Excuse me, would you like to take a survey?

What is your opinion on sentience? What features must a given computational process have to be considered morally significant?

What is the moral significance of:

Healthy adult humans
infants
fetuses
higher primates
mammals
humans declared brain-dead

etc?

Some little things:

• "Professional field" should be multiple-choice.
• What do you mean by "spiritual" under "religious views" – believe in the supernatural? take mysticism seriously in a way compatible with naturalism?
• On p(Aliens), does "the Universe" mean past light cone, present surface of observable universe, or entire (potentially infinite) continuum? How about other Everett branches?
• A definition of "supernatural" before the p(God) question would be nice.
• "Three Worlds Ending" might benefit from a "clear preference for specific other outcome" option.
• Similarly, at least some of the PD and other game theory/superrationality-related questions could have something like "different clear preferences depending on unspecified details of the situation".

interesting questions that you want asked... post each as a separate comment

Select the Existential Risk you judge most likely to occur this century?

• Nuclear holocaust
• Badly programmed superintelligence
• Genetically engineered biological agent
• Accidental misuse of nanotechnology (“gray goo”)
• Environmental catastrophe (eg runaway global warming)
• etc

I wonder if you'd get better probability values if you used AJAX slider controls for a continuous value between 0 and 1. Less chance of anchoring percentages on multiples of 10 and 5.

I'd like to see a question on the best level of aid to the Third World (say, an estimated optimum as a fraction of GDP in affluent Western countries). The current level is nonzero but rather low (especially if you exclude things like military aid to allies); some people say it's scandalously low, others that such aid is actively harmful and the level should therefore be zero or very close. (I assume plenty of people also say that the level should be zero because someone in the US has no obligations to someone in sub-saharan Africa, but that opinion isn't expressed so often in public.)

For the IQ question, you should clarify what level of precision you're after. Exact results or rounded ones? Only from professionally-conducted tests, or not? Include ones taken in childhood, or not? And, though you hardly need this pointed out to you, whatever form the question ends up taking you should expect substantial sampling bias in the (non-blank) answers.

interesting questions...

What's your take on the simulation argument? If you've no strong opinion, pick the most likely:

• The human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage.
• Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).
• We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
• I deny that at least one of the above propositions is true.
• I'm unfamilier with the simulation argument.

• "Time per day on OB/LW" is hard to measure, since I'm just being online, studying and working in parallel.
• "Political views" -- I'd like "not commited" as an option.
• "Santa" -- understanding your position is a process, so e.g. clear-cut "yes/no" doesn't map on my "I contemplated the notion, and was unsure before growing old/perceptive enough to realize it's a running joke".
• Before the questions on probabilities, it'd be nice to ask about the position on interpretation of probability.
• There should be questions about position on morality. I suggest: consequentialist (in Yudkowsky's interpretation/other), hedonist, others?
• Another question: do you hold an explicit utilitarian position (on a form of preference order) such as average or total utilitarianism.
• The question on whether the data given by the person who fills in the survey should be publicly available should be included in the survey.
• I'd like to separate Sci-fi from fantasy.
• Add questions about habits of learning: do you learn technical stuff unrelated to work.
• What do people do in leisure time (watch TV/serf Internet/solve crosswords/study math).
• Technically, "Cooperate" in a standard PD is an incorrect answer, since the fact that you know that the other one is a Cooperator is not built into the problem.
• Don't call that hideous scheme you set up "probability". The log score will punish you infinitely for this heresy.
• A question about procrastination
• A question about diet
• Knowledge of related math: logic, probability theory, Bayesian networks, inference algorithms, expected utility, microeconomics, causal/evidential decision theories.
• Knowledge of biases/ev-psych literature: read stuff on OB/LW, read a serious book, read (how many) papers.

When looking for a long-term romantic partner: How important is intelligence? How important is a consequentialist moral outlook? How important is rationality?

"Do you think that the so called Dark Arts are inherently evil and should not be taught, learned and used by us? Why?"

Are you an active member of other communities built around X, where X is one of the following? (check all that apply)

• Atheism / Skepticism
• Pick-up artists
• Fandom (SF, anime, webcomics, whatever)
• Political debate
• Political activism
• Technology (programming, electronics ...)
• Transhumanism / the singularity
• Entrepreneurship
• Wikipedia
• Free software
• Environmentalism
• Self-help / self-improvement
• Religion
• Science
• Other

(Does someone have a better way of formulating this question?)

nutritional supplements, diet, exercise habits, height and weight

Many questions pose a low risk of identity disclosure. For the few questions that pose a high risk

let people check a box which says "turn this answer into missing data before placing it in the public domain."

On the belief in god question, rule out simulation scenarios explicitly...I assume you intend "supernatural" to rule out a simulation creator as a "god"?

On marital status, distinguish "single and looking for a relationship" versus "single and looking for people to casually romantically interact with"

The "inapplicable" option for the Robin-versus-Eliezer singularity question should be phrased in stronger terms than "don't believe in"; someone could easily (say) think that there's a 5% chance of a technological singularity some time, of which 4% is accounted for by one option and 0.5% by the other (and another 0.5% by all others together). But wouldn't it be better just to ask for probability estimates for (1) Robin-style singularity, (2) Elizer-style singularity, and (3) any singularity?

For this, and also for the Three Worlds Collide question, there should be at least one URL.

The survey should ask country of residence.

Perhaps there should be a short survey and a full survey? Or every question (or most other than demographics) have a "no answer" as an already marked default? It's a pretty intensive survey unless you spend a lot of time here I think.

The likelihood of an existential risk actualizing during this century.

Looking into U.S. political parties especially beyond the big two doesn't look like a good use of my time. Consider replacing that with the scores from the World's smallest political quiz

You should survey superstition (astrology, bad luck avoidance, complementary medicine, etc).

