2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Call For Critiques/Questions

• I suggest a basilisk question, as usual.
• I'd also like OCEAN/Big Five restored. The results from last time weren't very definitive and more data would be helpful.
• Given the recent SSC debate on how effective MIRI is, it might be interesting to ask something about opinions of MIRI's effectiveness in pursuing its mission: just asking how much people donated is insufficient since one might donate faute de mieux, and IIRC the modal donation is $0 in the first place.
• Perhaps the AI projection questions could be replaced by the same question-set used in "Future progress in artificial intelligence: A poll among experts", VC Müller, N Bostrom? Buys one comparability with their survey responses; it would be very interesting and intriguing if LWers turned out to be less extreme.

I would personally be interested in more detailed drug use questions. Examplae. In the Past year have you taken:

-Modafinil

-Amphetamine (of any sort including Adderall)

-Heroine/Other Opiates (not prescribed by a doctor as a painkiller) -Marijuanna

-Hallucinogens (LSD/DMT/Psychobillin)

-Testosterone/HGH (if you took testosterone because you are transexual do not click yes)

Maybe there is a better list of drugs?

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

The "currently looking for more relationship partners" feels to me ambiguous -- what if someone is open to having more relationship partners, but not actually looking for more? Perhaps make this a three option issue "actively looking" vs "open to having more relationship partners but not actively looking for more" vs "not open to having more relationship partners"?

I'd add: "Do you use/have you used a Spaced Repetition program, like Anki or Supermemo?"

• No
• Yes, regularly
• I tried it, but stopped

In the politics I'd add a "how strongly do you care about this political affiliation" (scaled on 1-5, from "not at all" to "it's an important part of my identity")

A couple (more) questions I'd find interesting:

• How many times do you exercise per week, on average?

• How many nonfiction books do you read per month, on average?

• How knowledgeable would you consider yourself in the following fields? (on a scale of 0 to 5, where 3 is about "studied it at university" and 5 "I'm a publically recognized expert")

  • Psychology

  • Economics

  • Artificial Intelligence

  • Statistics

Formidable work. Given recent discussions, might it be worth adding "vegan" to "vegetarian"? (And perhaps even "pescetarian" or "flexitarian" but I suppose one can get lost in small distinctions.)

I'd been interested in seeing how many people participate in systematic self-improvement efforts outside the LW/CFAR space. Some examples in rough increasing order of weirdness: diet, fitness, psychiastric help, life coaching etc., social skills programs of various kinds, nootropics. This covers a lot of ground and there's probably some options I haven't thought of, but these two questions would be a good start:

• Do you follow a limited or unusual diet for health (not ethical) reasons?

(this would probably need "I tried and it didn't work" and "I tried but found it too hard" options. We'd probably also want some way of distinguishing between "I'm allergic to onions" and "I kind of try not to eat red meat" and "I'm full-blown hardcore paleo".)

• How many hours a week do you spend exercising, on average?

(for example, 0 if you are single, 1 if you are in a monogamous relationship, higher numbers for polyamorous relationships)

This implies that you are only poly if you're in more than 1 relationship. I suggest simply

(for example, 0 if you are single, 1 if you are in a monogamous relationship)

because

• If you're poly, the idea of counting relationships will be familiar to you already; it's only those who aren't who might need it set out explicitly
• I hate saying "you have to add more text here to cater to my itch" - if I can fix what I perceive to be a problem by removing text, I much prefer that.

I feel like using Scandanavia as an example of "socialism" is not really accurate - they're capitalist welfare states with slightly higher taxes than other capitalist welfare states.

For relationship status, a polyamorous person can be married and in a relationship at the same time, which is a problem. Similarly, someone can be living with their partner/spouse and additional roommates. Also, "Liberal" in the Political section should probably be renamed to "Progressive", to avoid collisions with how "liberal" is used in Europe and in political philosophy.

Please change the "referred by a link on another blog" option to "referred by a link on another blog or website". It's been bugging me for years.

Again, your relationship style question conflates very different clusters. There is a big difference between traditional monogamy and serial monogamy, or between the ideal of polyamory preached in rationalist circles and the harem type of polyamory (polygyny, mistresses, etc...) which is traditional for a sufficiently high-status man to have. The obvious way to solve this is to split the "prefer monogamous" and "prefer polyamorous" answers into two answers each, each of which describes the relevant clusters in a short sentence similar to the answer choices in the political question.

You are asking too many calibration questions for me. I might answer 1, 2, or, at a stretch, 3. 10 questions is gonna cause me to leave that whole section blank.

Likewise, I don't think I'm gonna answer the probabilities section unless you switch to radio buttons, like you use in the extra credit political section.

Per your own advice, you may want to add a completely implausible question to the survey so you can measure our Lizardman's constant and subtract it from the other results.

