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Kindly comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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Good points, Kindly, thank you. New alternate explanation idea:
When these people encounter this question, they're slogging through this huge survey. They're not doing an IQ test. This is more casual. They're being asked stuff like "How many partners do you have?" By the time they get down to that question, they're probably in a casual answering mode, and they're probably a little tired and looking for an efficient way to finish. When they see the Bayes question, they're probably not thinking "This question is so important! They're going to be gauging LessWrong's rationality progress with it! I had better really think about this!" They're probably like "Output answer, next question."
If we really want to test them, we need to make it clear that we're testing them. And if we want them to be serious about it, we have to make it clear that it's important. I hypothesize that if we were to do a test (not a survey) and explain that it's serious because we're gauging LessWrong's progress, and also make it short so that the person can focus a lot of attention onto each question, we'd see less atrocious results.
In hindsight, I wonder why I didn't think about the effects of context before. Yvain didn't seem to either; he thought something might be wrong with the question. This seems like one of those things that is right in front of our faces but is hard to see.
I think that people may be rationing their mental stamina, and may not be going through all the steps it takes to answer this type of question.
If you'll excuse the expression, I'm suspicious of your sudden epiphany. That is, I accept your suggestion as a possible explanation (although I'm not convinced, mainly because this doesn't describe the way I answered the question; I don't know about anyone else). But I think saying "Oh gosh! The true answer has been staring us in the face all along!" is premature.
I am not sure why you took "a new explanation" so seriously. I guess I have to be really careful on LessWrong to distinguish ideas from actual beliefs. I do not think it's "The True Answer". I just think it's a rather obvious alternate explanation that should have occurred to me immediately, and didn't, and I'm surprised about that, and about the fact that it didn't seem to occur to Yvain either. I reworded some things to make it more obvious that I am not trying to present this as "The True Answer" but just as an idea.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Would you mind trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that I'm acting stupid in the future, Kindly? I definitely don't mind being told "Your statement could be interpreted as such-and-such stupid behavior, so you may want to change it." but it's a little frustrating when people speak to me as if they really believe I am as confused as your "The True Answer" interpretation would imply.
I'm not sure why you're accusing me of this. I often disagree with people, but I usually don't assume the people I disagree with are stupid. This is especially true when we disagree due to a misunderstanding.
(I don't intend to continue this line of conversation.)