightly before I really got into LW). I don't have solid evidence, and it does seem a bit convenient, but what I think is happening (please take a second to recall your subjective experience of taking the test before reading further). Despite what the test says, most of the questions do have "right" (or at least socially desirable) answers and LWers are better than the population used to norm the test at avoiding self-serving biases in their answers. Do you remember conscious thinking of biases while taking the test and/or have you developed habits meant to make you less prone to having self severing biases to begin with?

8[anonymous]12y

I noticed self-serving a bit on the first few questions and adjusted. I definitely remember thinking of biases.

9beoShaffer12y

Most tests (I think including this one) are normed on people who (mostly) don't do that. Thus I'd expect it to under rate your positive qualities.

1A1987dM12y

Gotta keep that in mind next time... (Relevant comment)

3Nornagest12y

I wasn't consciously keeping biases in mind and I don't think I've consciously developed habits to ameliorate them, although I've probably gotten better at recognizing and avoiding them anyway. I scored higher on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness than the last time I took a Big 5 test, by almost a quartile each. If I had to guess, I'd probably ascribe this to improving my social life over the last year or so, although my participation in LW would be hard to disentangle from that.

1gwern12y

http://lesswrong.com/lw/7s4/poll_results_lw_probably_doesnt_cause_akrasia/ is relevant.

3Kindly12y

We'll find out what it means when we have an average of all the other LW results.

1Richard_Kennaway12y

It says at the top: but that isn't enough information to calculate P(autism|score=N). There's more information about the test here.

1A1987dM12y

They address some of those issues in their FAQs.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

I think the test is noisy on agreeableness. Six months ago I got 76%, and a couple of days ago I got 17%. The same person answering the same questions with the same friend being used as a comparison. The other four (Open 95% Conscientious 41% Extravert 91% and Neurotic 4%) were as stable as you'd expect, and reflect my self image. I have no idea whether I'm actually agreeable or not. I certainly can be, and I can also be spectacularly nasty. And I guess what you think of me would probably depend on which face I've mostly chosen to show around you. (it usually is a conscious choice). I wonder if the test score is being influenced by which memories are most salient when I take the test.

[-]WingedViper12y350

Longtime lurker that finally signed up in July. All questions except for the last ones with the tests. (did the IQ test though)

[-]FAWS12y350

Took the survey.

[-]A1987dM12y350

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... (read more)

[-]MileyCyrus12y180

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”. ;-)

Dear Diary, Today I found a girlfriend. I will now commence Phase 2 of my master plan to reproduce.

2RobinZ12y

If it doesn't, then my answer to the question is off by my answer to the question.

3A1987dM12y

(Actually I was just too lazy to wade through my user page to find out how many times I did that last month.)

3TheOtherDave12y

Mine too.

[-]Jach12y350

Took it, now give me karma.

[-]borntowin12y340

Took the survey and actually liked it :)

[-]Hildon_Smith12y340

I took the survey, and I am posting for the first time. Thank you for such an intriguing community, everyone.

For the hospital question, although I felt very good about the answer from my own mathematics background, I decided to create a Perl script to check one trial, then ran the script in an environment a great many times to produce a distribution. Here is the single trial script. (You will spoil the answer by executing this script, obviously.)

[-]bairyn12y340

Took it. All of it.

[-]Kutta12y340

Took all of them.

[-]Giles12y340

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.

2A1987dM12y

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.

1Larks12y

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.

3Giles12y

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.

[-]MixedNuts12y340

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.

9RobinZ12y

Perhaps a domain-knowledge question could be included in a future iteration of the survey. "North America" is a pretty big place, after all, and a Marylander is unlikely to know as much about redwoods as a Californian. Perhaps a set of options might be along the lines of: * I knew the answer to the question. * I knew the answer to one or more related questions, on which I based my estimate. * I once knew the answer to this or a related question. * I had no prior relevant knowledge. * Other (because you always forget an option when making a list like this.)

9MixedNuts12y

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?".

3RobinZ12y

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.

3A1987dM12y

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.

[-]ahartell12y330

Took the survey.

[-]kalium12y330

Have been lurking for a few years now; did the survey and most of the extra questions.

[-]shirisaya12y330

I took the survey and answered everything through the political compass.

[-]incariol12y330

Done it all!

With all those personality tests and surveys it took me a bit more than an hour, but it was quite interesting (particularly CFAR questions) so I won't complain, much. :)

[-]jpulgarin12y330

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.

7Zubon12y

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.

5Scott Alexander12y

Good question. I'm going with "no".

-1adamisom12y

I like you

4jpulgarin12y

Why?

2adamisom12y

Because you have something I aspire to (multiple casual sex partners), why else?

6jpulgarin12y

Largely a result of Salsa dancing.

[-]Username12y320

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

6drnickbone12y

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.

1A1987dM12y

Who the hell downvoted that? Upvoted back to 0.

[-]ChrisPine12y320

Took the survey.

[-]fortyeridania12y320

I took it, and answered many of the "extra credit" questions (though not all of them).

[-]TraderJoe12y320

Taken it. Suggestion [if it's possible to change] - we should add the option to unanswer an answered question. Right now you can change your answer from A to B, but not from A to non-A and non-B.

0A1987dM12y

I think that, with some browsers at least, there's no way to do that (short of reloading the page and re-answering the questions). The ‘right’ thing to do would be to add a “None of the above / Prefer not to answer” option to all questions.

[-]DubiousTwizzler12y320

Just took my second survey. Been lurking a while now, this is my first comment.

[-]taryneast12y320

Done... I've been away from LW for a few months due to Other Life Stuff... but happy to fill in another survey.

[-]arborealhominid12y320

Lurker for the past couple years, posting for the first time. I took it, including a good chunk of the extra credit questions.

[-]JDM12y320

I just found this site, but this was an interesting survey and between that and the intelligence of conversation about it in the comments convinced me to sign up and read more on here.

Also, I did most of the questions, but I'm on an iPad and the iq test didn't load for me, so I'll do it on a computer later.

[-]beoShaffer12y110

Hi JDM, welcome to less wrong. You might want to take a look at the welcome thread.

[-]simplicio12y320

I am continually amused by how much nuance the contrarians of LW want in these questions. Even I thought the simulation question was ill-posed & wanted a "mu" answer.

Politics is always nearly hopeless, short of asking people to write a 14-page essay on their particular chimera of left-libertarian whig marxism, or whatever.

5Sarokrae12y

Upvoted for "left-libertarian whig marxism"

3Richard_Kennaway12y

That's Ken MacLeod, isn't it?

4simplicio12y

Don't tell me that that ideology, which I invented specifically to sound ridiculous, is actually HELD by somebody!

3Richard_Kennaway12y

The phrase he uses himself is "libertarian Trotskyist", but I don't think I can insert so much as a cigarette paper between that and "left-libertarian whig marxism". But no doubt the real left-libertarian whig marxists would castigate him as a splitter. He's a writer of hard SF; this is his blog.

0MugaSofer12y

Do those words actually have meanings?

