2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey

Surveyed. Having everyone participate in a Prisoner's Dillema is extremely ingenious.

Edit: Hey, guys, stop upvoting this! You have already falsified my answer to survey's karma question by an order of magnitude!

Edit much later: The lesswrong community is now proved evil.

Edit much more later: Bwahaha, I expected that... Thanks for the karma and stuff...

Taken. It was relatively quick; the questions were easy. Thanks for improving the survey!

Two notes: The question about mental illness has no "None" answers; thus you cannot distinguish between people who had none, and people who didn't answer the question. The question about income did not make clear whether it's pre-tax or post-tax.

Are you planning to do any analysis on what traits are associated with defection? That could get ugly fast.

(I took the survey)

I have taken the survey (and answered, to a good approximation, all the questions).

Note that if you take the survey and comment here immediately after, Yvain can probably identify which survey is yours. If this possibility troubles you, you may wish to delay. On the other hand, empirically it seems that earlier comments get more karma.

I conjecture that more than 5% of entrants will experience a substantial temptation to give SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE as their passphrase at the end. The purpose of this paragraph is to remark that (1) if you, the reader, are so tempted then that is evidence that I am right, and (2) if so then giving in to the temptation is probably a bad idea.

I took the survey. My apologies for not doing so in every previous year I've been here, and for not finding time for the extra questions this year.

The race question should probably use checkboxes (2^N answers) rather than radio boxes (N answers). Biracial people aren't that uncommon.

Living "with family" is slightly ambiguous; I almost selected it instead of "with partner/spouse" since our kids are living with us, but I suspected that wasn't the intended meaning.

Surveyed. Left several questions blank.

Incidentally, while I answered the "akrasia" questions about mental illnesses, therapy, etc. as best I could, it's perhaps worth noting that most of my answers related to a period of my life after suffering traumatic brain injury that significantly impaired my cognitive function, and therefore might be skewing the results... or maybe not, depending on what the questions were trying to get at

I took the survey.

However, this question confused me:

Time in Community How long, in years, have you been in the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong community? Enter periods less than 1 year in decimal, eg "0.5" for six months (hint: if you've been here since the start of the community in November 2007, put 6 years)"

(emphasis mine)

The wording confused me; I almost put "6 years" instead of "6" because of it.

Also, I was sorely tempted to respond that I do not read instructions and am going to ruin everything, and then answer the rest of that section, including the test question, correctly. I successfully resisted that temptation, of which fact I am proud.

Surveyed.

Nice to see the reactionaries got their bone thrown to them on the politics section.

Surveyed.

Survey taken. The very last question made me laugh out loud. It also proved to me that this is truly my type of community.

Taken, Answering all questions. I answered the last question (Co-operate or Defect) only after coming back and reading the comments, but I think I forgot to put in my passphrase so it doesn't really matter.

Finally decided to register for an account here. That reward structure will be fun to watch.

Made an account here to comment that I filled out the survey, and to make future participation more likely.

I have never posted on LW before, but this seems like a fine first time to do so.

I am really very curious to see the results of the real world cooperate/defect choice at the bottom of the test.

Surveyed. Put a humorous pair of Lojban lujvo as a passphrase. I cooperated, knowing that regardless, I was unlikely to win no matter what strategy I pursued, and that priming myself by forcing myself to cooperate now would possibly make me unknowingly want to cooperate in the future to my benefit.

Survey taken.

I found the Europe question awesome because I, incredibly luckily, had checked Europe's total population for a Fermi estimate just yesterday, so I got to feel like a high accuracy, highly calibrated badass. Of course, that also means it's not good data for things that I learned greater than ~1 day ago.

Survey Taken.

dude, no "jewish" religious background? seems like a serious omission unless my priors are all screwed up.

Survey completed in full. Begging for karma as per ancient custom.

I choose DEFECT because presumably the money is coming out of CFAR's pocket and I assume they can use the money better than whichever random person wins the raffle. If I win, I commit to requesting it be given as an anonymous donation to CFAR.

EDIT: Having been persuaded my Yvain and Vaniver, I reverse my position and intend to spend the prize on myself. Unfortunately I've already defected and now it's too late to not be an asshole! Sorry about that. Only the slightly higher chance of winning can soothe my feelings of guilt.

I can't wait to see the Cooperate/Defect ratio. I, for one, chose to cooperate.

Oh wow, you really cut down on the extra credit questions this time- no links to external tests! Not sure if I like that or not; in particular, now we only have one IQ source to look at. But oh well.

(I took the survey.)

Surveyed.

Surveyed.

The IQ question should, like with the SAT/ACT, make it clear you should leave it blank if you've not been tested. And the same with the follow-up in calibration.

Survey taken.

Surveyed.

The occupation thing could have been a checkbox, for us who are e.g. both students and doing for-profit work.

The income question could have used a clarification of whether it was pre- or post-tax. (I assumed pre-.)

Done. I'm glad there was nothing about Schrodinger this time around.

Surveyed, requesting free internet points.

I took the survey.

I completed every question on the survey that I could.

I've taken the survey.

By the way, nice game at the end. I didn't do the math but it seemed evident that defecting was the logical choice (and by reading the comments below I was right). I cooperated anyway, it just felt right. So, defectors, I probably just made one of you a few hundredths of a cent richer! Lucky you! ;-)

I'm doing the survey while I should be in a lecture, and I just reached the akrasia questions.

Took the survey. Note: "average" is not a very precise term. For one, "average person" is probably a mediocre stand-in for "typical person" (since there isn't actually a commonly accepted way to take averages of people). Furthermore, questions like "How long, in approximate number of minutes, do you spend on Less Wrong in the average day?" are actually highly ambiguous. The arithmetic mean of times that I spend on Less Wrong over days is substantially different from the median time.

It seems that I only comment here when I take the survey and remain a lurker otherwise.

(Survey taken)

Survey taken. Defected since I'm neutral as to whether the money goes to Yvain or a random survey-taker, but would prefer the money going to me over either of those two.

Took the survey. Surprisingly short.

Notes taken while I answered.

What is your family's religious background, as of the last time your family practiced a religion?

We're Ashkenazi Jews, but AFAIK the last time any ancestor of mine practiced a religion was in my great-grandparents' generation. (And then only because I knew only one of them personallyh, so it's reasonable to assume at least one of the others could have been religious.) I get that every human is descended from religious ones, but conflating this datapoint with someone whose actual parents practiced a religion once seems wrong.

Probability

For some of these my confidence was so low that I didn't answer. For some questions, there are also semantic quibbles that would affect the answer:

• Supernatural: AFAIK there is no agreed-on definition of "supernatural" events other than "physically impossible" ones which of course have a probability of 0 (epsilon). OTOH, if you specify "events that the average human observer would use the word 'supernatural' to describe", the probability is very high.
• Anti-Agathics: what counts as reaching an age of 1000 years? Humans with a few patched organs and genes? Cyborgs? Uploads with 1000 subjective years of experience?
• Simulation: this is complicated by ontological differences: whether, when universe A is simulated in universe B, this somehow contributes to B's "realness" measure, or actually creates B. Is existence of a universe a binary predicate? I answered as if it is.

Type of global catastrophic risk: although I chose the most probable, there wasn't a large difference in estimated probability for the top few leading dangers.

about how often do you read or hear about another plausible-seeming technique

At first I thought "every few days". But then I realized these techniques almost never work out or are unsupported by evidence, and so it would be wrong to call them plausible-seeming. So I recalibrated and answered much more rarely.

Then I saw the next questions asked how often I tried the technique and how often it actually worked. But I already choose not to try them most of the time because I expect not to succeed. So I let my previous answer stand. I hope this was as intended.

CFAR bonus questions:

You are a certain kind of person

Are these questions claiming that I, DanArmak, am this kind of person who can change; or that everyone can change? The answers would be very different. I assumed the latter, but it would be nice to have confirmation.

Other nitpicks: a certain kind on which dimension? Some aspects of personality are much harder to change than others.

What is the measure of "true" change? By the means available to us today, we can't change into truly nonhuman intelligences, so does that mean our "kind" cannot be changed? And the answers to the questions will change over time as technology creates new more effective interventions.