I'd suggest a section asking opinions on famous thought experiments. "Do you flip the switch in the trolley problem?", "do you push the fat man in the modified Trolley problem?", "is the China brain conscious?", "do you one box against Omega?", "does the Star Trek transporter kill you?", etc... maybe some not so famous though experiments, too. Eliezer has that thing in which a primitive culture which is afraid that cameras will steal your soul but does not realize that the eye is basically a camera is used as an analogy for crbcyr jub ner nsenvq bs hcybnqvat, and you asked that question about the angel which offers you reincarnation as a metaphor for pelbcerfreingvba.

My bonus question is "Do you read non-rationalist fanfiction? That is to say, do you read fanfiction other than HPMOR, Luminosity, Friendship is Optimal, etc... and their derivative fanfanfiction?"

I shall repeat my request for a second question under "Degree" that asks about one's highest degree attempted or in progress.

• Neither of "...and currently looking for more relationship partners" or "...and not currently looking for more relationship partners" seem to capture what I feel is a common poly sentiment, "...and I'll figure out what I want with new people as I get to know them".
• Neither of "Atheist but spiritual" and "Atheist but not spiritual" seem to capture "Atheist who doesn't know what 'spiritual' means in this context and therefore doesn't want to come down either for or against it, because there are both interpretations where it seems nice and interpretations where it seems silly".
• P(Aliens), P(Many Words), etc. -- are these supposed to be conditioned on the fact that we're not in a simulation, etc.? Otherwise, for example, P(Aliens) goes down in proportion to P(Simulation).

(hint: if you've been here since the start of the community in November 2007, put 6)

This should presumably be 7 now.

If there's no good way to ask about specific supplements in the survey, would anyone mind if I raised it as a question in Discussion?

How about a survey question about how much people care about their LW karma?

For Super Extra Bonus Questions: (feel free to modify the answer choices)

With which of these metaethical positions do you most identify?

• Non-cognitivism: Moral statements don't express propositions and can neither be true nor false. "Murder is wrong" means something like "Boo murder!".
• Error theory: Moral statements have a truth-value, but attempt to describe features of the world that don't exist. "Murder is wrong" and "Murder is right" are both false statements because moral rightness and wrongness aren't features that exist.
• Subjectivism: Some moral statements are true, but not universally, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by non-universal opinions or prescriptions, and there is no non-attitudinal determinant of rightness and wrongness. "Murder is wrong" means something like "My culture has judged murder to be wrong" or "I've judged murder to be wrong".
• Substantive realism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by mind-independent moral properties. "Murder is wrong" means that murder has an objective mind-independent property of wrongness that we discover by empirical investigation, intuition, or some other method.
• Constructivism: Some moral statements are true, and the truth of a moral statement is determined by whether an agent would accept it if they were undergoing a process of rational deliberation. "Murder is wrong" can mean something like "Societal agreement to the rule 'do not murder' is instrumentally rational".

With which ethical position do you most closely identify?

• Utilitarianism
• Egoism
• Contractualism
• Contractarianism
• Other Consequentialism
• Kantianism
• Divine Command
• Other Deontology
• Natural Law
• Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
• Stoic Virtue Ethics
• Epicurean Virtue Ethics
• Other Virtue Ethics
• Intuitionism

With which of these broad political groupings do you most closely identify?

• Progressivism (Includes American progressives, European social democrats, socialists, communists, left-wing anarchists, the social justice movement, etc. Important values include economic and social equality, liberation of oppressed groups, and democracy.)
• Liberalism (Includes European liberals, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, etc. Important values include freedom of association, individual autonomy, and technological progress.)
• Conservatism (Includes American conservatives, Christian democrats, nationalists, neoreactionaries, etc. Important values include tradition, bonds within communities, and patriotism.)

Thanks so much for running this again

Comments

-Items should either be randomized or if sorted, they should be sorted based on last years prevelency. For example in politics libertarian is the top listed item despite not being alphabetically first or being a majorty / plurality view.

-The religious denomination shouldn't ask atheists to skip the question. One is about what you believe the other about what you do. Plenty of atheists fast on Yom Kippur or go to church on Christmas.

-Less wrong use should have two items on comments that differentiate by frequency. Eg commented on a thread and comment at least monthly.

-Instructions for percentages should be more clear. Maybe give an example. As worded I'm unsure if to write"50%" or just "50"

-Not sure if cryonics should be conditional on no catastropic event.

-While we are asking about all the psych issues any reason not to ask about anti social or ADHD or other ones as well.

-The taxes question isn't meaningful. Politicaly the divide isn't lower higher in general. It's typically more / less progressive. Suggestion; "Should taxes on people earning more than 1mm per year be lower / higher"

-Older and younger siblings should be next to each other and not separated by birth month

-More details on vegetarianism. Rather than yes / no it should be a spectrum. Maybe: "vegan / vegetarian / reduced meat (eg meatless Monday) / no vegitarian leaning"

If this survey generates interesting psychometric research, someone might try to get a journal article out of it. If so, we will need your explicit consent to have (an aggregate of) your anonymous data published.

