jamesf comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 19 January 2014 04:08:27PM 2 points [-]

Quantified Self-related activities

I thought quite a bit about this and couldn't decide on many good questions.

The Anki question is sort of a result of this desire.

I thought of asking about pedometer usage such as Fitbit/Nike Plus etc but I'm not sure if the amount of people is enough to warrant the question.

Which specific questions would you want?

Social media use

By what metric? Total time investment? Few people can give you an accurate answer to that question.

Asking good questions isn't easy.

Self-perceived physical attractiveness on the 1-10 scale

I personally don't think that term is very meaningful. I do have hotornot pictures that scored a 9, but what does that mean? The last time I used tinder I click through a lot of female images and very few liked me back. But I haven't yet isolated factors or know about average success rates for guy's using Tinder.

Recreational drug use

There interested in not gathering data that would cause someone to admit criminal behavior. A person might be findable if you know there stances on a few questions. There also the issue of possible outsiders being able to say: "30% of LW participants are criminals!"

Personal computer's operating system

I agree, that would be nice question.

Comment author: jamesf 19 January 2014 05:17:56PM *  3 points [-]

Quantified Self examples:

  • Have you attempted and stuck with the recording of personal data for >1 month for any reason? (Y/N)
  • If so, did you find it useful? (Y/N)

Social media example:

  • How many hours per week do you think you spend on social media?

Asking about self-perceived attractiveness tells us little about how attractive a person is, but quite a bit about how they see themselves, and I want to learn how that's correlated with answers to all these other questions.

Maybe the recreational drug use question(s) could be stripped from the public data?

Comment author: ChristianKl 19 January 2014 06:17:16PM 1 point [-]

Have you attempted and stuck with the recording of personal data for >1 month for any reason? (Y/N)

Having a calendar with time of when you do what actions is recording of personal data and for most people for timeframes longer than a month.

Anyone who uses Anki gets automated backround data recording of how many minutes per day he uses Anki.

Comment author: jamesf 19 January 2014 06:42:51PM 2 points [-]

I might be willing to call either of those self-quantifying activities. Definitely the first one, if you actually put most activities you do on there rather than just the ones that aren't habit or important enough to definitely not forget. I think the question could be modified to capture the intent. Let's see...

Have you ever made an effort to record personal data for future analysis and stuck with it for >1 month? (Y/N)

Comment author: ChristianKl 19 January 2014 07:02:58PM 1 point [-]

That sounds like a good question. Hopefully we remember when the time comes up.