It's hard to know for sure, since previous surveys were only advertised on the LessWrong.com domain, but it doesn't seem like the diaspora thing has slowed the growth of the community a ton and it may have dramatically accelerated it.
My impression is that a big part of the increase in survey responses was that this was explicitly advertised as a diaspora survey, with a number of people saying things like "if you're reading this, it's for you."
Yes, that was exactly why it was marketed that way.
I'm trying to reconcile the 353 people on LW with the 668 people who never left. What do you think is up there?
I think those people interpreted the question as "Never left the community" or some such, rather than the site itself.
Also if you add up the LW and LW Meetup numbers they're almost that, I'd have to play with the data real quick to see how much overlap there is. Eh it's just a SQL query I'll do it right now:
sqlite> select count(*) from data where ActiveMemberships_1 = "Yes";
354
sqlite> select count(*) from data where ActiveMemberships_2 = "Yes";
216
sqlite> select count(*) from data where ActiveMemberships1 = "Yes" AND ActiveMemberships2 = "Yes";
77
77 / 354 = 0.2175141242937853
77 / 216 = 0.35648148148148145
P(Meetups | LW Site) = 21.75%
P(LW Site | Meetups) = 35.63%
I think that goes a long way towards explaining that particular inconsistency.
However it still leaves a quarter unaccounted for:
(668 - (354 + (216 - (216 * 0.3563)))) / 668 = 0.2619173652694611
Small note, "jargon" and "none of the above" seem to be missing codes/numbers in the philosophy table.
Edit: Also, the the tagged community write-ins is a 404 (there's a missing slash in the URL).
Further edit: I suspect you've misunderstood the one "NERB"; I think it's complaining about the discussion of Roko's Basilisk, not about there not being enough of it. The question asked about problems, right? (I wouldn't bother pointing this out, as as you've said this is necessarily messy and subjectve, but this one particular one seemed directly backwards.)
Small note, "jargon" and "none of the above" seem to be missing codes/numbers in the philosophy table.
That's because they didn't get used. I should probably just remove them.
Edit: Also, the the tagged community write-ins is a 404 (there's a missing slash in the URL).
Fixed.
(I wouldn't bother pointing this out, as as you've said this is necessarily messy and subjectve, but this one particular one seemed directly backwards.)
You seem to be correct, I was trying really hard to power through these and I think I mixed these two up:
14:41 < namespace> "To be fair I wasn't around for the peak, however, I'd cite the aforementioned Basilisk. It suddenly presents a sort of 'Rational Devil' to a super intelligent Al's 'Rational Messiah'. It's silly and mildly off-putting. Thankfully the information on the site, especially the Sequences, is far too useful to just toss aside. | NERB"
14:42 < namespace> "A tendency to hyperfocus on the ridiculousness of Roko's Basilisk stopped most people (inside and outside of LessWrong) from thinking about more-plausible acausal-trade-based ideas. | TMRB"
Won't fix though because the numbers come out the same anyway.
I am honored that my survey writeup produced this level of quality discussion and endorse this post.
(Though not necessarily its proposed upvote scheme, sounds kind of flaky to me. I'm personally very skeptical of upvotes and community curation as cure-alls.)
Before it was the LessWrong survey, the 2016 survey was a small project I was working on as market research for a website I'm creating called FortForecast. As I was discussing the idea with others, particularly Eliot he made the suggestion that since he's doing LW 2.0 and I'm doing a site that targets the LessWrong demographic, why don't I go ahead and do the LessWrong Survey? Because of that, this years survey had a lot of questions oriented around what you would want to see in a successor to LessWrong and what you think is wrong with the site.
How Did You Find LessWrong?
Been here since it was started in the Overcoming Bias days: 171 8.3%
Referred by a link: 275 13.4%
HPMOR: 542 26.4%
Overcoming Bias: 80 3.9%
Referred by a friend: 265 12.9%
Referred by a search engine: 131 6.4%
Referred by other fiction: 14 0.7%
Slate Star Codex: 241 11.7%
Reddit: 55 2.7%
Common Sense Atheism: 19 0.9%
Hacker News: 47 2.3%
Gwern: 22 1.1%
Other: 191 9.308%
How do you use Less Wrong?