9Richard_Kennaway12y

Certainly they do. A Marxist is someone who identifies with the doctrines expounded by Marx, a Trotskyist the same regarding Trotsky (let them fight among themselves over exactly what those doctrines are), a Whig (nowadays) is someone who interprets history as the march of progress towards the present enlightened dispensation, a libertarian is one who regards personal liberty as a fundamental value and government as no more than a very doubtful means of its protection, and "left" means generally favouring collective organisation and distribution of production over personal creativity, initiative, and capture of the value one creates. Whether they still mean anything when jammed together by a random political affiliation generator is another matter. Personally, I'm not sure why Ken MacLeod's head hasn't exploded yet.

0MugaSofer12y

Ah, OK. I knew Marxism, but I was under the impression that "Whig" was a political party of some kind and "left-libertarian" just sounded meaningless. Is that regarding libertarians? 'Cause in the general population it just seems to mean "liberal".

2A1987dM12y

BTW, left-libertarian is a retronym -- libertarian capitalists started to label themselves as libertarian about a century later than libertarian socialists did.

2Larks12y

Only in the American interpretation of the word "liberal", which is at odds to how it is used both in most of the world (British Commonwealth, Europe, etc.) and historically.

0MugaSofer12y

I'm ... not American.

2MixedNuts12y

Europe!"liberal" means "strongly for economic freedom, weakly for social regulation", so pretty much right-wing. US!"liberal" means "for economic regulation, strongly for social freedom", so totally left-wing.

0MugaSofer12y

Not ... particularly. We're all over the map on the economy in my experience. I don't even know what you mean by "social regulation"; are we talking abortion?Freedom of speech? What?

-1Eugine_Nier12y

Abortion, drug use, various alternative lifestyles.

0MugaSofer12y

Well, I'm not sure about drug use, but liberals here are generally OK with abortion and most alternative lifestyles.

0Peterdjones12y

"The version of left-libertarianism defended by contemporary theorists like Vallentyne, Steiner, Otsuka, van Parijs, and Ellerman features a strong commitment to personal liberty—embracing the libertarian premise that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership—and an egalitarian view of natural resources, holding that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of resources to the detriment of others.[17] On this view, unappropriated natural resources are either unowned or owned in common, believing that private appropriation is only legitimate if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if private appropriation is taxed to compensate those who are excluded from natural resources. This position is articulated in self-conscious contrast to the position of other libertarians who argue for a (characteristically labor-based) right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as land.[18"

0MugaSofer12y

I said it sounded meaningless, and from context I had assumed it was deliberately so. That's why I was surprised to learn that it was an actual political philosophy. Read the grandparent.

-4Eugine_Nier12y

I don't see how they propose the complex organization necessary for ensuring resources are only appropriated appropriately without severely compromising personal rights and liberties.

4fubarobfusco12y

One way would be to drive notions of proper appropriation (under whatever scheme) into cultural background as folk knowledge, so the "complex organization" is diffused among individuals rather than being externalized as a state apparatus. In other words, someone making an illegitimate property claim under this regime would not be suppressed by force, but instead mocked and not taken seriously, in the manner of someone who today claims to own the air you're breathing or the idea of birthdays. Only if they resort to force against others would there be a problem.

0A1987dM12y

Yes. Putting signs reading "private property - do not trespass" is pointless if there are no cops to deter people from trespassing anyway. (You can deter people yourself with a gun, but that'd mean you actually are on your land, which libertarian socialists would call "possession", not "property".)

0Eugine_Nier12y

How does that work for things that require violence to enforce?

5ChristianKl12y

The core idea is to avoid enforcing stuff. Self interest individuals who care about their own status won't violate norms because they don't want to lose their status. Burning Man works pretty well without any rules being enforced through violence.

2fubarobfusco12y

In that question, "requires violence to enforce" is being used as a one-place function. Is it really one?

-1MugaSofer12y

It doesn't, obviously. The idea is that those are rare.

0MugaSofer12y

With the magic of economics.

-2Eugine_Nier12y

That only works if your appropriate distribution is the one the market creates, I suspect this isn't the case for left-libertarians.

0MugaSofer12y

Presumably they think it would work.

0Peterdjones12y

Then I gues they just have to use redistributive taxation to iron out the consequences of a necesarily inappropriate distribution of resources.

-2Richard_Kennaway12y

I see there's actually a Wikipedia article on "left-libertarianism" and another on "libertarian socialism". On skimming them, "libertarian" in that context appears to mean having everything controlled by a democratic government to which everyone voluntarily submits. Democratic totalitarianism, in other words. "Liberty" is the freedom to do anything permitted by the other words that "libertarian" is yoked to.

4MugaSofer12y

?! I gotta see this! Oh, wait, nevermind: I think you may have misunderstood the way "socialist" was being used there.

0Richard_Kennaway12y

They talk about the elimination of the state, and in the same breath (or at least the same Wiki article) of collective ownership of the means of production. The idea seems to be that it isn't a "state" when it's Us, only when it's Them. Since it's Us, and therefore good and right, everyone will voluntarily agree to it. Anyone who does not is Bad, and therefore not one of Us, but one of Them. Liberty is liberty to do anything that is right, that is, to agree with Us. You can have anything you like, and do anything you like, as long as it's what We think you ought to have and do. We are truly democratic, since everyone voluntarily supports Us, but They are undemocratic, even if They have elected government, because if They had truly democratic government They would be organised like Us. But this is politics.

6MugaSofer12y

You haven't talked to many socialists, have you? But as you say, we're dealing with a mindkiller here.

-4Eugine_Nier12y

I suspect this is similar to the question for certain right-anarchists of why can't one think of the state as defense agency, that decided to expand into other services. I suspect the actual content of these philosophies is ideas about the optimal way to run a government/defense agency/collective ownership council.

[-]Bugmaster12y320

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

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

[-][anonymous]12y170

see the unreasonably long bonus questions section. http://iqtest.dk

[-]tgb12y320

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.

4faul_sname12y

Keeping it selected and ctrl-c/cmd-c ing it works.

2bsterrett12y

To clarify: this involves selecting the hyperlink text with your mouse, but not releasing your mouse button, and then copying the text while it is still selected. "Keeping it selected" is the default behavior of the browser which does not seem to be working.

4simplicio12y

I had this problem too but discovered that if I clicked on the link, then started typing the URL, Chrome knew where I was going.

[-]TrE12y320

I accidentally hit the enter key before I was done and my answers were submitted. I'm dumb.

8MBlume12y

You get 14 points anyway! ^_^

[-]Ben_Welchner12y310

In accordance with ancient tradition, I took the survey.

[-]Legolan12y310

Took the survey. It was quite interesting! I'll be curious to see what the results look like . . . .

[-]avantguard12y310

Took the survey on my iPhone so could only fill out half the answers. Politics questions were hilarious. Official delurk.

[-]Crude_Dolorium12y310

I took the survey, and the extra credit, and the pretext to delurk.