And: does "basic things" mean "fundamental things" or "minor insignificant things"? Normally I would assume "fundamental things", but then it seems identical to the previous question.

On a personal note, this set of questions struck me as incompatible after answering the previous sets. They seem to deliberately probe my irrational biases and cached beliefs, and I felt I couldn't answer them while I was deliberately thinking reflectively and asking myself why I believed the answers I was giving.

How would you describe your opinion on immigration?

The politics of immigration in Israel are totally different from those of the US (and I expect this holds for many other countries too in their different ways). I didn't answer because I was afraid of biasing the poll, and it would have been nice to get more guidance in the question.

Surveyed.

Also, spoiler: the reward is too small and unlikely for me to bother thinking through the ethics of defecting; in particular, I'm fairly insensitive to the multiplier for defecting at this price point. (Morality through indecisiveness?)

I took the survey. Thanks for putting this together, Yvain!

I chose DEFECT: CFAR/MIRI can keep their money. Furthermore, if I win I precommit to refusing payment and donating $120 * (1 - X) to MIRI, where X is the proportion of people who answer COOPERATE. I humbly suggest that others do the same.

Taken, answering all of the questions I was capable of answering. I will be very interested to see the results on some of the new questions. (The shifts on existing questions could also be interesting, but I don't expect much to change.)

First survey and comment, and I liked it too! (Including the bonuses, especially the reward question :)

I took it.

I took the survey. Also just realised that my choice of pass phrase was really silly... I was trying to make it easy for myself to remember what the second word would be, but failed to observe that the first word could become public and therefore it would be sensible to choose something that wouldn't be obvious to just about anybody from knowing the first word! Ah well, in the unlikely event that I win the draw, whoever gets in first can have the prize, I guess...

Survey taken.

taken. I did the whole thing! it actually wasn't that long.

Surveyed.

I took the survey.

I realized while answering one of the questions that the comments that I make for free karma are one of my main interactions with the LW website.

Survey taken, answered all questions I could. This excluded the IQ question set. I've never taken an IQ test. I've never been offered an IQ test, nor considered taking one. Is that strange? The survey seemed pretty confident that I'd have measured my IQ.

I have taken the survey, also the extra part. Although I was never tested for IQ in professional way and since it was a question in the non-extra part, I assume that most LW readers were. Interesting observation (if true). Maybe it is a nationally dependent thing? This ad-hoc hypothesis can be validated by the survey if only enough people from enough countries take it

Cooperator here.

Taken.

taken!

Surveyed. Is it okay to answer commited theist/pastafarian? :)

Surveyed. Thank you.

Survey Taken

I took the survey! Great set of questions. I felt like it was rather well designed,

It is done.

Short comments:

(Calibration Question) Without checking a source, please give your best guess for the current population of Europe in millions (according to Wikipedia's "Europe" article)

This is ambiguous! While strictly speaking "Europe" defaults to "the continent of Europe" spanning to the Ural, in common parlance "Europe" is used interchangeably with "European Union", similar to how you interpret "American student" in your very survey, a totum pro parte. Stahp with the totums pro parte for calibration questions, I beseech thee! (Of course I wouldn't have minded had I not given the correct answer for the European Union...)

(Akrasia: Elsewhat 1) Have you ever other things to improve your mental functioning?

Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?

(Human Biodiversity) (...) are in fact scientiically justified

Took it.

I took the survey as well

Took the survey.

I surveyed.

COMPLAIN! I have one partner but I'm definitely not monogamous. Sorry :)

Took the survey. Can't wait for the results.

I took the survey.

I think most of my answers were the same as last year, although I think my estimates have improved a little, and my hours of internet have gone down, both of which I like.

Many of the questions are considerably cleaned up -- much thanks to Yvain and everyone else who helped. It's very good it has sensible responses for gender. And IIRC, the "family's religious background" was tidied up a bit. I wonder if anyone can answer "atheist" as religious background? I hesitated over the response, since the last religious observance I know of for sure was G being brought up catholic, but I honestly think living in a protestant (or at least, anglican) culture is a bigger influence on my parents cultural background, so I answered like that.

I have no idea what's going to happen in the raffle. I answered "cooperate" because I want to encourage cooperating in as many situations as possible, and don't really care about a slightly-increased chance of < $60.

Surveyed.

Taken the survey. Thanks for doing this, Yvain.

Taken for the first time. 'Twas fun.

Congratulations for putting the dilemma to test. That was the hardest survey I've taken since the 2012 one.

Took the survey.

I'm interested in seeing what sort of interventions ended up working for people with akrasia.

I took the survey. Thanks for running it.

Should Muslim be divided into types?

I'm not sure what supernatural means for the more arcane simulation possibilities. I consider it likely that if we're simulated, it's from a universe with different physics.

I would rather see checkboxes for global catastrope, since it's hard to judge likelihood and I think the more interesting question is whether a person thinks any global catastrophe is likely.

Would it be worth having a text box for questions people would like to see on a future survey? I'm guessing that you wouldn't need to tabulate it,-- if you posted all the questions, I bet people here would identify the similar questions and sort them into topics.

Survey taken, all of it!

Thanks Yvain, for all the time and work you put every year into this. Can't wait to see the results!

I took the survey.

I completed the survey.

Second time taking the survey. I think a lot of my answers to the probability questions have changed in the last year — I think I've discovered more about myself and my beliefs since the first survey.

Took it.

Could you add a question asking how many of their donations people gave to non-x-risk EA charities? The EA movement would appreciate the information!

Surveyed. I liked the game.

If there are any naturalistic neopagans reading this, I'm curious how they answered the religion questions.

Answered them all as best I could :^)

I left the 'Singularity' question blank because it was I'll-defined - I treated it like a question specifically on the IE, but anyhu, my Priors on that are totally wacky. I expect it to happen, but I have no knowledge of the time at all really.

Took the survey.

Took the survey and cooperated.

Did the survey.

If possible, I'm interested in how unique the passwords were.

I took the survey - extra credit and everything!

I meant to skip some of the extra credit questions (the ones about the changeability of personality in particular), but wound up stuck answering one of them by software glitch on my computer (I couldn't uncheck it entirely, but at least tried to keep it from being noise).

Surveyed.

I took the survey. I didn't really know how to answer the "relationship" part since I'm not really poly right now, but have a number of "friends with benefits". So I answered it zero.

Taken the survey!

Suggestion: If you are upvoting people who took the survey, sort comments by "New" first so that late takers get their upvote.

Cool. Survey taken.

Survey complete.

Surveyed.

Minor nitpick: I think it is better to clarify definition of Europe in calibration question. Because if you go to Wikipedia to check which definition of Europe survey authors had in mind, you will immediately see Europe population on the same page.

I finished and had fun even if parts of it made me feel dumb (I never thought about that calibration question before and am pretty sure I got it wildly wrong). The monetary reward at the end looks interesting but even in the unlikely case that I won I might have too much trouble claiming any kind of prize right now...

I found myself geuinely confused by the question "You are a certain kind of person, and there's not much that can be done either way to really change that" - not by the general vagueness of the statement (which I assume is all part of the fun) but by a very specific issue, the word "you". Is it "you" as in me? Or "you" as in "one", i.e. a hypothetical person essentially referring to everyone? I interpreted it the first way then changed my mind after reading the subsequent questions which seemed to be more clearly using it the second way.

Surveyed. Amused at the final part. I hope we can look forward to more such fun in the future surveys!

I took the whole survey.

I took the survey.

I was within a factor of 2 on the Europe question, which is pretty good, I think.

As a general rule I "cooperate" on prisoner's dilemmas where the prize is of a trivial size, regardless of my opinion about the incentives and people involved. An interesting experiment might be to take people familiar with the prisoner's dilemma, flip the "cooperate" and "defect" incentives, and see if it makes a difference.

I have taken the survey, as I have done for the last two years! Free karma now?

Also, I have chosen to cooperaterather than defect was because even though the money technically would stay within the community, I am willing to pay a very small amount of money from EV in order to ensure that LW has a reputation for cooperation. I don't expect to lose more than a few cents worth of expected value, since I expect 1000+ people to do the survey.

Taken.

done

I've taken the survey.

Did the survey. Thanks, Yvain.

Survey taken. Nearly all questions answered, except for the Akrasia ones, since I haven't implemented many formal practices to fight akrasia.

