2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey

Shouldn't you ask when the respondent thinks the Singularity will occur before mentioning the year 2100, to avoid anchoring?

After reading the feedback I've made the following changes (after the first 104 entries so that anyone who has access to the data can check if there are significant differences before and after these changes):

• Added an "other" option in gender
• Moved "date of singularity" above question mentioning 2100 to avoid anchoring. Really I should also move the Newton question for the same reason, but I'm not going to.
• changed wording of anti-agathics question to "at least one person"
• added a "don't know / no preference" to relationship style
• clarified to answer probability as percent and not decimal; I'll go back and fix anyone who got this wrong, though. If you seriously mean a very low percent, like ".05%", please end with a percent mark so I know not to change it. Otherwise, leave the percent mark out.
• Added a "government work" option.
• Deleted "divorced". Divorced people can just put "single"
• Added "economic/political collapse" to xrisk
• Added "other" to xrisk
• Added a question "Have you ever been to a Less Wrong meetup?" Please do NOT retake the survey to answer this question. I'll just grab statistics from the people who answered this after it was put up, while recognizing it might be flawed.

I did NOT add an "Other" to politics despite requests to do so, because I tried this last time and ended up with people sending me manifestos. I want to encourage people to choose whichever of those categories they're closest to. If you really don't identify at all with any of those categories, just leave it blank.

Took the survey.

I think I failed it.

On the "Political" question: I identify with none of those. I understand the question is about which I identify with most, but all of the options have views on both social permissivity and economic redistribution. I am socially permissive, but have no belief one way or the other on redistribution/taxes. I simply have insufficient knowledge of that area to make a judgment. Perhaps it would be better to have two different questions - one for each of social views and economic views?

For "Religious views": I am an atheist but would not self-identify as either "spiritual" or "not spiritual". If a person asked me which I was, I would ask them what they meant by spiritual. I answered "Atheist but not spiritual", on the very weak grounds that I suspect I do not satisfy most other people's conceptions of spirituality; but really, the word is very ill-defined.

Thanks, Yvain! For the next survey, please consider country of residence and first language as questions.

I've been lurking on here for a long time, and just now registered to get a free karma point for taking the survey.

I did take the survey, however I found something I was unsure of what to put down and had to type in an explanation/question about:

It was for the question: "By what year do you think the Singularity will occur? Answer such that you think there is an even chance of the Singularity falling before or after that year. If you don't think a Singularity will ever happen, leave blank."

If I think the singularity is slightly less than 50% likely overall, what should I have put? It seemed off to leave it blank and imply I believed "I don't think a Singularity will ever happen" because that statement seemed to convey a great deal more certainty than 50+epsilon%. However, if I actually believed there was a less than 50% chance of it happening, I'm not going to reach an even chance of happening or not happening on any particular year.

As a side note, after taking that test, I realized that I don't feel very confident on a substantial number of things.

For the gender question it may make sense to have a generic "other" option. The monogamous/polygamous question should also maybe have a no preference option also.

Edit: And finished.

Would it not be useful for the “Degree” question to distinguish between the two no-degree cases of current undergraduate students and not-trying?

Thanks for doing this, I just took it. With the gender question, in addition to the transgender questions, it's maximally inclusive to include a non-binary "genderqueer" option.

Took the survey and finally created an account on here.

Looking at the comments, it seems like I am not the only one who used the survey as an impetus to create an account or a first post. I would be interested to see if there was a significant increase in the number of new accounts while the survey is running (as opposed to the average number of new accounts when there is no current survey).

...Also I took the IQ test posted in the comments.. Yeah, it has me as a good 15 points lower than what I was tested as in school also.

Survey now completed.

EDIT:

if you take it and post that you took it here, I will upvote you, and I hope other people will upvote you too

Let the record reflect that this comment currently has a negative score! :-(

EDIT2: No longer the case, obviously! :-)

I took it.

I think some of the "pick one" options were too broadly grouped, though any multiple-choice is going to be. I'd have preferred a "no preference" for "relationship style", for example, and more political options. Also I'm not sure what counts as "participates actively" in other groups--I've been a member of transhumanism-related groups for over a decade, for example, but am mostly a lurker; I did not check the box.

I would have been interested in seeing a question about involvement in offline activities like local meetups, or participation in IRC/other LW venues.

Thanks for running the survey!

