I’ve been reading the thread, and it appears there are some categories of questions Less Wrong wants explored in more detail, with more questions. These subjects include:
rates of vegetarianism/paleo/alt-diets
what drugs do you take without a prescription, including caffeine/nicotine/alcohol, nootropics, and illicit recreational drugs.
a wide diversity of philosophical moral/meta-ethical positions
opinions of certain policies
wider variety of sexual/romantic/gender orientation options.
This is all very interesting. However, with upvotes, below all these are comments of the form “I’m not taking this (part of) the survey if you add a bunch more questions, each with more options to consider than I even understand what they mean.”
May I suggest that we use this survey as a general value of information survey, and, if we really want to later, based upon the results of this initial one, more specific ones are made?
For example, if we want to discover exactly which one of flexitarian, vegan, pescetarian, or plain vegetarian someone is, we can ask that if, like, >5%, or 10%, of the community reduces meat intake.
or
there could be five checkboxes for drugs, such as
Which of the following have you consumed in the last year?
Alcohol
Nicotine
Nootropics
Illicit Substances
Then, on the next survey we can ask more details about specific nootropics if it turns out half of us use them everyday, and that’s exciting because we didn’t see it coming, or whatever.
or
Ask a question about whether someone is grey aromantic demisexual, or whatever, if the first survey returns a result of more than literally only 3 people choosing asexual on the initial survey, because frankly asexual people are rare, as much as they are special, lovely people like everyone else.
This second survey could be called, I don’t know: Less Wrong 2014 Census Part 2: Zooming In on Bonus Sections, and it could be taken by the few dozen people who differed widely from the mean in the first survey in the various sections. Of course, if Scott doesn’t want to make that survey, he shouldn’t have to. We can do it, or at least somebody can, if they really want to.
Additionally, I think there could be a Less Wrong Philosophy Survey, or Less Wrong Prediction/Calibration Survey, simply because some among us could make awesome surveys just as grand as the original Less Wrong census in its own right, and that there may be sufficient demand for that from the community.
Somebody upvoted my above comment. At least one person liked this comment. I grouped all my general suggestions for changes in one comment because I thought I shouldn’t clutter the thread with all my ideas in their own separate comments. I figure people skimmed over the long comment to upvote terser, better suggestions, which makes sense.
Whether you upvoted the above, or not, if an single example is an excelletn suggestion, build upon it in your own new comment, or let me know. Maybe a put up a bunch of noise above, and it’s difficult for us to send the signals. I just want to send my best signals through as suggestions to the survey like everyone else.
I’ve been reading the thread, and it appears there are some categories of questions Less Wrong wants explored in more detail, with more questions. These subjects include:
rates of vegetarianism/paleo/alt-diets
what drugs do you take without a prescription, including caffeine/nicotine/alcohol, nootropics, and illicit recreational drugs.
a wide diversity of philosophical moral/meta-ethical positions
opinions of certain policies
wider variety of sexual/romantic/gender orientation options.
This is all very interesting. However, with upvotes, below all these are comments of the form “I’m not taking this (part of) the survey if you add a bunch more questions, each with more options to consider than I even understand what they mean.”
May I suggest that we use this survey as a general value of information survey, and, if we really want to later, based upon the results of this initial one, more specific ones are made?
For example, if we want to discover exactly which one of flexitarian, vegan, pescetarian, or plain vegetarian someone is, we can ask that if, like, >5%, or 10%, of the community reduces meat intake.
or
there could be five checkboxes for drugs, such as
Alcohol
Nicotine
Nootropics
Illicit Substances
Then, on the next survey we can ask more details about specific nootropics if it turns out half of us use them everyday, and that’s exciting because we didn’t see it coming, or whatever.
or
Ask a question about whether someone is grey aromantic demisexual, or whatever, if the first survey returns a result of more than literally only 3 people choosing asexual on the initial survey, because frankly asexual people are rare, as much as they are special, lovely people like everyone else.
This second survey could be called, I don’t know: Less Wrong 2014 Census Part 2: Zooming In on Bonus Sections, and it could be taken by the few dozen people who differed widely from the mean in the first survey in the various sections. Of course, if Scott doesn’t want to make that survey, he shouldn’t have to. We can do it, or at least somebody can, if they really want to.
Additionally, I think there could be a Less Wrong Philosophy Survey, or Less Wrong Prediction/Calibration Survey, simply because some among us could make awesome surveys just as grand as the original Less Wrong census in its own right, and that there may be sufficient demand for that from the community.
Somebody upvoted my above comment. At least one person liked this comment. I grouped all my general suggestions for changes in one comment because I thought I shouldn’t clutter the thread with all my ideas in their own separate comments. I figure people skimmed over the long comment to upvote terser, better suggestions, which makes sense.
Whether you upvoted the above, or not, if an single example is an excelletn suggestion, build upon it in your own new comment, or let me know. Maybe a put up a bunch of noise above, and it’s difficult for us to send the signals. I just want to send my best signals through as suggestions to the survey like everyone else.