Taken. Quite tickled by the prize question.

Survey taken, can't wait to see the results :-)

Taken!

Answered the entire survey (except questions for U.S. residents). I can't see why Newcomb's problem is a problem. Getting $1,001,000 by two-boxing is an outcome that just never happens, given Omega's perfect prediction abilities. You should one-box.

I worry that I harmed the results by mentioning that I have meditated for cognitive benefit reasons, without a way to note that it wasn't to deal with Akrasia. I wanted to answer truthfully, but at the same time the truthful answer was misleading.

Survey taken.

took the survey, enjoyed the PD

Taken.

Thanks for running these, I took it. :) Love the prize question.

...I'm way off on the population of Europe, as I expected.

Took the survey.

Survey taken. I defected, because I am normally a staunch advocate of cooperation and the stakes were low enough that it seemed like a fun opportunity to go against my usual inclinations. If I had read the comments first, I would likely have been convinced by some of the cooperation arguments advanced here.

Took the survey.

Survey taken

Took the survey. I definitely did have an IQ test when I was a kid, but I don't think anyone ever told me the results and if they did I sure don't remember it.

Also, as a scientist I counted my various research techniques as new methods that help make my beliefs more accurate, which means I put something like 2/day for trying them and 1/week for them working. In hindsight I'm guessing this interpretation is not what you meant, and that science in general might count as ONE method altogether.

Surveyed. Looking forward to the data and analysis, as per every year.

Survey complete! I answered ALL the questions. ^_^

Survey taken, as always. It sure was well prepared. It's worth starting it for the first option (ruining everything), and continuation is always just one click away...

Took it.

I definitely gave a finite probability for "God" if "God" defined as a super-intelligent being that created the universe. This is of course quite different from an intervening god who is interested in say, human affairs.

Took survey. Reminded me that I've never had an IQ test; is it worthwhile?

Took the survey. I was unusually confident of an incorrect number for the population of Europe because I looked it up recently, but remembered it wrong.

Guess I learned something, in that I should adjust down my confidence in recalled figures after a few weeks.

Entered.

I took the survey.

This is, incidentally, my first comment on LessWrong. I've lurked for years, and pretty much thought I'll probably stay as a lurker for good. For some reason taking the survey made me want to break my silence.So that's a bonus, I guess.

Another lurker that took the (full) survey and signed up...

I discovered LW last year through gwern.net

My biggest barrier to registration was the risk of more procrastination. So, thanks in advance for any encouragement!

I have been surveyed.

I definitely appreciate being asked to assign probabilities to things, if for no other reason than to make apparent to me how comfortable I am with doing so (Not very, as it turns out. Something to work on.)

taken.

Done! Phew

I should mention that I've taken the survey.

I have taken the survey. Thank you Yvain for running it.

Took the survey.

Surveyed! I noticed that someone said that they cooperated on the prisoner's dilemma problem, so I'll balance the odds and tell you all that I defected. Am curious to see if this will reflect in the karma people give this comment.

Also, I wouldn't do this, but you leave the option open of someone poisoning the well and taking the survey a bunch of times to improve their chance of winning the money. Are you screening for duplicate IP addresses?

I took it, and even did the bonus questions. Yay me!

Survey completed! Also, everyone, please cooperate!

Yvain, will you reveal who won the money? Whether they cooperated or defected?

Took the survey yesterday and forgot to comment here afterwards. I chose to cooperate since the small chance of winning a little money mattered less to me than the pleasure I would get though even such a minor show of benevolence. I also have never taken an IQ test, and am glad to see at least a fair number of other people in the comments who have not either.

I took the survey.

Took the survey. Prisoner's dilemma was a nice addition - would be interesting next year to have 'would you co-operate in a prisoner's dilemma situation' earlier in the survey before the for-stakes version, and compare how often people co-operate in the for-stakes then as compared to this year (also compare across who has taken a LW census before, since this one might bias that a bit).

Took the survey. Yvain, thanks for doing this.

Took. Definitely liked the shorter nature of this one.

Cooperated (I'm OK if the money goes to someone else. The amount is such that I'd ask that it get directly sent elsewhere, anyway.)

Got Europe wrong, but came close. (Not within 10%.)

I took the survey.

Took the survey.

Would probably not have defected a year ago, and it would not have been an easy decision for me at that time.

I appear to be getting better at estimating.

I think the IQ questions should probably just be dropped from future tests. A number of people get tested as kids and get crazy numbers and never get tested again (since there's no real point, and people are generally afraid of seeing that number dive, people who get a crazy number are probably less likely to retest than others). That's a charitable explanation for the results in last year's survey, which I didn't take.

I just took the survey. Thanks for spending time on making and evaluating it! A few questions/comments:

When you asked for time spent on less wrong, did you mean mean time or median time? I assumed mean, which resulted in a higher number since I occasionally come here to procrastinate and spend way too much time in a single sitting...

Am I interpreting the agathics question correctly in that a person dying, getting frozen cryonically, and then being unfrozen and living for a 1000 years would count?

Singularity question, which starts by asking when the Singularity (with capital letter S) will occur seems a bit leading to me. I'd expect that if you asked "Do you think a singularity will occur, and if so, when?" that people would give lower probabilities.

Taken to completion.

The Cryonics Status question really needs an "other" answer. There are more possible statuses one can be in than the ones given; in particular there are more possible "I'd want to, but..." answers.

I took the survey, and look forward to the results.

Took the survey.

Got the Europe question right, unless Yvain rounds -- I was off by 9.90%.

Survey (mostly) done. My answers about the future were based on this comment

http://lesswrong.com/lw/iyc/new_vs_businessasusual_future/a13w

and assigned equal probabilities to the five listed outcomes over the next few centuries

Survey taken. It seemed shorter than the previous one.

Having completed the survey, I took this as an opportunity to register an account.

I hereby take part in the tradition and note that the tradition makes the following moot for relatively low levels of karma. You may round off your karma score if you want to be less identifiable. If your karma score is 15000 or above, you may put 15000 if you want to be less identifiable.

Income question: needs to specify individual or household. You may also want to specify sources, such as whether to include government aid, only include income from wages, or separate boxes for different categories of income.

I have done professional survey design and am available to assist with reviewing the phrasing of questions for surveys, here or on other projects.

Took the survey. Cooperated.

For the Prize Question, you should use a random number generator and cooperate with probability 0.8. Why? Suppose that the fraction of survey-takers that cooperate is p. Then the value of the prize will be proportional to p and there will be p + 4(1 - p) raffle entries. The expected value of Cooperating is p/(p + 4(1-p)) and the expected value of Defecting is 4(1-p)/(p + 4(1-p)). In equilibrium, these must be the same: if one choice were more profitable than the other, then people would switch until this was no longer the case. Thus p = 4(1 - p) and thus p = 4/5.

Addendum 29 November: Actually, this is wrong; see ensuing discussion.

Well that was the most interesting survey I have taken in a long time - looking forward to seeing the results. I was a little concerned at the start, as it seemed like some sort of dating service so the comment 'hang in there - this bit is almost over' was well placed.

One survey (and bonus questions!) completed.

I took the survey.

Thank you for putting this together Some of the questions were unclear to me, for example: does living with family mean my parents or my spouse and children? (I guessed the former, but was unsure) For the politics question, there should be an option for not identifying with any label (or if that will lead to everyone not wanting to be labeled an option for disinterest in politics could be an alternative.) Should an atheist who practices a religion (e.g. buddhism) skip the question on religion? P(aliens), this question leaves out the time dimension which seems important to establishing a probability for aliens, e.g. if aliens live 5 bilion light years away, are we asked the probability that there were aliens there 5 billion years ago such that we could receive a message from them now, or whether there are aliens now, which we will not be able to discover for another few billion years. P(supernatural) its not clear what counts as a supernatural event, e.g. god is included even though most would not define god as an event nor as occurring since the beginning of the universe (since if god created the universe he is either nontemporal or prior to the universe) for the CFAR questions I wasn't sure what qualified as a " plausible-seeming technique or approach for being more rational / more productive / happier / having better social relationships / having more accurate beliefs / etc." does it have to be a brand new technique, or even a modification of one already known. Is it askeing about generic techniques or even domain specific ones? Also, most techniques I try are not ones I hear about, but rather ones I come up with on my own, I dont know if others here are similar. Also all of the change questions seemed poorly defined and unclear.