Done. Definitely went through the whole "check the publication date"--whoop of victory--worry I was underconfident routine. Except silently because there's a sleeping person less than a foot away.

I'm amazed at the range of possibilities I considered for some of those probabilities. I definitely do not have a solid grasp of reality.

I took the survey and this is my first comment on lesswrong :)

Filled out the survey. The cryonics-question could use an option "I would be signed up if it was possible where I live."

Does lurking time count for "how long in the community"?

Yvain, one very important question that I think you missed: Do you currently have an account on Lesswrong?

I personally don't, and glancing through the number of 'first post' comments here, I believe that the ratio of lurkers to active users may be significant. (This is a throwaway account, and I am making an exception this once because there would be no other way to get information from the lurkers.)

Issues with the survey:

1. As mentioned elsewhere, politics is Americentric.
2. Race race seems to be missing some categorizations.
3. If you are going to include transgender, you probably should call the others cis. Otherwise you run the risk of implying transgendered people are not "really" their target gender, which is a mess.
4. The question of academic field was poorly phrased. I'm not an academic, so I assumed you meant what academic field was most relevant to my work. But you really should ask this question without referring to academia.
5. The academic question and the question about field of work need more options.
6. Expertise question needs CS as an answer :-)

EDIT: Overall, it's pretty good.

Took it.

My family is of mixed religious background, so I just arbitrarily used my mother's religious background for those questions. You might want to make the answer choices a little more flexible.

I know "male, female, FTM, MTF, other" is a standard gender/sex question, but I don't know why. A problem is that it implies that "FTM" is a distinct category from, rather than a subset of, "male" (ditto for female). This would be better if other questions had answers that were subsets of other answers, but you seem to try hard not to do that. This could be fixed by phrasing it as "cis male", but then you'd get people complaining about "cis" and "trans" not being a perfect dichotomy and complaining about the confusing word and so on. This could also be fixed by splitting the question into "gender (male/female/other)" and "Are you trans? (yes/no)", but then you'd get other complaints.

I wouldn't have been too far off on the Newton question if I had been able to remember the mapping between century numbering and year numbering. I ended up two centuries off. Fortunately I took that into account when calibrating.

Also, for the record: I'm not "considering cryonics". I'm cryocrastinating. Cryonics is obviously the best choice, and I should be signing up for it in the next five seconds. I will probably die while not signed up for cryonics, and that will be death by stupidity, and you will all get to point and laugh at my corpse.

I completed the survey. Thanks, Yvain, for doing it!

The option "Atheist but spiritual" gave me a pause. What does it actually mean?

This is great! I hope there's a big response.

It seems likely you're going to get skewed answers for the IQ question. Mostly it's the really intelligent and the below average who get (professional) IQ tests - average people seem less likely to get them.

I predict high average IQ, but low response rate on the IQ question, which will give bad results. Can you tell us how many people respond to that question this time? (no. of responses isn't registered on the previous survey)

(how many people have strong feelings on Three Worlds Collide these days?)

Many, according to some.

(Of course to actually get the answer, you would presumably have to...take a survey. :-) )

Thanks for putting this together, Yvain! Recommendation to the Powers That Be: promote this to the main page so that more people notice it.

I'm not sure what it is about a survey that gets me to stop lurking at a community and actually create an account, but there you have it. Maybe it's just the chance to tell my 'story' anonymously.

I took it a few hours ago, and only just then realized that I apparently can get karma from saying so.

Posted. It wasn't clear whether the IQ calibration question was whether your IQ would be higher than the reported IQ of respondents or the actual IQ of respondents, and also whether that included respondents that didn't answer the IQ question.

Everyone should take the survey before reading any more comments, in case they contain anchors etc.

I took the survey. My estimates will be very poorly calibrated (I haven't done much in the way of calibration/estimation exercises) but I'm hoping they'll at least be good enough for wisdom-of-the-crowds purposes and more useful than just leaving blank.

Minor quibble: shouldn't "p(xrisk)" be "p(NOT xrisk)"? Just worried about people in a hurry not reading the question properly.

I took the survey, I found the "Moral Views" question very hard to answer to, folding "moral views" in one of 4 broad categories is surhuman effort for me ;) but I did my best.

Also, not wanting to enter a political debate here and now, but your definition of "communism" seems a strawman to me.

I've encountered people online who would want an "Other" option for the Gender question.