I lurk, but never registered an account: 1120 54.4%
I've registered an account, but never posted: 270 13.1%
I've posted a comment, but never a top-level post: 417 20.3%
I've posted in Discussion, but not Main: 179 8.7%
I've posted in Main: 72 3.5%
[54.4% lurkers.]
How often do you comment on LessWrong?
I have commented more than once a week for the past year.: 24 1.2%
I have commented more than once a month for the past year but less than once a week.: 63 3.1%
I have commented but less than once a month for the past year.: 225 11.1%
I have not commented this year.: 1718 84.6%
[You could probably snarkily title this one "LW usage in one statistic". It's a pretty damning portrait of the sites vitality. A whopping 84.6% of people have not commented this year a single time.]
How Long Since You Last Posted On LessWrong?
I wrote one today.: 12 0.637%
Within the last three days.: 13 0.69%
Within the last week.: 22 1.168%
Within the last month.: 58 3.079%
Within the last three months.: 75 3.981%
Within the last six months.: 68 3.609%
Within the last year.: 84 4.459%
Within the last five years.: 295 15.658%
Longer than five years.: 15 0.796%
I've never posted on LW.: 1242 65.924%
[Supermajority of people have never commented on LW, 5.574% have within the last month.]
About how much of the Sequences have you read?
Never knew they existed until this moment: 215 10.3%
Knew they existed, but never looked at them: 101 4.8%
Some, but less than 25% : 442 21.2%
About 25%: 260 12.5%
About 50%: 283 13.6%
About 75%: 298 14.3%
All or almost all: 487 23.3%
[10.3% of people taking the survey have never heard of the sequences. 36.3% have not read a quarter of them.]
Do you attend Less Wrong meetups?
Yes, regularly: 157 7.5%
Yes, once or a few times: 406 19.5%
No: 1518 72.9%
[However the in-person community seems to be non-dead.]
Is physical interaction with the Less Wrong community otherwise a part of your everyday life, for example do you live with other Less Wrongers, or you are close friends and frequently go out with them?
Yes, all the time: 158 7.6%
Yes, sometimes: 258 12.5%
No: 1652 79.9%
About the same number say they hang out with LWers 'all the time' as say they go to meetups. I wonder if people just double counted themselves here. Or they may go to meetups and have other interactions with LWers outside of that. Or it could be a coincidence and these are different demographics. Let's find out.
P(Community part of daily life | Meetups) = 40%
Significant overlap, but definitely not exclusive overlap. I'll go ahead and chalk this one up up to coincidence.
Have you ever been in a romantic relationship with someone you met through the Less Wrong community?
Yes: 129 6.2%
I didn't meet them through the community but they're part of the community now: 102 4.9%
No: 1851 88.9%
How do you use Less Wrong?
I lurk, but never registered an account: +19.300% 1125 54.400%
I've registered an account, but never posted: -1.600% 271 13.100%
I've posted a comment, but never a top-level post: -7.600% 419 20.300%
I've posted in Discussion, but not Main: -5.100% 179 8.700%
I've posted in Main: -3.300% 73 3.500%
About how much of the sequences have you read?
Never knew they existed until this moment: +3.300% 217 10.400%
Knew they existed, but never looked at them: +2.100% 103 4.900%
Some, but less than 25%: +3.100% 442 21.100%
About 25%: +0.400% 260 12.400%
About 50%: -0.400% 284 13.500%
About 75%: -1.800% 299 14.300%
All or almost all: -5.000% 491 23.400%
Do you attend Less Wrong meetups?
Yes, regularly: -2.500% 160 7.700%
Yes, once or a few times: -2.100% 407 19.500%
No: +7.100% 1524 72.900%
Is physical interaction with the Less Wrong community otherwise a part of your everyday life, for example do you live with other Less Wrongers, or you are close friends and frequently go out with them?
Yes, all the time: +0.200% 161 7.700%
Yes, sometimes: -0.300% 258 12.400%
No: +2.400% 1659 79.800%
Have you ever been in a romantic relationship with someone you met through the Less Wrong community?
