I took the survey. Out of curiosity (too late to change now) what should I have answered if I'm not my father's first child, but I'm the first child he had with my mom? (There are kids from my dad's first marriage, but I didn't grow up with them).
I went with "no older siblings" since I assumed this was a question about socialization (or maybe even about uterine environment) but not siring. But I'd like to know for next year.
I would also like to know for next year. I have four older siblings on my father's side, and two on my mother's, and only spent any home time with one (from my mother's side). So, I answered 6 for older, but depending on whether this was a socialization or uterine environment question, the best answer might have been either 1 or 2 for older.
Taken! The way you were being so apologetic about the length, I thought it would be much more grueling - I found it quick and fun! :)
Filled in, but did not do digit lengths because I have no access to a printer or scanner in the near future.
Completed the survey (arguably the first thing I've actually contributed to LW, though I've discussed it at some length offline; this is my first comment ever). I have some degree of access to a scanner but not conveniently (same goes for a ruler actually; at best I may have a measuring tape somewhere I could find in under an hour's search). I filled out all the rest, aside from the N/A questions. Some of my answers have very low confidence (calibration percentage?), though.
A tip for those who don't have the equipment to perform the actual test: if you can verify that the lengths of the fingers on your left and right hands are equal (align the crease in the skin at the bases of the same finger on each hand, palm-to-palm), you can use the same technique to compare the D2:D4 lengths (one hand against the other). My fingers are the same length regardless of which hand (to the limit of my ability to measure without mechanical aid), and my D2:D4 ratio is somewhere in the range 1.00 < D2:D4 < 1.05, probably under 1.02 but definitely in excess of 1.00. As a cisgendered male, I guess I'm weird?
Oh, and some feedback: Part Four's "Moral Views" section could have used links (L...
Done.
I'm a bit confused about the accuracy of my BSRI because my true answer was frequently 'only towards my SO', such that my score would be drastically different were I single.
I'm a bit confused about the accuracy of my BSRI because my true answer was frequently 'only towards my SO',
Same here. And in some cases it was ‘except towards my parents’ or ‘only when I'm very tired’. I still tried to take some kind of weighed average.
Survey complete! I'd have answered the digit ratio question, but I don't have a ruler of all things at home. Ooh, now to go check my answers for the calibration questions.
Took the survey.
And yeah you should warn about the material needed for the digit ratio question in advance, so people don't start the survey if they aren't in the right conditions for it.
I'm done, but my ruler isn't good enough that I'm super confident in my digit ratios; I would have preferred one less significant digit (no pun intended, but I'll take it anyway).
Done - and mildly disappointed that we won't be measuring the prevalence of transponyism this year.
Does this post appear on LW's Main or Discussion pages for anyone else? I only found it via an offsite reference. Edit: Nevermind, I had my Main set to 'Promoted' instead of 'New'.
Taken the survey (would have loved to do digit ratio, but too difficult to get access to the equipment needed).
It's time to decouple sexual orientation from gender identity! If my gender is neither male nor female, but I'm primarily attracted to one of those, then I'm neither homosexual nor heterosexual (nor bisexual nor asexual). But neither am I some nebulous other; if only I had a binary gender identity, then suddenly I would have a binary sexual orientation too! Of course, some people identify specifically as homosexual or heterosexual (and some people even have prima-facie contradictory identifications such as both male and lesbian), and you could ask about that if you like, but you should also ask the more fundamental question of which genders one is attracted to.
Out of curiosity, if I'd avoided mentioning how she self-identifies and had instead told you that "she has had sex with other women before and has asked me if it's OK if she sleeps with other women while we're dating (or brings them home for a threesome)... but has never shown or claimed any interest in actually dating another woman" (all of which is, incidentally, true), what would your response have been? Framed that way, one could assume that she's actually bi or even lesbian and the only reason she's dating me instead of one of those girls is because she wants to avoid the social or family stigma of homosexuality.
Or you could take me at my word. It's not like you're in any position to verify one way or the other, where she in particular is concerned, unless you're one of the handful of people who actually know who I am speaking of and know her preferences at least as well as I do.
It also doesn't matter for the point I raised (about how some people have different targets for sexual and romantic attraction) unless you intended to imply that not only is she personally actually neatly classifiable under the existing system but so is everybody else who would claim otherwis...
I took the survey. Started on the BSRI but abandoned it because I found the process of giving vague answers to vague questions distressing.
I'm missing something here, I filled in the public and private and keys, but saw no game theory problem. Are we being given equal chances of the monetary reward?
Anyway, fun survey.
Done.
Didn't have a scanner, so I traced my hand on a piece of paper with a pencil and measured that. Not sure I got enough accuracy to take seriously. Oh, well.
About two hours ago, I submitted an incomplete census return -- it looks as if some keystroke produces an immediate submission, at least on my browser. I'll be submitting a complete one later today. Yvain, if you want to suppress the incomplete one and need help in identifying it then I can help. I was partway through the calibration questions when I accidentally submitted.
(I see TrE had the same problem.)
[EDITED to add: Complete return now submitted.]
Did it! I'm shocked that my digit ratio is so high. Like, I figured that it was pretty high, being a bisexual genderfluid "man" (assigned at birth, that is), but I didn't expect it to be greater than 1. Also, it was much shorter than I expected.
Done.
I think it is somewhat unrealistic to expect individual digit ratios to be accurate to three significant figures (although I understand that two significant figures might be too crude a measure to show effects of smaller size). One can hope that the errors are symmetric and it doesn't matter.
Suppose the actual length of a person's index finger is 80.5 mm and the actual length of his/her ring finger is 83.5 mm. Then the 2D:4D ratio is 0.964. A measurement error of 0.5 mm is very easy to make, e.g. due to inaccuracy of a photocopier, inaccuracy of a ruler, inexactness of where a finger joins the hand (and even if it wasn't a vague concept it would still be a problem to pinpoint the precise location of it with a great accuracy) and even differences in muscle tension in fingers at the particular moment of placing a hand in a photocopier. If a person measures his/her index finger as being 80 mm long (0.5 mm shorter) and her/his ring finger as being 84 mm long (0.5 mm longer), then they would obtain 2D:4D ratio of 0.952. Whereas if the length of the index finger is measured to be 81 mm, and the length of the ring finger is 83 mm, then 2D:4D ratio is 0.976. Therefore, the first digit after the decimal point does not vary that much (in the vast majority of all cases it is 9), the third one is basically noise, and even the second one is not that reliable (in an individual case). However, that might still be enough to notice some interesting correlations and if the errors are symmetric it might not even matter that much when all data will be aggregated.
I did the survey in all its parts, and upvoted every top level comment to promote LW's census partecipation.