Also, my only possible answer to "Relationship Style" is "I don't know."

Edit: Survey filled, though. Left Relationship Style blank.

Survey taken. :)

Just took it.

About the probability questions: I thought you were supposed to answer them instantly for your intuitive stance at the moment, without additional research, though I see some of responders apparently did research. Perhaps it should be better specified what is meant.

I just took it. My issue, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, is with the use of "agnostic" as a midpoint on the scale between theism and atheism. I realize that's a common colloquial use now but I don't get how it's a meaningful category -- unless it's meant to refer to negative atheism, and the "atheism" answers refer to positive atheism? And in the historical use of "agnostic" I think it's a separate category altogether that could overlap with both atheism and theism.

Overall I found the questions very interesting though, and I'm curious to see the results.

Filled out the survey. Neat!

I didn't know those versions of morality. There wasn't an option for "don't know" but I guess leaving it blank is the same thing.

The cryonics question is broken! I couldn't answer it without suspecting it would be misleading. My p would be incredibly low but only because my p for the human species surviving is low. This is a technically correct way to answer the question but I am not at all confident that everyone else would answer literally, including the obvious consideration "if everyone else is dead, yeah, you die too". Or, even if everyone did, I am not confident that the appropriate math would be done on a per-participant level in the results for the p(cryo) to be meaningful.

I took the survey. I'd really have liked an "other/no affiliation" option on the politics question, though, or a finer-grained scale. I suppose I could just have left it blank, but that seems not to transmit the right information.

I took the survey :3

Took it.

(Regarding the phrase "ontologically basic mental entity"; in my head, I always hear it in the voice of Raz from Psychonauts.)

Took the survey.

Thought you might have included an option for "reactionary" on the political orientation question. The distinction between reactionary, and libertarian or conservative is substantial even given the fact that the match isn't supposed to be perfect.

The global warming question might be more discriminating if the question were whether someone thinks that the mainstream view on AGW is scientifically valid within reason. The question as it stands is vague, hinging on the interpretation of "significant".

Otherwise a good survey!

Took it. First post as well.

Just took the survey. It was odd how only the word "Other" was translated into the Norwegian "Andre"... and everything else was in English.

Liberal, for example the US Democratic Party or the UK Labour Party: socially permissive, more taxes, more redistribution of wealth

Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth

Only an American could have written something like that... Political "ideologies" apparently do not translate between countries in any way. It's like asking Muslims if they feel closer to Catholics or Lutherans.

The test has also a problem with extremely low "probability" events like "God existing". There's really no meaningful number between a vague "theoretically possibly just extremely unlikely" (and number of 0s you put there doesn't really mean anything) and "literally impossible 0%" here.

I took the survey. Sorry I asked you to keep my data private, but I precommitted to doing so in order to improve the quality of my responses.

Like all the cool kids, I took the survey. You should too!

Scientia potentia est!

Good idea, and a good set of questions. However, while I might say I'm fairly knowledgeable about a few topics anywhere else, the feeling of going far out of my depth is one I associate strongly with LW. As an example, I would expect the list of those who could hold a heavy AI discussion with LW's resident experts to be about 5 people.

Also, "exists" when referring to the entire observable universe, makes me a bit tense. In our past light cone? In our future light cone? In a spacelike interval? It makes a big difference.

The "Anti-Agathics" question is ambiguous:

What is the probability that any person living at this moment will reach an age of one thousand years?

Two possible meanings (which, at least for me, would result in very different numbers):

1. Given a randomly selected person living at this moment, what is the probability that they will reach an age of one thousand years?

2. What is the probability that at least one person living at this moment will reach an age of one thousand years?

I took the survey. If it is not too late to receive Karma for taking the survey, I would not mind.

I took the survey.

Like several other people, I was a bit bothered by the P(God) type questions. For some of those, my belief depends on an argument for the impossibility of, say, God, rather than on any particular evidence. In that case, am I supposed to take into account my uncertainty as to the validity of my argument? Or just put 0?

I took the survey and really enjoyed it. Thanks! It was mostly clear but I'm not gonna lie -- had to look up the morality definitions (except consequentialism). Perhaps a very brief definition would help.

Took it!

For the probability questions, I think it might have been useful for people to be able to specify confidence in their estimate. An estimate of X% from someone who is familiar with almost all of the relevant arguments and evidence is different from an estimate of X% by someone with only a cursory understanding of the issue. Then we can target the subjects people are most uncertain about to produce the most informative discussions.

