I found these very difficult (with one exception—one of the entries was mine). Perhaps I’m just bad at spotting the relevant cues, but I think actually vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism are probably easier to fake than (e.g.) liberalism/conservatism or theism/atheism. Being a vegetarian isn’t a matter of all-encompassing worldview; you can turn an omnivore into a vegetarian by adjusting one or two opinions (e.g. on what sorts of diet are healthiest) or preferences (e.g., does meat taste delicious or gross) or values (e.g., is a chicken’s suffering 0%, 1% or 50% as important as a human’s), and it’s probably not super-difficult for most thoughtful people to imagine themselves into the opposite position.
Yeah, I had much the same problem. And since allegedly each person was randomly labelled either “vegetarian” or “omnivore”, clearly that indicates that we’re failing to tell which is which. I made some (insufficient) attempt to adjust my probability estimates downward a little (effectively, updating on the knowledge that randomized answers usually look credible to me, so that my naive credibility judgements must be overgenerous), so that almost all my estimates were 40%-60%.
I fear that this one (at least with the sample of contestants we’ve got—LW posters are an intelligent lot) is just too difficult.
I am prepared to be embarrassed if it turns out that some people were able to identify fakers much better than chance...
I pretty much agree with you. I think it’ll be interesting to get the data out of this and see how competent the judges are compared to Leah’s Christianity tests. A few people in my local group thought this would be a good topic.
I found these very difficult (with one exception—one of the entries was mine). Perhaps I’m just bad at spotting the relevant cues, but I think actually vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism are probably easier to fake than (e.g.) liberalism/conservatism or theism/atheism. Being a vegetarian isn’t a matter of all-encompassing worldview; you can turn an omnivore into a vegetarian by adjusting one or two opinions (e.g. on what sorts of diet are healthiest) or preferences (e.g., does meat taste delicious or gross) or values (e.g., is a chicken’s suffering 0%, 1% or 50% as important as a human’s), and it’s probably not super-difficult for most thoughtful people to imagine themselves into the opposite position.
All felt realistic to me. With different degrees of believability, but none scored below 50% in my radar.
Yeah, I had much the same problem. And since allegedly each person was randomly labelled either “vegetarian” or “omnivore”, clearly that indicates that we’re failing to tell which is which. I made some (insufficient) attempt to adjust my probability estimates downward a little (effectively, updating on the knowledge that randomized answers usually look credible to me, so that my naive credibility judgements must be overgenerous), so that almost all my estimates were 40%-60%.
I fear that this one (at least with the sample of contestants we’ve got—LW posters are an intelligent lot) is just too difficult.
I am prepared to be embarrassed if it turns out that some people were able to identify fakers much better than chance...
I pretty much agree with you. I think it’ll be interesting to get the data out of this and see how competent the judges are compared to Leah’s Christianity tests. A few people in my local group thought this would be a good topic.