• Someone? Who is someone? Honestly, I'm curious, because I can't think of who these someones would be. What research psychologists who aren't already members of Less Wrong pay attention to it? I doubt it would be Scott using it to publish something(?) Maybe he shares the results on Slate Star Codex, and a psychiatrist friend of his considers Less Wrong an interesting subject pool, so they use the data? This is something I'd want to know before I give consent. Like, even a rough description of who Scott conceives of as using this data would make me more comfortable.

• For the 'Gender', and 'Sexual Orientation' categories, why not allow the 'Other' radio button to instead be a text box subjects can fill in themselves?

• I've got a hunch that within the Less Wrong community there's enough of a diversity of mathematicians that we'd discover something interesting if the type of career as mathematician as subject could choose from was split into two options of 'applied mathematics', and 'pure mathematics'. By interesting, I mean the ratio of one type to the other might reflect how the community thinks about mathematics, especially regarding issues relevant to the MIRI. From there, we could try to infer what's going on. If nothing interesting is going on there, then my hypothesis is falsified, and the survey tried something new that in no way threatened its integrity.

• The Political Compass Test generates quantified results on a two-dimensional axis:

x-axis: left-right y-axis: authoritarian-libertarian

This is my graph as a sample. Taking the Political Compass Test can be done in five minutes. If greater quantification allows for much more potential value to glean results by mining the raw data, then an extra five minutes on an already long survey is a small price for subjects to pay. There could be two text boxes for each subject taking the survey to input their scores along each axis into them, and then, if there's a spreadsheet program behind the survey somewhere, it can organize the results for you. What Scott can tell us by having that data analyzed however it can might be more useful than the discrete radio buttons of surveys past.

If this sort of thing is worth doing with made-up statistics, imagine the value of information we'll get by using real ones.

If that's too much data for Scott to handle alone, then we can ask our friend Peter Hurford [? · GW], the data scientist with a double major in psychology and political science if the effective altruist distributed volunteer task force he coordinates, .impact, would be willing to help. Honestly, I can only imagine Scott is incredibly busy, and outsourcing it to a trustworthy few willing to do so with their own spare time anyway might be worthwhile.

• I personally would appreciate if the 'Moral Views' question could be converted to a rating system. There could be set of Likert scales for how much you identify with virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology. Or, instead, there could be a ranking system for which you identify which ones you feel are closest to your own, from most to least. Again, this offers a finer grain of data, so more value of information to be had.

• Part Five keeps me out because I've never taken an IQ test, and getting one off the Internet can be too expensive. Additionally, I'm Canadian, so the scores on all the other tests aren't relevant to me. Not that I mind, much, but it might be something to think about for next time, as maybe at least 1/3 of subjects won't be able to respond that way.

• my opinion as a single data point: this survey is just long enough. I've learned a lot more on Less Wrong since last year. My technical comfort zone has expanded, so when I read questions about, e.g., assigning probabilities to future events, my eyes don't glaze over as much as. So, the survey feels shorter than last year. I remember the survey from last year was so long that I didn't even bother.

• If you're including a poll on opinions of feminism, I'd be interested to see one on the men's rights activism movement as well.

In the mental health category, I'd love to see (adult) ADHD there as well. I'm less directly interested in substance abuse disorder and learning disabilities (in the US sense) / non-autism developmental disabilities, but those would be interesting additions too.

Some thoughts from my notes when I did the LWSH survey. I mostly plagiarized it from you, so they should be relevant:

Consider adding an option under work and/or profession for "Homemaker." We have at least one.

Consider an option under the relationship goals section for "not looking, but open to the possibility."

There used to be a whole section on akrasia. I note that it is now missing, but it had questions about use of medication and supplements. Those questions didn't specify whether the meds were taken specifically to combat akrasia. They probably should have, given the purpose of the section. If the Akrasia section goes back in, consider modifying it that way.

How would you describe your opinion on immigration?

Immigration into one's own country (as for the following two questions) or in general?

• Given that you already ask the Sex question, the Gender question can have just three answers “Man”, “Woman”, and “Neither/Other”.
• As suggested by people on SSC, you might want to add a question “Is your gender an important part of your identity?” or something, to find out how many of us are cis-by-default.
• I'd have three answers to Relationship Goals, “actively looking”, “open but not actively looking”, and “not open”.
• Split the “no” answer to Children into “not now” and “never”.
• Selfishly, I'm glad you didn't split physics in the Profession question into theoretical physics and experimental physics so that I, as a phenomenologist, don't have to choose, but you might still want to consider splitting them.
• Maybe in the Religious Views question “Agnostic” → “Agnostic/Apatheist/Ignostic” (cf. “Don't know/Don't care/Don't understand”). Also, consider specifying what the hell you mean by “spiritual”, as IIRC the previous times different people interpreted it in different ways.
• In the Aliens question, does octopus-level intelligence count? Does pre-50,000 BC human-level intelligence count?
• Wouldn't (say) three calibration questions be enough?