That was shorter than I expected. I peevishly admit to having to look up a few things I should have known.

Taken.

I took the survey!

I took the survey.

Surveyed.

No, I don't read instructions and am going to ruin the survey results for everyone.

snicker

Also, wow, the population of Europe is wildly lower than I thought it was, it's outside my 90% range...

Random math: one way of deciding whether or not to cooperate in the reward question is plot reward versus percentage-UDT-users in the LW community (under the assumption that everyone in that set will do the same thing you do, and everyone else splits 50-50). If that percentage is larger than about 65% (which I'm 70% sure it is), cooperating is superior to defection, but defection actually has the higher maximum expected value - if the entire community chooses randomly, anyway.

...

blink blink

Aw, darn it, I should've flipped a coin...

Edit: No, wait, nevermind, that would halve my expected reward.

I did the survey, mostly.

I took the survey, my first, and answered all the questions and extra credit. I did not defect on the monetary reward.

I predict my survey will show me as highly confused. :-)

Surveyed, including bonus. Only just remembered to comment.

I see the logic, but did think that the Prisoner's Dilemma question was overly complicated - possibly leading to some participants not making the connection to their beliefs about How To Behave In Prisoner's Dilemmas (well, I see now from below that it led to at least one.)

I have no idea if this is a good or bad thing.

I have taken the survey, thanks a lot Yvain!

I wouldn't have minded if it was shorter.

One minor nitpick for next time: there were a couple questions where the title was the opposite of what the question was about: P(Global catastrophic risk) was actually about P(no global catastrophic risk), and Defect calibrate were about how many people cooperated.

I suspect a couple people might not read the questions and answer the opposite of what they meant.

Took the survey.

A few observations:

• Family's religious background should probably include an 'Athiest/Agnostic' answer, rather than just lumping in with 'Other'. At the very least, it would be interesting to see what kinds of patterns the 'Other' box breaks down into.

• I computed P(Supernatural) as dependent on P(Simulation), based on my understanding of the two concepts. Would anyone be interested in a Discussion page on whether those probabilities can be logically separated?

Surveyed!

Thanks for putting this together.

Perceived flaws:

Percentages are probably not the best way to elicit well-calibrated guesses about very probable or very improbable events. (The difference between 1/1,000 and 1/1,000,000 is a lot bigger in reality than it looks, when you put them both between 0 and 1 on a scale of 0 to 100.)

Computing P(Many Worlds) requires assuming that the phrase "Many Worlds" refers to a specific set of concrete predictions about the nature universe, which admit the possibility of truth or falsity. I tend to disagree with that presumption.

P(Anti-Agathics) seems, from the name, not to be intended to include cryonics, but does seem to include it in the actual text. I predict paradoxical answers in which people give P(Cryonics) > P(Anti-Agathics), even though cryonics is a way of allowing a person alive today to reach the age of 1000 years.

P(Simulation) may or may not actually be a well-defined question. If, as some people are surely visualizing while answering it, there are aliens somewhere hovering over a computer terminal with us running on it, certainly the answer is 'yes'. Whatever the reality, it seems likely to be a lot stranger than that. Eliezer's own "Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover" describes a scenario (admittedly fanciful) in which one would be hard pressed to answer the "simulation" question with a simple yes or no.

Took it. It's a good survey with a lot of interesting questions.

I took the survey, and wanted it to be longer.

Done. There were a few questions that were iffy, but overall I think this year's survey was a significant improvement from previous versions. Thanks Yvain for doing this.

I'm seconding the request for next year to include a Monogamish option. I'm in a basically monogamous relationship, but we both sometimes sleep with friends.

(also I took the survey)

Ok, went and took the survey.

And I only lied about one question!

I have taken the survey. Whoot!

Taken and look forward to seeing the results. Thanks for putting this together.

Took the survey, including all questions. Hope it is not discarded for contradictory elements.

I took the survey.

The answer to how many minutes I spend here is a bit lower than you might expect, in that my robots scan the RSS feeds and send me interesting stuff so basically it's almost zero, unless you count my robots time somehow.

I completed the survey & had to look up the normative ethics choices (again). Also cisgender. I cooperated with the prisoner's dilemma puzzle & estimated that a majority of respondents would also do so, given the modest prize amount.

Also, based on my estimate of a year in Newton's life in last year's survey, I widened my confidence intervals.

Took the survey. Cooperated because most puzzles which explicitly use the words "cooperate" and "defect" have been created in such a way as to make cooperation the better choice.

(Considering my fairly low chances of winning, a deep analysis would have had only recreational value, and there were other fun things to do.)

Completed survey.

I took the census. My answers for MWI and Ailens were conditional on ¬Simulation, since if we are in a simulation where MWI doesn't hold, the simulation is probably intended to provide information about a universe in which MWI does hold.

I'm a European, and the thought that geographical Europe might be meant didn't even occur to me,since in most of my daily interactions (media consumed, small talk, etc.), "Europe" is used interchangeably with "European Union". Teaches me to read such survey questions more thoroughly.

I want to congratulate you on how well you integrated the many suggestions you got, I see many improvements compared to the 2012 (for example, the introductory text convinced me to take the survey right away, when I was one of those who put it off last year).

Done. Loved the prisoner's dilemma.

I took the survey.

Survey'd!

Surveyed! And for the first time, too. This survey was pretty interesting and definitely not what I expected

Yay, survey taken!

I loved the Prisoner's Dilemma at the end, I wonder how that will turn out?

Did all of it. Monetary reward questions made me laugh.

I did it!

Done, all questions answered. Yvain, well done on clear questions and good design.

Took the survey. Very interesting questions overall, especially the site-wide Prisoner's Dilemma.

I'd like to note that I was very confused by the (vague and similar) CFAR questions regarding the possibility of people changing, but I'm assuming that was intentional and look forward to an explanation.

Mission complete.

Boomshanked! (aka done)

Excited to see the results.

Took the survey, and continued to finally make an account. Some questions were ambiguous though (as some other people partially pointed out). I had most problems with:

• Having more children. Over which period of time? As an adolescent I'm not really keen on having children just yet, but I might be in 15 or 20 years.
• Time on LW: I've recently finished reading almost all posts on LW, which meant I spent several hours a day on LW. But now that I have finished reading all those I am only reading new posts, which takes no more than 5-10 minutes a day on average. So there is a large difference between a best estimate of the amount of time I spent on LW any previous day and the best estimate of the time I will spend tomorrow. Which of these is the average day?
• Hear about: I had problems interpreting the question. Taking the wording literally the category specified is extremely broad, including even casual comments by colleagues along the lines of: 'Try checking the batteries more frequently.' (which is a technique to improve your productivity, provided batteries are important in your line of work).
• Akrasia: meditation. I've meditated after sporting frequently in the past, which had nothing to do with akrasia. I decided not to mention the meditation (contrary to Keller, whose comment I only noticed after filling in the survey).

Surveyed, including bonus.

I really liked the monetary reward prisoners dillema. I am really curious how this turns out. Given the demographic here, I would predict ~ 85% cooperate.

The free text options were rendered in german (Sonstige). Was that a bug or does it serve some hidden purpose?

Took it. Comments:

• Hopefully you have a way to filter out accidental duplicates (i.e. a hidden random ID field or some such), because I submitted the form by accident several times while filling it out. (I was doing it from my phone, and basically any slightly missed touch on the UI resulted in accidental submission).

• Multiple choice questions should always have a "none" option of some kind, because once you select a radio button option there's no way to deselect it. Most of them did but not all.

• I answered "God" with a significant probability because the way the definitions is phrased, I would say it includes whoever is running the simulation if the simulation hypothesis is true. I'm sure many people interpreted it differently. I'd suggest making this distinction explicit one way or the other next time.

Taken. Thanks for putting in the effort to do the surveys. I noticed that the question on IQ calibration asked about "the probability that the IQ you gave earlier in the survey is greater than the IQ of over 50% of survey respondents", and I wondered if you meant to ask instead about (the probability that the IQ given earlier is greater than the reported IQ of over 50% of survey respondents). I recall that people tended to report absurdly high IQs in earlier surveys.