It was fun and not particularly long, although I miss the 'global prisoner dilemma' of the last survey.
Answered. WRT Type of Global Catastrophic Risk, I answered conditioned on greater than 90% of humanity being wiped out before 2100, which I assume is what you meant. If it wasn't, well, I ruined everything, then.
Answered all I could except the digit one because of no access to scanner. Looking forward to the results!
Survey finished- erred on the side of not screwing up Yvain's numbers where possible, but I'm curious what the ideal way to mark down Religious Background for results of families that divorced over religious disagreement is. Also had a really strong desire (thwarted, but present) to put a SQL injection into the question about whether the universe is a simulation, which is a bad idea no matter what the answer turns out to be or whether I could conceivably affect the simulation. It's like a pascal's wager mixed with a Russian roulette, only the gun is fully loaded. Either I screw up the numbers, I tank the survey, or I crash the simulation. Dear brain, we were reading about akrasia just recently, were you paying attention?
Why would the universe be particularly likely to run an SQL statement in a form question about whether the universe is a simulation? All you have to do is think the attack and
NO CARRIER
Took it.
EDIT: I was surprised to find the BEM test in it. I took it some time ago and it resulted in 65-70% F and 50-60% M (as far as I can see largely because of my strong and caring relationship to my children).
I didn't determine my digit-ratio during the test but did right now. I arrive at totally different values (between 0.91 and 1.05) depending and hand and exact points and the copier print reading gives still different values. My best guess is that it is somewhere around 0.96.
I hope you don't count fanfiction as "books", because otherwise my response is off by at least two bullet points.
Tooken. My scanner was being evil today so I only had low-res overview scans, and could only get to within a tenth of a centimeter, but I think my results are dramatic enough that it's not wildly incorrect to use my guess? Drop me if I'm wrong, I should be easy to pick out of the crowd via karma.
Completed.
Can anyone explain the Bem Sex Roles thing and why its relevant? I scored slightly more masculine and less feminine then average which confused me slightly. Its all self reporting though so I'm not sure how much it will express m nature vs what I value (like to think about myself)
Done, though sadly without the digit ratio due to lack of equipment. I'm a newbie and I just thought that was really cool.
I did the survey! This is the second time I've completed an iteration of this survey, but this year was the first time I answered all the questions. I also did all the extra credit except for the digit ratio question.
Finished the survey. Didn't answer the SSC question even though I read it regularly because I plan to take the edited version when it's posted there, and I also didn't answer the digit ratio question.
Survey done, including digit ratio. And I learned something new.
But not particularly confident in the accuracy of my measurement.
The entire community is extremely insular and is weighed down with it's own established ideas. Most of the writers speak with total conviction, absolutely convinced of their own conclusions, despite the entire point of the endeavor being the pursuit of ever increasing amounts of correctness, thus making them 'less wrong'.
It consists mostly of extremely narrow demographics, cutting it's objectivity off at the knees by creating a culture that is perfect for serving as echo chambers despite their criticism of one another. It has also engaged in censorship of ideas, something that CANNOT be allowed in a group that is trying to further rational thought.
Aside from that there is also the personality cult surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky. Objectivity is impossible if people weight the merit of your arguments by your popularity, which is inevitable in such a situation.
Took the survey. Skipped the digit ratio - I could have done it but didn't feel like walking to the copier or finding a ruler.
Next year I want to see an independent measure of conscientiousness, and compare this between people who bother to answer the digit ratio question and those who don't...
I would have given a response for digit ratio if I'd known about the steps to take the measurement before opening the survey, or if it were at the top of the survey, or if I could answer on a separate form after submitting the main survey. I didn't answer because I was afraid that if I took the time to do so, the survey form, or my https connection to it, or something else would time out, and I would lose all the answers I had entered.
I filled in the survey! Like many people I didn't have a ruler to use for the digit ratio question.
I have taken the survey, and to signal my cooperation I have upvoted every existing top-level comment here. Do unto others...
Survey complete!
I'm kind of surprised at how much better I feel like I've gotten about reasoning about these really fuzzy estimates. One of my big goals last year was "get better at reasoning about really fuzzy things" and I feel like I've actually made big progress on that?
I'm really excited to see what the survey results look like this year. I'm hoping we've gotten better at overconfidence!
The gender default thing took me by surprise. I'm guessing that a lot of people answer yes to having a strong gender identity?
Submitted. (Yvain, if you're reading this, you might want to see my note about an accidental incomplete submission.)
I am somewhat disappointed to be asked about favorability with a movement without allowing me to distinguish between the ideals of that movement and the movement as it exists (see: feminism and social justice, which, as phenomenon in reality appear to be ways to generate indignation on tumblr -- I love equality but do not use tumblr and I don't see any purpose in being indignant on the internet).
Also, as regards a "Great Stagnation": Strongly Doubt is not the opposite of Strongly Believe. So I have strong doubts where the balance of my estimation is that Cowen is incorrect -- my radio button does not exist, it is too far to one end of the spectrum, despite not being a hyper-radicalized opinion.
Done, except the digit ratio thing. I still picked a public key and a private key, so that if I get near a scanner or photocopier before November 14 I will submit an otherwise empty survey response with my digit ratios and the same public key and private key as today. Is that OK?
In Political, going only by the descriptions after the colons it looks like Liberal is halfway between Social democratic and Libertarian, and I picked it based on those, but... note that Moldbug also is socially permissive in most all the senses I care about (besides the post I linked, he also supports gay rights) and yet his position doesn't resemble that of the US Democratic Party or the UK Labour Party.
In Less Wrong Use, I rounded my top-level posts down to zero.
In Time on LW and Hours Online, thanks to LeechBlock, I didn't have to pull numbers out of my ass! Likewise for Meditate thanks to Beeminder. OTOH, I answered Books by counting the books I can remember reading and dividing by an anally extracted estimate of the fraction of books I read that I remember.
In the second part of the Calibration questions, does “correct” imply ‘correctly spelled’? My answers are P(correct and correctly spelled) + P(rec...
I answered that I'm cis by default, but I would freak out if I woke up in a woman's body.
I think it's totally reasonable to consider that freaky for reasons other than that you now have to live as a woman. I think the spirit of the question was more, "If you were a woman but had the same personality, would you be okay with that?"
Done! The length is fine; the questions are interesting and fun to consider.
EDIT: removed concerns about "cryivf" if. "srzhe" nf ynetrfg obar (znff if. yratgu); gur cryivf nccneragyl vfa'g n "fvatyr obar".
You should probably Rot13 this. I scanned the comments before I did the survey, and I couldn't remember why I was so confident in the correct answer, but I was.
Survey completed. Account created to get starting karma and increase likelihood/amount of future participation.