One problem with the political question: Socialism is not what they have in Scandinavia. That would be social democracy (technically a form of government that's supposed to evolve towards full socialism, but they don't seem to have done that). It's unclear what option one is supposed to choose to mean "What they have in Scandinavia" rather than actual socialism.

Filled out. For the probability questions that I thought were very close to 0 (or 100) I thought about how many times in a row I would have to see a fair coin land heads to have a similar level of credence, and then translated that into percentages. A fun exercise.

Also, my calibration was a little off on the last question.

Filled out.

I have a feeling that some people might answer some of the "what is P(...)?" with a probability rather than a percentage (i.e. 0.5 when they actually mean 50%). (I almost did it myself)

(EDIT: However, some people (such as myself) also used 0.5 to mean 0.5%, so an automatic conversion is probably impossible.)

This survey is now closed. I'll have data eventually.

The answer to my question from November 12 was 970 people.

Huh, I'm surprised that I'm not at all the first lurker to make an account just for this.

Took it. Thanks for the effort you are putting into this.

Alright, I finally made an account. Thanks for the push, though this had little to do with why I've joined. I liked the probability parts of the survey, though I know I need to improve my estimates. Political section might be better done with a full-fledged Question section just devoted to it. Perhaps a later survey? I can't wait to see the results.

Took it. Though I had a hard time answering what religion my family would abide to, my dad is an agnostic I think, but I'm not even sure what my mother believes in . . . No one I know very well practice religion (not just believing) either so it has never been a big part of my life, might be because I'm from Sweden.

I took it as well. One comment: my mother and father adhere(d) to different flavours of Christianity in different degrees. This made it somewhat hard to answer that question fully (I went with my father because he cares most, but my mother's views probably had more influence on me.)

Moral views should probably be two questions-- one about the existence of moral facts and one about favorite normative theory (with "None" "Other" or "Particularist" as a fourth option).

Took the survey.

Took it. It's been awhile since my last IQ test so I did not answer that one, and I don't think I'm gonna be in the top 50% at all.

Taken. Moral views question gave me a bit of trouble, I didn't agree with any of them. Another option like 'There is morality, but I don't define it in any of the ways above' would be nice.

In general I thought the categories covered things pretty well.

Thanks Yvain. Just took the survey, can't wait for the results!

Survey taken. :)

I took the survey :)

I filled out the survey, but I left a number of questions blank, on the basis that I don't feel qualified to answer them. I would have left the year of singularity question blank too, but it said that doing that meant I thought it definitely wouldn't happen.

Filled out.

I took the survey. I would trust my probabilities for aliens, espers, and time travelers as far as I can throw them. I don't really think any number I could give would be reasonable except in the weak sense of not committing the conjunction fallacy.

I second the anchoring effect in the Singularity question. Based on previous comments I had written before, I would have expected a far more distant year than the one I gave in the survey. Oops.

Also, I missed the Principia question by ten years, and gave myself 80% confidence. I don't know if that was good or bad. How would I go about estimating what my confidence should have been?

I was disappointed that mathematics fell under the "hard sciences", but I suppose we can't all have our own category.

For the Existential Risk question, I would have liked to see an option for societal collapse. It wouldn't have been my number one option, but I think the prospect of multiple stressors in conjunction, such as international economic and food crises, leading to a breakdown of modern civilization is more likely than a number of other options already on the list.

Took the survey; I mostly lurk but have posted occasionally.

Perhaps future surveys should have exhaust valves channeling people's need to express themselves:

1) In any number of words, what is your theory of gender? (essay section)

2) On unsophisticated government forms that only have the options "male" and "female", which do you select? (multiple choice, two options)

3) Sex with people who gave the same answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)

4) Sex with people who gave a different answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)

5) In any number of words, what are your political views? (essay section)

6) Which nine of the following ten political terms most poorly describe that position (multiple choice, ten options).

etc.

Another lurker who took the survey. I suppose I should go find the newbie thread and introduce myself.

I was extra wrong on Principia. Almost disturbing to think how recent it was...

I took the survey.

I took your survey. There may be small errors in a couple of my answers. I can hardly wait to see your explanation of what you are doing with those "calibration questions" like "what is your estimate of the probability that your answer to Newton's Principia publication date is within 15 years of the correct answer"?