Typo in Great Stagnation question: "See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnationfor"

More Children

Please make the options:

1. Yes
2. Yes, but not now
3. No
4. Uncertain

Is anyone interested in asking whether people are cosmopolitan?

How about natalist versus antinatalist?

[Added] I don't care about this that much, but here's a question text for cosmopolitanism: "In prioritizing political or charitable causes, would you weight the interests of a person of another nationality equally with those of a fellow citizen?" (Yes or No) A link to Chris's post might also help.

Not exactly a question per se, but I remember Yvain complaining about invalid entries, such as words in the number field etc. etc.

This sounds like something that simple Regular Expressions could speed up. Perhaps we could ask him what his current survey workflow is and try to see where they can fit?

Although this advice seems a bit TOO obvious not to have been mentioned before. Apologies if so.

The "with family" option in the "living with" question is ambiguous for those of us with children. I suggest changing it to "with parents or guardians[1]", changing the partner/spouse option to "with partner/spouse (and children if applicable)", and adding an "other" option for less traditional living arrangements.

Questions in the mental health section are inconsistent about whether they're referring to whether you have ever suffered from a condition ("have you ever been diagnosed...") or whether you are currently suffering from it ("...I personally believe I have it"). Some are lifelong conditions, but others like depression are temporary.

Questions on feminism / social justice / human biodiversity don't distinguish between what you think of the concept itself and what you think of the movement around it. (Or is this the point?)

[1] Is this a Britishism? Feel free to change it to the equivalent in US English.

I'll write down a long list of questions. I think they are useful. If you don't like them all because they are too much I would certainly like to keep data about spaced repetition software usage. The question from last year was good.

I would specifically like to have the bolted questions included. With them we could cut the question that asks for self identification as vegetarian.

Given the absence of perfect information our justice system has to convict a few innocent people. Where the optimum of the ratio between guilty going free and innocent getting sentenced? X guilty going free for one innocent being arrested. What's your X?

Morality Questions:

How morally problematic are on a scale of 1 to 5 the following actions:

1) Eating animal products

2) Discriminating against a person based on their gender

3) Abortion at 3 month of age

4) Abortion at 7 month of age

5) Not voting in a national election

6) Rerouting a trolley car to kill one person instead of five.

Options: today, yesterday, 2 to three days ago, up to a week ago, up to a month ago, up to three month ago, up to a year ago, up to three years ago, up to ten years ago, more than ten years ago, never +++

When was the last time you read a scientific paper beyond the abstract that was work related?

When was the last time you read the abstract of a scientific paper that was work related?

When was the last time you read the abstract of a scientific paper that wasn't work related?

When was the last time you read a scientific paper that wasn't work related?

When was the last time you read a science textbook?

When was the last time you used spaced repetition software (Anki, Memosyne, Supermemo etc.)?

When was the last time you made an effort to record personal data for future analysis?

When was the last time you took a Vitamin D supplement?

When was the last time you took a multivitamin supplement?

When was the last time you took a Iron supplement?

When was the last time you took a Creatine supplement?

When was the last time you took a Adrafinil/Modafinil supplement?

When was the last time you drunk alcohol?

When was the last time you smoked?

When was the last time you meditated?

When was the last time you prayed?

When was the last time you got the flu vaccine?

When was the last time you ate flesh?

When was the last time you went the gym?

When was the last time you went jogging?

When was the last time you went dancing?

When was the last time you exercised in any form?

When was the last time you drove a bicycle?

When was the last time you drove a car?

When was the last time you used public transportation?

When was the last time you donated to charity?

How often do you exercise on average per week? {Enter number}

How often do you eat on average meat per week? {Enter number}

(this question allows together with the "When was the last time you ate flesh?" question allows us to to see to what extend people lie to themselves - are sub groups who score higher on the calibration questions better able to estimate their average meat consumption?)

• Order the countries by their frequency in previous surveys.
• As ever, the political labels used are misleading. The Scandinavian countries are not socialist, and the UK labour party are in many ways extremely illiberal.
• You might want to break the cryonics question up a little more - some people are 'just finishing up the paperwork' for a very long time.
• The immigration question is presumably actually asking about immigration controls, not immigration itself.

You have the "Slate Star Codex" question under the "privacy" section. You may want to retitle the section to something like "top matter".

I'd like an "apolitical" choice for my political views. Especially here, there's likely a significant slice of the population who choose to not have any politics in the manner of Paul Graham, and thus equally don't identify at all, not even a little bit, with any of the given political options.

"If you were referred here by another blog—" "another" is needless.

Consider asking a "% positive" followup to total karma.

I'm going to ask for 4 options in the mental health section; there should be a separate category for people who weren't diagnosed with depression but believe they have had it.

I'd like more resolution in the extra credit section on politics. Just moving to a 7-scale would be a large improvement.

