(This is the comment I propose as Schelling point to collect replies saying you took the survey, to make the comment section tidier)
No questions about LLM usage and attitudes?
Some questions off the top of my head I'd like to see the results of (no need for this to be in the standard LW poll):
How people are using LLMs.
Which ones they use.
How useful they find them.
How much they pay for them.
How seriously they take LLM welfare, consciousness, moral standing, etc.
Whether an LLM has ever talked them into a delusion (or a belief that everyone they tell it to says is a delusion), or had some other dysfunctional effect.
...
I had some last year (ctrl+f for "llm frequency" and keep reading) and this year they fell victim to the culling of questions. I got some advice this year from someone who does a lot more surveys than I do that 70 questions is really the upper end of what you want to ask, and I uh, failed to cut things down to just 70.
70 questions is really the upper end of what you want to ask
With a LW audience in mind? That's a bit lower than I would assume.
This is the collector comment to collect problems with the census. If there's a typo, a confusing question, anything like that, reply here.
I don't think this 10% closeness makes any sense when it's 10% of the "numeric AD year".
Without checking a source, estimate the probability that the answer you just gave is within 10% of the true value. (So, if you guessed 1000 AD, it's between 900 and 1100 inclusive.) Same rules for percents apply as above.
Huh, I think it mostly works depending on the question. For some it gives a very wide range ("What year was the US declaration of independence signed?" gives you anywhere from 1600 to 1950!) but for others that seems a tricky range. Is your complaint that it's too easy, or that the math is weird?
10% of the year is not a sensible way to measure your error. If I ask "When did X happen?" and you answer 2000 CE when the real answer was 2020 CE, there's a sense in which you are more wrong than if you answered 300 BCE while the real answer was 500 BCE. Even if you don't think this, you probably don't think that the sensible target should be narrower closer to 0 BCE.
Whereas you are in a meaningful way about as incorrect if you say 10 km when the real answer is 11 km as if you say 1 m when the real answer is 1.1 m
How month long vacations would you trade for a new sportscar? If you'd trade months of vacation for one sportscar, write 2, if you'd trade one month of vacation for two cars, write 0.5.
Many typos here. Also I hate it. Which sportscar. Why not just give a dollar value. My mind compulsively goes to the tesla roadster which'll probably have cold gas thrusters and so is likely to value a lot more than the average sportscar. The answer will also be conflated with how much people like their work. Some people like their work enough that they'll have to give a negative answer, or they might just answer incorrectly based on varying interpretations of what a vacation is, can you work during a vacation if you want to? I'd say not really, but I'm guessing that's not what you intended.
(previously posted as a root comment)
Typos fixed.
Intent in spoilers
I'm retrying the cambist booking values test from last year, but with consistent phrasing. I don't need any one question to be comparable - it's fine if each person thinks of a different sports car. I need the cycle to be comparable - so for each individual person to think of the same sportscar between questions. Likewise with how much they like their job. I think self consistent values are one of the load bearing pieces of rationality - it shows up in things like scope insensitivity, or taboo tradeoffs, or expected value calculations.
Collective LessWrong Value:
If everyone who used LessWrong would pay the same amount you do for the website, how much would you pay? (In USD)
Should probably say "Per year"
Also it's a very tricky question because it seems to assume that we can start charging people without decreasing the number of users, in which case the price should probably be extremely high, higher than any online service has ever costed, due to the fact that it's almost never possible to charge what a public information good, or its impacts, are worth (it's worth a lot).
I also came here to say I didn't understand this hypothetical at all. If I choose $1000 then what happens to users who don't want to pay $1000?
Am I supposed to imagine that I am implementing a paywall on LW and choosing what price I would set it at? Of course I would set it at $0.
Another possible interpretation is a fund-raising drive of the form "I would publicly commit to paying up to this much conditional on enough other people publicly committing to paying at least as much."
Another is "if LW (with its content as-is) had been paywalled from the beginning, what annual fee would you be happy to have been paying?"
Collapsed to reduce screen estate
LW Karma
If you have no account, your karma score is 0. Be aware it may be easy to identify you from this information. Feel free to round your karma score if you want to be less identifiable. If your karma score is 15,000 or above, you may put 15,000 if you want to be less identifiable.
FYI I have been giving a number via normal distribution with mean = karma, sigma = some % of karma.
For at least one time you noticed someone else was wrong, did you tell them?
For at least one time you noticed you were wrong, did you tell people?
Why is the top question a multiple choice, but the bottom question a singular choice lol
How many random human lives would you trade for a sportscar? If you'd trade two human lives for one sportscar, write 2, if you'd trade one human life for two sportscar, write 0.5.
I think the only sensible interpretation is "what is the maximum number of human lives you would trade for a sportscar?", but this is quite far from the literal meaning of the question.
Brainstorm:
Set a timer for 60 seconds.
Come up with as many ways to make music using things which are not normally instruments as you can in that time.
What is the thing I am supposed to answer? The number of ways I came up with, or write down all of them?
"How long have you had with the current biggest issue in your life?"
What does this mean? Is this "how long have I had the issue?" or "how long have I tried solving?"?
"How many X would you trade for a Y?" You should be more specific. Am I to imagine that you are generously offering me either n extra units of X or one extra unit of Y, and I need to figure out how big n needs to be for me to be indifferent? (This is how I assumed you meant it).
Argh, that "with" snuck by my edit passes.
"How long have you had the issue" is the idea. The question somewhat assumes that people try to solve big issues.
For the exchanges- basically yep, I'm trying to find the indifference point.
unclear to me if "If your birthday is an odd number" ment my age or day of month of my birthday or other.
Thanks for organizing this!
I find this parenthetical confusing because it sounds broader than how i expected 'false positive' to be defined:
> a 8% false-positive rate (it returns positive 8% of the time even if cancer is absent)
I feel like the survey should mention how many questions there are, and perhaps how much time you expect people take for each section
The Less Wrong General Census is unofficially here! You can take it at this link.
The kinda-sorta-annual-if-you-really-squint tradition of the Less Wrong Census is once more upon us!
I want to pitch you on taking the survey. First, the demographics data is our best view into who's using the site and who is in the community. I use it when trying to figure out how to help meetups, I add a bunch of questions the LessWrong team asks which I assume they use to improve the site. Second, because I am madly, ravenously curious what works and what doesn't for raising the sanity waterline and making people more rational. I'm even curious what folks think that would mean! Third, if you're reading this and you're thinking "eh, I'm not really a rationalist, more just rationalist adjacent" then you are also of interest; I include questions from several adjacent communities as well. Also, you make a fantastic active control group.
If you want to just spend five minutes answering the basic demographics questions before leaving the rest blank and hitting submit, that's totally appreciated. The survey is structured so the fastest and most generally applicable questions are generally speaking towards the start. (I did add some intermissions that mix this up. If you're impatient, feel free to skip any or all intermissions.) At any point you can scroll to the bottom and hit Submit, though you won't be able to add more answers once you do.
The survey shall remain open from now until at least January 7th, 2026. I plan to close it sometime on Jan 8th.
I don't work for LessWrong, but I do work on improving rationalist meetups around the world. Once the survey is closed, I plan to play around with the data and write up an analysis post like this one sometime in late January.
Please take the survey at this link.
Ancient tradition is that if you take the survey you can comment here saying you took the survey, and people upvote you for karma.