Also if there is some sort of sampling theory surveying practice FAQ that explains the use of such questions I would be interested in reading it.

I've taken the survey, and have the uncomfortable feeling that the odds I gave for several interrelated propositions were mutually inconsistent.

I took the survey and could feel my affective heuristics generating random near-the-ballpark numbers.

Given I am a mathematician and have no idea how to actually compute any of those probabilities (or what that would even formally mean, say in a probability measure space), I let those numbers stand without further scrutiny.

After lurking on LessWrong for several months, I just made an account today and took the survey. :) I'm curious to see the results.

I took the survey.

The political section is begging for a one line write in, seriously. Please consider adding on in addition to the pick one option poll. I'm not having warm fuzzies for any of the groups and had to bite my tongue and pick one I really really dislike, just because the alternatives are so much worse and one of the alternatives, while probably quite popular a choice, will be misinterpreted if I chose it.

I just took the survey but am still concerned about the ambiguities.

Re the politics question, I'm not a communist but I don't think any sane modern communists would use the soviet union as an example of communist government. They officially claimed the government was a transitional stage towards self governing collective utopia.

I'm very happy that this survey is being retaken! Looking forward to seeing the results.

Taken. My two cents as everyone's:

Under academic field, there were specific fields for statistics and "other hard sciences" but not a specific field for abstract mathematics, which I was surprised by.

agree with others that the political categories were too linear and a libertarian socialist option would have been nice.

My estimate for Newton's Principia was off by 27 years... so my confidence was a bit high but not too much.

Took it. I liked the calibration questions a lot.

I took this survey.

I took the survey and was annoyed to realize that I didn't have a strong enough background to have informed answers to several questions.

Taken. Thanks Yvain, I appreciate this effort!

Nitpick: why no "Other" categories for Participation and Expertise?

I took the survey, but unfortunately, when I saw "If you don't know enough about the proposition to have an opinion, please leave the box blank", I left all of the probability boxes blank afterwards because I just didn't feel like I could give an answer I would be happy with, even for some of the questions that could be described as clear-cut. Maybe next survey I'll be able to provide more useful details.

I took the survey. Thanks Yvain!

I don't really understand why divorced would be separate from single and looking (or single and not looking, if the marriage was especially traumatizing). Also, one could be married and looking if one is polyamorous.

There's no option for public sector (government) for Work Status. Non-profit may be misleading if it contains that as well.

Took they survey. Interested in the results. Interestingly enough, I have had an account for a month or two now, but have not posted anything until now. Thanks for putting this together Yvain.

Took the survey, but this post will make the reported karma score inaccurate

Like many others, I made an account for this survey.

I took the survey.

I took the survey.

I've taken the survey, and realised that I really need to practise making probability estimates.

Survey taken.

I had fun doing the background research to be able to give a number to the P(Aliens) questions. :) The topic has, of course, come up many times, but never before for me in association with a community where the social norms favored a careful, quantitative answer.

When answering the Newton question, I was surprised at the shape of my probability distribution for the answer. It definitely wasn't a gaussian, a uniform distribution, or other form that I've worked with. This was simply due to the knowledge I started with, which was vague propositions rather than measurements. (i.e. I knew the right century and had a good idea when Newton was born, but didn't know when he died.) I'm quite curious what the distribution of responses will be for the year, since a historical date is the sort of thing we'd expect humans to make errors on, but not gaussian errors.

Took it a while ago, but forgot to comment till now.

Took the survey

Survey take!

I took it, but I would never post a content-free comment just for the sake of a few karma!

The results should be fun to see, so thanks for taking the time to do this.

I didn't like the ethics question, because it could be interpreted as asking about one's theoretical position on metaethics, or about one's actual values, and the two can diverge. Specifically: I bet there are quite a lot of people on LW for whom something like the following is true: "I don't believe that moral judgements have actual truth values separate from the values of the people or institutions that make them. But I do have values, and I do make moral judgements, and the way I do so is: [...]".

Taken.

In the singularity year question, I interpreted that to mean “50% that a singularity occurs before YYYY, 50% that either it occurs later or it never occurs at all; leave blank if you think it's less than 50% that it ever occurs”, even though, taken literally, the first part of the question suggests “50% that the singularity occurs before YYYY, given that it ever occurs”. Given that my probability that no singularity will ever occur is non-negligible, these interpretations would result in very different answers.