If the survey occurs near/during a HPMOR update (particularly a large update), your responses to the HPMOR questions will be skewed by people who would've read all of it, and will have read all of it, but aren't quite there yet because it just released.

The semicolon in "Hours of TV" should be a comma (sorry for being all nitpicky, that one just really bugs me.)

Formatting issues:

• The title "Part Eight: Slightly More Complicated Questions" appears twice.

Question requests:

• Ability to solve the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen atom.
• OCEAN personality test results
• Split "no" option in meetups into "no, because there are no meetups near where I live" and "no, there may be meetups near where I live but I don't want to go to them"

Other comments:

• I like the multiple calibration questions

What is your preferred relationship style?

No explicit option for asexual and/or aromantic? (Or whatever the term would be for preferring not to be in a relationship, as opposed to not having a preference.)

Please answer on a scale from 0% (definitely false) to 100% (definitely true). For your convenience, 0% will be interpreted as "epsilon" and 100% as "100 minus epsilon".

For estimated probabilities that are greater than 99%, or less than 1%, how many digits of accuracy do you wish the answer to be? Just jump straight from 99% to 100%, or go for 99.999999% if that's honestly the best estimate?

What is the probability that any of humankind's revealed religions is more or less correct?

I find this slightly unclear; does 'atheistic Buddhism' count as a 'revealed religion'?

way fewer people use LW now, it would be interesting to track immigration and emmigration. Add some questions to see what time period people report their peak use being / what people think changed ?

You should add a question that asks what model of population ethics they support (Additive utility, Average utility, Other, Non-utilitarian, Don't know).

Question suggestions:

Only answer if you think the chance of a singularity in the 21st century is over 1%. Do you think affecting the singularity's outcome is tractable enough to be worth any of your time or money?

Are you a narcissist? (rationale)

(This is only for people who had an SAT score out of 1600) Did you take the SAT after (or during) April 1995?

May want to add Slate Star Codex as an exception to the referrals question.

Time in community question needs to be updated to 7 years for the start of the community.

Might be worth it to specify aggregate Karma if you have multiple accounts. (This is an account that I started using after I decided I no longer wanted to use my real name. I mostly lurk anyway, though.)

It would be worth it to add a "no meetups in my area" option to the meetups question.

The header for part eight is listed twice.

I've been reading the thread, and it appears there are some categories of questions Less Wrong wants explored in more detail, with more questions. These subjects include:

• rates of vegetarianism/paleo/alt-diets
• what drugs do you take without a prescription, including caffeine/nicotine/alcohol, nootropics, and illicit recreational drugs.
• a wide diversity of philosophical moral/meta-ethical positions
• opinions of certain policies
• wider variety of sexual/romantic/gender orientation options.

This is all very interesting. However, with upvotes, below all these are comments of the form "I'm not taking this (part of) the survey if you add a bunch more questions, each with more options to consider than I even understand what they mean."

May I suggest that we use this survey as a general value of information survey, and, if we really want to later, based upon the results of this initial one, more specific ones are made?

For example, if we want to discover exactly which one of flexitarian, vegan, pescetarian, or plain vegetarian someone is, we can ask that if, like, >5%, or 10%, of the community reduces meat intake.

or

there could be five checkboxes for drugs, such as

Which of the following have you consumed in the last year?

• Alcohol
• Nicotine
• Nootropics
• Illicit Substances

Then, on the next survey we can ask more details about specific nootropics if it turns out half of us use them everyday, and that's exciting because we didn't see it coming, or whatever.

or

Ask a question about whether someone is grey aromantic demisexual, or whatever, if the first survey returns a result of more than literally only 3 people choosing asexual on the initial survey, because frankly asexual people are rare, as much as they are special, lovely people like everyone else.

This second survey could be called, I don't know: Less Wrong 2014 Census Part 2: Zooming In on Bonus Sections, and it could be taken by the few dozen people who differed widely from the mean in the first survey in the various sections. Of course, if Scott doesn't want to make that survey, he shouldn't have to. We can do it, or at least somebody can, if they really want to.

Additionally, I think there could be a Less Wrong Philosophy Survey, or Less Wrong Prediction/Calibration Survey, simply because some among us could make awesome surveys just as grand as the original Less Wrong census in its own right, and that there may be sufficient demand for that from the community.

Suggestions for Questions Specific to the Center for Applied Rationality

Maybe take the opportunity to ask more questions about CFAR, and ask the CFAR staff you know if they want questions answered, because they love data. As a CFAR workshop alumnus, I'm interested in seeing where that community is headed. Here are some suggestions:

• If you're not one of the CFAR alumni, what's your estimate that you will attend one of their workshops in the next [six months, one year, two year, insert timescale here]?

• If you haven't attended a CFAR workshop, do you ever intend to?

• If you don't want to attend a CFAR workshop, what's stopping you the most from going?

• If you're unsure if you would want to attend a CFAR workshop, what would increase your confidence that it's worthwhile to attend one?