I'd like to note that the current formulation of sex/gender/sexual orientation questions forced me to misrepresent myself because the technically correct answers seemed to cause an even greater misrepresentation. I would like extra options to the "sex assigned at birth" question, perhaps "male, now transitioned to female/other" and vice versa, to account for other-gendered transitioners; but I'll be the first to admit that this probably isn't a major issue.
I'm confused. If you were male at birth and transitioned to female, can't you just answer the "sex assigned at birth" question male, and the gender question with "transgender m -> f" ?
Well, that's how I answered, but "other" would have been a more honest description of my gender. The question asked: "With what gender do you primarily identify?" and I don't have a female identity, only what I can describe as a femininely androgynous body image (prompting transition treatments) and much heavier social dysphoria about being male'd than female'd, although the optimal no-mental-suffering-causing option would be to be recognized as non-binary. Answering "AMAB other homosexual" probably wouldn't have had a statistically relevant effect but the possibility of being interpreted (even though realistically nobody would have cared about it in the anonymized answers) as a "male" genderqueer attracted to men was psychologically too painful.
I completed most things except for the digit ratio. Thanks for putting this together, the results are always very interesting to see. Now to see how many of the trivia I got right.
Took the survey. However, my answer for the probability of MWI is "Since MWI makes the same predictions as the standard interpretation, asking for the probability of MWI is meaningless. It is like asking "this glass is 50% full of water. What is the probability that it is half empty? What is the probability that it is half full?" I put 0 for the MWI question, but I'm not sure what you want for that.
For some of the other probability questions, my answer is "I don't have enough information to come up with a good estimate, and I also don't have enough information to come up with a probability that takes into account my inability to come up with a good estimate". Again, I put 0.
Also, after the test, I'm starting to get worried how you anonymize the questions. Releasing the data without a name attached is not anonymization, if the answers people give are enough to identify them.
Done. The basilisk question was really interesting.
Welp, gotta go and destroy all humans now...
DONE.
Hopefully, i'll be able to change a few of my answers regarding the LW meetup frequency by next year. And the answers regarding donations should change drastically within 3 years.
Was pretty happy that I knew a bunch of the answers wrt the calibration section. :)
Now hand over them Karma points.
Survey completed in full, reporting in for karma as per ancient tradition.
Thanks to Scott and Dan for all the work they put into this!
Did it, including the digit ratio.
I may have found a problem-- if I didn't click on the background after answering a radio button question, then using the down arrow marked a lower radio button. I think I cleared up all the resulting errors, but it took two passes, and I may not have caught all the errors.
Finished it. I can't wait to read the post that talks about how bad people are at following directions.
I can already tell you that...well, you remember the preview thread. The one where I posted a version of the survey saying in big letters on the top "DO NOT TAKE THIS, IT IS NOT OPEN" and the first question was "You are not supposed to take the survey now" and the only answer was "Okay, I'll stop"?
Four people took it. Obviously they won't be counted.
Done! The survey has been a progressively smoother experience each of the past three years. And it's nice to have a time to think about the past month's habits in a structured way during the school year.
I completed the survey. (Did not do the digit ratio questions due to lack of available precise tools.)
Submitted, answering almost all questions.
The hardest question was choosing a single favorite LW post.
Also, I wasn't sure if Worm should count as more than one book. (It didn't end up mattering.)
A scanner + Photoshop makes it significantly easier to measure digit ratios.
For those that have mentioned a lack of a ruler, I used this one online: http://iruler.net/.
Might be worth it to link in the survey, if it's still editable.
I'll be interested to compare the results to the 2014 Effective Altruists Survey from earlier this year. Peter Hurford will be presenting its results soon, and I believe he's cross-tabulating them with those on the 2013 LW Census (including figures like the gender ratio and how much people donate).
I took the survey.
I have a few suggestions though.
For the race question, I recommend allowing people to pick more than one option, or creating an extra option saying "I don't primarily identify with one race".
For profession, I feel like it was unclear what people who aren't currently students or employed are supposed to pick. What they most recently worked in or studied in a formal setting? What about students who haven't declared a major yet? The field of study they're leaning toward?
For the time in community question, I suggest clarifying whether that includes lurking. My guess was no, but I think it was sufficiently vague to where a significant number of people wouldn't have guessed that.
I would also be interested in seeing a question relating to use of artificial cognitive enhancement techniques such as tDCS and nootropics.
Thanks for working on the survey. :)
Done.
I tried doing it on my phone earlier, but was having "issues" and decided to wait until I could do so on a laptop. In the mean time, I read the digit ratio comments and decided to try and measure mine.
I measured wrong, and the ruler (which is no more precise than half centimeters) did not come with me to my current location. *is sad*
I have submitted the survey, AND for the first time realized I'm not sure the example lifespan in the anti-agathics question should be understood as continuous. And I learned about natural law!
Thanks, I did the survey. I had been lurking some multiple months in irc and reading bits of sequences and now made an account after the survey.
I would be interested to work with the organizers to include an actual IQ testlet in a future survey.
Most people do worse at calibration than they expect, but you can improve with practice. http://predictionbook.com/
I put an estimate on one calibration question that I knew was wrong. In hindsight I shouldn't have done that. The mistake: I don't know what bone is the longest in the body, but I knew that. So I put down a random answer for that question. But then I felt like it would be cheating on the calibration to put 0% after an intentionally wrong answer, so I put a higher number that wasn't accurate. My mistake, but other people might have done something similar.
I want the political questions to measure the importance of an issue on next year's survey.
I accidentally pressed enter and the form was sent away - half-filled.
This is stupid. I sent another form with only the second half of the survey filled out. Dividing line is the population question, which I incorrectly answered with Rot13(Ehffvn).
Done. I accidentally hit enter when I had everything done except for the digit question, so It submitted my entry and I was not able to answer that question. :(
Completed. I'll be fascinated to see how digit length correlates to gender default. It would imply some very interesting things about sexuality.
Took the survey. I think I've mentioned this last year: I'd like more clarity about the distinction between a "supernatural" God and living in a simulation.
Given the decision on a cap in length I think it might be worthwhile to do a second LW Lifestyle and Values survey in addition to the census. At best with half a year of distance to the census.
I am curious what kind of analysis you plan to run on the calibration questions. Obvious things to do:
For each user, compute the correlation between their probabilities and the 0-1 vector of right and wrong answers. Then display the correlations in some way (a histogram?).
For each question, compute the mean (or median) of the probability for the correct answers and for the wrong answers, and see how separated they are.
But neither of those feels like a really satisfactory measure of calibration.
The question called P(Global Catastrophic Risk) should really be called something more like P(not Global Catastrophic Risk). (Or else the question itself should be inverted, but that would be a Bad Idea since some people have now filled in the survey.)