[-]gjm12y310

I took the survey and answered every question. Like many others here, I found that the iqtest.dk result was distinctly lower than any other estimate of my IQ I've had. I was miles out on the calibration date question. There was one probability question -- I forget which -- for which it was extremely not-obvious whether you were supposed to enter a percentage or a probability.

[-]Emily12y310

I took the survey :) thanks for running it again!

6fortyeridania12y

Yes, thanks.

[-]komponisto12y310

Taken.

[-]blashimov12y310

I took all of it!

[-]krescent12y310

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

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

2MugaSofer12y

I wish I could upvote this twice - once for insight and once for tradition.

[-]drenan12y310

Took the survey.

Did anyone else find the IQ questions to be either boringly easy or impossibly hard? I don't think I answered anything that required more than 15s of thought.

6bsterrett12y

I found that leaving a question and coming back to it was much more helpful than trying to focus on it. There were several questions that I made no progress on for a few minutes, but I could immediately solve them upon returning to them.

4A1987dM12y

There were a couple I answered after several minutes of thought.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

Yes, apart from a couple of intermediate cases. In hindsight, the easy questions were where I already knew, or worked out, the construction technique for the question, the impossible ones were where I didn't spot what was going on, and the intermediates were where I knew the technique but the application was complicated and took a while to deduce.

[-]dv82matt12y310

Did it.

[-]Tuxedage12y310

Obligatory "took the survey" post.

[-][anonymous]12y310

Took it.

[-]faul_sname12y310

If you're using Chrome, the Big 5 site is much more tolerable if you open console and run this line of javascript:

for(i in document.all) document.all[i].style['background-color'] = '#fff';

That sets the background color to white for everything instead of their hideous color scheme.

[-]pleeppleep12y300

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)

-1Curiouskid12y

I hope your being sarcastic. It only took me 20 minutes. :)

3RobinZ12y

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.)

4Curiouskid12y

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.

[-]pleeppleep12y160

Odd, I thought you meant you only spent 20 minutes crying....

I love how well sarcasm works on the internet!

[-]SPLH12y300

Been there, done that survey...

I'm curious about the results.

[-]thomblake12y300

I took the survey

[-]Baruta0712y300

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.

5Baruta0712y

Just took the IQ test for fun, wasn't even trying hard for half of it, still got a 102

3Shmi12y

How does it feel to be almost exactly average?

2Baruta0712y

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

-1anon89512y

Don't worry; I'm sure there are plenty of ways you can still contribute. Edit: Well, I thought it was funny.

-1MugaSofer12y

Why is this being downvoted?

1anon89512y

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.

[-]aausch12y300

Censused!

[-]daenerys12y300

It looks like I wasn't the only one who had difficulty selecting the links, and so had to type them in manually.

Yvain or a mod- Can we get all the links from the survey pasted into the body of the OP so that those of us who couldn't select them have an easier access mode than manual copying?

9fortyeridania12y

I couldn't select the links either.

4Divide12y

If you use X11 you'll find that even though the selection clears just after releasing the mouse button, it's been nonetheless placed in the selection buffer (so you can middle-button it somewhere).

4Raoul58912y

Even if I could have selected the links I wouldn't have tried it, because you just know that clicking on something like that will open a new page and delete all of your entered data.

1tetsuo5512y

i was unable to click or copy them

[-]Dre12y300

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?

[-]Abd12y290

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.

2Friendly-HI12y

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.

5Abd12y

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.

1Friendly-HI12y

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

0Abd12y

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.

0Vaniver12y

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.

4johnlawrenceaspden12y

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.

4Friendly-HI12y

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."

2DaFranker12y

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.

0Vaniver12y

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).

2DaFranker12y

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?

0Vaniver12y

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.

0Friendly-HI12y

"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?

2Vaniver12y

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).

0Abd12y

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."

0Vaniver12y

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.

-2Abd12y

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.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

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.

4Abd12y

The URL is incorrect, the comma at the end should be removed. Here is the page

0Abd12y

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.

[-]clgroft12y290

Took the vast majority. The OCEAN test seemed mostly wrong, the IQ seemed low (big shock, right? Shouldn't have raced through, I guess), and my Myers-Briggs was ENFJ, which is just bizarre.

Also, I've commented a few times, never posted.

[-]roryokane12y290

I took the survey.

One thing I was unsure about: the appropriate answer to the question “Referrals: How did you find out about Less Wrong?”. I answered “Referred by a link on another blog”. But I actually investigated and discovered Less Wrong after seeing a bunch of links to it on Hacker News. Hacker News is really a link aggregation site or social news site, not a blog. But I thought that that answer was better than choosing “Other” and writing in “link from an aggregation site”.

[-]twanvl12y290

CFAR Question 1: not constructively.

CFAR Question 6: what kind of archaic unit is 'feet'? I was able to answer by remembering that 3 feet ~= 1 meter.

Income: before or after tax? I answered after taxes, which for me is 65% of the income before taxes.

[-]NoSignalNoNoise12y280

took it

[-]Stephanie_Cunnane12y280

Done and done.

[-]Salemicus12y280

I took the survey, but, like others, I was unable to answer the American-style school questions.

[-]ChrisHallquist12y280

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

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

0Cakoluchiam12y

At first I wondered whether the test adjusts either direction for lack-of-patience; and then I realized I could run an experiment. There don't appear to be any points granted for finishing early; I just took the test three times, guessing randomly as fast as possible, and scored 93 first then <79 (what appears to be the lowest score possible) twice and 93 the third time, and then took the test a fourth time, guessing randomly at a rate of 1 question/minute (finishing with 1 minute to spare), and got 83. This appears to reject the hypothesis that finishing early boosts your score (or, inversely, taking more time lowers your score). Though... V whfg ernyvmrq vg qbrfa'g nccrne gb inel gur cbfvgvba bs gur nafjref ba frcnengr nggrzcgf, fb n zber gubebhtu grfg jbhyq hfr n cerqrgrezvarq frdhrapr bs nafjref gung fbzrgvzrf erfhyg va na VD nobir 79, naq inel gur gvzr gb pbzcyrgr gur grfg hfvat gung frdhrapr. ... but I have to get to bed soon so I'm not going to spend another 40 minutes to run that test.

[-]thomblake12y280

Took it.

[-]pre12y280

i typed my age then hit return which submitted the form with only one answer. so then i filled it in again. you'll want to ignore that first entry. dinner arrived as i did that so that was a couple of hours ago now. age is 39 if that helps.

[-]FAWS12y280

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?

5Scott Alexander12y

Seems easy to test for once the results are out: sort people into metric/non-metric groups by the "country" question and compare results.

4dbaupp12y

And the anchoring effect of the random number changes.

4FourFire12y

My answer would be affected.

3A1987dM12y

I rounded my guess to the nearest hundred, to cancel that effect.

0[anonymous]12y

Oh crap, it's 3, not 2. Two is for kilograms -> pounds. Well, there's at least one answer a bit lower than intended. ^^

[-]BT_Uytya12y270

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)

1WingedViper12y

Yep, imperial system was quite a frustration and is not really appropriate for such a scientifically minded group.

2TraderJoe12y

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.