• [Likert scale, 1 to 7]: 1 being 'not very different', and 7 being 'very different', what's your opinion of how different is rationality as it is expressed on Less Wrong from applied rationality as it is taught by the CFAR?

A question on romantic orientation would be good.

All the time, people put DO NOT CITE on their papers, but that digit ratio web page had a link, explaining why you shouldn't cite: because it's just a copy of wikipedia.

Also, handfacts.com looks really sketchy to me. Not only is it no longer handfacts.com nor e-hand.com, but now eatonhand.com, but it doesn't have instructions on measuring digit ratio.

Typos in digit ratio question: "Use a ruler of calipers", "The result is 2D:4D" (should that be 2D/4D)? This question could probably use an image.

1a) If you're planning on comparing IQ scores to SAT scores, you should include age at which the respondent took the SAT. I know of at least one international gifted program, run by Johns Hopkins University, which administers the SAT to 12-year-olds.

1b) Scores on the different sections of the SAT might be interesting. E.g. SAT Score out of 1600; SAT-Verbal score out of 800; SAT-Math score out of 800 and SAT Score out of 2400; SAT-Reading score out of 800; SAT-Writing score out of 800; SAT-Math score out of 800.

2) A mere typo: "Do you attend Less Wrong meetup?" should be "Do you attend Less Wrong meetups?"

3) Two more mere typos, in the Digit Ratio section. a) "Close cover of place a sheet of paper..." should say "Close cover or place a sheet of paper..."

3b) "Use a ruler of calipers" should say "Use a ruler or calipers". Unless "ruler of calipers" is a thing, in which case, ignore 3b.

4) Pedantic grammatical edit from the Digit Ratio section: "Once you have the measures for both your ring and index finger, then divide the length of your index finger by the length of your ring finger." You can remove "then" since your sentence starts with "Once."

First of all, the survey is excellent as it is. So I, too, merely suggest an addition.

I'd like to see added something about teaching / spreading rationality / proselytizing. My first idea would be something like: "Do you attempt to make others think more rationally?" with options on a spectrum from "no" and "I generally try to be the voice of reason in discussions" to something like "Many know me as an advocate for rationality". Not sure about how to adress an online/offline divide.

"None of your family / friends / acquaintances will suffer from any form of cancer anymore, nor will any of their descendants! How many years of your remaining lifespan would you be willing to give up in exchange for the whole of humanity enjoying the same protection, given your sacrifice would remain anonymous? (If you provide a large number, no life extension would be entailed.)" -- (Requires numerical answer: number of years).

How about:

What country is the most successful at providing a good quality of life for its citizens?

Also:

What historical society emphasized the moral virtues with which you most strongly agree?

Typo in HBD question: "are in fact scientiically justified"

Extra Credit: Politics, Question about the Great Stagnation: the link is too large Screenshot

To the Super Bonus Questions, could you add:

Is there a number which you have considered your "favorite number" for some period of time (i.e., from before you read this question)? If so, what is it?

Maybe you could split “Yes” in the Blood question into “Yes, in the last 12 months” and “Yes, longer ago”.

Before the professional intelligence measurement question, please add something like:

Please ESTIMATE your IQ, using a standard average of 100 and stdev of 15.

It might make sense to add on something like:

You may want to check a normal distribution calculator (such as http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/normal.aspx ) to ensure you aren't overestimating.

Or, alternatively, we could get at the same sort of question by asking this:

Please estimate how many people would have to be in a group of adults, chosen uniformly at random, for you to expect the group to contain one (and only one) person smarter than you.

But it's not obvious to me that this is a thing people would be good at estimating.

Some questions I'd personally put in if I was writing this survey (you don't need to put these in if you don't want to, just suggestions):

• To what extent have your beliefs about the world and your reasoning processes changed since you became a member of this community?
• To what extent do you think that MIRI's mission is a worthy one (i.e. do you think that AI is a major existential risk, do you think it's important to ensure the development of friendly AI, do you think that MIRI is capable of advancing that goal, etc.)
• To what extend do you identify with the term "nerd"?
• How do you perceive your physical attractiveness, on a scale of 1 to 10?

How would you rate your general success in life in the following areas, before and after you became a member of this community?

• Progress on goals
• Wealth
• Social life
• Romance
• Happiness
• Overall

Why not use the Kinsey sex scale for sexual orientation? (really depends on what you want to gather out of this information)

A split question of whether your children are biologically related to you or just children you are raising.

Allow multiple options (checkboxes) for work-status, and profession.

I have seen "education level" as highest level completed; but it doesn't take into account highest level incomplete. so where I might be part of a bachelors, I could not say so because I have not yet completed it. Perhaps a level of "highest education not yet completed"

An option of "other" for political view

Allow multiple (checkboxes) for referrals.

an option to skip the probabilities section. and submit the survey without participating in that part.

On "Profession," the field label "Art" is vague. Better would be "Arts and humanities."