Some US states do not have partisan voter registration, so choosing "no party" does not necessarily mean someone would not register by party if that option were available.
Done!
I left the HBD (human bio-diversity) question blank, due to having misplaced my barge-pole.
I've gone back, sorted the comments by 'new', and upvoted everyone who commented they did the survey since I took it, and upvoted everyone who did it before me. This way I've upvoted everyone, and they got more karma. It took me three minutes. If you spend a substantial amount of spare time on Less Wrong, it might be worth it for others for you to do the same. The more people who do this, the more karma everyone gets. Also, it can act as an incentive for people to take the survey for karma even if they're late to the game.
Me, survey, did, etc.
EDIT: I do not self-identify as a LWer (and am a bit surprised other people here would do that), but I would expect to be in the survey target demographic none the less.
People who frequently play chess are chess players. People who frequently spent time on LW can be seen as LWers. With >1000 karma you simply fit in that category.
I filled out the survey. Thanks for doing this!
The digit ratio instructions are underspecified.
"....from the middle of the bottom crease". It's hard to tell what the "middle" means meaningfully enough to produce any sort of measurement, even to the nearest centimeter; certainly it is impossible to measure "to the nearest hundredth of a centimeter."
The instructions don't mention the left hand, and don't mention the step of scanning/copying your hand. We can easily interpolate, but the instructions are structured as if they are meant to be followed formally, so may as well make them precise.
I forgot to ask, does spelling count on the calibration questions? Because there are several were I was less confidient of my spelling than of having the basically right answer.
Most comments show exactly one downvote without a clear pattern why. I'd guess that a single person downvoted all these short comments. Can it be that this user doesn't know the custom of upvoting survey-takers?
ADDED 2014-10-25T16:20 UTC: The single downvotes disappeared.
ADDED 2014-10-26T21:10 UTC: The single downvotes reappeared again (at least for a lot of high scoring comments).
Can it be that this user doesn't know the custom of upvoting survey-takers?
Or disagrees with it.
Is Anti-Agathics a strict superset of Cryonics? That is to say, would someone becoming cryonically frozen and then restored, and then living for 1000 years from that date, count as a success for the anti-agathics question?
Did the survey!
Minor quibble:
Number of Current Partners (for example, 0 if you are single, 1 if you are in a monogamous relationship ...)
Seems like bad wording - what if you're in exactly one polyamorous relationship? Your partner could be seeing other people, and even if you're not seeing anyone else you wouldn't call it monogamous.
My first comment here after about a month of lurking is to say that I've completed the survey. Looking forward to seeing the results.
Done. If I were to make a wager I'd say that the correlation between a low digit ratio and stereotypically masculine traits is fairly weak, based on my own >90th percentile high digit ratio yet high masculinity/low femininity scores on the inventory (as well as anecdotal reports from others corroborating my stereotypically masculine traits)
Something that just occurred to me (separate from my took-it comment): Scott, do you take your own survey?
Quick question: I assume the P(God) question excludes simulators, basement universes created in particle accelerators ect? I know it says supernatural, but since a parent universe would not necessarly obey the same laws of physics as the daughter universe, this could be counted as supernatural.
Did the survey. Accidently pressed submit before calculating digit ratio :( Answered everything else though.
Maybe next time add schizoid personality disorder to the "I think I might have this psych disorder" list.
Did the survey.
I started reading the articles only recently and just registered the account now.
I suspect most self-identified communists would baulk at the description of their ideology as "complete state control of many facets of life".
I took the survey. The BSRI reminds me of the MBTI, though, in that the questions are vague and I would probably give different answers depending on various factors, like what time it is or whom I've interacted with recently.
I did the survey! I don't have sufficiently convenient access to a photocopier or scanner to be induced to do the digit ratio thing though.
Top-level comment to say yep, took the survey! Well, except for the digit length by tool-aided measurement. However, I did do a rough measurement (which I chose to not record on the survey) by manually aligning the creases on both hands (first to verify corresponding finger lengths, then to compare D2:D4) I determined my digit ratio to be in excess of 1.00 and possibly as high as 1.02, which would make me very unusual (especially for a cis male). Then again, my height already makes me that.
Also, this is the first thread in which I've commented on LW! My actual first comment (with more stuff about the survey) is here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/l5k/2014_less_wrong_censussurvey/bihv EDIT: Feedback that I posted in that other comment, which it was pointed out really belongs here: Part Four's "Moral Views" section could have used links (LW, WP, wherever) for those of us who aren't sure about the selection of moral philosophies. It is a question I had been exploring, but mostly just in a "judge each as they are presented to me" approach and I had not encountered all of them before. Also, the WP articles for some of them do not contrast them with the others, so suggested...
Distinguishing Liberal/Social Democratic seems silly, as the difference between Neoreactionary and Conservative is much greater yet they aren't on the poll, and in previous years they were about as common as self-aware Communists.
Also note that the majority of people who pick "Conservative" on LessWrong are probably going to be Neoreactionary in their preferences and one of the more important markers of that group is strongly dissaproving of right wing people who think they can change things by voting and a loathing for the useless and actually harmfull nature of US Republicans.
It was in Yvain's dark matter essay.
On last year’s survey, I found that of American LWers who identify with one of the two major political parties, 80% are Democrat and 20% Republican, which actually sounds pretty balanced compared to some of these other examples.
But it doesn’t last. Pretty much all of those “Republicans” are libertarians who consider the GOP the lesser of two evils. When allowed to choose “libertarian” as an alternative, only 4% of visitors continued to identify as conservative. But that’s still…some. Right?
When I broke the numbers down further, 3 percentage points of those are neoreactionaries, a bizarre local sect that wants to be ruled by a king. Only one percent of LWers were normal everyday God-‘n-guns-but-not-George-III conservatives of the type that seem to make up about half of the United States.
Did the survey. Seemed shorter than last year but I haven't gone back to double check how long last year's was.
In regards to the question on what sort of job you have, I selected 'other' because I work in a factory. I considered selecting 'business' since the factory is owned by a for-profit business, but given that many of the other options were professional positions where one might also be an employee of a business, and because my job is a labor union job rather than a professional position, I took the 'business' option to be more along the lines of e.g. owning a business. I might suggest adding other options like 'manufacturing labor' or the like in the future, if you get enough similar responses to warrant adding those sort of options.
Took the survey. Anyone else concerned that "largest bone in the body" isn't very well-defined? Largest by volume, longest measurement, ... ?
That still doesn't help for the purposes of calibration, when you have uncertainty over whether these are all the same.
Took the survey a few days ago, and forgot to even comment! Thanks Yvain and looking forward to seeing what comes out of it
Did the survey. I don't know what cisgender means, but I assume that's me, as I'm definitely not transgender...