Robin Hanson notoriously thinks that most medicine does little or no good. I'd guess that he opposes large-scale socialized medicine on these grounds, though that's not a foregone conclusion and I don't think I've seen an explicit statement from him about this. It's probably more usual to think that medicine is great and we should all have easier access to more of it. How about a question somewhere in this vicinity?

You have a question about the Singularity, but none about the more general question of artificial general intelligence. It is at least possible to expect (e.g.) that humanish-level AI will become possible in the next century but that it will not lead to a technological singularity; for instance, someone who expects that the days of exponential performance improvements in computing are almost behind us and that the road to AI will be via full-brain simulation with rather little understanding might well have that expectation. So there would be some value -- I don't know whether enough to justify the extra length of the survey -- in having a question about AI as well as one about the Singularity.

Why ask for political parties? Political views are complicated, if all you can do is pick a party this complexity is lost. All those not from the US (like myself) might additionally have a hard time picking a party.

Those are not easy problems to solve and it is certainly questionable if thinking of some more specific questions about political views and throwing them all together will get you meaningful reliable and valid results. As long as you cannot do better than that asking just for preferred political parties is certainly good enough.

I'd be interested in music taste and sports participation as well...maybe on a secondary survey which asks about hobbies.

I'd suggest framing the "How religious was your family" question in a specific cultural context. For example, my family was 'Average Religious' for Canada, but from what I've gathered about the United Stats, that would make them less religious than normal.

Also, I'd be interested to learn what percentage of the members here own weapons for self defense (as opposed to decorative, or other purposes). I'd also suggest the term 'weapons' over 'guns,' once again due to many members living outside of the United States.

When considering the impact on your success and quality of life, how useful is a dedicated emphasis on improving rationality to you?

• Dramatically improved my life
• Somewhat useful
• Irrelevant
• Somewhat of a hindrance
• A significant dissadvantage

How educated do you consider yourself on the following topics:

• Economics
• World affairs / political geography
• Energy / climate change / pollution / ecology
• Law
• Psychology / neurology
• Biology / medical science
• Artificial intelligence
• Maths and Physics

(any others of interests? These are biased towards important on frequent topics here)

The likelihood of the creation of an AGI leading to an intelligence explosion?

ETA: The likelihood of human uploads leading to an intelligence explosion?

Does the first AGI have to be Friendly, or we're screwed?

As others have said, (1) party affiliation is an oversimplification of political beliefs but (2) many many people do broadly hew to one or another party line. But precisely because #2 is true, you can get much the same information as you do from "Democrat or Republican?" by asking one or two questions addressed more directly to the issues.

At least once in the past (probably much more often) researchers have done a political survey, done a principal-component analysis (or something similar) on the results, and published their conclusions about the two-ish main collections of issues on which people in their sample divide. You might want to look up at least one such case (unfortunately I remember no details, and I have no reason to believe that my google-fu is stronger than yours) and use that to decide what actual question(s) to ask.

Have a note explicitly inviting people to add noise to their karma scores. Noisy karma scores are less useful for identification, though of course if anyone says "about 3000" and you believe them then it doesn't leave much room for doubt about who it is.

Occupation, income, self-perceived success in relationships and career, life satisfaction, experience of depression. Parents education and income and rationality. High school popularity, comfort and success interacting with people from different social/cultural groups.

As survey length rises, survey response rate falls.

I recommend making two or more surveys. The first one should take less than 5 minutes and we should push everyone, including non-commenters to fill it out.

We should use our handles, or another ID, to link the data from multiple surveys.

On the Newcomb question I think you should have an option for Wittgenstein-like positions, i.e. "the premise of the question contains hidden contradictions". I'd offer the same option for the other similarly-formatted questions, although I'm not aware of anyone making any such assertion about PD.

In what aspect of life is it most useful to improving your rational thinking?

• Professional succes
• Scientific and or technical achievement
• Social life
• Personal development (self improvement, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, etc)
• Important life decisions.

On the belief in god question, rule out simulation scenarios explicitly (I assume "supernatural" is meant to rule out a simulation creator subject to its own physics as a "god")

On marital status, distinguish "single and looking for a relationship" versus "single and looking for people to casually hang out with"

It would be interesting to have at least one question in the general domain of economic/political forecasting, for two reasons: (1) such questions have some practical interest; (2) they can be tested later. (Especially valuable if we ask for confidence limits or something, so that calibration as well as accuracy can be tested.)

I don't have strong feelings about what such questions would be best; anyone who agrees with me that there should be such questions and does have strong feelings about what questions might put them in replies to this comment. Random examples: length and depth of the current recession; likely relative importance of (say) US, China, Europe, India in 20 years' time.

I would like to see the results made public, as well as seeing more surveys in general.

Don't have a good indicator of how many people would worry about public data, but as the survey-taking group size increases (as I presume will happen over time on LW) it should become easier to remain unidentifiable.

Plenty of people voluntarily fill out surveys about themselves on social networking sites, and those of us concerned with anonymity probably wouldn't be filling them out either way.

There is plenty of literature out there about how groups can go wrong. We need to make sure we do not fall victim to those traps. What are ways we can identify and avoid known pitfalls?

Perhaps we should include some questions about the perception of the community: diversity of viewpoints, strength of conformity, how much you personally identify with the group, things of that nature. These answers could be useful for self-diagnostic purposes, both for the group itself as well as its individual members comparing their answers against others in the group.

I found the last survey interesting because of the use of ranges and confidence measures. Are there any other examples of this that a community response would be helpful for?

MBTI type (may not be the most "scientifically valid", but it's probably the one the most people would know).