Thank you to everyone who took the 2012 Less Wrong Survey (the survey is now closed. Do not try to take it.) Below the cut, this post contains the basic survey results, a few more complicated analyses, and the data available for download so you can explore it further on your own. You may want to compare these to the results of the 2011 Less Wrong Survey.
Part 1: Population
How many of us are there?
The short answer is that I don't know.
The 2011 survey ran 33 days and collected 1090 responses. This year's survey ran 23 days and collected 1195 responses. The average number of new responses during the last week was about five per day, so even if I had kept this survey open as long as the last one I probably wouldn't have gotten more than about 1250 responses. That means at most a 15% year on year growth rate, which is pretty abysmal compared to the 650% growth rate in two years we saw last time.
About half of these responses were from lurkers; over half of the non-lurker remainder had commented but never posted to Main or Discussion. That means there were only about 600 non-lurkers.
But I am skeptical of these numbers. I hang out with some people who are very closely associated with the greater Less Wrong community, and a lot of them didn't know about the survey until I mentioned it to them in person. I know some people who could plausibly be described as focusing their lives around the community who just never took the survey for one reason or another. One lesson of this survey may be that the community is no longer limited to people who check Less Wrong very often, if at all. One friend didn't see the survey because she hangs out on the #lesswrong channel more than the main site. Another mostly just goes to meetups. So I think this represents only a small sample of people who could justly be considered Less Wrongers.
The question of "how quickly is LW growing" is also complicated by the high turnover. Over half the people who took this survey said they hadn't participated in the survey last year. I tried to break this down by combining a few sources of information, and I think our 1200 respondents include 500 people who took last year's survey, 400 people who were around last year but didn't take the survey for some reason, and 300 new people.
As expected, there's lower turnover among regulars than among lurkers. Of people who have posted in Main, about 75% took the survey last year; of people who only lurked, about 75% hadn't.
This view of a very high-turnover community and lots of people not taking the survey is consistent with Vladimir Nesov's data showing http://lesswrong.com/lw/e4j/number_of_members_on_lesswrong/77xz 1390 people who have written at least ten comments. But the survey includes only about 600 people who have at least commented; 800ish of Vladimir's accounts are either gone or didn't take the census.
Part 2: Categorical Data
SEX:
Man: 1057, 89.2%
Woman: 120, 10.1%
Other: 2, 0.2%)
No answer: 6, 0.5%
GENDER:
M (cis): 1021, 86.2%
F (cis): 105, 8.9%
M (trans f->m): 3, 0.3%
F (trans m->f): 16, 1.3%
Other: 29, 2.4%
No answer: 11, 0.9%
ORIENTATION:
Heterosexual: 964, 80.7%
Bisexual: 135, 11.4%
Homosexual: 28, 2.4%
Asexual: 24, 2%
Other: 28, 2.4%
No answer: 14, 1.2%
RELATIONSHIP STYLE:
Prefer monogamous: 639, 53.9%
Prefer polyamorous: 155, 13.1%
Uncertain/no preference: 358, 30.2%
Other: 21, 1.8%
No answer: 12, 1%
NUMBER OF CURRENT PARTNERS:
0: 591, 49.8%
1: 519, 43.8%
2: 34, 2.9%
3: 12, 1%
4: 5, 0.4%
6: 1, 0.1%
7, 1, 0.1% (and this person added "really, not trolling")
Confusing or no answer: 20, 1.8%
RELATIONSHIP STATUS:
Single: 628, 53%
Relationship: 323, 27.3%
Married: 220, 18.6%
No answer: 14, 1.2%
RELATIONSHIP GOALS:
Not looking for more partners: 707, 59.7%
Looking for more partners: 458, 38.6%
No answer: 20, 1.7%
COUNTRY:
USA: 651, 54.9%
UK: 103, 8.7%
Canada: 74, 6.2%
Australia: 59, 5%
Germany: 54, 4.6%
Israel: 15, 1.3%
Finland: 15, 1.3%
Russia: 13, 1.1%
Poland: 12, 1%
These are all the countries with greater than 1% of Less Wrongers, but other, more exotic locales included Kenya, Pakistan, and Iceland, with one user each. You can see the full table here.