Did it. Did all the extra credit except for the digit ratio.
Also, apparently I really have weird ideas about gender, as I'm masculine 55 and feminine 38, more masculine and less feminine than the average male (and I was born male), but I also answered that I don't particularly prefer being born male, modulo the relevant social roles. It's all just sorta a thing that happened; if it had happened the other way, I might have grown up being influenced into different roles and different ways of behaving, but I'd still pretty much be me (complete with being really weirdly headstrong and over-aggressive).
Too late now, but an interesting question would be: Have you volunteered for MIRI, CfAR, or the broader mission of rationality or AI-risk? (The question would have to be specified more precisely than that.)
Next year, can we have "something sort of like left-libertarianism-ist" on the big politics question. I think that there are many people here (myself included) that do not know how to categorize ourselves politically, but know that we have a lot in common with Yvain.
Took the survey. Did not read the comments first. Here are my observations after filling it out and reading the comments:
Problems encountered:
Criticism of questions:
I realize after the fact that when answering “how many books have you read”, I counted only things which are books in the sense of "the kind of thing that has an ISBN", excluding book-length self-published-on-the-internet documents, and also thought only of new books as opposed to rereads. I request that future versions of this question clarify what counts as a book and whether rereading counts.
"Hours Online": what counts as "on the Internet" in today's world is unclear. If I'm writing a book in Google Docs, does that count? If I'm focused on a problem, but I have an IRC channel open in the corner of my screen, does that count? If I'm wa
I took the survey.
The only part I wasn't sure about how to answer was the P(God) and P(supernatural) part. I put a very low probability on P(supernatural) because it sounded like it was talking about supernatural things happening "since the beginning of the universe" which I took as meaning "after the big bang." But for P(God) I put 50% because, hey, who knows, maybe there was a clockmaker God who set up the big bang?
If one were to interpret these survey responses in a certain way, though, they could seem illogical because one might think that P(supernatural) (which includes God in addition to many other possibilities) would strictly have to have a higher probability than the more-specific P(God). But like I said, I took P(supernatural) as referring to stuff after the big bang, whereas I took P(God) as including any time even before the big bang.
I completed the survey.
Yvain, in the "Referrals" section I feel the wording is a little ambiguous in what you should do if you were referred by Overcoming Bias but you've not "Been here since it was started in the Overcoming Bias days". I think you should answer "Referred by a link on another blog or website" on the first one and write "Overcoming Bias" in the second question despite the "other than Overcoming Bias" in it. But I'm not completely confident that this is what you would expect, or if other people would read it the same way.
Took the survey! A few things:
I'm afraid my answer to the singularity start date is going to get thrown out, because I peg it to have started in the past with the start of the limited liability corporation. I know this is non-standard and weird, but it is genuine.
I'm a little disappointed that more of the suggestions from last year's results weren't included. This survey was nowhere near too long and I think that more optional questions (that don't involve outside tests) would add value.
Still frustrated with 'highest degree completed' not being 'highest degree completed or in progress.'
Don't reuse your password from last year! The public ones were all published! And try harder to make your's unique - last year there were a couple duplicates. If you put 'SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE', you're doing it wrong.
Did the survey (a couple days ago).
I wasn't here for the last survey- are the results predominantly discussed here and on Yvain's blog?
Done! Ahhh, another year another survey. I feel like I did one just a few months ago. I wish I knew my previous answers about gods, aliens, cryonics, and simulators.
Glad to do the survey, and appreciate that LW takes the views of readers seriously, that's great!
FWIW, I said I "strongly disagree" with Feminism and Social Justice, even though I find their Wikipedia descriptions generally agreeable. I think in the future, it would be good to split those questions into pairs: a) "Do you agree with the stated mission goals of X ?", and b). "Do you agree with the actions of people who identify as X ?"
If we're going to bother to ask (b) at all, it's probably best to frame it in a way that doesn't make "some but not all of them" the obvious answer.
For example, perhaps you could identify some groups you consider definitive of Feminism and Social Justice, and we could ask "How often do you agree with $group?" (IIRC, on their own blog Yvain often uses something called jezebel as a metric for what feminists believe.)
I took the survey. Finding a ruler with the correct precision was difficult so I skipped the digit question. Anyone in the Bay Area with the requisite equipment?
I took the survey. Though I can’t remember my SAT score, which I know I put on the last survey – I wish I had saved my answers last year.
You are probably one of the few people who can identify an exact year when you forgot your SAT scores.
FINISHED. ALL OF IT. \m/ Literally superhuman.
TIL I'm undifferentiated according to the BSRI... huh.
Karma for all, per tradition. <3
- a long time lurker
P.S. You can trashcan the premature submission that answers Part 8's first question with 23200. While revising my predicted date of the singularity, I brushed my keypad's enter (next to the 3) by mistake. ಠ_ಠ
Took it.
This is my second year taking the survey. I wish I remembered what my answers were last year so I could see how I've changed.
Hello, I'm decloaking from lurker status to say that I took the survey.
Calibration question for the Religious Denomination and P(Religion) questions:
Do the terms "believe" and "correct", respectively, in these questions refer strictly to the supernatural elements of a religion (accuracy of creation story, reification of pantheon, etc.)? Or more broadly over its entire catechism?
In other words, if a virtue ethicist were to feel that Floobian morality is pretty darn sound, but not truly believe that Floob herself literally sang the cosmos into existence... would you call that person a Floobist? Or does a point of disagreement constitute disbelief / incorrectness?
Given the recent example of the Pope coming out in favor of science's version of the origins of everything, I think this is a relevant distinction to draw.
Survey taken!
Concerning the mental health questions, how do you weight self diagnosed and diagnosed by psychiatrist? Do you think, given the Less Wrong demographic self diagnosis is less or more reliable (intuitively I would tend to more). How should cases like myself answer - diagnosed with asperger by psychiatrist1, two years later diagnosed with ADHD but not asperger by psychiatrist2, several month later diagnosed as neither asperger nor ADHD by psychiatrist3?
I'm new to LW and have been lurking and catching up for a while, but I answered the survey anyway. Working on gathering more ground so I'll be able to increase my interactions soon enough.
Completed the survey.
Two issues: I put a very low donation to charity, even though I consider working for the FHI to be a donation in kind.
Second, I messed up the probabilities, sorry, because I could not give any answer to P(simulation) and P(MWI) other than "NAN" (not a number). I can explain that stance in detail if you want.
Right, let's try and explain...