[-]blogospheroid12y270

Took the survey. Was tired to take the IQ test. Thanks for the opportunity.

[-]CAE_Jones12y270

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).

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

I wouldn't normally defend flash, but the test was all visual, so a screen reader might not have helped.

[-]Bill_McGrath12y270

Survey taken.

[-]Epiphany12y270

Problem: You might want to specify "this year's survey" in the following line, otherwise people may think that having taken a previous year's survey means they do not need to take this year's survey to be counted:

Everyone who took the survey before, your responses are still saved and you don't have to take it again.

[-]rejuvyesh12y270

I too have taken the survey, it's been some time since I commented.

[-]wanderingsoul12y260

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

5Cakoluchiam12y

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.

4jeremysalwen12y

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)

1Cakoluchiam12y

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?

1jeremysalwen12y

Analysis of the survey results seems to indicate that I was correct: http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/

2Nornagest12y

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.

1Cakoluchiam12y

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.

3Nornagest12y

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.

3A1987dM12y

Even without cheating, I don't think the people who voluntarily spend 40 minutes on an IQ test are representative of the whole population.

0A1987dM12y

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.

[-]Raoul58912y260

I just took the survey, making this my first post that someone will read!

[-]hylleddin12y250

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.

[-]FrankGarza12y250

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.

[-][anonymous]12y250

Done with the entire thing. :)

[-]bsterrett12y250

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.

[-]Neurosteel12y250

After having read all of the Sequences, I suppose its time I actually registered. I did the survey. Here are the cogno-stats:

Big Five O80 C83 E79 A83 N9 IQ 122 Myers-Briggs E33 N88 T1 J33 Autism 15

I'm doing my PhD in the genetics of epilepsy (so a neurogenetics background is implied). Is anyone familiar with data on the reliability of the various cogno-metrics that are out there?

(Aside: political metrics L/R:-2.25 A/L:-3.54, pretty centrist on most issues, just make them based on actual data and I'll change my view in a femtosecond)

0amcknight12y

I'm jealous

0A1987dM12y

I'm jealous of E79 A83 N9 and Autism 15, too. (I also have O80, so that's OK. OTOH my IQ is higher than that.)

[-]Mestroyer12y250

I study computer engineering (which is about arranging transistors on silicon to make computer hardware). I checked "Computers (other academic, computer science)," rather than "Engineering," even though computer engineering is not computer science, because I thought that category was more specific than engineering, and less specific than the category including only computer science.

But this was kind of unclear.

On the question "Given that no label can completely describe a person's political views, with which of these labels do you MOST identify?"

I am probably halfway between liberal and libertarian. So I flipped a coin and picked liberal.

For the calibration IQ question, I could have given my probability that my real IQ was higher than the median IQ here. But then you wouldn't be able to check it against anything to determine my calibration, because I have never taken a real IQ test and left the field blank. Maybe you should put a different question instead of that calibration one?

For the Hours Writing question, it says schoolwork counts. Does code count, if written for schoolwork? I guessed no. Do answers to problems from textbooks that are kind of hal... (read more)

[-]A1987dM12y100

The "Anonymity" question should be broken into two. It doesn't give you an option for "It would be easy to find my real name, and I am unhappy about that."

Yes. In my case, the best answer would be: “It would be non-trivial but still relatively easy for someone who doesn't know me in meatspace to find out my full name and my Facebook profile from what I write on LW, but I can't think of why anyone could be bothered to do that and even if it happened it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It would bother me if certain people who do know me in meatspace read some of the things I write on LW knowing army1987 is me, and it would be nearly obvious for anyone who knows me in meatspace that army1987 is me, but I think it's pretty unlikely for one of those people to stumble upon LW so I'm not too worried.”

[-]Dallas12y250

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.

[-]A1987dM12y150

I assumed it was supposed to mean ‘revived in a way that wouldn't have been possible if the patient hadn't been cryopreserved’.

0MugaSofer12y

Damn, really? I factored in time travel.

1A1987dM12y

I wouldn't even know how to define “will be revived” if time travel were possible. (Assuming that the world-line of a person is continuous and time-like, it means “there's some t in the future such that the person is in the “not alive” state shortly before t and in the “alive” state shortly after t”, which under these assumptions is either true in all frames of references or in none of them. If time travel is possible, then there might be frames of reference in which there are two copies of the person at the same time, one dead and one alive...)

1MugaSofer12y

I was thinking magical future brain-scanning before information-theoretic death.

3Shmi12y

Not if the Universe is too small, or it ends first, or if there is a flaw in the BB model, or if we are in a simulation preventing BB, or... In other words, nothing is 100% and BB least of all.

0drnickbone12y

True, but presumably Dallas assigns all these scenarios epsilon, leaving 100-epsilon for Boltzmann Brains. (100 doesn't mean absolute certainty in this survey.)

0pragmatist12y

This seems to rely on a controversial theory of personal identity. I'm of the opinion that personal identity requires some sort of causal continuity: for a future person to be me, his mental states must have appropriate causal links to my mental states. That wouldn't be true of a Boltzmann brain. To put it another way, if the universe is spatially infinite, there are presumably Boltzmann brains qualitatively identical to my brain somewhere out there right now (where the "now" is relative to some foliation of space-time, of course). I don't consider those spatially distant BBs to be identical to me, and I'm guessing you wouldn't either. Why should I judge differently if the BB's are not just spatially but also temporally separated from me?

2TheOtherDave12y

I have no problem with the idea that there are Boltzmann brains out there right now who are as much me as this body is.

0pragmatist12y

Really? If someone (very trustworthy and very powerful) offered you a choice between a minute of intense pleasure administered to the body reading this right now or to a qualitatively identical but spatially very distant body, would you be indifferent?

1TheOtherDave12y

If someone offered this brain a choice between pleasure for this brain and pleasure for that brain, I would no doubt choose the former. Does that mean that nothing but this brain is me? It might also turn out that if someone offered my right brain hemisphere a choice between pleasure for my right-brain and pleasure for my left-brain, I consistently choose pleasure for my right hemisphere. If that turns out to be true, does that mean that nothing but my right hemisphere is me? (If the analogous thing also turns out to be true for my left hemisphere, does that also mean that nothing but my left hemisphere is me? Does it mean there are two of me that don't share an identity? I'm not sure that question even means anything.)

0TraderJoe12y

[comment deleted]

-3Dallas12y

Boltzmann brain scenarios will occur regardless of any given doomsday.

-1drnickbone12y

Good point... And for very similar reasons, anyone who gave a lower probability to the cryonics question than to the many worlds question is inconsistent. Wonder how many people did that? EDIT Surprised a bit by the downvotes here. Did the many worlders interpret "probability of being revived at some point in the future" as "fraction of future worlds in which the person is revived" (or more technically, something like, "quantum measure of future revival across worlds containing humans in a state consistent with our present knowledge"). Rather than "probability of being revived in any future world"? If so, it is consistent to assign a high probability to many worlds, but a low probability to revival. I would also love there to be a question on probability that Santa exists among the religion ones, and then compare answers to that with many worlds. Santa exists in some worlds, after all, even though his measure is miniscule... EDIT: Same issue here. Does a many-worker typically interpret P(Santa Exists) as "measure across worlds consistent with our knowledge in which Santa exists" rather than "probability Santa exists in any world"?

