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gjm comments on 2013 Census/Survey: call for changes and additions - Less Wrong
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I'd like a question about how politically active people are. Tentatively suggested list of answers: vote, vote in primaries, do research before voting, involved with parties, tries to influence legislation by contact with people who can affect it directly, has run for office.
An option for probabilities to the effect of "this is so hard to estimate that I don't think much precision is possible"-- something equivalent to "revival from cryonics isn't going to happen next year, but I don't think there's a sensible way to talk about the odds for thirty years from now". In other words, the militant agnostic position: "I don't know, and you don't either".
Here's a question I've wanted to see about religion, but it would also work for rationality: Has rationality affected any of your major decisions about sex and/or money?
Has rationality been of practical use for you? Time, money, relationships, other.
Do you use rationality (not necessarily learned at LW/CFAR) as a filter for who you associate with?
"Vote in primaries" is a bit US-specific. How about "vote in national elections only" and "vote in other elections" (which would cover primaries, elections for local government, etc.)? Something like that, anyway.
"Voting in primaries" is US specific, but it is significantly stronger than "voting in other elections." We have an order of magnitude more people voting in state elections than in primaries.
In fact, it's probably the strongest thing that you can do to influence politics in America. It's significantly rarer than volunteering to help elect parties or writing letters to your senator, and everyone who's at a primary already does those things.
I only bothered looking up the statistics for California, but there I found 31% of registered voters showing up for the 2012 presidential primary elections, as opposed to 75% for the general election. (The statistics for eligible voters are somewhat lower, but more or less proportionally so.) That's a significant difference, but we're not talking an order of magnitude, and I'd be very surprised to find that that many people are politically engaged in more substantive ways.
France has primaries too now, I think it's an informative option to offer. How about "votes in parties' internal election, like primaries"?
I believe that the amount of effort this takes depends very much on the country.
Fine with me. I'm not politically active, even in just one country, so I was fairly uncertain about what should go on the list.
For that matter, should going to demonstrations be on the list? How about organizing demonstrations?