Consider either an infinite universe, or better yet, a Tegmark multiverse. In this infinite universe, there will be infinitely many copies of you, and of the world. Some will be run on what we would clearly consider to be simulations (a sci-fi super computer programmed by elegant post humans or bug-eyed monsters). Some would be in places we would consider "real". Other would be in places we might or might not consider to be simulations (eg on a giant game of life board, inside a tower of simulations with no conscious simulation at any level, etc...). Add in dust theories, by which we can consider that we are sequences of events from wildly different space-time zones in the multivese.
Amazingly, we can still make decisions in this setting, by appealing to principle like entropy or artificial induction (ie "induction may or may not work, but if it doesn't work, we can't do anything anyway, so we may as well assume it works"). However, asking "are we a simulation" involves some sort of dividing an infinite number of copies of us (some clearly simulations, some occasionally simulations (see the dust theories) some completely a...
Took the survey. I loved the calibration questions; it takes ~20 times more effort to come up with the confidence level than the answer, and I always feel I learn about myself. I've messed with some calibration question games before and was downright astonished at how well calibrated I was (the irony is not lost on me); but the questions were all in A-vs-B format rather than free form. The A-vs-B format is much easier to appear to be well calibrated.
Taken.
Finger thing is weird. My fingers don't have constant length to the tenth of a millimeter, and holding my hand in the copier for a long time was uncomfortable enough that the fingers probably bent at least two millimeters. So if you really need tenths of a millimeter accuracy, disregard the one that has a result for the right hand and says 'nope' for the left hand.
"Social democrat" and "liberal" have been given almost identical descriptions. Don't know if that's deliberate.
For the future, in the case of multiple choice questions it might be nice to have an "unselect" option. (Some of the questions say "if you don't know leave blank" or similar and then if you accidentally click an option you are forced to choose something)
Took the survey. I almost missed it since I don't really read Main these days.
Are options 3/4 on the BSRI backwards? To me "occasionally" is rarer than "sometimes".
I identify with being "mixed race" far more than any individual race (which feels distinct to me from "other", but it was still the only choice for me).
I learned/confirmed non-zero answers about myself for questions I hadn't previously/strongly considered. This could be considered a "bonus" for taking the survey.
(Finished.)
Took the survey! Even the digit ration thing! I hope enough people did that for it to be useful.
Done!
I really like the calibration questions and would like to see more of them.
Where were the questions on things like Newcomb's paradox?
I'd like the option to enter (rough) confidence intervals, and I'd think they'd be useful for analysis.
Why not expand the survey? People could always leave stuff out that they don't want to answer.
Finished the survey! I'm curious to see what the results will be. Finding my digit ratio was interesting. I expected crazier questions.
Mission Accomplished.
I definitely want to see the results! For reference, 2013: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jj0/2013_survey_results/
I wonder if we could get a chart with the data matched up over time? Chart community changes over time?
Took the survey! That last one was a hard because I didn't have a ruler :( Also, out of curiosity - has anyone ever had the same Public and Private key before?
The ritual has been completed. I await my karmic reword, as per tradition.
There was a lot of good variance in the calibration questions (for me), so nice job thinking of them! Gur ivqrb tnzr dhrfgvba va cnegvphyne fhecevfrq zr jura V ybbxrq hc gur nafjre, nf rira nf n uhtr Zvarpensg sna V unqa'g ernyvmrq vg orng bhg frpbaq cynpr ol 3 zvyyvba.
Also, in a fit of needless cleverness, I made my public key decryptable (by my private key) into a plaintext message that works as an extra layer of identification in the case that I win the money.
Did it! Even the digit ratio question! (which is why I am taking it relatively late)
Unsurprisingly, my digit ratio is pretty feminine (0.969 averaged over both hands).
Could I suggest posting a link to the survey in Discussion as well? I hardly ever check Main any more, and I don't think I'm the only one.
For the first time I did it!
And want to thank the person who included "homemaker" in occupations list.
I completed the survey.
Without an accompanying glossary, my formulation consistently lurked in the critical analysis of the question. At one point I laughed under my breath pondering which resource would rusticate alternative interpretations. A modern Attorney, or Socrates himself!
Who do you currently live with most of the time? (Alone, with parents or other guardians, with partner and/or children, with roommates.)
My house is currently: me, wife, daughter, sister, another sister, mother, father. I put "with partner and/or children", but that doesn't seem like a good fit.
Please give the score you got on your most recent PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC IQ test
This makes me feel like I should have an IQ number to put here? Is that a thing people usually have?
Place your right hand firmly on the plate of a photocopier or scanner with fingers straight.
I used a picture of my hand. We're just going for ratios, so that should be fine, and it's a lot easier.
And... done. I would like to point out that X-Risk question may be confusing when skimming. P(X-Risk) looks as if it were asking for probability of catastrophe coming to pass, but the explanations spells out that the probability of humanity successfully avoiding catastrophe should be entered.
Survey taken. I agree with others' points re: the potential inaccuracy of the BSRI, although I also presume that if most other people are considering the fact that their interactions with partners / lovers is dramatically different than those with strangers / colleagues, much of the error in the test will be filtered out. For future tests, it may be helpful to put a qualification on the LW part of the test, asking people to self-identify whether they were taking an average of all interactions, or mostly using those with SOs, etc.
Completed survey less annoying question that required using an annoying scanner that makes annoying noises (I am feeling annoyed). Almost skipped it, but realized that the attitudes of ex-website-regulars might be of interest.
I have taken the survey, including the digit ratio question.
Since there was a box to be included in the SSC survey, I just a little bit disappointed there wasn't a question for favourite SSC post to go with the favourite LessWrong post question.
Did the survey, except digit ratio due to lack of precision measuring devices.
As for feedback, I had some trouble interpreting a few of the questions. There were some times when you defined terms like human biodiversity, and I agreed with some of the claims in the definition but not others, but since I had no real way to weight the claims by importance it was difficult for me to turn my conclusions into a single confidence measurement. I also had no idea weather the best-selling computer game question was supposed to account for inflation or general growth of the videogame market, nor whether we were measuring in terms of copies sold or revenue earned or something else entirely, nor whether console games or games that "sell" for 0$ counted. I ended up copping out by listing a game that is technically included in a bit of software I knew sold very well for its time (and not for free), but the software was not sold as a computer game.
Also, a weird thing happened with the calibration questions When I was very unsure which of a large number of possible answers was correct, and especially if I wasn't even sure how many possible answers there were, I found myself wanting to write an answer that was obviously impossible (like writing "Mars" for Obama's birth state) and putting a 0 for the calibration. I didn't actually do this, but it sure was tempting.
Took the survey. As usual, immense props to Yvain for the dedication and work he puts into this.
I did the survey.