I took it. Thanks for this, I'm excited about the results.

I praise Yvain for this.

I took the survey.

Thanks for putting together the survey. It prompted me to do a couple things, including start posting here.

I was about 100 years off with Newton. Dang it!

Troshen

I took the survey.

I didn't like it because some of the questions offered too narrow a range of answers for my taste. Example: I consider the "many worlds" hypothesis to be objectively meaningless (because there's no possible experiment that can test it). The same goes for "this universe is a simulation."

As for the "singularity", I see it as nearly meaningless too. Every definition of it I've seen amounts to a horizon, beyond which the future (or some aspects of it) will be unimaginable -- but from how far past? Like a physical horizon, if such a "limit of vision" exists it must recede as you approach it. Even a cliff can be looked over.

Took the survey. Why are posts stating that being voted up?

Took it. It might be worth differentiating between people who identify with a particular political group and people who just happen to skew a little more in one direction than another.

Some of my probabilities might be a bit off, too, as I'm not entirely sure about factoring x-risks into the lifespan questions. A better way of specifying various very small probabilities would also be appreciated.

Took the survey, hoping for valuable data soon.

I took the survey. Thanks for putting this together.

I thought it was nanoweapons, not gray goo, that was the risk of nanotechnology.

I'm fairly sure there is no cryonics available in my area - perhaps this could be added as an option in future surveys?

I felt I didn't have a strong basis to answer many of the P(x) questions, but I answered some as best I could, and left others blank. I also wasn't sure whether being a regular poster on an atheism forum would count as being an active member of a community - I selected "no".

Thanks for the survey, and I look forward to the results!

Just took it. Quite fun! I wish I had an hour for each of those probability questions.

Took survey. Boy was I wrong about Newton!

"P(many worlds)" is the same as for any other interpretation that makes the same predictions. Depending on how you understand "more or less correct" I'd approach 100%.

Since it's unclear what's meant by the survey question, I didn't answer.

I disliked the moral philosophy question. I felt comfortable putting down "consequentialist," but I can see how someone might feel none of the answers suited them well. I would have made the fourth option simply "other," and maybe added a moral realism vs. anti-realism question.

See the Phil Papers survey. On the normative ethics question, "other" beat out the three "standard" moral philosophies, and there's no indication that everyone in that category is a moral anti-realist.

Also, for the Newton question:

My answer: friragrra bu svir

Correct answer: fvkgrra rvtugl frira

Now I feel dumb for putting such a high confidence in my answer. Should I feel dumb?

I guess if I had thought about it more, I would have realized that my confidence that my 30 year range was not too low exceeded my confidence that it was not too high, and adjusted my answer downwards a few years, accordingly.

Filled out the survey; the calibration questions really forced me to explore my reasoning behind some of my immediate intuitions.

Oh and by the way, second post ever!

(back to lurking)

I took the survey. You should too!

Hmm. For the anti-agathics question I'm wondering if I should be taking into account the probability of x-risk between now and 3011. The question looks like it's about our technical ability to solve aging, which means I should answer with P(someone lives to 1000 | no XK-class end-of-the-world scenario between then and now)? (Though of course that conditional is not what was written.)

ETA: in other words, see wedrifid's comment just above.

Came out of activity hibernation to take this. Thanks for seeing a thing that needed doing and choosing to do it!

Problems with the gender field have already been discussed; the sexuality question has some of the same issues. "Gay" and "straight" don't really make sense for people with nonbinary gender, and many people interpret "bisexual" as referring to "both" genders (male and female), as opposed to a more inclusive "queer" or "pansexual." I do honestly appreciate how much effort you've put into making the survey as inclusive as it already is, though.

One more long time lurker (over RSS) who just created an account to take the survey and comment. Probably my favorite survey I've ever taken, I'll direct a few friends to it as well and try to get them to start reading the site.

I just noticed this:

Like the last survey, if you take it and post that you took it here, I will upvote you, and I hope other people will upvote you too.

I suppose that means you'd like to know that I took it about two weeks ago. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier!

Took the survey; lurk lots and should probably get more involved. First steps can be going to the London meetup. +-10 on publishing yeah, but overestimated my uncertainty to be safe.