Did the survey.

Results: I'm better at estimating continental populations than I had thought; I am frustrated by single-option questions in many cases (e.g. domain of study, nothing for significantly-reduced-meat-intake-but-not-strict-vegetarian, interdependent causes of global catastrophe) and questions that are too huge to be well-formulated, let alone reasonably answer (supernatural/simulation/God).

Also the question about aliens made me unaccountably sad: even if I retroactively adjust my estimates of intelligent alien life upwards (which I would never do), I have to face the incredibly low probability that they're in the Milky way.

Huh, I put svir uhaqerq zvyyvba sbe Rhebcr'f cbchyngvba. Turns out I was thinking of the Rhebcrna Havba, (svir uhaqerq naq frira zvyyvba) engure guna Rhebcr vgfrys, which is substantially higher.

Several of these questions are poorly phrased. For instance, the supernatural and god questions, as phrased, imply that the god chance should be less than the chance of supernatural anything existing. However, I think (and would like to be able to express) that there is a very small (0), chance of ghosts or wizards, but only a small (1) chance of there being some sort of intelligent being which created the universe-for instance, the simulation hypothesis, which I would consider a subset of the god hypothesis.

I took it. I was surprised how far I was off with Europe.

I already commented on other people's comments and got Karma while not stating that I took it. Am I still supposed to just say "I took it" and get more Karma without commenting anything more of value? Well, I took it. All of it. And I chose to "cooperate" because it seemed more ethical. 30$-60$ isn't enough to arouse my greed anyway.

Oh, btw. Hi everybody, I'm new here even though I created this account years ago when I was lurking. I knew I'd come back.

Fun as always. Looking back at my answers, I think I'm profoundly irrational, but getting more aware of it. Oh well.

Took the survey, and finally registered after lurking for 6 months.

I liked the defect/cooperate question. I defected because it was the rational way to try to 'win' the contest. However, if one had a different goal such as "make Less Wrong look cooperative" rather than "win this contest", then cooperating would be the rational choice. I suppose that if I win, I'll use the money to make my first donation to CFAR and/or MIRI.

Now that I have finished it, I wish I had taken more time on a couple of the questions. I answered the Newcomb's Box problem the opposite of my intent, because I mixed up what 2-box and 1-box mean in the problem (been years since I thought about that problem). I would 1-box, but I answered 2-box in the survey because I misremembered how the problem worked.

Well I took this year's survey, answering as many questions which I felt comfortable answering (nice one on the last question).

I'm confused by the CFAR questions, in particular the last four. Are they using you as 'the person filling out this survey' or the general you as in a person? "You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are" sounds like the general you. "You are a certain kind of person, and there's not much that can be done either way to really change that" sounds like the specific you.

Help?

I tend to dismiss Steven Landsburg's critique of the standard interpretation of experiments along the lines of the Ultimatum Game, since nobody really thinks it through like him. But I actually did think about it when taking this survey (which is not the same as saying it affected my response).

I took the survey, after having found out about the site a mere 15 minutes prior. As you might imagine this is my first comment.

Census'd! And upvoted! But an upvote isn't really quite strong enough to demonstrate my appreciation for this work. Thank you.

Did the whole thing. Cheers to all involved. :)

I made an account after taking this survey.

I wanted an ADBOC answer to the HBD question. Lacking that, I answered the question about the belief (regardless of whether I endorse policies that people with the same belief typically endorse -- like I did for the AGW question), but given that (unlike the AGW question) it was in the politics section and that it mentioned a movement, I felt a bit uncomfortable doing that. Also, I interpreted "we" in the Great Stagnation question as "American", given that that's what the cited Wikipedia article says.

In the income question I only counted my PhD scholarship after taxes, and not the "reimbursement" of travel expenses (which often exceed the amount I actually spend while travelling) nor the private tutoring I've very occasionally done (I kind-of consider the money a gift in exchange of a favour).

I rounded my top-level contributions to Main and Discussion down to zero.

Survey completed. I cooperated without thinking about it much. I believed that TDT-like reasoning would probably lead a significant number of others to cooperate too, and I felt I should support the group.

Always lurking, never commenting, but I'm happy to participate in the survey since the results are interesting to read.

Regarding the preferred relationship status I'm not sure that combining uncertain with no preference was ideal. I have no strong preferences on that issue and I'm very certain of that.

Also, the religion question was difficult, in that I had to choose between "atheist but spiritual" and "atheist and not spiritual"- I'm an atheist but go to religious services regularly. But it isn't out of anything "spiritual" which is at best a hideously ill-defined term, but rather out of emotional and communal attachment.

The Singularity question is also broad, since there are so many different meanings. I interpreted it as about an intelligence explosion (partially since I consider the others to be much less likely).

Overall, this version was well-done. Thanks for putting in the effort, and thanks for everyone who helped contribute questions.

Survey taken. I'm particularly interested in what the ratio between an individual's estimate of alien life in the milky way vs observable universe is (not just the individual averages)

Answered the survey, including the bonus questions. Took me 32 min altogether. Comments:

How many people are aware of their IQs? I'm from Germany and have never taken an IQ test. Is knowing about one's IQ common enough in the US that not making that question a bonus question made sense?

There were quite a few questions (e.g. estimate weekly internet consumption, estimate how often you read about ideas for self-improvement) which felt pointless - how could you possibly get accurate estimates from people, given how ambiguous these questions were, and how difficult these estimates are?

The money question: After I failed to come up with a unique passphrase, I chose cooperate and left the rest blank. This kind of stuff tempts my perfectionism, and that's a lose-lose situation for me.

Finally had time to take the survey. I missed the on-line IQ test from the previous survey. Since I haven't taken any professional IQ-test I had to leave the question blank.

I defected, and then afterwards I realized that the proportion of people cooperating could likely have a causal effect on future in-group cooperativeness among LWers. Dammit, I should have thought of that earlier.

Some notes on my answers:

• I put 0 for supernatural, God, and religion, not because I think the answer is literally zero but because I didn't think Yvain wanted us answering using exponential notation.
• Some of the other probability estimating questions deeply confused me, and I'm pretty sure I didn't base my answer on any kind of consistent assumptions. Like I based my cryonics answer on the assumption that uploading counts without even really thinking about it, but then assigned a lower probability to anti-agathics by assuming it required keeping the original meat alive. Also I'm really confused by the simultation hypothesis debate.

This has been the most fun, satisfying survey I've ever been part of :) Thanks for posting this. Can't wait to see the results!

One question I'd find interesting is closely related to the probability of life in the universe. Namely, what are the chances that a randomly sampled spacefaring lifeform would have an intelligence similar enough to ours for us to be able to communicate meaningfully, both in its "ways" and in general level of smarts, if we were to meet.

Given that I enjoyed taking part in this, may I suggest that more frequent and in-depth surveys on specialized topics might be worth doing?

Took the full survey again. I am kind of sad that we didn't get some of last years questions which resulted in awesome answers such as the 'describe lesswrong in a sentence' one.

Surveyed; hope to receive karma per most ancient tradition.

I think your relationship preference question conflates very different clusters. You should differentiate between the kind of polyamory which is trendy in rationalist communities these days, the kind where a wealthy/high-status man is allowed to keep more than one wife (or a wife and couple of mistresses), the kind of serial monogamy which is the default relationship model of the West and Western-influenced countries today (have lots of sexual long-term boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, marry one of these, divorce, repeat), arranged marriages in cultures in which divorce is impossible or virtually impossible, and perhaps some other empirical clusters on relationship-space which I am forgetting about.

After several years of answering the probability questions I finally grew tired of them and left them blank. You would have been more likely to get a response from me if you had used radio buttons like with the political questions (0-25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, 75-100%, or something like that).

Also, next year I would like to see more hypothetical questions. Both standard ones like the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Trolley Problem, etc... and additionally any novel ones you can think of that will reveal interesting attitudes in their responses (for example, that time you asked a cryonics question disguised as an angel reincarnation question).

Finally (and this has been driving me nuts for a couple of years), I keep answering that I was referred to LessWrong by a certain website (that is not a blog). But your referral question has no option for "website", so I write-in the name in "other". Except that when you do the analysis, you apparently lump this answer under the "blog" category, so presumably you wanted me to answer "blog" when I took the survey. But not all websites are blogs (even if all blogs are websites)! Is there any way you can reword that question?