Yes: +0.800% 132 6.300%
I didn't meet them through the community but they're part of the community now: -0.400% 102 4.900%
No: +1.600% 1858 88.800%
In a bit of a silly oversight I forgot to ask survey participants what was good about the community, so the following is going to be a pretty one sided picture. Below are the complete write ins respondents submitted
Philosophical Issues With LessWrong At It's Peak[Part One]
Philosophical Issues With LessWrong At It's Peak[Part Two]
Community Issues With LessWrong At It's Peak[Part One]
Community Issues With LessWrong At It's Peak[Part Two]
Philosophical Issues With LessWrong Now[Part One]
Philosophical Issues With LessWrong Now[Part Two]
Community Issues With LessWrong Now[Part One]
Community Issues With LessWrong Now[Part Two]
| Label | Code | Tally |
|---|---|---|
| Arrogance | A | 16 |
| Bad Aesthetics | BA | 3 |
| Bad Norms | BN | 3 |
| Bad Politics | BP | 5 |
| Bad Tech Platform | BTP | 1 |
| Cultish | C | 5 |
| Cargo Cult | CC | 3 |
| Doesn't Accept Criticism | DAC | 3 |
| Don't Know Where to Start | DKWS | 5 |
| Damaged Me Mentally | DMM | 1 |
| Esoteric | E | 3 |
| Eliezer Yudkowsky | EY | 6 |
| Improperly Indexed | II | 7 |
| Impossible Mission | IM | 4 |
| Insufficient Social Support | ISS | 1 |
| Jargon | ||
| Literal Cult | LC | 1 |
| Lack of Rigor | LR | 14 |
| Misfocused | M | 13 |
| Mixed Bag | MB | 3 |
| Nothing | N | 13 |
| Not Enough Jargon | NEJ | 1 |
| Not Enough Roko's Basilisk | NERB | 1 |
| Not Enough Theory | NET | 1 |
| No Intuition | NI | 6 |
| Not Progressive Enough | NPE | 7 |
| Narrow Scholarship | NS | 20 |
| Other | O | 3 |
| Personality Cult | PC | 10 |
| None of the Above | ||
| Quantum Mechanics Sequence | QMS | 2 |
| Reinvention | R | 10 |
| Rejects Expertise | RE | 5 |
| Spoiled | S | 7 |
| Small Competent Authorship | SCA | 6 |
| Suggestion For Improvement | SFI | 1 |
| Socially Incompetent | SI | 9 |
| Stupid Philosophy | SP | 4 |
| Too Contrarian | TC | 2 |
| Typical Mind | TM | 1 |
| Too Much Roko's Basilisk | TMRB | 1 |
| Too Much Theory | TMT | 14 |
| Too Progressive | TP | 2 |
| Too Serious | TS | 2 |
| Unwelcoming | U | 8 |
Well, those are certainly some results. Top answers are:
Narrow Scholarship: 20
Arrogance: 16
Too Much Theory: 14
Lack of Rigor: 14
Misfocused: 13
Nothing: 13
Reinvention (reinvents the wheel too much): 10
Personality Cult: 10
So condensing a bit: Pay more attention to mainstream scholarship and ideas, try to do better about intellectual rigor, be more practical and focus on results, be more humble. (Labeled Dataset)
| Label | Code | Tally |
|---|---|---|
| Arrogance | A | 7 |
| Assumes Reader Is Male | ARIM | 1 |
| Bad Aesthetics | BA | 1 |
| Bad At PR | BAP | 5 |
| Bad Norms | BN | 5 |
| Bad Politics | BP | 2 |
| Cultish | C | 9 |
| Cliqueish Tendencies | CT | 1 |
| Diaspora | D | 1 |
| Defensive Attitude | DA | 1 |
| Doesn't Accept Criticism | DAC | 3 |
| Dunning Kruger | DK | 1 |
| Elitism | E | 3 |
| Eliezer Yudkowsky | EY | 2 |
| Groupthink | G | 11 |
| Insufficiently Indexed | II | 9 |
| Impossible Mission | IM | 1 |
| Imposter Syndrome | IS | 1 |
| Jargon | J | 2 |
| Lack of Rigor | LR | 1 |
| Mixed Bag | MB | 1 |
| Nothing | N | 5 |
| ??? | NA | 1 |
| Not Big Enough | NBE | 3 |
| Not Enough of A Cult | NEAC | 1 |
| Not Enough Content | NEC | 7 |
| Not Enough Community Infrastructure | NECI | 10 |
| Not Enough Meetups | NEM | 5 |
| No Goals | NG | 2 |
| Not Nerdy Enough | NNE | 3 |
| None Of the Above | NOA | 1 |
| Not Progressive Enough | NPE | 3 |
| Not Rational | NR | 3 |
| NRx (Neoreaction) | NRx | 1 |
| Narrow Scholarship | NS | 4 |
| Not Stringent Enough | NSE | 3 |
| Parochialism | P | 1 |
| Pickup Artistry | PA | 2 |
| Personality Cult | PC | 7 |
| Reinvention | R | 1 |
| Recurring Arguments | RA | 3 |
| Rejects Expertise | RE | 2 |