I felt that I had to leave blank some of the questions that ask for a probability number, because no answer that complies with the instructions would be right. For instance, I consider the "Many Worlds" hypothesis to be effectively meaningless, since while it does describe a set of plausible alleged facts, there is, as far as I know, no possible experiment that could falsify it. ("Supernatural" is also effectively meaningless, but for a different reason: vagueness. "Magic", to me, describes only situations where Clarke's Third Law applies. And so forth.)
I would like to participate in a deeper discussion of the idea of the Singularity, but don't know if that's welcome on LW. I want to attack the idea on several levels: (1) the definition of it, which may be too vague to be falsifiable; (2) the definition of intelligence -- I don't think we're talking about a mere chess-playing computer, but it's not clear to me whether Minsky's criteria are sufficient; (3) if those first two points are somehow nailed down, then I'm not at all sure that a machine intelligence is desirable, and certainly I'd hesitate to connect one to hardware with e...
Done.
How real is the research on digit ratio? (On bogus statistics-based research see, for example: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble).
In any case, can you please explain how you plan to use digit ratio data?
Done.
Also, concerning the psychological states. I was diagnosed with a certain something, but the results were largely inconclusive. Chose "was diagnosed".
From what people have said, it seems that after the survey was posted a new question was added about our favorite LW post. Were there any others?
(Posted as a top-level comment at the request of TobyBartels)
My only two comments are one I made on that post inviting lurkers to post and this one, but I did take last years survey for what it's worth. Though I don't recall my answers to last year's survey, I suspect they line up pretty well with this year's. I wonder if there's any potential in the data to track how respondents answers change over time.
A lot of people seem to have had some trouble with measuring digit ratio. I tried the scanner method, but the fingertips were too far away from the scanner bed to be in focus. I also had a transparent plastic bag between my hand and the scanner, to avoid leaving a handprint on the plate, which probably didn't help. So I used a ruler instead. Which I would have used to measure the scan anyway, so why go via the scan?
Completed. I'm concerned that the "mixed" options for religious background are concealing meaningful demographic information. For instance, my parents are of Christian and Jewish parentage, so I chose the "mixed" option because I do not consider my cultural heritage to be predominantly Jewish or Christian. A person with Hindu and Muslim parents would have the same answer, but a very different cultural background. Perhaps in future it might be better to use a "check all that apply" format?
I took the survey and answered every question. As usual, I found my ability to correctly answer the calibration questions comically bad . . . but hopefully well calibrated.
Took the survey, and it made me realize I'd never bothered to register an account here before now. The situation has been corrected.
Partial success. I meant to fill in the survey completely, but my internet froze at calibration question 5. In an attempt to revive it, I pressed Enter, which resulted in submission of the incomplete survey. Now what ?
The political ideology question seems to equate libertarian with libertarian capitalist, and communist with totalitarian There's no option for libertarian communism/socialism.
Also, the moral philosophy question seems to assume one believes moral questions have truth values. "None" isn't given as a choice.
I took the survey. I was reminded by Brienne's post today at Facebook. Thanks for running the survey.
Did the entire survey in the nick of time.
I'm very thankful for the humiliating experience of racking my brain to come up with plausible sounding reasons for why the answers to the calibration questions should be one thing or another, trying to lower my certainties so that I felt that surely I couldn't be falling for that old overconfidence bias again, finishing the survey, and looking up the answers on wikipedia afterwards. Now that we have ten widely different questions I really can't rationalize setting Russia as the fourth most populated country with 55% subjective certainty.
At least I got the darn norse god right.
Nine of the questions ask which of various options you "identify with": country, race, gender, political category, moral philosophy, political category (subdivided), effective altruism, gender again, and meta-ethics. I am unclear about this concept, and for the purpose of making a choice, mentally replaced it by respectively "reside in long-term", "are", "are", "believe", etc. Would such rephrasings have changed anyone's answers to any of the questions?
"Identify with" reminds me of the Discworld's Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, who is a six-foot-six human who "identifies as" a dwarf, and who is accepted as such by the dwarves, even though everyone, including him, knows he's human. I don't know Terry Pratchett's thinking behind the character, but Carrot strikes me as a reductio ad absurdum of the concept.
I don't know Terry Pratchett's thinking behind the character, but Carrot strikes me as a reductio ad absurdum of the concept.
I don't think it's a reductio. Actually, I think it's almost the opposite; one of Pratchett's usual schticks is drawing up exaggerated social and political concepts that look absurd on their faces but later turn out to make internal sense. Looked at in that light, it's pretty clear what's going on: Carrot isn't phenotypically a dwarf, but he's culturally a dwarf, and he's accepted as such by Pratchett's dwarves because, to them, dwarvishness is less about being short and beardy and more about the culture. Wearing mail to dinner, being intimately familiar with mine engineering, baking bread that doubles as an assault weapon, et cetera. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the situation Pratchett had in mind was something like being adopted into a religious group normally associated with another ethnicity: his dwarves very often play on religious and traditional themes.
As Pratchett's developed Discworld's dwarvish culture more, this has started to make less sense, but the series isn't particularly good at long-term thematic continuity.
I did the survey! I decided to say I didn't believe in god, even though I think there's a high probability of the universe being a simulation, because I don't count a simulation as supernatural. Supernatural is something that requires the universe to be non-reductionist, in my opinion.
Taken.
Also found that my finger lengths are symmetrical across both hands to the limit of my ability to measure with a ruler. (Calipers might reveal differences, but I don't have access to those.) I did suspect this level of symmetry, but I didn't know until I measured them, so thanks!
Survey completed. Some of the questions are ambiguous.
"How many children do you have?" I find this question problematic each year. Biological offspring? Custodial children?
"What is your approximate annual income in US dollars?" Personal income? Household income?
"Gender Default" I wanted something like a Likert scale here. I would not say I would feel "wrong," "creeped out," or "freaked out" by switching genders, but I would even less say that I "identify with their birth gender only because they see no reason to go through the hassle and social stigma of transitioning," which also seems qualitatively different than "a man who would be happy as either a man or a woman, but since they're a man, they stay a man." The question sets us a dichotomy that may not be so much false as a mild category error, sort of like "which one of you is the fork?"
Did the survey. I'm not terribly interested in karma, but if you feel the need to upvote, then upvote away.
One answer I gave that may confuse - I put "atheist" down under "other" for my religion, because I do believe that a) atheism is properly defined as an active belief in the lack of god(s), b) I hold this belief, c) there can be no actual direct evidence for this belief, and d) being a belief about the nature of god(s)(or lack thereof) is sufficient to make something a religion.
(Oddly, I also put 5% down as my probability of there being a god, but this is mostly because the definition is a superset of the simulation hypothesis, and I don't regard a big computer as being a god in any sense we use the term to mean)
What definition of the Singularity did you use for the question about when you think the Singularity is likely?