This data also allows us to calculate Less Wrongers per capita:
Finland: 1/366,666
Australia: 1/389,830
Canada: 1/472,972
USA: 1/483,870
Israel: 1/533,333
UK: 1/603,883
Germany: 1/1,518,518
Poland: 1/3,166,666
Russia: 1/11,538,462
RACE:
White, non-Hispanic 1003, 84.6%
East Asian: 50, 4.2%
Hispanic 47, 4.0%
Indian Subcontinental 28, 2.4%
Black 8, 0.7%
Middle Eastern 4, 0.3%
Other: 33, 2.8%
No answer: 12, 1%
WORK STATUS:
Student: 476, 40.7%
For-profit work: 364, 30.7%
Self-employed: 95, 8%
Unemployed: 81, 6.8%
Academics (teaching): 54, 4.6%
Government: 46, 3.9%
Non-profit: 44, 3.7%
Independently wealthy: 12, 1%
No answer: 13, 1.1%
PROFESSION:
Computers (practical): 344, 29%
Math: 109, 9.2%
Engineering: 98, 8.3%
Computers (academic): 72, 6.1%
Physics: 66, 5.6%
Finance/Econ: 65, 5.5%
Computers (AI): 39, 3.3%
Philosophy: 36, 3%
Psychology: 25, 2.1%
Business: 23, 1.9%
Art: 22, 1.9%
Law: 21, 1.8%
Neuroscience: 19, 1.6%
Medicine: 15, 1.3%
Other social science: 24, 2%
Other hard science: 20, 1.7%
Other: 123, 10.4%
No answer: 27, 2.3%
DEGREE:
Bachelor's: 438, 37%
High school: 333, 28.1%
Master's: 192, 16.2%
Ph.D: 71, 6%
2-year: 43, 3.6%
MD/JD/professional: 24, 2%
None: 55, 4.6%
Other: 15, 1.3%
No answer: 14, 1.2%
POLITICS:
Liberal: 427, 36%
Libertarian: 359, 30.3%
Socialist: 326, 27.5%
Conservative: 35, 3%
Communist: 8, 0.7%
No answer: 30, 2.5%
You can see the exact definitions given for each of these terms on the survey.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS:
Atheist, not spiritual: 880, 74.3%
Atheist, spiritual: 107, 9.0%
Agnostic: 94, 7.9%
Committed theist: 37, 3.1%
Lukewarm theist: 27, 2.3%
Deist/Pantheist/etc: 23, 1.9%
No answer: 17, 1.4%
FAMILY RELIGIOUS VIEWS:
Lukewarm theist: 392, 33.1%
Committed theist: 307, 25.9%
Atheist, not spiritual: 161, 13.6
Agnostic: 149, 12.6%
Atheist, spiritual: 46, 3.9%
Deist/Pantheist/Etc: 32, 2.7%
Other: 84, 7.1%
RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND:
Other Christian: 517, 43.6%
Catholic: 295, 24.9%
Jewish: 100, 8.4%
Hindu: 21, 1.8%
Traditional Chinese: 17, 1.4%
Mormon: 15, 1.3%
Muslim: 12, 1%
Raw data is available here.
MORAL VIEWS:
Consequentialism: 735, 62%
Virtue Ethics: 166, 14%
Deontology: 50, 4.2%
Other: 214, 18.1%
No answer: 20, 1.7%
NUMBER OF CHILDREN
0: 1044, 88.1%
1: 51, 4.3%
2: 48, 4.1%
3: 19, 1.6%
4: 3, 0.3%
5: 2, 0.2%
6: 1, 0.1%
No answer: 17, 1.4%
WANT MORE CHILDREN?
No: 438, 37%
Maybe: 363, 30.7%
Yes: 366, 30.9%
No answer: 16, 1.4%
LESS WRONG USE:
Lurkers (no account): 407, 34.4%
Lurkers (with account): 138, 11.7%
Posters (comments only): 356, 30.1%
Posters (comments + Discussion only): 164, 13.9%
Posters (including Main): 102, 8.6%
SEQUENCES:
Never knew they existed until this moment: 99, 8.4%
Knew they existed; never looked at them: 23, 1.9%
Read < 25%: 227, 19.2%
Read ~ 25%: 145, 12.3%
Read ~ 50%: 164, 13.9%
Read ~ 75%: 203, 17.2%
Read ~ all: 306, 24.9%
No answer: 16, 1.4%
Dear 8.4% of people: there is this collection of old blog posts called the Sequences. It is by Eliezer, the same guy who wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It is really good! If you read it, you will understand what we're talking about much better!
REFERRALS:
Been here since Overcoming Bias: 265, 22.4%
Referred by a link on another blog: 23.5%
Referred by a friend: 147, 12.4%
Referred by HPMOR: 262, 22.1%
No answer: 35, 3%
BLOG REFERRALS:
Common Sense Atheism: 20 people
Hacker News: 20 people
Reddit: 15 people
Unequally Yoked: 7 people
TV Tropes: 7 people
Marginal Revolution: 6 people
gwern.net: 5 people
RationalWiki: 4 people
Shtetl-Optimized: 4 people
XKCD fora: 3 people
Accelerating Future: 3 people
These are all the sites that referred at least three people in a way that was obvious to disentangle from the raw data. You can see a more complete list, including the long tail, here.