P(God)

This question bugged me from last year's survey, but I'm not sure if my objections are valid. Consider a subset of this question: "What is the probability that Bayesian mathematical reasoning was created by a supranatural entity?" It seems... outside the domain, a little bit? Like a question, "What is the probability that Bayesian mathematics is true?"- what would it mean for this to be false? Which is to say, I don't know whether probability estimates are capable of a certain degree of recursive self-analysis, and asking about the origins of Bayesianism may be in that class.

any question you want in the Super Extra Bonus Questions section

Do you like the cartoon, "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"?

• Yes, and I consider myself a brony/pegasister
• Yes
• No
• No opinion / unsure

(And to compare that with a fandom that seems to be less represented amongst LWers:)

Are you a furry fan? (Reference link: http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Furry )

• Yes
• No
• No opinion / unsure

"How frequently do you meditate?"

"How many books did you read last year?"

More graphs in the reported analysis? I like pictures over numbers when I can get them.

I request that you add an intensity of importance question for each item on the politics section. I might think that abortion is terrible but not at all politically important, for example, and both of those seem like worthwhile information.

The survey is long enough.that I'm unlikely to put genuine thought into each of the questions. If none of the answers us closer enough, I'm likely to skip the question. I'm likely to pick numbers it off thin air on any questions asking for a probability. I'm unlikely to actually dig up my SAT scores etc and will guess from memory. I will probably skip half of the bonus questions that Seth uninteresting because there are so many of them.

There are probably other people who are willing to run through the survey to help out but will spend a fixed and not too large amount of time on it. This is likely to introduce some bias and inaccuracy of answers given its current size. Just noting this as a set of trade offs to keep in mind.

If it's not yet too late, I should like to see:

How often do you use a physical library? Often Rarely Never Online Resources Only

I approve! I think you should put in High school tests in regards to other countries (maybe at least the UK and Australia). It would also be helpful to track GRE scores and similar graduated standardized testing. I think it would be also interesting to see what people we have on the Myers-Briggs testing as well as an optional question. I think that would be interesting to look at on the data side.

In the Religious Denomination question, "If atheist, please skip this question." should be replaced with "If non-religious, please skip this question."

Maybe even remove this sentence and add "non-religious" or "not applicable" as an option.

I think this is a very important change. I think there are many people who identify as Jewish Atheist, Buddhist Atheist, or Unitarian Universalist Atheist, (and maybe some others) and right now you are leaving it up to them to choose how to interpret the question. No information is lost by implementing this change, as there was already a question about theism.

Am I doing the digit thingy right? I scanned my hands and used MS Paint to make a line through each finger, then divided the number of pixels in each line.

• Left hand.
• Right hand.

Mental Health:

• The questions are currently mixing point and lifetime prevalence: "have you ever been diagnosed" with "I believe I have it".

• Can we give social anxiety its own question?

A random comment.

This is the first time I've seen "anti-agathics". Based on what I know of biblical Greek, I read this as something that would be like "anti-good". If I had been in charge of making up an anti-aging drug, I would have called it something like anti-presbycs (maybe that wasn't chosen because it looks too much like "presbyterian"? Presbyterian does derive from the world meaning "elder"...).

This isn't a request to change the wording if that's what people who will be taking the survey are familiar with BTW, just something I noticed. Carry on.

(double-post, sorry)

(double-post, sorry)

Choice suggestions:

Some ideal world would use the empirically valid Eysenck model of left vs. right and authoritarian vs. libertarian for the political section. Oh wait, you basically did. Good job.

Complex Affiliation choice - Inscrutably Idiosyncratic

Autism Spectrum choice - I don't know but my Autism Spectrum Quotient was [blank]

Question suggestion 1:

Only answer this if you think the chance of a singularity before 2100 is over 1%. Do you feel that influencing the singularity's outcome is tractable enough to be worth your time or money?

Question suggestion 2:

The singleton AI has taken over, fixed technology near 2014 levels and now asks you to decide the world's economic priorities for the next century. You must choose from:

A. Maximize GDP B. Maximize median GDP per capita C. Maximize number of people making over a certain fixed income that you get to choose as [blank]

There may be any number of priorities besides economic ones. The AI will not dictate how we trade off non-economic priorities, but only that we choose one of the above and exclude the other two.

Other question suggestions I'm not making (since I will limit myself to two) but maybe someone else will:

Mental Health - Add ADHD and this question

A two-choice sub-question of whether your SAT out of 1600 was taken before or after April 1995, when it was recentered.

I would like that the question for previous surveys asks for the private key that was used in the last survey if the person remembers.

Bring back the Unreasonably Long Questions section (the one with the personality tests etc.), and maybe add the BSRI to it.

Maybe bring back mother's age and father's age in the Super Bonus Questions.

What about a question about PUAs in Extra Credit: Politics?

I oppose the Birth month question. It costs a lot of anonymity but provides no good return.

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.