| Sequences | S | 2 |
| Small Competent Authorship | SCA | 5 |
| Suggestion For Improvement | SFI | 1 |
| Spoiled Issue | SI | 9 |
| Socially INCOMpetent | SINCOM | 2 |
| Too Boring | TB | 1 |
| Too Contrarian | TC | 10 |
| Too COMbative | TCOM | 4 |
| Too Cis/Straight/Male | TCSM | 5 |
| Too Intolerant of Cranks | TIC | 1 |
| Too Intolerant of Politics | TIP | 2 |
| Too Long Winded | TLW | 2 |
| Too Many Idiots | TMI | 3 |
| Too Much Math | TMM | 1 |
| Too Much Theory | TMT | 12 |
| Too Nerdy | TN | 6 |
| Too Rigorous | TR | 1 |
| Too Serious | TS | 1 |
| Too Tolerant of Cranks | TTC | 1 |
| Too Tolerant of Politics | TTP | 3 |
| Too Tolerant of POSers | TTPOS | 2 |
| Too Tolerant of PROGressivism | TTPROG | 2 |
| Too Weird | TW | 2 |
| Unwelcoming | U | 12 |
| UTILitarianism | UTIL | 1 |
Top Answers:
Unwelcoming: 12
Too Much Theory: 12
Groupthink: 11
Not Enough Community Infrastructure: 10
Too Contrarian: 10
Insufficiently Indexed: 9
Cultish: 9
Again condensing a bit: Work on being less intimidating/aggressive/etc to newcomers, spend less time on navel gazing and more time on actually doing things and collecting data, work on getting the structures in place that will onboard people into the community, stop being so nitpicky and argumentative, spend more time on getting content indexed in a form where people can actually find it, be more accepting of outside viewpoints and remember that you're probably more likely to be wrong than you think. (Labeled Dataset)
One last note before we finish up, these tallies are a very rough executive summary. The tagging process basically involves trying to fit points into clusters and is prone to inaccuracy through laziness, adding another category being undesirable, square-peg into round-hole fitting, and my personal political biases. So take these with a grain of salt, if you really want to know what people wrote in my advice would be to read through the write in sets I have above in HTML format. If you want to evaluate for yourself how well I tagged things you can see the labeled datasets above.
I won't bother tallying the "issues now" sections, all you really need to know is that it's basically the same as the first sections except with lots more "It's dead." comments and from eyeballing it a higher proportion of people arguing that LessWrong has been taken over by the left/social justice and complaints about effective altruism. (I infer that the complaints about being taken over by the left are mostly referring to effective altruism.)
Attention Paid To Outside Sources
More: 1042 70.933%
Same: 414 28.182%
Less: 13 0.885%
Self Improvement Focus
More: 754 50.706%
Same: 598 40.215%
Less: 135 9.079%
AI Focus
More: 184 12.611%
Same: 821 56.271%
Less: 454 31.117%
Political
More: 330 22.837%
Same: 770 53.287%
Less: 345 23.875%
Academic/Formal
More: 455 31.885%
Same: 803 56.272%
Less: 169 11.843%
In summary, people want a site that will engage with outside ideas, acknowledge where it borrows from, focus on practical self improvement, less on AI and AI risk, and tighten its academic rigor. They could go either way on politics but the epistemic direction is clear.
Intense Environment
More: 254 19.644%
Same: 830 64.192%
Less: 209 16.164%
Focused On 'Real World' Action
More: 739 53.824%
Same: 563 41.005%
Less: 71 5.171%
Experts
More: 749 55.605%
Same: 575 42.687%
Less: 23 1.707%
Data Driven/Testing Of Ideas
More: 1107 78.344%
Same: 291 20.594%
Less: 15 1.062%
Social
More: 583 43.507%
Same: 682 50.896%
Less: 75 5.597%
This largely backs up what I said about the previous results. People want a more practical, more active, more social and more empirical LessWrong with outside expertise and ideas brought into the fold. They could go either way on it being more intense but the epistemic trend is still clear.