MEETUPS:
Never been to one: 834, 70.5%
Have been to one: 320, 27%
No answer: 29, 2.5%
CATASTROPHE:
Pandemic (bioengineered): 272, 23%
Environmental collapse: 171, 14.5%
Unfriendly AI: 160, 13.5%
Nuclear war: 155, 13.1%
Economic/Political collapse: 137, 11.6%
Pandemic (natural): 99, 8.4%
Nanotech: 49, 4.1%
Asteroid: 43, 3.6%
The wording of this question was "which disaster do you think is most likely to wipe out greater than 90% of humanity before the year 2100?"
CRYONICS STATUS:
No, don't want to: 275, 23.2%
No, still thinking: 472, 39.9%
No, procrastinating: 178, 15%
No, unavailable: 120, 10.1%
Yes, signed up: 44, 3.7%
Never thought about it: 46, 3.9%
No answer: 48, 4.1%
VEGETARIAN:
No: 906, 76.6%
Yes: 147, 12.4%
No answer: 130, 11%
For comparison, 3.2% of US adults are vegetarian.
SPACED REPETITION SYSTEMS
Don't use them: 511, 43.2%
Do use them: 235, 19.9%
Never heard of them: 302, 25.5%
Dear 25.5% of people: spaced repetition systems are nifty, mostly free computer programs that allow you to study and memorize facts more efficiently. See for example http://ankisrs.net/
HPMOR:
Never read it: 219, 18.5%
Started, haven't finished: 190, 16.1%
Read all of it so far: 659, 55.7%
Dear 18.5% of people: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a Harry Potter fanfic about rational thinking written by Eliezer Yudkowsky (the guy who started this site). It's really good. You can find it at http://www.hpmor.com/.
ALTERNATIVE POLITICS QUESTION:
Progressive: 429, 36.3%
Libertarian: 278, 23.5%
Reactionary: 30, 2.5%
Conservative: 24, 2%
Communist: 22, 1.9%
Other: 156, 13.2%
ALTERNATIVE ALTERNATIVE POLITICS QUESTION:
Left-Libertarian: 102, 8.6%
Progressive: 98, 8.3%
Libertarian: 91, 7.7%
Pragmatist: 85, 7.2%
Social Democrat: 80, 6.8%
Socialist: 66, 5.6%
Anarchist: 50, 4.1%
Futarchist: 29, 2.5%
Moderate: 18, 1.5%
Moldbuggian: 19, 1.6%
Objectivist: 11, 0.9%
These are the only ones that had more than ten people. Other responses notable for their unusualness were Monarchist (5 people), fascist (3 people, plus one who was up for fascism but only if he could be the leader), conservative (9 people), and a bunch of people telling me politics was stupid and I should feel bad for asking the question. You can see the full table here.
CAFFEINE:
Never: 162, 13.7%
Rarely: 237, 20%
At least 1x/week: 207, 17.5
Daily: 448, 37.9
No answer: 129, 10.9%
SMOKING:
Never: 896, 75.7%
Used to: 1-5, 8.9%
Still do: 51, 4.3%
No answer: 131, 11.1%
For comparison, about 28.4% of the US adult population smokes
NICOTINE (OTHER THAN SMOKING):
Never used: 916, 77.4%
Rarely use: 82, 6.9%
>1x/month: 32, 2.7%
Every day: 14, 1.2%
No answer: 139, 11.7%
MODAFINIL:
Never: 76.5%
Rarely: 78, 6.6%
>1x/month: 48, 4.1%
Every day: 9, 0.8%
No answer: 143, 12.1%
TRUE PRISONERS' DILEMMA:
Defect: 341, 28.8%
Cooperate: 316, 26.7%
Not sure: 297, 25.1%
No answer: 229, 19.4%
FREE WILL:
Not confused: 655, 55.4%
Somewhat confused: 296, 25%
Confused: 81, 6.8%
No answer: 151, 12.8%
TORTURE VS. DUST SPECKS
Choose dust specks: 435, 36.8%
Choose torture: 261, 22.1%
Not sure: 225, 19%
Don't understand: 22, 1.9%
No answer: 240, 20.3%
SCHRODINGER EQUATION:
Can't calculate it: 855, 72.3%
Can calculate it: 175, 14.8%
No answer: 153, 12.9%
PRIMARY LANGUAGE:
English: 797, 67.3%
German: 54, 4.5%
French: 13, 1.1%
Finnish: 11, 0.9%
Dutch: 10, 0.9%
Russian: 15, 1.3%
Portuguese: 10, 0.9%
These are all the languages with ten or more speakers, but we also have everything from Marathi to Tibetan. You can see the full table here..