I thought Europe was about a third the size it actually is, whee! On the bright side, at least I didn't claim to be confident about that.

On the god/simulation questions, I answered them using the theory that they're the same thing, but in retrospect perhaps that isn't quite what you had in mind?

Amusingly, google chrome autofill still remembered my answers from last year. This made filling the demographic part a bit faster, and allowed a little game: after giving a probability estimation I could check my answer from a year ago.

I had to skip "Professional IQ test" questions, having never taken one. What's a cost-effective way to get this done?

Apparently I don't participate in the community. I only comment once a year, to report that I took the survey.

Took the survey. Got the Europe question right, although if you believe my confidence level (25%), pretty much by sheer luck.

I'm disappointed to see that most of my suggestions weren't used.

Took the survey.

I took the survey.

I took the survey (answered nearly everything).

I have taken the survey!

Taken.

I defected. If I win I'll donate it all to GiveWell's top-rated charity--so the rest of you defectors have stolen statistical cash from the world's poorest! (Unless you were planning to do the same thing.)

Submitted!

I really liked the questions last year related to if you had $x, how happy would you be? I know I missed the 1 week comment period for this survey, but Yvain, could you put those questions in again next year??

cheers

I took the survey.

I, like many others, was very amused at the structure of the MONETARY AWARD.

I'm not sure it was an advisable move, though. There's an ongoing argument about the effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation. But few argue that incentives don't tend to incentivise the behaviour they reward, rather than the behaviour the rewarder would like to incentivise. In this instance, the structure of the reward appears to incentivise multiple submissions, which I'm pretty sure is not something we want to happen more.

In some contexts you could rely on most of the participants not understanding how to 'game' a reward system. Here, not so much, particularly since we'd expect the participants to know more game theory than a random sample of the population, and the survey even cues such participants to think about game theory just before they submit their response. Similarly, the expectation value of gaming the system is so low that one might hope people wouldn't bother - but again, this audience is likely to have a very high proportion of people who like playing games to win in ways that exercise their intelligence, regardless of monetary reward.

So I predict there will be substantially more multiple submissions this time compared to years with no monetary reward.

I'm not sure how to robustly detect this, though: all the simple techniques I know of are thwarted by using a Google Form. If the prediction is true, we'd expect more submissions this year than last year - but that's overdetermined since the survey will be open for longer and we also expect the community to have grown. The number of responses being down would be evidence against the prediction. A lot of duplicate or near-duplicate responses aren't necessarily diagnostic, though a significant increase compared to previous years would be pretty good evidence. The presence of many near-blank entries with very little but the passphrase filled in would also be very good evidence in favour of the prediction.

(I used thinking about this as a way of distracting myself from thinking what the optimal questionnaire-stuffing C/D strategy would be, because I know that if I worked that out I would find it hard to resist implementing it. Now I think about it, this technique - think gamekeeper before you turn poacher - has saved me from all sorts of trouble over my lifespan.)

I enjoyed taking this survey. Thanks!

I can't wait to see the results and play with the data, if that becomes possible.

Took the survey. I was pretty confident about my answer for Europe because I thought I remembered the number, but it turns out I was wayyy off. So I looked it up and yep, sure enough, the number I was remembering was for the EU, not Europe as a whole. So, uh, whoops.

I took the survey a few days ago and ran into trouble trying to answer the IQ test-related questions (IQ/SAT/ACT/etc.) because I would have to dig around for the answers to those questions and that required more effort than I wanted to spend on a survey.

The instructions for entering percents was also a bit confusing.

Other than that, the survey was well designed. I really appreciated how clear you were about where it was OK to stop and that it was fine to leave things blank.

Done. I hate to get karma without posting something insightful, so here's a song about how we didn't land on the moon.

I noticed a bunch of people saying that they will donate the money if they win. I find that a surprisingly irrational sentiment for lesswrong. Unless I am missing something, it seems people are ignoring the principle of the fungibility of money. It seems like the more rational thing to do would be to commit to donating 60$ whether or not you win. (If your current wealth level is a factor in your decision, such that you will only donate with the higher wealth level with the prize, then this can be modified to donating whether or not you win if you receive a windfall of 60$ from any source (your grandmother gives a generous birthday present, your coworker takes you out to lunch every day this week, you find money in the street, you get a surprisingly large bonus at work, your stocks increase more then expected etc))

I just realized I forgot a very important question I really want to know the answer to!

"What is your 90% confidence interval for the percent of people you expect to answer 'cooperate' on the prize question?"

I've added this into the survey so that people who take it after this moment can answer. If you've taken the survey already, feel free to record your guess below (if you haven't taken the survey, don't read responses to this comment)

I was confused by what was meant with supernatural. I mean if you believe you live in a simulation of course things that are not constrained by the physical laws of our universe might occasionally show up in it. Preferred the ontologically basic mental entity formulation of previous polls.

What is the probability that there is a god, defined as a supernatural intelligent entity who created the universe?

I've included our potential simulators in this.

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

I've included religions such as venturist.

What is the probability that at least one person living at this moment will reach an age of one thousand years, conditional on no global catastrophe destroying civilization in that time?

I've put the answer includying and excludying the use of cryonics.

I estimate that 90% of people will have deffect.

I wouldn't mind if my survey wasn't anonymous.

I defected, because I'm indifferent to whether the prize-giver or prize-winner has 60 * X dollars, unless the prize-winner is me.

I took the survey.

Taken. Now self-consciously thinking up some witty comment, because I am in more of an introvert state right now.

I don't answer survey questions that ask about race, but if you met me you'd think of me as white male.

I'm more strongly libertarian (but less party affiliated) than the survey allowed me to express.

I have reasonably strong views about morality, but had to look up the terms "Deontology", "Consequentialism", and "Value Ethics" in order to decide that of these "consequentialism" probably matches my views better than the others.

Probabilities: 50,30,20,5,0,0,0,10,2,1,20,95.

On "What is the probability that significant global warming is occurring or will soon occur, and is primarily caused by human actions?", I had to parse several words very carefully, and ended up deciding to read "significant" as "measureable" rather than "consequential". For consequential, I would have given a smaller value.

I answered all the way to the end of the super bonus questions, and cooperated on the prize question.

Took survey. Now realize that given the first phrase of my passphrase the second word is easily determined. To enable me to claim the prize anyway should I win it: it is powdery and turns red and black in reaction to potassium hydroxide.

Nice job on the survey. I loved the cooperate/defect problem, with calibration questions.

I defected, since a quick expected value calculation makes it the overwhelmingly obvious choice (assuming no communcation between players, which I am explicitly violating right now). Judging from comments, it looks like my calibration lower bound is going to be way off.

Completed survey.

Feedback: I feel like it would be valuable to disambiguate between "I'm planning to have more children in <2years" from "I'd like to someday have kids".

"am I a student?" and "how do I make money?" like separate questions to me. Like student is sort of an occupation, but it's not a way to earn money. I am both a student and self-employed, and about 6 months of the year I do internships = for-profit work.

It would be awesome if Time of LW included both a mean and median time or something, also perhaps a total time spent on it. For me it varies hugely, and I really had no idea what to put. Some weeks I spend many hours on it, other weeks 0.

Done the survey. Nice touch at the end.

I took the survey, was fun!

I felt so rebel giving passwords right above Google's message:

Never submit passwords through Google Forms

All the extra credit questions!

Yes I did the survey. PW: one two.

Firstly I need to also say that giving probabilities to things that are either very low or very unknown is not very helpful. For example, aliens etc I don't know and as others have pointed out, God or simulation master, are they the same thing? Also giving the probability to us being Boltzmann brains or something very weird like that is undefined as it involves summing over the multi-verse which is un-countably infinite etc. For the simulation hypothesis I think we simply cant give a sensible number.

On a more general note, for friendly AI/unfriendly AI I think more attention should be on the social and human aspect. I don't see what maths proofs have to offer here. We already know you can potentially get bad AI because if you get an evil person say then give them a brain upload, self modifying powers etc, then they quite possibly will self modify to make themselves even more evil and stronger, turn off their conscience etc. What the boundaries of this are we don't know and need actual experiments to find out. Also how one person behaves and a society of self modifiers could quite possibly be a very different matter. Questions like do a large range of people with different values converge or diverge when given these powers is what we want to know.