Just finished the survey. I'm very much an LW lurker, who apparently succumbs to some type of self-confidence bias. Though I know nothing of probability theory (thus why a lot of the questions were left blank), I gave myself a 10% chance for the publishing-question. (Was that a randomized question?) After a bit of consideration, I said [YEAR]—it was first published in [YEAR + 37]. I wasn't too far off.

Maybe that same bias is what deters me from ever actually posting anything.

I took the survey! I also assumed the probabilities were meant to be first-glance intuitive. I wish I'd known people were actually doing research, for I would have done the calculations!

I took the survey, but didn't read anything after "Click Here to take the survey" in this post until afterwards.

So my apologies for being extremely program-hostile in my answers (explicitly saying "epsilon" instead of 0, for instance, and giving a range for IQ since I had multiple tests). Perhaps I should retake it and ask you to throw out the original.

I did have one other large problem. I wasn't really clear on the religion question. When you say "more or less right" are you talking about cosmology, moral philosophy, historical accuracy? Do you consider the ancient texts, the historical traditions, or what the most rational (or most extreme) modern adherents tend to believe and practice? If ancient texts and historical traditions, judging relative to their context or relative to what is known now? My judgement of the probability would vary anywhere from epsilon to 100-epsilon depending on the standard chosen, so it was very hard to pick a number. I ended up going with what I considered less wrong convention and chose to judge religions under the harshest reasonable terms, which resulted in a low number but not epsilon (I considered judging ancient texts, or the most reactionary believers by modern standards, to be unreasonably strict).

Took the survey. My probabilities sometimes contradict each other because I tried to take the outside view into account, and found no consistent way to do so before giving up.

I did get Newton almost exactly right.

I just finished the survey. I had given myself a 15% probability of being correct on the Newton question, and was off by significantly over 15 years. However, I should have calibrated that as 30%, as I knew the century but had no idea when in the century he published the book.

Survey taken, looking forward to the results.

I just took the survey. I was pretty sure I remembered the decade of Newton's book, but I was gambling on the century and I lost.

I think quibbles over definitions and wording of most of the probability questions would change my answers by up to a couple of orders of magnitude.

Lastly, I really wanted some way to specify that I thought several xrisks were much more likely than the rest (for example, [nuclear weapons, engineered pandemic] >> others).

Done. Seemed like a pretty good survey overall. Like others, I was confused by some questions though. Didn't know how to answer family religion, especially since I wasn't sure how far back I was supposed to look. Also, how exactly would it be determined when the singularity occurs? The moment human-level ai is reached? Seems to me that it would be more of a gradual (though still relatively sudden, all things considered) process.

The probability questions were interesting. I guess the questions about Newton and IQ relative to the average were there to account for less wrong over/underconfidence? Either way, since I didn't have an IQ score handy there was only one question, which I could have gotten right by accident. Would have liked to see a few more along those lines. (Heck, I would really like to see a "judge your own rationality" test on Less Wrong, period. Anyone done this yet?)

Took it. Sort of embarrassed that I don't know my IQ.

Filled out the survey yesterday.

Survey taken. Made me put hard numbers on fuzzy feelings, which is good.

I wonder how my answers compare to those I gave last time... is there any way to check?

Median date of singularity: if I think there's a >50% chance of (total) human extinction before this event, I can't provide an answer.

(If, for whatever reason, i have <50% chance of Singularity, I can't answer).

Og take survey. Og deny validity of single-factor, linearly ranked intelligence measurement, though. Og increasingly fond of Dr. Gould.

I just finished the survey. My estimate for the Calibration Year was 200 years wrong. How embarrassing, I need to learn the basics.

I think there is a difference between "I have looked over all the evidence intensely and find the evidence and counter-evidence to weigh precisely in balance such that my estimate of the probability of event X is 50%" and "I don't know anything about X, so I will default to 50% even if it isn't reasonable".

It's the difference between "I know fair coins produce heads 50% of the time" and "what's a fair coin?". I wanted the second option when talking about many worlds -- I just haven't read the sequence on quantum mechanics yet, and I haven't read anything outside the sequences on quantum mechanics either. I just have an educated layman's understanding.

First thing I did upon completing the survey: looked up Principia Mathematica and gave a little whoop of self-congratulation.

Surveys always need more respondents. When Wikipedia or Reddit want to publicize things, we/they use a bar at the top of the page. Can we do that? (It doesn't have to be as obnoxious as the donation fundraiser ones WP uses!)

Yay free karma. Can I exchange the karma for a lunch?