NEWCOMB'S PROBLEM
One-box: 726, 61.4%
Two-box: 78, 6.6%
Not sure: 53, 4.5%
Don't understand: 86, 7.3%
No answer: 240, 20.3%
ENTREPRENEUR:
Don't want to start business: 447, 37.8%
Considering starting business: 334, 28.2%
Planning to start business: 96, 8.1%
Already started business: 112, 9.5%
No answer: 194, 16.4%
ANONYMITY:
Post using real name: 213, 18%
Easy to find real name: 256, 21.6%
Hard to find name, but wouldn't bother me if someone did: 310, 26.2%
Anonymity is very important: 170, 14.4%
No answer: 234, 19.8%
HAVE YOU TAKEN A PREVIOUS LW SURVEY?
No: 559, 47.3%
Yes: 458, 38.7%
No answer: 116, 14%
TROLL TOLL POLICY:
Disapprove: 194, 16.4%
Approve: 178, 15%
Haven't heard of this: 375, 31.7%
No opinion: 249, 21%
No answer: 187, 15.8%
MYERS-BRIGGS
INTJ: 163, 13.8%
INTP: 143, 12.1%
ENTJ: 35, 3%
ENTP: 30, 2.5%
INFP: 26, 2.2%
INFJ: 25. 2.1%
ISTJ: 14, 1.2%
No answer: 715, 60%
This includes all types with greater than 10 people. You can see the full table here.
Part 3: Numerical Data
Except where indicated otherwise, all the numbers below are given in the format:
mean+standard_deviation (25% level, 50% level/median, 75% level) [n = number of data points]
INTELLIGENCE:
IQ (self-reported): 138.7 + 12.7 (130, 138, 145) [n = 382]
SAT (out of 1600): 1485.8 + 105.9 (1439, 1510, 1570) [n = 321]
SAT (out of 2400): 2319.5 + 1433.7 (2155, 2240, 2320)
ACT: 32.7 + 2.3 (31, 33, 34) [n = 207]
IQ (on iqtest.dk): 125.63 + 13.4 (118, 130, 133) [n = 378]
I am going to harp on these numbers because in the past some people have been pretty quick to ridicule this survey's intelligence numbers as completely useless and impossible and so on.
According to IQ Comparison Site, an SAT score of 1485/1600 corresponds to an IQ of about 144. According to Ivy West, an ACT of 33 corresponds to an SAT of 1470 (and thence to IQ of 143).
So if we consider self-report, SAT, ACT, and iqtest.dk as four measures of IQ, these come out to 139, 144, 143, and 126, respectively.
All of these are pretty close except iqtest.dk. I ran a correlation between all of them and found that self-reported IQ is correlated with SAT scores at the 1% level and iqtest.dk at the 5% level, but SAT scores and IQTest.dk are not correlated with each other.
Of all these, I am least likely to trust iqtest.dk. First, it's a random Internet IQ test. Second, it correlates poorly with the other measures. Third, a lot of people have complained in the comments to the survey post that it exhibits some weird behavior.
But iqtest.dk gave us the lowest number! And even it said the average was 125 to 130! So I suggest that we now have pretty good, pretty believable evidence that the average IQ for this site really is somewhere in the 130s, and that self-reported IQ isn't as terrible a measure as one might think.