[-]AnthonyC12y240

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.

[-]MTGandP12y240

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.

[-]selylindi12y240

I took it.

For the P(Warming) question, you might get people answering different versions of the question on this. For example, my personal evaluation of the probability of warming and that humans are a major cause is very, very high, but my evaluation of the probability that humans are the primary cause is much lower.

[-]matsn12y240

Survey completed!

[-]Dorikka12y240

In your base, answering your survey.

Notes (might not want to read unless you've already taken the survey):

V'ir nggraqrq na bayvar zrrghc naq qvqa'g xabj jung gb fnl gb gur zrrghc dhrfgvba, fb V fnvq 'ab'. Fvathynevgl dhrfgvba unf cbffvoyr napubevat rssrpg; tybony png. evfx dhrfgvba zragvbaf gur lrne 2100 evtug orsber vg. Eri. Onlrf pnyvoengvba nafjre fubhyq znlor zragvba jurgure gb hfr crepragntrf be cebonovyvgvrf.

-1Eugine_Nier12y

What's the difference?

3Dorikka12y

The survey says to answer the other probability questions using percentages (a range from 0->100) rather than probabilities (range from 0->1). If someone forgot, they might forget to multiply by 100, and even though it probably wouldn't be hard to tell the difference, it makes it a bit harder to process the data, I think.

[-]Spectral_Dragon12y230

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.

[-]DaFranker12y110

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.

Upvoted specifically for the second paragraph, specifically because it was insightful.

3[anonymous]12y

Your survey data is valuable to the Less Wrong community, upvoting your comment is how you get credited for it.

3A1987dM12y

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?

2Spectral_Dragon12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

Yes, there's a tendency for witty remarks (and quotations) to skyrocket to karma scores that actual novel insights seldom achieve.

[-]Friendly-HI12y230

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?

5RobinZ12y

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.

8Peterdjones12y

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"

5DaFranker12y

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.

4Vaniver12y

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.

5wedrifid12y

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.

3Vaniver12y

I was adding anecdotal evidence about US scientists, which I somehow missed were excluded from the claim. Thanks for pointing out the oddity.

3wedrifid12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

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.)

[-]RHollerith12y230

Took it.

[-]TraderJoe12y230

Next year the survey should include an option to explain why your IQ is actually higher than was measured.

4Divide12y

I dunno, on my test it came up higher than expected (and higher than the result of a pro test they gave me in primary school once).

3Kindly12y

I guess this year we can assume that everybody had such an explanation, and imagine the best possible version of it, sight unseen.

3RobinZ12y

Dibs on "I took the survey really late at night and I was tired"!

2A1987dM12y

Dammit!

[-]Vaniver12y230

Done! I only estimated my amount of time in the community, though, which may lead to an amusing disagreement with last year's survey.

2Cakoluchiam12y

I too had to estimate my time in the community (even though this is my first day posting anything)—I started lurking shortly after Yvain mentioned it in his blog, but he is a prolific enough writer that digging through those archives would be a mind-numbing task. Perhaps there's someone else who's done the dirty work for me? (hoping)

1Vaniver12y

Last time, I figured it out by writing a script that went through my comments until it hit the earliest one, but that only worked because I made an account as soon as I got here. (I probably could have gone hunting for the results of that script, but I didn't care as much this time around.) I imagine Yvain has mentioned LW on his blog enough times that it'd be difficult to do an automated solution (but you might be able to just make a list of links to LW from posts, then choose from those).

2Cakoluchiam12y

Thanks for the idea. I know he referenced OvercomingBias for a while before LessWrong, and I read a handful of articles there, but I think my sparse interest in following anything, aside from what was crossposted or linked at Yvain's blog, makes any claim of seniority a potential false representation of my expertise. This is sort of the inverse problem of the way I counted the start of my last relationship more than a year earlier than my then-partner would. One good thing I can say for weddings (aside from marriage) is that at least they solidify a date to count as anniversary. So, I suppose now that I've finally registered an account, I can count today for future anniversaries between myself and LessWrong.

[-]Dannil12y230

Done, except for the very last part and the IQ questions (I have never taken a proper test).

[-]ArthurDenture12y230

Took the survey.

I hope this question isn't used the way I worry it will be used:

CFAR Question 3

A certain town is served by two hospitals. In the larger hospital, about 45 babies are born each day. In the smaller one, about 15 babies are born each day. Although the overall proportion of girls is about 50%, the actual proportion at either hospital may be greater or less on any day. At the end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days on which more than 60% of the babies born were girls?

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.)

9MixedNuts12y

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: print [ len(filter(lambda x: x > 0.6 *per_day, [ sum([ randint(0,1) for birth in range(0, per_day) ]) for day in range(0, 365) ])) for per_day in (15, 45) ] 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?

[-]Morendil12y100

For another intuitive answer, try lower values of 15, like 1.

The Python code works better, on my machine, if I add the line "from random import randint" at the top.

3Emile12y

There may be a more convenient method, but using non-breaking spaces ( ) works. print [ len(filter(lambda x: x > 0.6 *per_day, [ sum([ randint(0,1) for birth in range(0, per_day) ]) for day in range(0, 365) ])) for per_day in (15, 45) ]

0A1987dM12y

Certain browsers (early versions of Firefox, at least) for some reason automatically replace all hard spaces with regular spaces when submitting a form.

3FAWS12y

does prefacing with 4 extra spaces work? EDIT: Apparently not. Very likely a bug then.

3A1987dM12y

The usual kludge is to replace spaces with full stops.

2dbaupp12y

That's not such a rigorous answer: Imagine you have a random sample with n observations x_1, ..., x_n, independently and identically distributed according to some distribution with mean mu and variance s^2. The sample mean is sum(x_i)/n (the expected value is mu as one would hope). Doing some manipulations we find that this has variance s^2/n, i.e. a large n means a small variance, so larger samples are more tightly clustered around mu.

0[anonymous]12y

print [ len(filter(lambda x: x > 0.6 *per_day, [ sum([ randint(0,1) for birth in range(0, per_day) ]) for day in range(0, 365) ])) for per_day in (15, 45) ]

9gwern12y

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.

[-]ArthurDenture12y110

If you can answer correctly more statistical questions, how is that not being 'better at statistical reasoning'?

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.

6A1987dM12y

BTW, I had seen the CFAR Question 1 before.

2[anonymous]12y

On the other hand, I hadn't seen it before, but still got it correct.

0AnthonyC12y

I have not read Thinking Fast and Slow, but the answer to this follows directly from binomial probability distributions, which (at least in NY) were part of the 11th grade math curriculum as of 2004. That doesn't mean most people will notice the connection, but technically they've been exposed to all the necessary information to solve it.

[-]Steven_Bukal12y220

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

[-]Cakoluchiam12y220

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.

5Cakoluchiam12y

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)

0A1987dM12y

What?