Survey taken. I look forward to the results.

Grargh argh grr! The first thing I did afterwards was go to Wikipedia and see when [the thing identified] was actually [verbed], and I was off by a hundred or so years. Blech.

Anyways, survey taken.

I took the survey. I left most of the probability estimation questions blank because I feel very uncertain about any number I imagine entering.

I took the survey and I agree with some other comments about the difficulty of assigning probabilities to distant events. I decided to just round to either 0 or 1% for a few things. I hope "0" won't be interpreted as literally zero.

Something bugs me about the IQ question. It's easy to call sour grapes on those complaining about that metric but it seems like such a poor proxy for what matters, namely, making awesome stuff happen. Not denying a correlation, just that I think we can do much better. Even income in dollars might be a better proxy despite the obvious problems with that.

I took the survey. Got Newton wrong by over 50 years. At least my confidence was appropriately low.

I would suggest requesting probabilities in a simple, exception-less way. Why not just ask for a number from 0 to 1? "Use percentages, but don't put down the percentage sign, unless you're going below 1%, then put the percentage sign so I know it's not a mistake" looks to me like asking for trouble.

I took it too. Disturbs me how much my alien probability changed when framed as 'in universe' vs 'in galaxy'.

Took the survey and was quite unsure how to answer the god questions... If we took it, for example, that there's 30% chance of universe being simulated then the same probability should be assigned to P(God) too and to P(one of the religions is correct) as well.

I started trying to fill this out, but more than half I either don't know/remember, am to unsure about the supposed meaning of the question and would require clarification, or can't answer meaningfully because the USA centric assumptions of the question.

Survey complete. Had to answer "there's no such thing as morality" because I can't imagine a configuration of quarks that would make any of the other choices true. What would it even mean at a low level for one normative theory to be "correct?"

I took the survey. Props to Yvain for putting in the effort on this (again).

(I really ought to take a legitimate IQ test one of these days.)

Survey = taken.

For the newton question, I got the thousands, tens and ones place correct, but flubbed the hundreds place. 60% confidence. Not sure if I should feel bad about that.

I may have just taken it twice... hitting enter seems to submit the form immediately. How inconvenient! I felt funny putting in "0"s and "100"s instead of 0+epsilon etc.

Done. Was out by only 17 years on the Principia Mathematica.

Some of the questions made me feel a bit stupid, which is probably a good thing now and then. Had to answer Deist/etc. for the religious identity question, because there wasn't an option for epistemic untheist with Christian ethical heuristics and an admittedly indefensible level of wishful thinking. But "etc." will do :)

Here's hoping we all live to 2100 and find out whether we were right about that stuff.

I think the probability of 90% die-off by 2100 attributable to a single cause is low, but let's face it, an interconnected cascading clusterfuck of 5%-fatal catastrophes would be bad enough, and sadly I think that's more likely. Or I've been reading too much Jared Diamond.

Great, now I'm not sure if I'm horribly under-confident or freakishly lucky... (re: Newton)

The cryonics question could use a "cryocrastinating" option... I have filled out papers and not sent them anywhere...

In the ethics field an option should allow for: i don't know enough of these to make a decision. I did not actually know half of the options given by their terms.

Why "Academics (on the teaching side)"? As an academic on the research side, what do I put?

The greatest risk question would benefit from a write-in option. I consider economic/political collapse a greater risk than those listed.

I took the survey. Thanksgiving break at the family house gives me plenty of time to relax and catch up on all of the reading here that I have been avoiding since I started college.

Thanks for conducting this new survey, Yvain. I eagerly await the results.

Slightly off-topic, it would be interesting to see how members of this community respond to the PhilPapers survey. (You must be registered to take the survey.) My own responses can be found here.

For those of us still in high school, should we put "general" or the major we expect to take in college?

Took the test. I assigned 70-80% to "God creating the universe", as I strongly (80%) suspect that it's a simulation, it's being more or less actively controlled and manipulated by some outside entity/entities, and even if said entity is one of many and has comparatively little power over its native environment - even to the point of resembling a human scientist - it's pretty much pointless for us to call it anything but a god.

Took the survey.

After taking it and reading these comments I took this IQ test mentioned in this comment.

If it is accurate I've lost 20 IQ points since I was 17 (the date of my one and only IQ test). That's kind of depressing. Then again, I feel like I'm a much better thinker now...