AGE:
27.8 + 9.2 (22, 26, 31) [n = 1185]
LESS WRONG USE:
Karma: 1078 + 2939.5 (0, 4.5, 136) [n = 1078]
Months on LW: 26.7 + 20.1 (12, 24, 40) [n = 1070]
Minutes/day on LW: 19.05 + 24.1 (5, 10, 20) [n = 1105]
Wiki views/month: 3.6 + 6.3 (0, 1, 5) [n = 984]
Wiki edits/month: 0.1 + 0.8 (0, 0, 0) [n = 984]
PROBABILITIES:
Many Worlds: 51.6 + 31.2 (25, 55, 80) [n = 1005]
Aliens (universe): 74.2 + 32.6 (50, 90, 99) [n = 1090]
Aliens (galaxy): 42.1 + 38 (5, 33, 80) [n = 1081]
Supernatural: 5.9 + 18.6 (0, 0, 1) [n = 1095]
God: 6 + 18.7 (0, 0, 1) [n = 1098]
Religion: 3.8 + 15.5 (0, 0, 0.8) [n = 1113]
Cryonics: 18.5 + 24.8 (2, 8, 25) [n = 1100]
Antiagathics: 25.1 + 28.6 (1, 10, 35) [n = 1094]
Simulation: 25.1 + 29.7 (1, 10, 50) [n = 1039]
Global warming: 79.1 + 25 (75, 90, 97) [n = 1112]
No catastrophic risk: 71.1 + 25.5 (55, 80, 90) [n = 1095]
Space: 20.1 + 27.5 (1, 5, 30) [n = 953]
CALIBRATION:
Year of Bayes' birth: 1767.5 + 109.1 (1710, 1780, 1830) [n = 1105]
Confidence: 33.6 + 23.6 (20, 30, 50) [n= 1082]
MONEY:
Income/year: 50,913 + 60644.6 (12000, 35000, 74750) [n = 644]
Charity/year: 444.1 + 1152.4 (0, 30, 250) [n = 950]
SIAI/CFAR charity/year: 309.3 + 3921 (0, 0, 0) [n = 961]
Aging charity/year: 13 + 184.9 (0, 0, 0) [n = 953]
TIME USE:
Hours online/week: 42.4 + 30 (21, 40, 59) [n = 944]
Hours reading/week: 30.8 + 19.6 (18, 28, 40) [n = 957]
Hours writing/week: 7.9 + 9.8 (2, 5, 10) [n = 951]
POLITICAL COMPASS:
Left/Right: -2.4 + 4 (-5.5, -3.4, -0.3) [n = 476]
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5 + 2 (-6.2, -5.2, -4)
BIG 5 PERSONALITY TEST:
Big 5 (O): 60.6 + 25.7 (41, 65, 84) [n = 453]
Big 5 (C): 35.2 + 27.5 (10, 30, 58) [n = 453]
Big 5 (E): 30.3 + 26.7 (7, 22, 48) [n = 454]
Big 5 (A): 41 + 28.3 (17, 38, 63) [n = 453]
Big 5 (N): 36.6 + 29 (11, 27, 60) [n = 449]
These scores are in percentiles, so LWers are more Open, but less Conscientious, Agreeable, Extraverted, and Neurotic than average test-takers. Note that people who take online psychometric tests are probably a pretty skewed category already so this tells us nothing. Also, several people got confusing results on this test or found it different than other tests that they took, and I am pretty unsatisfied with it and don't trust the results.
AUTISM QUOTIENT
AQ: 24.1 + 12.2 (17, 24, 30) [n = 367]
This test says the average control subject got 16.4 and 80% of those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders get 32+ (which of course doesn't tell us what percent of people above 32 have autism...). If we trust them, most LWers are more autistic than average.
CALIBRATION:
Reverend Thomas Bayes was born in 1701. Survey takers were asked to guess this date within 20 years, so anyone who guessed between 1681 and 1721 was recorded as getting a correct answer. The percent of people who answered correctly is recorded below, stratified by the confidence they gave of having guessed correctly and with the number of people at that confidence level.
0-5: 10% [n = 30]
5-15: 14.8% [n = 183]
15-25: 10.3% [n = 242]
25-35: 10.7% [n = 225]
35-45: 11.2% [n = 98]
45-55: 17% [n = 118]
55-65: 20.1% [n = 62]
65-75: 26.4% [n = 34]
75-85: 36.4% [n = 33]
85-95: 60.2% [n = 20]
95-100: 85.7% [n = 23]
Here's a classic calibration chart. The blue line is perfect calibration. The orange line is you guys. And the yellow line is average calibration from an experiment I did with untrained subjects a few years ago (which of course was based on different questions and so not directly comparable).
The results are atrocious; when Less Wrongers are 50% certain, they only have about a 17% chance of being correct. On this problem, at least, they are as bad or worse at avoiding overconfidence bias as the general population.
My hope was that this was the result of a lot of lurkers who don't know what they're doing stumbling upon the survey and making everyone else look bad, so I ran a second analysis. This one used only the numbers of people who had been in the community at least 2 years and accumulated at least 100 karma; this limited my sample size to about 210 people.
I'm not going to post exact results, because I made some minor mistakes which means they're off by a percentage point or two, but the general trend was that they looked exactly like the results above: atrocious. If there is some core of elites who are less biased than the general population, they are well past the 100 karma point and probably too rare to feel confident even detecting at this kind of a sample size.
I really have no idea what went so wrong. Last year's results were pretty good - encouraging, even. I wonder if it's just an especially bad question. Bayesian statistics is pretty new; one would expect Bayes to have been born in rather more modern times. It's also possible that I've handled the statistics wrong on this one; I wouldn't mind someone double-checking my work.