So where did the party go? We got twice as many respondents this year as last when we opened up the survey to the diaspora, which means that the LW community is alive and kicking it's just not on LessWrong.
LessWrong
Yes: 353 11.498%
No: 1597 52.02%
LessWrong Meetups
Yes: 215 7.003%
No: 1735 56.515%
LessWrong Facebook Group
Yes: 171 5.57%
No: 1779 57.948%
LessWrong Slack
Yes: 55 1.792%
No: 1895 61.726%
SlateStarCodex
Yes: 832 27.101%
No: 1118 36.417%
[SlateStarCodex by far has the highest proportion of active LessWrong users, over twice that of LessWrong itself, and more than LessWrong and Tumblr combined.]
Rationalist Tumblr
Yes: 350 11.401%
No: 1600 52.117%
[I'm actually surprised that Tumblr doesn't just beat LessWrong itself outright, They're only a tenth of a percentage point behind though, and if current trends continue I suspect that by 2017 Tumblr will have a large lead over the main LW site.]
Rationalist Facebook
Yes: 150 4.886%
No: 1800 58.632%
[Eliezer Yudkowsky currently resides here.]
Rationalist Twitter
Yes: 59 1.922%
No: 1891 61.596%
Effective Altruism Hub
Yes: 98 3.192%
No: 1852 60.326%
FortForecast
Yes: 4 0.13%
No: 1946 63.388%
[I included this as a 'troll' option to catch people who just check every box. Relatively few people seem to have done that, but having the option here lets me know one way or the other.]
Good Judgement(TM) Open
Yes: 29 0.945%
No: 1921 62.573%
PredictionBook
Yes: 59 1.922%
No: 1891 61.596%
Omnilibrium
Yes: 8 0.261%
No: 1942 63.257%
Hacker News
Yes: 252 8.208%
No: 1698 55.309%
#lesswrong on freenode
Yes: 76 2.476%
No: 1874 61.042%
#slatestarcodex on freenode
Yes: 36 1.173%
No: 1914 62.345%
#hplusroadmap on freenode
Yes: 4 0.13%
No: 1946 63.388%
#chapelperilous on freenode
Yes: 10 0.326%
No: 1940 63.192%
[Since people keep asking me, this is a postrational channel.]
/r/rational
Yes: 274 8.925%
No: 1676 54.593%
/r/HPMOR
Yes: 230 7.492%
No: 1720 56.026%
[Given that the story is long over, this is pretty impressive. I'd have expected it to be dead by now.]
/r/SlateStarCodex
Yes: 244 7.948%
No: 1706 55.57%
One or more private 'rationalist' groups
Yes: 192 6.254%
No: 1758 57.264%
[I almost wish I hadn't included this option, it'd have been fascinating to learn more about these through write ins.]
Of all the parties who seem like plausible candidates at the moment, Scott Alexander seems most capable to undiaspora the community. In practice he's very busy, so he would need a dedicated team of relatively autonomous people to help him. Scott could court guest posts and start to scale up under the SSC brand, and I think he would fairly easily end up with the lions share of the free floating LWers that way.
Before I call a hearse for LessWrong, there is a glimmer of hope left:
Would you consider rejoining LessWrong?
I never left: 668 40.6%
Yes: 557 33.8%
Yes, but only under certain conditions: 205 12.5%
No: 216 13.1%
A significant fraction of people say they'd be interested in an improved version of the site. And of course there were write ins for conditions to rejoin, what did people say they'd need to rejoin the site?
Rejoin Condition Write Ins [Part One]
Rejoin Condition Write Ins [Part Two]
Rejoin Condition Write Ins [Part Three]
Rejoin Condition Write Ins [Part Four]
Rejoin Condition Write Ins [Part Five]
Feel free to read these yourselves (they're not long), but I'll go ahead and summarize: It's all about the content. Content, content, content. No amount of usability improvements, A/B testing or clever trickery will let you get around content. People are overwhelmingly clear about this; they need a reason to come to the site and right now they don't feel like they have one. That means priority number one for somebody trying to revitalize LessWrong is how you deal with this.
Let's recap.