4Cakoluchiam12y

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.

[-]MaoShan12y220

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

1MaoShan12y

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.)

2MaoShan12y

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.

7wedrifid12y

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.

2A1987dM12y

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.)

2wedrifid12y

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!

[-]Nighteyes567812y220

Completed. Huzzah! I feel like a participating member of the community.

[-][anonymous]12y220

Done.

[-]Jost12y210

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

[-]tetsuo5512y210

I Took the survey and all the extra questions. I could not answer the USA centric school test results, we have a similar system in my country but they cannot be easily converted to eachother.

I'm glad to finally have a BigFive and IQ test that people somewhat agree on using.

[-]nshepperd12y210

Done! Yay!

[-]Mexamark12y210

I just took it but I'd like to make a few points:

At the end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days on which more than 60% of the babies born were girls?

Is it asking about the total number of babies born at the day or babies born at each hospital?

Redwood question.

Please, use meters next time.

[-]A1987dM12y110

Redwood question.

Please, use meters next time.

Better still, ask a question for which everyone in the world would natively use the same units.

2TheOtherDave12y

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you're distinguishing between the following two interpretations: 1. At the end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days on which more than 60% of the babies born [summed over both hospitals] were girls? and 2. At the end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days on which more than 60% of the babies born [at that hospital] were girls? Did I understand that correctly, or is there some other interpretation you have in mind?

4Unnamed12y

The intended interpretation is #2:

0Mexamark12y

Those were the exact interpretations I was referring about, thanks. And just for reference, I answered the question as if it were #2.

2TheOtherDave12y

Cool, I'm glad I understood you. Given that, can you say more about interpretation #1? It doesn't make much sense to me; I don't see how that question has an answer, so I'm curious as to how you're seeing an ambiguity as to which interpretation to use. I mean, if I deal a 5 of clubs and a 6 of hearts and I ask you which card has the total across two cards of more than 10, it seems the correct answer is "both," or perhaps "wtf?" The same thing seems true to me of interpretation #1 above.

4Mexamark12y

Ew, that was pretty stupid of my part, sorry. I was thinking in terms of At then end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days in which more than 60% of the girls born over both hospitals were born at that hospital Which is a different question altogether and still has an obvious answer... Oh well, way to make a good first impression.

5TheOtherDave12y

Ah! Yes, that makes sense. Though you're right that the answer is obvious, assuming one hospital is much larger than the other, which I vaguely remember it was. (grin) More so than you might expect. Hi, welcome to Less Wrong. We actually tend to respond pretty well to people who recognize and admit to goofs. We all do it from time to time, and it sure beats hell out of failing to recognize and admit to them. That said, figuring out the failure mode and intervening to make it less likely in the future is even better. Any thoughts on that?

1Mexamark12y

Someone made a post about this recently listing that and other useful practices (and I just saw you replied in there as well). I've heard about these checklists before but while I think it's a pretty important habit to acquire I haven't had the time yet to improve on those aspects nor have made of those an habit yet (i.e. I think it's important to improve but I don't actually remember to practice on my daily life). Taking this checklist as an example, I think I can say that I failed to do 2.1 (when I said there were two probable interpretations without even asking myself the meanings of the 2nd one) while correctly doing 1.5 (when I perceived that I was mistaken and admitted to it instead of arguing for a side). Would you know any tips on (or any texts about) perceiving these cognitive flaws while they are being committed or shortly after so one can promptly deal with them?

0TheOtherDave12y

A rule of thumb I find very helpful when evaluating statements is to ask myself what I would expect to experience differently if it were true or false, and to ask myself what I would endorse doing differently if I knew it were true or false. Frequently, what this makes me realize is that I don't actually understand the statement... which is particularly embarrassing when I'm the one who said it.

2TheOtherDave12y

Oh, and: hey! You're from Sao Paulo! (My husband is from Sao Carlos, and his family still lives around there.)

0Mexamark12y

Nice! Unfortunately there are not as many Brazilians in this site as one could expect., given our large population. If you don't mind me asking, where is he living now?

2TheOtherDave12y

We both live in the U.S. (Massachusetts).

3A1987dM12y

Seriously... -2 karma for answering a question? Is anyone running a script to downvote comments at random or something?

0TheOtherDave12y

For a while both that comment and its grandparent were being downvoted about equally, which I took to be an expression of opposition to the personal chatting in the middle of a different discussion.

0A1987dM12y

When I saw them, both your comments were at -2 and bot Mexamark's comments were at 0.

[-]Jay_Schweikert12y210

Took basically all of the survey except for the extra IQ tests. Thanks, Yvain! Looking forward to seeing the results.

[-][anonymous]12y210

Fear me for I answered all the questions and took all the auxillary tests!

[-]NoahTheDuke12y200

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?

[-]drnickbone12y200

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"?

0Cthulhoo12y

Same for me... missed by 60 years but stated 30% of accuracy. I'm actually emotionally confused about the whole matter :)

2A1987dM12y

I correctly remembered what decade his theorem was published, but my guess about how old he was was off by a factor of 2.

[-]fezziwig12y200

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.

[-]kvasarnomad12y200

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..

[-]MugaSofer12y200

Did it a few days ago, only just noticed the karma.

EDIT:

P(Supernatural) What is the probability that supernatural events, defined as those involving ontologically basic mental entities, have occurred since the beginning of the universe?

What if you believed in, say, angels or ghosts that used powers from outside the matrix?

3DaFranker12y

I assumed that those aren't counted. They don't sound really ontologically basic, just "hard to access". We can-in-principle break outside the box, and we are-in-principle causally linked to outside-the-matrix powers, or something like that.

0MugaSofer12y

That's my point. They aren't ontologically basic, yet most people would consider them "supernatural" for all intents and purposes. At least, I would. The definition of "supernatural" offered is deliberately incoherent, which is great for winning arguments but bad for making predictions.

1DaFranker12y

Wait, could you explain (or taboo, if that's easier) what you mean by "incoherent"? I don't see what's incoherent about "event which happened because a nonreducible basic element of the building blocks of the universe has complex causal influence on the universe using complex internal rules". Is that the wrong way to interpret "events involving ontologically basic mental entities"?

0MugaSofer12y

Does this help? -Eliezer Yudkowsky, Excluding the supernatural

1DaFranker12y

Well, re-reading the whole post did help a bit. I'm not sure I agree with the statements that say "this is incoherent a priori", but I haven't explored the question in depth yet. It seems as if one could envision a universe where a certain specific quark (or replace with whatever most-elementary thing turns out to really be most elementary, if any) does unpredictable things and interacts with other selected quarks in the universe in specific ways that maximize the odds of a certain specific event happening later on, "as if" this quark had the intent of making this event happen. Would this not be a mental entity that cannot be reduced? Perhaps this is exactly the kind of "confusion" Eliezer was talking about.

0MugaSofer12y

I think it would have to be conscious? Maybe? Hmm, that is confusing...