Or we could just be really horrible. If we haven't even learned to avoid the one bias that we can measure super well and which is most susceptible to training, what are we even doing here? Some remedial time at PredictionBook might be in order.
HYPOTHESIS TESTING:
I tested a very few of the possible hypothesis that were proposed in the survey design threads.
Are people who understand quantum mechanics are more likely to believe in Many Worlds? We perform a t-test, checking whether one's probability of the MWI being true depends on whether or not one can solve the Schrodinger Equation. People who could solve the equation had on average a 54.3% probability of MWI, compared to 51.3% in those who could not. The p-value is 0.26; there is a 26% probability this occurs by chance. Therefore, we fail to establish that people's probability of MWI varies with understanding of quantum mechanics.
Are there any interesting biological correlates of IQ? We run a correlation between self-reported IQ, height, maternal age, and paternal age. The correlations are in the expected direction but not significant.
Are there differences in the ways men and women interact with the community? I had sort of vaguely gotten the impression that women were proportionally younger, newer to the community, and more likely to be referred via HPMOR. The average age of women on LW is 27.6 compared to 27.7 for men; obviously this difference is not significant. 14% of the people referred via HPMOR were women compared to about 10% of the community at large, but this difference is pretty minor. Women were on average newer to the community - 21 months vs. 39 for men - but to my surprise a t-test was unable to declare this significant. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
Does the amount of time spent in the community affect one's beliefs in the same way as in previous surveys? I ran some correlations and found that it does. People who have been around longer continue to be more likely to believe in MWI, less likely to believe in aliens in the universe (though not in our galaxy), and less likely to believe in God (though not religion). There was no effect on cryonics this time.
In addition, the classic correlations between different beliefs continue to hold true. There is an obvious cluster of God, religion, and the supernatural. There's also a scifi cluster of cryonics, antiagathics, MWI, aliens, and the Simulation Hypothesis, and catastrophic risk (this also seems to include global warming, for some reason).
Are there any differences between men and women in regards to their belief in these clusters? We run a t-test between men and women. Men and women have about the same probability of God (men: 5.9, women: 6.2, p = .86) and similar results for the rest of the religion cluster, but men have much higher beliefs in for example antiagathics (men 24.3, women: 10.5, p < .001) and the rest of the scifi cluster.
DESCRIPTIONS OF LESS WRONG
Survey users were asked to submit a description of Less Wrong in 140 characters or less. I'm not going to post all of them, but here is a representative sample:
- "Probably the most sensible philosophical resource avaialble."
- "Contains the great Sequences, some of Luke's posts, and very little else."
- "The currently most interesting site I found ont the net."
- "EY cult"
- "How to think correctly, precisely, and efficiently."
- "HN for even bigger nerds."
- "Social skills philosophy and AI theorists on the same site, not noticing each other."
- "Cool place. Any others like it?"
- "How to avoid predictable pitfalls in human psychology, and understand hard things well: The Website."
- "A bunch of people trying to make sense of the wold through their own lens, which happens to be one of calculation and rigor"
- "Nice."
- "A font of brilliant and unconventional wisdom."
- "One of the few sane places on Earth."
- "Robot god apocalypse cult spinoff from Harry Potter."
- "A place to converse with intelligent, reasonably open-minded people."
- "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon"
- "Amazing rational transhumanist calming addicting Super Reddit"
- "Still wrong"
- "A forum for helping to train people to be more rational"
- "A very bright community interested in amateur ethical philosophy, mathematics, and decision theory."
- "Dying. Social games and bullshit now >50% of LW content."
- "The good kind of strange, addictive, so much to read!"
- "Part genuinely useful, part mental masturbation."
- "Mostly very bright and starry-eyed adults who never quite grew out of their science-fiction addiction as adolescents."
- "Less Wrong: Saving the world with MIND POWERS!"
- "Perfectly patternmatches the 'young-people-with-all-the-answers' cliche"
- "Rationalist community dedicated to self-improvement."
- "Sperglord hipsters pretending that being a sperglord hipster is cool." (this person's Autism Quotient was two points higher than LW average, by the way)
- "An interesting perspective and valuable database of mental techniques."
- "A website with kernels of information hidden among aspy nonsense."
- "Exclusive, elitist, interesting, potentially useful, personal depression trigger."
- "A group blog about rationality and related topics. Tends to be overzealous about cryogenics and other pet ideas of Eliezer Yudkowsky."
- "Things to read to make you think better."
- "Excellent rationality. New-age self-help. Worrying groupthink."
- "Not a cult at all."
- "A cult."
- "The new thing for people who would have been Randian Objectivists 30 years ago."