While that list seems reasonable, it's quite hard to put into practice. Rigor, as the name implies requires high-effort from participants. Frankly, it's not fun. And getting people to do un-fun things without paying them is difficult. If LessWrong is serious about it's goal of 'advancing the art of human rationality' then it needs to figure out a way to do real investigation into the subject. Not just have people 'discuss', as though the potential for Rationality is within all of us just waiting to be brought out by the right conversation.
I personally haven't been a LW regular in a long time. Assuming the points about pedanticism, snipping, "well actually"-ism and the like are true then they need to stop for the site to move forward. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Scott Alexander's comment policy: All comments must be at least two of true, kind, or necessary.
True and kind - Probably won't drown out the discussion signal, will help significantly decrease the hostility of the atmosphere.
True and necessary - Sometimes what you have to say isn't nice, but it needs to be said. This is the common core of free speech arguments for saying mean things and they're not wrong. However, something being true isn't necessarily enough to make it something you should say. In fact, in some situations saying mean things to people entirely unrelated to their arguments is known as the ad hominem fallacy.
Kind and necessary - The infamous 'hugbox' is essentially a place where people go to hear things which are kind but not necessarily true. I don't think anybody wants a hugbox, but occasionally it can be important to say things that might not be true but are needed for the sake of tact, reconciliation, or to prevent greater harm.
If people took that seriously and really gave it some thought before they used their keyboard, I think the on-site LessWrong community would be a significant part of the way to not driving people off as soon as they arrive.
More importantly, in places like the LessWrong Slack I see this sort of happy go lucky attitude about site improvement. "Oh that sounds nice, we should do that." without the accompanying mountain of work to actually make 'that' happen. I'm not sure people really understand the dynamics of what it means to 'revive' a website in severe decay. When you decide to 'revive' a dying site, what you're really doing once you're past a certain point is refounding the site. So the question you should be asking yourself isn't "Can I fix the site up a bit so it isn't quite so stale?". It's "Could I have founded this site?" and if the answer is no you should seriously question whether to make the time investment.
Whether or not LessWrong lives to see another day basically depends on the level of ground game its last users and administrators can muster up. And if it's not enough, it won't.
Virtus junxit mors non separabit!
Question: Where in the data do we find the various write-in answers? Like for the blogs and such.
I'm going to add these as html/text files to the "Basic Results" section. Thanks for reminding me. In the mean time they're available in the public data release.
All the links to the data appear to have gone down.
Yes, I'm working on that. Hold tight.
Thanks for your work, ingres! I want to point out two possible errors in the data analysis output files:
In Blogs And Media Demographic Clusters, average age is 2.4
In the Superbabies section of Calibration Question And Brier Score Analysis, no people said they would have their child genetically modified for improvement purposes (e.g. to heighten their intelligence or reduce their risk of schizophrenia). This 0 for "yes" is for all Brier score groups, and it can't be right because:
1) on the next question, a lot of people answered they would have their child modified to change their eye color (but not to reduce risk of schizophrenia? doesn't make sense);
2) on a question further down, a lot have stated they have a positive opinion of such modifications.
Also, I remember answering "yes" there, so unless my survey answers got thrown out somehow, it can't be zero.
I'm somehow reminded of the scene in Logicomix where Russel figures that Godel should be given some kind of award for actually reading his Principia, though he's not sure what.
You went through the analysis files, closely enough to spot errors, and then actually went and reported them? Props.
As we wrap up the 2016 survey, I'd like to start by thanking everybody who took
the time to fill it out. This year we had 3083 respondents, more than twice the
number we had last year. (Source: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lhg/2014_survey_results/)
This seems consistent with the hypothesis that the LW community hasn't declined
in population so much as migrated into different communities. Being the *diaspora*
survey I had expectations for more responses than usual, but twice as many was
far beyond them.
Before we move on to the survey results, I feel obligated to put a few affairs
in order in regards to what should be done next time. The copyright situation
for the survey was ambiguous this year, and to prevent that from happening again
I'm pleased to announce that this years survey questions will be released jointly
by me and Scott Alexander as Creative Commons licensed content. We haven't
finalized the details of this yet so expect it sometime this month.
I would also be remiss not to mention the large amount of feedback we received
on the survey. Some of which led to actionable recommendations I'm going to
preserve here for whoever does it next:
- Put free response form at the very end to suggest improvements/complain.
- Fix metaethics question in general, lots of options people felt were missing.
- Clean up definitions of political affilations in the short politics section.