0TheOtherDave12y

In general, the local definition of "supernatural entity" excludes all manner of extremely powerful, unverifiable-in-practice, non-evidence-leaving entities (e.g., beings from outside the matrix). The rough principle is that believing in such non-supernatural powerful unverifiable entities is problematic for one set of reasons (the phrase "invisible dragon" is sometimes used as shorthand for this, after Carl Sagan's famous essay; see also Belief in Belief), and believing in ontologically basic mental entities is problematic for a different set of reasons (cf Excluding the Supernatural, quoting Richard Carrier). (I will also add here, since it has lately become a socially relevant thing here, that I'm not trying to suggest by crediting the original authors that the Sequence posts don't add anything novel to the discussion.)

0MugaSofer12y

I suppose my problem is that we can't indicate our opinion on such beings, which, unlike the definition used, are not incoherent and indeed I suspect more people here would admit to some non-negligible probability of such beings than the "supernatural" ones described in the census. It's not a huge problem, it just seems that the normal definition is more relevant than the one used.

1TheOtherDave12y

So, you'd want to see a question like "Estimate the probability that there exist non-supernatural in-practice-unverifiable entities who are currently aware of and capable of influencing events on Earth."? I agree with you that more people would estimate that higher than the probability of supernatural entites. As for whether it's more relevant... hm. Relevant to what? That is, suppose that the mean reported probability were 10%. Or suppose it were 75%. Or .001%. What would you do with those answers?

0MugaSofer12y

Perhaps "informative" would be a better term. I wouldn't restrict it to non-supernatural entities, because that might cause people to give their estimate that aliens have reached us, rather than considering, say, matrix lords or demons.

0TheOtherDave12y

I think my question still applies. For example, consider two worlds in which that question were asked, one in which the mean reported probability were 10%, the other 75%. What information would you have about the difference between those two worlds, and why do you want that information?

2MugaSofer12y

Because if someone believes in ghosts, I could really care less if they believe they're irreducibly mental. I want to know what they'll do when their pipes start knocking more than their philosophical justification for this, although obviously both would be best.

0TheOtherDave12y

(nods) Makes sense.

[-]MBlume12y200

Is income before or after taxes?

9Scott Alexander12y

Before.

[-]Zubon12y200

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.

1Cakoluchiam12y

Interesting you don't consider what I thought would be the obvious interpretation of counting Y(+Z) alone, even after you considered adding adopted and foster children, which would, over the population, double-count any choice with the inclusion of X.

[-]shinoteki12y190

I took it.

[-][anonymous]12y190

Survey taken.

[-]Cthulhoo12y190

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.

[-][anonymous]12y190

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.

[-]Cthulhoo12y130

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).

6ChristianKl12y

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.

0TraderJoe12y

[comment deleted]

2ChristianKl12y

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.

5Unnamed12y

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.

5Larks12y

I generated my own random integer and then worried that the intent had been for us to select from a biased sample.

4Douglas_Reay12y

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.

3Kawoomba12y

Heh, paranoia. I generated the random number using different means.

[-]solaire12y190

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... (read more)

[-]Bruno_Coelho12y190

Done. I hope this data help LW/CFAR.

[-]Divide12y190

Huh, I got the date almost right - sadly, the date of death.

[-]johnlawrenceaspden12y190

took

[-][anonymous]12y180

user account removed - or at least, an honest attempt of it shall be made. :)

[-][anonymous]12y180

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

[-]EStokes12y180

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.

7RobinZ12y

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.

2EStokes12y

Thank you!

[-]DaFranker12y180

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.

[-]Risto_Saarelma12y180

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.

3A1987dM12y

[-]Alex_Altair12y170

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.

[-]aspera12y170

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.

[-]wesley12y170

Did it. Was enjoyable for me!

[-]ChrisHallquist12y170

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

0[anonymous]12y

Probably the "intelligence explosion" view, since that is the one Eliezer advocates (as it says on the page you linked to).

[-][anonymous]12y160

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).

[-]Asymmetric12y160

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!

[-]thomblake12y160

I took a survey.

[-]therufs12y160

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

[-][anonymous]12y150

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! =]

5gwern12y

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?

0[anonymous]12y

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.

3gwern12y

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.

2A1987dM12y

Maybe you should rot13 the second paragraph, in case someone accidentally reads it before taking the survey.

4[anonymous]12y

Okay, sorry, I guess I forgot

[-]Alejandro112y150

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.

[-]covaithe12y150

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

[-]dugancm12y150

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.

[-]TonyDuMont12y150

Survey:Completed. Extra credit as well!

[-]Michael_Sullivan12y150

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 rkcyn... (read more)

[-]magfrump12y150

I was 26 years off on Bayes' birth and 21 feet off on the tallest redwood.

Also the first time I took the IQ test I accidentally hit the back button on my mouse, and didn't remember how much time I was supposed to have left, so I just went through everything and submitted right away. I'm not sure how much I would have gotten out of the last 5-10 minutes or whatever but it made me feel bad.

I felt like the Big 5 test rated me lower on Openness and Conscientiousness than I remember from tests in the past, but those are from long long ago. The Myers-Briggs rated me as more F and J than I expected (or less T and P) and I think the question framing is maybe bad for someone who lives in faulty emotional hardware in a mathematical universe.

I reproduced my results from all of the tests verbatim, regardless of whether I agreed with them; I noticed at least one comment of someone who did not, and I'm wondering how common people's responses to disagreement with personality tests was.

[-]Scott Alexander12y140

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.

3A1987dM12y

Er... From your blog: [numbers redacted]

2Alejandro112y

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).

2Vaniver12y

I suspect that last gubhfnaq should be a uhaqerq.

2Alejandro112y

Indeed, thank you.

2Vaniver12y

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.)

4Scott Alexander12y

Shutting off the survey makes it invisible, which means that people can't go back to see how a question was worded or something.

3A1987dM12y

Thanks for the anchoring. Next time, please use rot-13. ;-)

4Vaniver12y

Ciphered.

0RobinZ12y

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.

[-]lhopegood12y140

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

[-]CharlieDavies12y140

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.

4Eugine_Nier12y

Because it's the right thing to do?

3CharlieDavies12y

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?

0Eugine_Nier12y

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.

0[anonymous]12y

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.

[-]Epiphany12y140

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

[-]dejb12y140

I took it and did most of the bonus questions.

[-]moshez12y140

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).

-1hankx778712y

Same here, agree 100%

[-]scav12y140

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".

5Cakoluchiam12y

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.

2[anonymous]12y

I've seen this a lot now; what does "mu" mean in this context; where does the term come from?

7VincentYu12y

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)) It was popularized by Hofstadter's GEB.

0A1987dM12y

I interpreted “Strongly agree” as plain ‘yes’, and “Agree” as ‘it depends, but more often than not, yes’ or ‘yes, but...’.

[-]roland12y140

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?

[-]beoShaffer12y120

Making an IQ test is non-trival even before getting into the question of getting a good population to norm it against.

2roland12y

Maybe we should do something simpler, just a number of questions with a time limit and then we can measure how many of those we are able to solve. Similar to: http://iqtest.dk/main.swf

4[anonymous]12y

I thought that IQ test was pretty good.