- "Fascinating, well-started, risking bloat and failure modes, best as archive."
- "A fun, insightful discussion of probability theory and cognition."
- "More interesting than useful."
- "The most productive and accessible mind-fuckery on the Internet."
- "A blog for rationality, cognitive bias, futurism, and the Singularity."
- "Robo-Protestants attempting natural theology."
- "Orderly quagmire of tantalizing ideas drawn from disagreeable priors."
- "Analyze everything. And I do mean everything. Including analysis. Especially analysis. And analysis of analysis."
- "Very interesting and sometimes useful."
- "Where people discuss and try to implement ways that humans can make their values, actions, and beliefs more internally consistent."
- "Eliezer Yudkowsky personality cult."
- "It's like the Mormons would be if everyone were an atheist and good at math and didn't abstain from substances."
- "Seems wacky at first, but gradually begins to seem normal."
- "A varied group of people interested in philosophy with high Openness and a methodical yet amateur approach."
- "Less Wrong is where human algorithms go to debug themselves."
- "They're kind of like a cult, but that doesn't make them wrong."
- "A community blog devoted to nerds who think they're smarter than everyone else."
- "90% sane! A new record!"
- "The Sequences are great. LW now slowly degenerating to just another science forum."
- "The meetup groups are where it's at, it seems to me. I reserve judgment till I attend one."
- "All I really know about it is this long survey I took."
- "The royal road of rationality."
- "Technically correct: The best kind of correct!"
- "Full of angry privilege."
- "A sinister instrument of billionaire Peter Thiel."
- "Dangerous apocalypse cult bent on the systematic erasure of traditional values and culture by any means necessary."
- "Often interesting, but I never feel at home."
- "One of the few places I truly feel at home, knowing that there are more people like me."
- "Currently the best internet source of information-dense material regarding cog sci, debiasing, and existential risk."
- "Prolific and erudite writing on practical techniques to enhance the effectiveness of our reason."
- "An embarrassing Internet community formed around some genuinely great blog writings."
- "I bookmarked it a while ago and completely forgot what it is about. I am taking the survey to while away my insomnia."
- "A somewhat intimidating but really interesting website that helps refine rational thinking."
- "A great collection of ways to avoid systematic bias and come to true and useful conclusions."
- "Obnoxious self-serving, foolish trolling dehumanizing pseudointellectualism, aesthetically bankrupt."
- "The cutting edge of human rationality."
- "A purveyor of exceedingly long surveys."
PUBLIC RELEASE
That last commenter was right. This survey had vastly more data than any previous incarnation; although there are many more analyses I would like to run I am pretty exhausted and I know people are anxious for the results. I'm going to let CFAR analyze and report on their questions, but the rest should be a community effort. So I'm releasing the survey to everyone in the hopes of getting more information out of it. If you find something interesting you can either post it in the comments or start a new thread somewhere.
The data I'm providing is the raw data EXCEPT:
- I deleted a few categories that I removed halfway through the survey for various reasons
- I deleted 9 entries that were duplicates of other entries, ie someone pressed 'submit' twice.
- I deleted the timestamp, which would have made people extra-identifiable, and sorted people by their CFAR random number to remove time order information.
- I removed one person whose information all came out as weird symbols.
- I numeralized some of the non-numeric data, especially on the number of months in community question. This is not the version I cleaned up fully, so you will get to experience some of the same pleasure I did working with the rest.
- I deleted 117 people who either didn't answer the privacy question or who asked me to keep them anonymous, leaving 1067 people.
Here it is: Data in .csv format , Data in Excel format
On IQ Accuracy:
As Yvain says, "people have been pretty quick to ridicule this survey's intelligence numbers as completely useless and impossible and so on" because if they're true, it means that the average LessWronger is gifted. Yvain added a few questions to the 2012 survey, including the ACT and SAT questions and the Myers-Briggs personality type question that I requested (I'll explain why this is interesting), and that give us a few other things to check against, which has made the figures more believable. The ridicule may be an example of the "virtuous doubt" that Luke warns about in Overconfident Pessimism, so it makes sense to "consider the opposite":
The distribution of Myers-Briggs personality types on LessWrong replicates the Mensa pattern. This is remarkable since the patterns of personality types here are, in many significant ways, the exact opposite of what you'd find in the regular population. For instance, the introverted rationalists and idealists are each about 1% of the population. Here, they are the majority and it's the artisans and guardians who are relegated to 1% or less of our population.
Mensa's personality test results were published in the December 1993 Mensa Bulletin. Their numbers.
