[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.

I can't avoid all my problems by drawing squirrels, but when I can, I do.

--Randall Munrow

Not that I'm aware, but you might check the "fiction" tag on Slatestarcodex. (I remember finding a similarly useful tag on his Livejournal, but I don't remember what it was called OTTOMH).

Disagreed.

The old introduction may be obscure, but at least it is informative. A visitor can follow the links, read 5 minutes about biases (if it is required) and then he gets some understanding of what this site is actually about. The new version is much more vague. Who would like to think more clearly, improve their lives and make major disasters less likely? Well, pretty much everybody.

I don't think that minor changes, like rephrasing introduction or adding disclaimers about criticisms to FAQ will have any noticeable effect. To attract significantly more people, you should write actual content, like HPMoR or the sequences.

Personally, when I recommend LessWrong to friends, I tell a few words about what it is, so they don't actually have to read introduction at all. Or, even better, link directly to the sequences.

Anyway, remember that one data point is one data point. People in marketing have their A/B tests for a reason; now, it's unclear whether the new introduction will attract more people because of its apprehensibility or less because of its vagueness.

These roles would take significant work, but I imagine people would be motivated to do this by altruism or status.

If someone's goal is status, why write on LW instead of writing a personal blog?

On my midterm exam in my college class Computer and Networking Security, I scored 88%, the highest in the class. About 18 other students took the test, and the mean of our scores was 62%. The exam will be graded on a curve, so my score is probably equivalent to A+.

I was the second-to-last student to finish the exam. This surprised me at the time, but now I think it must have been because I took more time to thoroughly think about the questions and show my work. On the other hand, I studied very little – only for 20 minutes, right before the exam. I am thankful that that turned out to be enough, and proud that I skimmed the slides effectively enough and paid enough attention in class that that’s all I needed.

One transportation option many people would not think of is an adult kick scooter. Kick scooters are most useful for speeding up trips of short distances, up to a few miles, on sidewalks and across roads. As of my research a few months ago, the cheapest one that would fit a non-short adult was the Razor A5 Lux Scooter, which currently costs $100.

The main advantage of a kick scooter is that unlike a bicycle, you can legally and more safely ride them on the sidewalk, so you don’t have to focus as much on navigating car or pedestrian traffic. Compared to other forms of short-distance transportation they are faster than walking, take less effort than running, and are easier to ride and safer than a skateboard. Also, since they are smaller than bicycles, they are somewhat easier to store in an office, but I don’t expect that that size difference is relevant to most people.

The main problem is that you still need to lock the scooter to something at your destination to prevent it being stolen. They are also unfashionable.

Because of the locking/storage problem, I decided that it would not be worth it for me to get a scooter. But others may find a kick scooter worth it for their travel habits.

I took the survey. Though I can’t remember my SAT score, which I know I put on the last survey – I wish I had saved my answers last year.

You are saying that shminux is "a worse person than you" and also "heartless", but I am not sure what these words mean. How do you measure which person is better as compared to another person ? If the answer is, "whoever cares about more people is better", then all you're saying is, "shminux cares about fewer people because he cares about fewer people". This is true, but tautologically so.