I think I used the one about the future becoming incomprehensible.
I'm pretty sure you could get an incomprehensible future by increasing everyone's IQ by 40 points (I know, it's a vague concept) and this might be easier than AI.
I took the survey, now give me my ~40 upvotes.
(is the free karma just an incentive to take the survey? or do 45 people really think that commenting that you took the survey is a valuable contribution to the discussion?)
Man, I'm late this year. Taken. To save my index finger, just upvoted everyone who took it in November :)
Next time, the "supernatural" question really needs to just link to the Sequence post defining the word.
I have taken the survey, and can't wait to see the results on the calibration questions. Post-hoc self-assessment suggests I have a long way to go...
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.
I was oh-so-tempted to enter “Over 9000!” in there.
Was anybody else disappointed that the Sex Role Inventory wasn't nearly as raunchy as the name suggested?
Hey, this year I was able to answer some of the calibration questions! Three yays for norse mythology.
Also apparently I'm a weird person.
I took the survey.
Did anyone else fall on the borderline for some of these questions? I was in a weird space for the one about whether you ever had a relationship with someone else from LW (they introduced me to LW).
On November 2, I wrote: "Partial success. I meant to fill in the survey completely, but my internet froze at calibration question 5. In an attempt to revive it, I pressed Enter, which resulted in submission of the incomplete survey. Now what ?" I received recommendation to take the survey again and report the unfinished one as something to be discarded. So now I finally took the full survey. To avoid duplicity, please discard an old incomplete survey finished at calibration question 5, from someone who lives in Slovakia, attended 2013 "full" minicamp and reported that time carma of cca 174.
I think the question on P(God) is a lot more difficult to answer than the surveyors realize. We're all cognizant of the possibility of the known universe being a simulation, a machine constructed by some intelligent entity in a higher level universe*. Some of us consider the probability of the scenario Simulation to be high, if not absolute for reasons I wont go into here.
Many of us are define "natural" as "happened in reality", thus they define "supernatural" as "did not happen". Those may rightfully assign literal 0 to P(God), that is a statement as sure as the axioms of the logic you formulate it in. The rest of us, though, those of us who believe that all words should by virtue of their existence have a use, have to think a bit more. If "Supernatural" means anything, I'd be surprised if anyone here bears a definition that does not render Simulation equivalent to the scenario God as God was defined in the survey.
To me, "Supernatural", if you're going to use it, could only mean "so mysterious as to be beyond being reasoned about or modelled". The work of the simulator's hand would definitely qualify as such, and so too would the simulator itself. Lo, a supernatural creator. God is reality.
I'm a bit unhappy about the options for metaethical positions. I object to the identification of non-cognitivism with emotivism, because if non-cognitivism is defined as the position that moral statements don't have truth-values, then I'm a non-cognitivist, but I still hold that there are logical relationships between moral statements, and between moral and factual statements.
"Social democrat" and "liberal" have been given almost identical descriptions. Don't know if that's deliberate.
I took the survey.
I failed to ask for this when the request for comments came up, but it would have been nice to get questions about people's awareness/participation in the LWSH. Oh well, maybe next year.
I did the digit ratio question, but I am not sure if my datapoint is useful -- I have arthritis in my fingers and I'm not sure if that warps the result.
Here are the answers to the calibration questions if anyone is curious (rot13):
Q: What is the largest single bone in the human body?
A: Gur srzhe (be guvtuobar) vf gur ybatrfg, urnivrfg, naq zbfg ibyhzvabhf obar va gur uhzna obql. Vg znxrf hc 26% bs na vaqvivqhny'f urvtug ba vgf bja. Gur gvovn (be fuvaobar) vf gur frpbaq ybatrfg, naq V pbhyqa'g svaq vasbezngvba ba gur frpbaq urnivrfg. Hapyrne vs gur cryivf pbhagf, orpnhfr gur cryivf vf znqr bs frireny obarf shfrq gbtrgure.
Q: In what US state was Barack Obama born?
A: Unjnvv. Gurer jnf na bqq pbafcvenpl gurbel gung Bonzn jnf npghnyyl obea va Xraln naq gung uvf Unjnvvna ovegu pregvsvpngr jnf snxrq.
Q: The Battle of Trafalgar was fought off the coast of which country?
A: Fcnva. Gur 1805 Onggyr bs Gensnytne jnf sbhtug whfg bss gur pbnfg bs Pncr Gensnytne, Fcnva. Gur Oevgvfu fbhaqyl qrsrngrq n pbzovarq Serapu naq Fcnavfu anil, ybfvat abg n fvatyr fuvc gb gurve 22. Vg jnf gur zbfg qrpvfvir aniny ivpgbel bs gur Ancbyrbavp Jnef.
Q: Who is the one-eyed chief god of Norse mythology, sometimes called "the All-Father"?
A: Bqva. Bqva vf gur Nyysngure bs gur Abefr Tbqf, naq gur ehyre bs Nftneq (juvpu pbagnvaf Inyunyyn). Ur tbhtrq bhg bar bs ...
Does "Magic Player" count as a non-English language?
It's that time of year again.
If you are reading this post and self-identify as a LWer, then you are the target population for the Less Wrong Census/Survey. Please take it. Doesn't matter if you don't post much. Doesn't matter if you're a lurker. Take the survey.
This year's census contains a "main survey" that should take about ten or fifteen minutes, as well as a bunch of "extra credit questions". You may do the extra credit questions if you want. You may skip all the extra credit questions if you want. They're pretty long and not all of them are very interesting. But it is very important that you not put off doing the survey or not do the survey at all because you're intimidated by the extra credit questions.
It also contains a chance at winning a MONETARY REWARD at the bottom. You do not need to fill in all the extra credit questions to get the MONETARY REWARD, just make an honest stab at as much of the survey as you can.
Please make things easier for my computer and by extension me by reading all the instructions and by answering any text questions in the simplest and most obvious possible way. For example, if it asks you "What language do you speak?" please answer "English" instead of "I speak English" or "It's English" or "English since I live in Canada" or "English (US)" or anything else. This will help me sort responses quickly and easily. Likewise, if a question asks for a number, please answer with a number such as "4", rather than "four".
The planned closing date for the survey is Friday, November 14. Instead of putting the survey off and then forgetting to do it, why not fill it out right now?
Okay! Enough preliminaries! Time to take the...
***
[EDIT: SURVEY CLOSED, DO NOT TAKE!]
***
Thanks to everyone who suggested questions and ideas for the 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey. I regret I was unable to take all of your suggestions into account, because of some limitations in Google Docs, concern about survey length, and contradictions/duplications among suggestions. The current survey is a mess and requires serious shortening and possibly a hard and fast rule that it will never get longer than it is right now.
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.