So, if you believe that most of the people who took the survey lied about their IQ, you also need to believe all of the following:
That most of these people also realized they needed to do IQ correlation research and fudge their SAT and ACT scores in order for their IQ lie to be believable.
Some explanation as to why the average of lurker's IQ scores would come out so close to the average of poster's IQ scores. The lurkers don't have karma to show off, and there's no known incentive good enough to get so many lurkers to lie about their IQ score. Vaniver's figures.
Some explanation for why the personality type pattern at LessWrong is radically different from the norm and yet very similar to the personality type pattern Mensa published and also matched my predictions. Even if they had knowledge of the Mensa personality test results and decided to fudge their personality type responses, too, they somehow managed to fudge them in such a way that their personality types accidentally matched my predictions.
That they decided not to cheat when answering the Bayes birthday question even though they were dishonest enough to lie on the IQ question, motivated to look intelligent, and it takes a lot less effort to fudge the Bayes question than the intelligence and personality questions. (This was suggested by ArisKatsaris).
That both posters and lurkers had some motive strong enough to justify spending 20+ minutes doing the IQ correlation research and fudging personality test questions while probably bored of ticking options after filling out most of a very long survey.
It's easier just to put the real number in the IQ box than do all that work to make it believable, and it's not like the liars are likely to get anything out of boasting anonymously, so the cost-benefit ratio is just not working in favor of the liar explanation.
If you think about it in terms of Occam's razor, what is the better explanation? That most people lied about their IQ, and fudged their SAT, ACT and personality type data to match, or that they're telling the truth?
Summary of criticism:
Possible Motive to Lie: The desire to be associated with a "gifted" group:
In re to this post, it was argued by NonComposMentis that a potential motive to lie is that if the outside world perceives LessWrong as gifted, then anyone having an account on LessWrong will look high-status. In rebuttal:
I figure that lurkers would not be motivated to fudge their results because they don't have a bunch of karma on their account to show off and anybody can claim to read LessWrong, so fudging your IQ just to claim that the site you read is full of gifted people isn't likely to be motivating. I suggested that we compare the average IQs of lurkers and others. Vaniver did the math and they are very, very close..
I argued, among other things, that it would be falling for a Pascal's mugging to believe that investing the extra time (probably at least $5 worth of time for most of us) into fudging the various different survey questions is likely to contribute to a secret conspiracy to inflate LessWrong's average IQ.
Did the majority avoid filling out intelligence related questions, letting the gifted skew the results?
Short answer: 74% of people answered at least one intelligence related question and since most people filled out only one or two, the fact that the self-report, ACT and SAT score averages are so similar is remarkable.
I realized, while reading Vaniver's post that if only 1/3 of the survey participants filled out the IQ score, this may have been due to something which could have skewed the results toward the gifted range, for instance, if more gifted people had been given IQ tests for schooling placement (and the others didn't post their IQ score because they did not know it) or if the amount of pride one has in their IQ score has a significant influence on whether one reported it.
So I went through the data and realized that most of the people who filled out the IQ test question did not fill out all the others. That means that 804 people (74% not 33%) answered at least one intelligence related question. As we have seen, the IQ correlations for the IQ, SAT and ACT questions were very close to each other (unsurprisingly, it looks like something's up with the internet test... removing those, it's 63% of survey participants that answered an intelligence related question). It's remarkable in and of itself that each category of test scores generated an average IQ so similar to the others considering that different people filled them out. I mean if 1/3 of the population filled out all of the questions, and the other 2/3 filled out none, we could say "maybe the 1/3 did IQ correlation research and fudged these" but if most of the population fills out one or two, and the averages for each category come out close to the averages for the other categories, why is that? How would that happen if they were fudging?
It does look to me like people gave whatever test scores they had and that not all the people had test scores to give but it does not look to me like a greater proportion of the gifted people provided an intelligence related survey answer. Instead it looks like most people provided an intelligence related survey answer and the average LessWronger is gifted.
Exploration of personality test fudging:
Erratio and I explored how likely it is that people could successfully fudge their personality tests and why they might do that.
There are a lot of questions on the personality test that have an obvious intelligence component, so it's possible that people chose the answer they thought was most intelligent.
There are also intelligence related questions where it's not clear which answer is most intelligent. I listed those.
The intelligence questions would mostly influence the sensing/intuition dichotomy and the thinking/feeling dichotomy. This does not explain why the extraversion/introversion and perceiving/judging results were similar to Mensa's.
I'm inclined to believe the survey results myself, but there is a third possibility. If a certain personality type (or distribution of types) reflects a desire to associate with gifted people, or to be seen as gifted, we'd likely expect that to be heavily overrepresented in MENSA; that's pretty much the reason the club exists, after all. We... (read more)