In particular, 'Communist' has an overly aggressive/negative definition.
- Possibly completely overhaul short politics section.
- Everywhere that a non-answer is taken as an answer should be changed so that
non answer means what it ought to, no answer or opinion. "Absence of a signal
should never be used as a signal." - Julian Bigelow, 1947
- Give a definition for the singularity on the question asking when you think it
will occur.
- Ask if people are *currently* suffering from depression. Possibly add more
probing questions on depression in general since the rates are so extraordinarily
high.
- Include a link to what cisgender means on the gender question.
- Specify if the income question is before or after taxes.
- Add charity questions about time donated.
- Add "ineligible to vote" option to the voting question.
- Adding some way for those who are pregnant to indicate it on the number of
children question would be nice. It might be onerous however so don't feel
obligated. (Remember that it's more important to have a smooth survey than it
is to catch every edge case.)
And read this thread: http://lesswrong.com/lw/nfk/lesswrong_2016_survey/,
it's full of suggestions, corrections and criticism.
Without further ado,
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Questions (PDF Format)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results (PDF Format, Missing 23 Responses)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results Complete (Text Format, Null Entries Included)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results Complete (Text Format, Null Entries Excluded)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results Complete (HTML Format, Null Entries Excluded)
Our report system is currently on the fritz and isn't calculating numeric questions. If I'd known this earlier I'd have prepared the results for said questions ahead of time. Instead they'll be coming out later today or tomorrow. (EDIT: These results are now in the text format survey results.)
Peak Philosophy Issues Write Ins (Part One)
Peak Philosophy Issues Write Ins (Part Two)
Peak Community Issues Write Ins (Part One)
Peak Community Issues Write Ins (Part Two)
Philosophy Issues Now Write Ins (Part One)
Philosophy Issues Now Write Ins (Part Two)
Community Issues Now Write Ins (Part One)
Community Issues Now Write Ins (Part Two)
Rejoin Condition Write Ins (Part One)
Rejoin Condition Write Ins (Part Two)
Rejoin Condition Write Ins (Part Three)
Rejoin Condition Write Ins (Part Four)
Rejoin Condition Write Ins (Part Five)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Structure (License)
2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Public Dataset
(Note for people looking to work with the dataset: My survey analysis code repository includes a sqlite converter, examples, and more coming soon. It's a great way to get up and running with the dataset really quickly.)
Part One: Meta and Demographics
Part Two: LessWrong Use, Successorship, Diaspora
Part Three: Mental Health, Basilisk, Blogs and Media
Part Four: Politics, Calibration & Probability, Futurology, Charity & Effective Altruism
Effective Altruism and Charitable Giving Analysis
Mental Health Stats By Diaspora Community (Including self dxers)
How Diaspora Communities Compare On Mental Health Stats (I suspect these charts are subtly broken somehow, will investigate later)
Improved Mental Health Charts By Obormot (Using public survey data)
Improved Mental Health Charts By Anonymous (Using full survey data)
Political Opinions By Political Affiliation
Political Opinions By Political Affiliation Charts (By anonymous)
Blogs And Media Demographic Clusters
Blogs And Media Demographic Clusters (HTML Format, Impossible Answers Excluded)
Calibration Question And Brier Score Analysis
More coming soon!
Some notes:
1. FortForecast on the communities section, Bayesed And Confused on the blogs section, and Synthesis on the stories section were all 'troll' answers designed to catch people who just put down everything. Somebody noted that the three 'fortforecast' users had the entire DSM split up between them, that's why.
2. Lots of people asked me for a list of all those cool blogs and stories and communities on the survey, they're included in the survey questions PDF above.
1. Add more in depth analysis, fix the ones that decided to suddenly break at the last minute or I suspect were always broken.
2. Add a compatibility mode so that the current question codes are converted to older ones for 3rd party analysis that rely on them.
If anybody would like to help with these, write to jd@fortforecast.com
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I'm at the moment trying to look at the data and find it hard given that I don't have a good list of the questions.
I think it would be great if we have an additional spreadsheet that contains one column with the headers of the questions and one column with the content of the question.
The information about likert scale conversion could be added in a third column.
I don't know if you already have this and you're asking for a better list, but the printable version of the survey is here:
http://www.jdpressman.com/public/lwsurvey2016/lw_2016_survey_(2016_05_01).pdf