[-]gwern12y130

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

[-]Danny_Hintze12y130

Taken!

[-]Gastogh12y130

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?

[-]Blackened12y120

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

1A1987dM12y

Thanks. I'll try those when I have some time.

[-]OrdinaryOwl12y120

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.

[-][anonymous]12y120

Took it.

[-]hankx778712y120

done!

[-]Divide12y120

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.

[-]ErikM12y110

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.)

[-]duwease12y90

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..

3Vaniver12y

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?)

4thomblake12y

That sounds like my first job!

0ChristianKl12y

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.

[-]Desrtopa12y80

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.

6A1987dM12y

You should rot13 that.

4Desrtopa12y

Good point, edited.

2Cakoluchiam12y

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".

3Desrtopa12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

V guvax fbzr cneg bs zl zvaq jnf guvaxvat gung, gbb, gubhtu vg zvtug or uvaqfvtug ovnf.

0Cakoluchiam12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

Gur dhrfgvba fnlf “ure” (abg gung V gbbx gung vagb nppbhag jura nafjrevat).

[-]ChristianKl12y70

Taken :)

[-]KnaveOfAllTrades12y70

Taken.

[-]JulianMorrison12y50

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.

2[anonymous]12y

How do you know what the LW consensus is? We don't have the survey results yet. Are you going off of last year's numbers?

0MugaSofer12y

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.

0A1987dM12y

Doesn't that game disallow counterfactuals and value judgements?

0MugaSofer12y

... 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.

[-]johnlawrenceaspden12y50

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?

5Abd12y

Should we answer here? Some people are still taking the test. I have this issue with a number of comments in this thread. The instructions did not mention anything about reading the comments before taking the survey.

1A1987dM12y

If you're concerned with that, you can use ROT-13. But yeah, we should have told people not to read comments before taking the survey.

2Abd12y

question 26 only. rot13 Frcnengryl pbafvqre gur "znva yvar," naq gur npprffbel yvarf. Va rirel genafsbezngvba, gur znva yvar ebgngrf pbhagrepybpxjvfr 45 qrterrf. Gung yrnqf gb N, Q, naq R nf cbffvovyvgvrf. Va gur gjb iregvpny genafsbezngvbaf, gur npprffbel yvarf pbaarpg gb gur raqcbvagf bs gur znva yvar. Gung yrnirf bayl N. Gurer vf nyfb n pbafvfgrapl va gur ebgngvba bs gur fznyyre yvarf, ohg vg'f zber pbzcyrk gb rkcerff. Guvf vf yvxryl abg gur orfg nafjre. In looking again at the survey, I answered no questions at all, and got an IQ score of 78. I answered A to all questions and also got a 78. This calls the test into question, which I'd love to do. Effing test gave me a 110 when I tried! How sucky is that? (I think it might be a good test, showing me a developing problem with speed. But obviously it doesn't work well at the low end.)

0CuSithBell12y

I agree with your analysis, and further: Gurer ner sbhe yvarf: gur gjb "ebgngvat" yvarf pbaarpgrq gb gur pragre qbg, naq gur gjb yvarf pbaarpgrq gb gur yrsg naq evtug qbgf. Gur pragre yvarf fgneg bhg pbaarpgrq gb gur fvqr qbgf, gura ebgngr pybpxjvfr nebhaq gur fdhner. Gur bgure yvarf NYFB ebgngr pybpxjvfr: gur yrsg bar vf pragrerq ba gur yrsg qbg, naq ebgngrf sebz gur pragre qbg qbja, yrsg, gura gb gur gbc, gura evtug, gura onpx gb gur pragre. Gur evtug yvar npgf fvzvyneyl.

1scav12y

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.

0MugaSofer12y

That's why rot13 was invented.

1scav12y

Nah, rot13 helps avoid casual spoilers but it doesn't count as not publishing the answers. You could probably devise a code that requires non-trivial cryptanalysis and encrypt any discussion of the answers using that, and not publish the solution to the encryption. Then someone else can post here asking how to crack it, and so on ad nauseam.

4johnlawrenceaspden12y

A little bird tells me that decompiling the flash app reveals the answers. So by the non-trivial cryptanalysis definition they've published the answers themselves.

2MugaSofer12y

My point was that it wouldn't "sabotage the test for others", as you put it, because they wouldn't accidentally read the answers and invalidate their test results. Did I misinterpret your position?

3scav12y

I think the intention of not publishing the answers at all (rather than putting the answers behind a link saying "Spoilers - do not click if you don't want to know the answers") was that they do not want the answers published. So, I think it would be rude to do so, that's all.

0MugaSofer12y

If you don't see them before you take the test, I fail to see why anyone should care. If someone wants to know the answers - I know I would - why should anyone want to stop them?

0A1987dM12y

Rot-13 would prevent unintentional cheating, and I can't see the point of intentional cheating, as anything you could achieve through that you could achieve by photoshopping the results page.

1Divide12y

33 - gurer vf n cnggrea ba qvntbanyf tbvat sebz fj gb ar: ubevmbagny, iregvpny, qvntbany. 34 - rnfl, artngvir va, cbfvgvir bhg, nqqvgvba. 36 - va rirel (ynetr) ebj/pbyhza gurer ner 9 juvgr obkrf, naq rnpu bs 5, 6 naq 7 bs bgure funqrf. Anybody up to take on the others?

4RobinZ12y

Spoilers should be rot13'd.

3Divide12y

Thanks, and sorry. Fixed.

0johnlawrenceaspden12y

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.

0FAWS12y

26 - Ebjf, gur guerr yvarf ner svkrq ng n cbvag naq ebgngr. 29, 35, 38 - Zvqqyr pbyhza vf gur genafsbezngvba cresbezrq ba gur yrsg pbyhza gb neevir ng gur evtug ebyhza.

[-]thomblake12y40

results soon?

[-]ZoneSeek12y20

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

[-][anonymous]12y00

On the CFAR question number 4, about the three drugs prescribed to a low income patient.

V pubfr N, gur guerr uhaqerq svsgl qbyyne qeht gung gbbx vg sebz bar uhaqerq vapvqragf/zbagu gb guvegl/zbagu. Zl ernfbavat jnf gung vs gur crefba fcrag unys bs gur fvkgl ubhef gurl fnir jbexvat ng n zvavzhz jntr wbo, gurl jvyy unir erphcrengrq gur gjb uhaqerq qbyynef rkgen gurl fcraq naq unq gvzr yrsg bire. Nyfb, jbexvat n zvavzhz jntr wbo vf yvxryl zber cyrnfnag guna ynlvat va cnva, gubhtu guvf qbrf qrcraq ba jurgure gur crefba pna svaq n wbo.

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[-][anonymous]12y00

I just took it but I'd like to make a few points:

At the end of a year, which hospital will have the greater number of days on which more than 60% of the babies born were girls?

Total number of babies born at the day or babies born at each hospital?

Redwood question Please, use meters next time.

Annd, I got a ENTJ at the personality test, it should've been an INTJ, just because I enjoy something doesn't mean I'm good at it.