Answered all questions, I hope I helped!

I'm very curious to see how the monetary reward works out.

What about being the ultimate defector and submitting multiple times to increase your chances of winning (and screwing up the survey results as a side effect)?

Did that.

Re. relationships: The only people I've heard use "polyamorous" are referring to committed, marriage-like relationships involving more than two adults. There ought to be a category for those of us who don't want exclusivity with any number.

I've left most of the probability questions blank, because I don't think it is meaningfully possible to assign numbers to events I have little or no quantitative information about. For instance, I'll try P(Aliens) when we've looked at several thousand planets closely enough to be reasonably sure of answers about them.

In addition, I don't think some of the questions can have meaningful answers. For example, the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, if true, would have no testable (falsifiable) effect on the observable universe, and therefore I consider the question to be objectively meaningless. The same goes for P(Simulation), and probably P(God).

P(religion) also suffers from vagueness: what conditions would satisfy it? Not only are some religions vaguely defined, but there are many belief systems that are arguably relgions or not religions. Buddhism? Communism? Atheism?

The singularity is vague, too. (And as I usually hear it described, I would see it as a catastrophe if it happened. The SF story "With Folded Hands" explains why.)

Extra credit items:

Great Stagnation -- I believe that the rich world's economy IS in a great stagnation that has lasted for most of a century, but NOT for the reasons Cowen and Thiel suggest. The stagnation is because of "progressive" politics, especially both the welfare state and overregulation/nanny-statism, which destroy most people's opportunities to innovate and profit by it. This is not a trivial matter, but a problem quite comparable to those listed in the "catastrophe" section, and one which may very well prevent a solution to a real catastrophe if we become headed for one. (Both parties' constant practice of campaigning-by-inventing-a-new-phony-emergency-every-month makes the problem worse, too: most rational people now dismiss any cry of alarm as the boy who cried wolf. Certainly the environmental movement, including its best known "scientists", have discredited themselves this way.) This is why the struggle for liberty is so critical.

Delurked and taken (finally); this is my first comment. I'd been wanting to take this survey for a while, but offline matters kept me away until now. At least I got in a good stab at most of the extra credit questions.

I second the following suggestions:

• Clarify the income question on tax status (pre-tax / post-tax / pre-some taxes and post-others) and individual vs. household. I mention the third tax possibility here because some taxes are deducted by the employer, so employees don't see that money in their paychecks. If the question intended is along the lines of "Other than tax refunds, how much money do you / your household receive (that you can use in a budget and could theoretically spend, although some of it may be set aside for further taxes) in a year?", then this matters.
• Add a "None" option to the mental illness question to distinguish between "none" and "didn't answer". Checkboxes would be nice, since mental illnesses can interact with each other, but Yvain has stated that he can't put them in the survey. I will mention this anyway in case checkboxes become viable for future versions of the survey.

I will also make a further suggestion, although I understand that it may be too onerous to implement: have an option to make only part of one's responses private. I mention this because I started by choosing the "public but anonymous" option, but switched to "private" once I got to the point that all my responses together could probably identify me out of the dataset if someone was moderately determined to do so and knew a few specific facts about me.

In my case, making a single extra credit section private (showing it as if I hadn't answered in the public dataset) would have been enough for me to be comfortable putting the remaining responses in the public dataset. That section has data that I don't mind giving Yvain and CFAR, but don't want to leave readily available to potential future agents trying to identify my responses in the dataset. I would prefer to make only the single section private, but I did not have that option available. I am also curious if other people are in the same boat.

Should I win, I precommit to spending the prize on myself, as per Yvain's stated wishes for the prize.

Took the full survey (ouch, my calibration is terrible, especially if I misunderstand the question...). I find it a bit frustrating that it asks only about the SAT and ACT (which I haven't taken), and not, for example, the GRE. Otherwise it was really fun without taking very long, thanks Yvain!

Took the survey. I assume from the phrasing that 'country' means where I'm "from" rather than where I currently reside (there is more room for uncertainty about the former than about the latter). Might be interesting to put both questions.

Survey taken!

I tried it a few days ago and it didn't submit as far as I can tell - in between I looked up the answer to the calibration question, but I answered as I did originally (NAILED IT anyway).

Survey gripe: I answered "left-handed" for the handedness question, but I only really write with my left hand, and do everything else with my right. My left hand might be a little more dextrous but my right is definitely stronger. As such I'd see myself as cross-dominant rather than ambidextrous; is this something that could be included on future surveys or is it not useful for the kind of data you're collecting?

Finally did it. I'd like exactly 7 karma please.

For the questions about the many worlds hypothesis, and whether we are living in a simulation, it seems to me that there is no way to know the truth, because the world would look just the same, but it may sometimes be useful to think as if they were true? Or am I just missing something fundamental?

I enjoyed reading about the MONETARY REWARD.

Took the survey.

I chose to defect. Defecting maximizes the expected payoff for me personally, and the expected overall payoff isn't affected by my decision since Yvain just keeps whatever money isn't claimed.

An interesting variant would have been for Yvain to throw away whatever money was lost due to defections, or donate it to some organization most don't like. In that case I would probably have cooperated.

I've never been IQ tested.

Done, including most bonus questions. Missed the IQ ones since I've never had that test, and defected before reading the comment saying the money was coming from someone's pocket rather than lesswrong (order of preference for where money is: my pocket>lesswrong>random lesswrong survey completer). Though I'd probably still defect knowing it's coming from Yvain.. ideally next time you could find a source of prize money who everyone wants to take money from?

I took the survey. Very much awaiting the results, although the last question feels like Tragedy of the Commons rather than pure prisoner's dilemma.

I took the survey.

I chose to Defect on the monetary reward prize question. Why?

• I realized that the prize money is probably contributed by Yvain. And if $60-or-less were to be distributed between a random Less Wrong member and Yvain, I would rather as much of it as possible go to Yvain. This is because I know Yvain is smart and writes interesting posts, so the money could help him to contribute something to the world that another could not. Answering Defect lowers the amount of prize money, making Yvain keep more of it.
• Also, I would rather I have the $60-or-less than anyone other Less Wrong member, and answering Defect gets me a bigger chance of that happening.

Edit: pgbh had the same reasoning.

I took the survey. In a bit sad that there are less questions than last year, but in total I like it.

Taken the survey, for the second time. Doesn't feel like a year...

I'm a bit curious about the Prisoners' Dilemma question. I co-operated, as my rationale was "Well, I'm unlikely to win anyway, and I don't really want to spoil the prize for whoever does win, so C". Not sure if that counts as a true PD...

I chose defect, and plan on donating the money to MIRI if I win.

I would also like to hereby precommit to (assuming a repeat of the monetary award next year), donating the money to x-risk reduction next year if I win, and also chosing "cooperate" if a large number of people make a similar precommitment and "defect" otherwise.

I took the survey! It was certainly the most interesting online information-gathering survey I've ever taken, mostly because of the end- in retrospect, not sure what I expected.

I took the survey; apparently I get karma for that? :-)

I took the survey. Been lurking for about two years sans account.

I guess this makes me part of the borganism now.

Survey taken. I hope I didn't break it - I am a committed atheist, but also an active member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and I indicated that in spite of the explicit request for atheists not to answer the denomination question. (Atheist UUs are very common, and people on the "agnostic or less religious" side of the spectrum probably make up around 40% of the UU congregations I'm familiar with.)

Took the survey. Feels good to be posting a comment again, think it's potentially a way to get people to overcome the tendency to just lurk.

I've completed the survey

Finally registered, hereby delurked, and completed the survey with over 24 hours to spare! Looking forward to the results. Thanks for doing this.

I understand how tricky putting together a good survey can be, never mind having to make it play well on Google Forms. Probably the most vexing item for me was the Akrasia:Illness one. Because of the high levels of comorbidity among the choices, I can't imagine I was the only one wondering how to "select the most important".

I still have a long way to go in absorbing even a surface level of everything here, and relish the upcoming year for its potential to illuminate and enlighten. Some of the questions have already sent me off on further explorations.

