Yes, I did under specify my answer. Let's assume that a billion dust specks will completely shred one person.

Then if have a specific population (key assumption) of 3^^^3 people and face the same decision a billion times, then you have the choice between a billion tortures and 3^^^3 deaths.

If you want to avoid comparing different negatives, figure out how many dust specks impacts (and at what rate) equivalent to 50 years of torture, painwise, and apply a similar argument.

Torture vs dust specks has other features - in particular, the fact that "torture" is clearly the right option under aggregation (if you expect to to face the same problem 3^^^3 times).

Another dilemma where the same dichotomy applies is torture vs. dust specks. One might reason that torturing one person 50 years is better than torturing 100 people infinitesimally less painfully for 50 years minus one second, and that this is better than torturing 10,000 people very slightly less painfully for 50 years minus two seconds……. and at the end of this process accept the unintuituive conclusion that torturing someone 50 years is better than having a huge number of people suffer a tiny pain for a second (differential thinking). Or one might refuse to accept the conclusion and decide that one of these apparently unproblematic differential comparisons is in fact wrong (integral thinking).

The exposure of the general public to the concept of AI risk probably increased exponentially a few days ago, when Stephen Colbert mentioned Musk's warnings and satirized them. (Unrelatedly but also of potential interest to some LWers, Terry Tao was the guest of the evening).

I am constructing a political bias quiz together with Spencer Greenberg, who runs the site Clearer Thinking and wonder if people could help me coming up with questions. The quiz will work like this. First, you'll respond to a number of questions regarding your political views: e.g., republican or democrat, pro-life or pro-choice, pro- or anti-immigration, etc. Then you'll be given a number of factual questions. On the basis of your answers, you'll be given two scores:

1) The number of correct answers - your degree of political knowledge. 2) Your degree of political bias.

The assigmment of political bias will be based on the following reasoning. Suppose you're a hard-core environemntalist, and are consistently right about the questions where hard-core environemntalist like the true answer (e.g. climate change) but consistenly wrong about the questions where they are not (e.g. GMOs). Now this suggests that you have not reviewed these questions impartially, but that you acquire whatever factual beliefs suit your political opinions - i.e. that you're biased. Hence, the higher the ratio between the correct answers you like and the correct answers you dislike is, the more biased you are.

(The argument is slightly more complicated, but this should suffice for the present purposes. Also, the test shouldn't be taken too seriously - the main purpose is to make people think more about political bias as a problem).

The questions are intended for an American audience. I have come up with the following questions so far:

1) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that global temperatures are rising due to human activities (this question is taken from a great paper by Dan Kahan )? (Most agree it's true, divided, most agree it's false)

2) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that genetically modified foods are safe? (Same possible answers)

3) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that humans are causing mass extinction of species at a rate that is at least 100 times the natural rate? (Same possible answers)

4) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that radioactive wastes from nuclear power can be safely disposed of in deep underground storage facilities? (Same possible answers)

5) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that humankind evolved from other species through natural selection. (Same possible answers)

6) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that the death penalty increases homicide rates. (Same possible answers)

7) Studies show that on spatial reasoning tests, male mean scores are higher than females', whereas the converse is true of emotional intelligence tests. (True/false)

8-10) (These are taken from Bryan Caplan's excellent The Myth of the Rational Voter ) Expert economists were given the following possible explanations for why the economy isn't doing better. For each one, please indicate whether they thought it is a major reason the economy is not doing better than it is, a minor reason, or not a reason at all:

8) “Taxes are too high”

9) “Foreign aid spending is too high"

10) “Top executives are paid too much”

11) How much does the US spend on foreign aid, as a share of GDP (0-1 %, 1-3 %, 3+ %).

I need perhaps 10-15 additional questions. The questions need to have the following features:

1) The answer needs to be provable. Hence why ask what expert scientists believe about P – on which there are surveys I can point to – rather than P itself in many of the questions. However, you can also have questions about P itself if you can point to reliable sources such as government statistics, as I do in question 11.

2) They should be “baits” for biased people; i.e. such that biased people should be expected to give the wrong answer if they don’t like the true answer, and the true answer if they like it.

3) The questions shouldn’t be very difficult. If you give people questions on, e.g, numbers, you have to give fairly large intervals, as I do in question 11. Also you cannot ask too outlandish questions (e.g., questions on small parts of the federal budget).

At present I seem to have more questions where the liberal answer is the true one, so “pro-conservative” questions are particularly welcome.

Any suggestions of questions or other forms of input is highly appreciated! :)

Took the survey. As usual, immense props to Yvain for the dedication and work he puts into this.

Type I vs. Type II errors?

the causal mechanism is almost certainly seasonal weather

Not the only possible one. If Alice was born in January and Bob was born in December, she will be 11 months older than him when they start going to school (and their classmates will be in average 5.5 months younger than her and 5.5 months older than him), which I hear can make a difference.

avoid South Hemisphere confounders

The survey already asks for country. Sure, some people will have been born and grown up in a country in a hemisphere other than that they “most identify with” today, but they'll probably be a small enough minority that they wouldn't screw up the statistics too much.

Is the "Birth Month" bonus question just to sort people arbitrarily into groups to do statistics, or to find correlations between birth month and other traits? If the latter, since the causal mechanism is almost certainly seasonal weather, the question should ask directly for seasonal weather at birth to avoid South Hemisphere confounders.

The question about "Country" should clarify whether you are asking about nationality or residence.