An inquiry into the thoughts of twenty-five people in India

post by KatjaGrace · 2022-05-28T08:30:15.355Z · LW · GW · 5 comments

Contents

6 comments

Sometimes I get excited about running surveys. Here is a Positly one from November 2020 in which I asked the following questions, to participants from India:

  1. What are you looking forward to this week?
  2. What do you think of as the most important thing going on in the world right now?
  3. If you had a spare half hour right now, what would you do with it?
  4. What is something you changed your mind about recently?
  5. What in life is more important than other people realize?
  6. If someone gave you $5 right now, what would you do with it?
  7. Who is someone you think of as a hero?
  8. Are you paying attention to the US election?
  9. What was the biggest news story this year?

I don’t recall any notable constraints other than the India location requirement, but I barely remember doing this.

5 comments

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comment by lc · 2022-05-29T16:59:00.609Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's kind of wild to me how many people outside the United States consider "America election" the most important thing going on in the world right now.

comment by benjamin.j.campbell (benjamin-j-campbell) · 2022-05-28T08:38:56.558Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Those are some extreme outliers for age. Was that self-reported, or some kind of automated information gathering related to their Positly profiles?

comment by Alexisfrustrated · 2024-04-20T10:00:02.618Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask Indians what they would do with a similar amount of money to $5 in rupees or crores?

They don't use dollars in India, except perhaps internationally or for rich tourists.

comment by silentbob · 2022-05-28T09:55:03.294Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

First person (row 2) partially sounds a lot like GPT3. Particularly their answers "But in the scheme of things, changing your mind says more good things about your personality than it does bad. It shows you have a sense of awareness and curiosity, and that you can admit and reflect when decisions have been flawed or mistakes have been made." and "A hero is defined by his or her choices and actions, not by chance or circumstances that arise. A hero can be brave and willing to sacrifice his or her life, but I think we all have a hero in us — someone who is unselfish and without want of reward, who is determined to help others". Then however there's "SAVE THE AMOUNT" and "CORONA COVID-19". This person is confusing.

Replies from: Mo Nastri
↑ comment by Mo Putera (Mo Nastri) · 2022-05-29T16:39:24.328Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm reminded of Sarah Constantin's Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences. A quote that resonates with my own experience:

I’ve noticed that I cannot tell, from casual conversation, whether someone is intelligent in the IQ sense.

I’ve interviewed job applicants, and perceived them all as “bright and impressive”, but found that the vast majority of them could not solve a simple math problem. The ones who could solve the problem didn’t appear any “brighter” in conversation than the ones who couldn’t.

I’ve taught public school teachers, who were _incredibly _bad at formal mathematical reasoning (I know, because I graded their tests), to the point that I had not realized humans could be that bad at math — but it had _no _effect on how they came across in friendly conversation after hours. They didn’t seem “dopey” or “slow”, they were witty and engaging and warm.

I’ve read the personal blogs of intellectually disabled people — people who, by definition, score poorly on IQ tests — and _they _don’t read as any less funny or creative or relatable than anyone else.

Whatever ability IQ tests and math tests measure, I believe that lacking that ability doesn’t have _any _effect on one’s ability to make a good social impression or even to “seem smart” in conversation.