Oh, also, igtheism/ignosticism would have been a nice choice to have (I've only recently discovered the terms, and found they matched pleasantly with my views on the subject).

Did it.

Participated!

Took the survey. I just missed last year's, so I was glad to get to participate this year.

One other comment on the survey: I totally surprised my self by describing my political views as "socialist," once I saw "socialist" defined as "for example Scandanavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth." I'm not actually very clear on the details of how Scandanavian countries differ from, say, Britain, France, or Germany, but insofar as I'm inclined to support things like guaranteed basic income the shoe seems to fit. I wonder if the wording will result in more socialists on this year's survey.

Possible Survey Spoiler. You may want to take the survey before reading this.

I'm not sure if monetary prize question was intended to serve as a reimagining of the prisoner's dilemma, but that seems to be the way people are interpreting it in these comments. I would like to point out that the cooperate/defect question is fundamentally different from the original Prisoner's Dilemma because the total amount of prison time in the original scenario actually is dependent on your cooperation or defection. In this game, the total amount of money is unchanged by our actions.

Defecting reassigns more money to yourself and Yvain (or whoever is paying for the prize.) Cooperating assigns more money to other survey takers. I don't really see why anyone should prefer giving money to random other survey takers rather than themselves or Yvain.

In future surveys, this could be corrected for (assuming this is intended to serve as a prisoner's dilemma) by promising to burn the portion of the prize money that is defected away.

Not taken, and will not be taken as long as it demands that I log in with Google (or Facebook, or anything else other than maybe a local Less Wrong account).

I did it! I place my faith in you people! COOPERATE

Took the survey and reminded my fellow Russians to participate too.

Survey taken!

Answered all questions.

-Survey caused me to realize that my mental model of Europe as EU does not line up with the world's model of Europe as geographical area. Good thing to learn.

-I think my answers to the CFAR questions are contradictory

-Would have liked more granularity in the vegetarianism question

Thanks very much to Yvain for running this

I've taken the survey.

The Prisoner's Dilemma question didn't do it for me. What will happen to the remainder of the $60? Will it be burned? Also I make enough money that winning $30 probably isn't worth the hassle and security risk to transfer it into my bank account.

EDIT Wow, that came out negative! Thank you Yvain for organizing this survey! Depriving money from you does not seem like an altruistic option.

Done!

Yvain, thanks for taking the time to organise this! You're awesome! :-)

Survey taken! Can't wait to see the results.

Took the survey. This survey made me remember that I've never actually done a proper IQ test. I should consider rectifying that situation. Other than that, I was surprised that your extensive "Complex Affiliation" political section did not include "Liberal". Modern Liberalism is a distinct political tradition that I would argue ought to be on such an extensive list, especially given that it's on the much shorter earlier list of political affiliations. :V

Also, though I don't yet "self-identify" with Effective Altruism, I do sympathize with their goals and ideals, and am mulling over the idea of joining the movement.

Aside from that, good work coming up with some quite clever questions. No doubt the results should make interesting fodder for thought.

Though one question, what happens if the first word of the two word passphrase is the same as someone else's? Am I fair to assume that anyone who was unable to come up with an original enough first word is effectively disqualified from winning the prize, or is the prize going to be shared among those who chose the same first word?

Edit: I just realized that technically what could happen with the two word passphrase is that even if two or more people had the same first word, chances are they would have different second words and so even if multiple people thought they had won after the first word was revealed, only the one with the correct second word would actually win. Which would suck for the others with that first word who didn't win, as they'd be given such hope and then have those hopes dashed. XD

Answered every question to which I had an answer. I haven't spent much time on Less Wrong recently, but it's really pretty remarkable how just answering Less Wrong surveys causes me to think more seriously than just about anything else I come across in any given week.

I took the survey, then tried to sign up for Less Wrong.

Only to discover that I already had an account. So my answers to the questions of whether I had an account and how many karma points I had were wrong!

I just wanted to say - firstly, I'm surprised that "Liberal" is given as an option on the short political affiliation question, but not on the longer one! I wrote it in.

Secondly, I STRONGLY object to the UK Labour Party being given an example of a liberal party! I imagine that Americans would have the same reaction to the Republican party being given as an example of a liberal party (they freed the slaves, didn't they?). To my mind, the Labour Party of the 21st Century is both illiberal and right-wing.

In the Wikipedia article about Europe, the figure for the population in the infobox is slightly different from that in the main text of the lead section.

I accidentally submitted the survey before finishing it, so I'm taking it again. So, when you see two very similar responses except the second contains a few more answers than the first, please ignore the first.

Do we make suggestions here or wait for another post?

A few friends are Anglo-Catholic (ie. members of the Church of England or equivalent, not Roman Catholic, but catholic, I believe similar to Episcopalian in USA?), and not sure if they counted as "Catholic", "Protestant" or "Other". It might be good to tweak the names slightly to cover that case. (I can ask for preferred options if it helps.)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1453250_492554064192905_1417321927_n.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Catholicism

Is there anywhere I can read an explanation of (or anyone who can explain) the distinction between "Atheist but spiritual" and "Atheist and not spiritual"?

Answered. A day late - hope it's still counted, only saw this now.

A comment on the prize for those who've already taken it:

Qrsrpg frrzf yvxr pyrneyl gur evtug zbir. Gurer'yy or uhaqerqf bs erfcbaqragf fb V'yy unir n znetvany vzcnpg ba gur fvmr bs gur cevmr. Ubjrire, V dhnqehcyr zl punapr bs jvaavat ol pubbfvat qrsrpg. Gung orvat fnvq, V ubcr lbh cvpxrq pbbcrengr.

Didn't take the survey. There were enough question I was vaguely uncomfortable with answering that I chose not to. I may change my mind later; however, I already read the comments, including some which give information on the probability calibration question.

Was I the only person who shamelessly defected only because the defect/cooperate choice isn't really a prisoner's dilemma at all? Obviously, if enough of us defect that the payout is diminished, the winner receives less, but whoever would be paying for the prize would have that much less money missing from his pocket. I would not have defected if I expected my defection were to result in a net loss of resources. For the 2014 survey, how about we try this again, with the modification if enough people defect for the payout to be reduced, a good of equal market value to the reduction in payout shall be purchased and destroyed? (You can't just burn the money, because that's not actual destruction of value, just redistribution of value to everyone else who owns units of that same currency.)

Er: Rhebcr: V fnvq sbhe uhaqerq svsgl zvyyvba, juvpu V inhtryl erzrzorerq urnevat, ohg jnf irel pbasvqrag. Gheaf bhg gur cbchyngvba bs Rhebcr vf arneyl frira uhaqerq sbegl zvyyvba - SNVY! Rkprcg nppbeqvat gb Jvxvcrqvn, gur cbchyngvba bs gur Rhebcrna Havba vf n yvggyr bire 500 zvyyvba, juvpu vf nyzbfg vafvqr zl 10% vagreiny, naq cebonol jung V jnf guvaxvat bs, nyybjvat sbe erzrzorevat n fbzrjung bhgqngrq ahzore.

I threw a D30, came up with 20 and cooperated.

Point being that cooperation in a prisoners dilemma sense means choosing the strategy that would maximize my expected payout if everyone chose it, and in this game that is not equivalent to cooperating with probability 1. If it was supposed to measure strategies, the question would have been better if it asked us for a cooperating probability and then Yvain would have had to draw the numbers for us.

Is there a way to be notified when the 2014 survey comes out?

I've never taken an official IQ test - what am I supposed to do for the calibration question?

Just finished it. I missed the deadline, but it seems to have let me submit. Thanks for a good time!

I defected because I decided that I'm one of the last ones to complete the survey, so RIGHT NOW I have the choice between 4 tickets and 1 ticket in a lottery for approximately the same amount of money. My gut now tells me this was bad decision making, so...Contemplation Time!

I took the last two surveys, but I'm not taking this one, since I anticipate that all my answers will be the same.

Feedback, FWIW:

• Can you not infer "relationship status" from "number of current partners"?
• Profession: No "Chemistry"?? ... three choices for "computers," you nicely distinguish finance/economics as separate from "business," and the same for the "statistics" and "mathematics" people, but the central science has to fall under "other hard science"?