I would really like to see these questions in the survey:

For the questions:

• Give the time from your birth to your death in subjective years (so years where you are cryonically preserved don't count)
• Give the estimate where you are 50% sure it would be less than your answer and 50% sure it would be more than your answer)

The questions are:

• 1) How long do you think you will live?
• 2) If your only way to die was by really wanting to die, when do you think you would die...
• a) if you could control your aging process but the world would be otherwise unchanged?
• b) if an AGI optimizing your utility function would be created?

And maybe also this one:

• c) if your utility function would be maximized (regardless of actual physical laws in our universe)?

EDIT 1: I've removed this specification: where death = permanently not conscious; if you create a clone or a simulation that is not a direct upload, it doesn't count as 'still living'.
EDIT 2: I've added that one could control its aging process in 2a).

Don't you want devoted followers?

Who leave their families for you

Give their money to you

Give their bodies to you

Give up their lives for you

Consider you God, and will kill for you

Don't you want to become a cult leader?

Since the death of God there has been a vacancy open

You can fill that void, here is how

• I'd like to split the Gender:Other option into "I identify as a gender not listed here" and "I don't identify as any particular gender", as I'm curious how many other people have the latter view.
• "roommates" is a bit of an americanism; I might phrase that as "with other people". I'm kind of curious about the split between "with friends" and "with people I didn't otherwise know", but I can't think of anything terribly useful to do with that.
• I'd like a referral option for "Referred by other rationalist fiction (e.g. luminosity, friendship is optimal)"
• For people who believe there is a large probability of catastrophe in the near future, conditioning on the singularity occurring leads to a misleadingly early prediction for when. I'm not particularly invested in this question, just flagging it up because I think my own answer will be misleading.
• Suggested questions:
  • "How many academic or professional conferences did you attend during the last year?" 0/1/2/3/4+.
  • "Have you received any formal rationality training (CFAR workshops or similar)?" Y/N.
  • "At what age did you first receive formal, classroom-based education?" 0-2/3/4/5/6/7-9/10-14/15-18/18+/never.
  • "Which of these media do you spend at least an hour consuming in most months?" Anime/Western Comics(professionally published)/Fanfiction/Live-Action Movies/Literature (professionally published)/Live-Action TV/Manga/Music without vocals/Music with vocals/Dance, Opera or Theatre/Sports (live action)/Webcomics/Web-original literature/Web-original video (including e-sports)/Western animation. (checkboxes)

Question about politics is lacking a "none of the above" option.

On the two-dimensional political axis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

The options given are:

• central right (anti-state capitalist)
• moderate right (state-ambivalent capitalist)
• upper-moderate-right (regulationist capitalist)
• Worded as moderate left, but presented as upper-center (Scandinavian welfare states)
• Upper-left (state communist, USSR)

This leaves a rather large portion of the spectrum totally unaccounted for and is going to artificially inflate the neighboring elements.

Adding the following items would fix this:

• Upper-right (Third Positionist, Golden Dawn, British National Party)
• Lower-left (Anarchism, Christiania, Spanish Republic)
• Lower-right (Neo-feudalist, neoliberal)
• Pragmatic Centrist/Technocrat (non-ideological pursuit of policy goals)
• Dadaist/Absurdist/Nihilist (rejection of politics as an organizational process)

It's also controversial to conflate Communism as an ideology with the specific implementation of Marxism-Leninism that the USSR embodied; this also ignores wide variations between Soviet leaders (Kruschev in particular was highly revisionist and attracted the ire of other contemporary communists leading to the Sino-Soviet split).

Alternatively, going strictly for coverage, the following options should encompass the majority of political beliefs held by Westerners:

• Conservative (US Republican party)
• Liberal (US Democratic party)
• Libertarian (sic) (US Libertarian party)
• Fascist (BNP, Golden Dawn, Front Nationale, various groups in the US)
• Electoral Socialist (US Socialist Party, Old Labor, France's Socialist Party)
• Revolutionary Marxist (ANSWER Coalition in the US, various Communist parties and organizations around the world)
• Anarchist (IWW, the organizers of Occupy, neo-Situationism, various other movements)

This has the side-effect of hitting all quadrants and achieving pretty good coverage on the two-axis political spectrum.

Other comments:

• It's possible to get a 1600-scored SAT by just adding your Math and Reading scores. The change to a 2400-point SAT was done via the addition of an 800-point Writing section that many colleges ignored and is now being phased out IIRC. When I applied for colleges, they typically asked for the scores for each section out of 800. Doing this here would probably be best.
• I think 10 calibration questions is a pretty huge burden and is probably going to lead to a lot of drop-off. There's no way to measure this in Google Forms and it's probably going to skew the results pretty badly.
• Google forms is probably not the best way to deploy this. Look into getting a SurveyGizmo account or better yet, access to Qualtrics. Qualtrics is the state of the art survey tool. I used to have access through my university and am pretty sure someone else on LW now would.