Thanks—I’d forgotten about mailinator, but I just now tried it and was able to get my results—even though I took the test a few hours ago, it still had the results so I did not have to retake the test.
The test worked well—I found the results to be quite accurate (or at least they were consistent with my own self-perception).
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2002 for work on judgment and decisionmaking tasks that are the operational measures of rational thought in cognitive science. Because assessments of intelligence (and similar tests of cognitive ability) are taken to be the quintessence of good thinking, it might be thought that such measures would serve as proxies for the assessment of rational thought. It is important to understand why such an assumption would be misplaced. It is often not recognized that rationality and intelligence (as traditionally defined) are two different things conceptually and empirically. Distinguishing between rationality and intelligence helps explain how people can be, at the same time, intelligent and irrational. Thus, individual differences in the cognitive skills that underlie rational thinking must be studied in their own right because intelligence tests do not explicitly assess rational thinking. In this article, I describe how my research group has worked to develop the first prototype of a comprehensive test of rational thought (the Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking).
I’ve tried to find a complete version of the test online, and haven’t succeeded in finding one. But there are a decent quantity of sample questions, covering all the question types, in the appendix to his book “The Rationality Quotient: Toward a Test of Rational Thinking”.
Interesting test but i think the questions “How many other causes of death aside from this one did you consider before you arrived at this conclusion?” and “How many weeks would you budget to write this paper?” can be answered in different rational ways.
1) I already know that smoke inhalation is the primary cause of fire deaths. For someone who doesn’t know that, it can be rational to consider several options. But in my case it is enough to recall the aforementioned statitical fact and thus consider only one option to tell which cause of Bill’s death will most likely turn out to be. (So i consider just one cause but according to the test i should consider many causes).
2) The average time of writing each of 3 previous papers is 3 weeks and minimum time is 2 weeks. The fourth paper is about the book i like, it is implied that now i have more thorough knowledge about the book than in previous cases which consequently means that i can devote less time to reading/research/thinking than i usually do. And since the minimum time previously was 2 weeks and in that case the paper was about less familiar book, i assume that writing the fourth paper (about more familiar book) will most likely take no more than 2 weeks. (So i would budget 2 weeks but according to the test i should budget 3 weeks).
Your ability to evaluate outside information and theories for accuracy. For example, the question you answered earlier about the fictional BacoNation fast food sandwich checked your Evidence Evaluation. The question reported that the BacoNutcase ad campaign produced a $16 million increase in BacoNation sales, but the sales of the sandwich had fluctuated by nearly as much in the recent past without an ad campaign. Since the connection between the ad campaign and the sales increase was dubious, the question awarded full points if you answered that the ads were only somewaht likely to have driven the sales up.
That just seems wrong. This was the data:
March: $55.0 million
April: $43.8 million
May: $59.4 million
June: $49.6 million
July: $46.1 million
August: $54.9 million
September: $44.5 million
October: $60.5 million
The a priori chance of ads increasing sales is high. Bayesian updating increases the chance quite significantly since the result is higher than any one in the past 7 months (albeit quasi-tied with May). How is it not very likely that the increase is due to the ads? Simply saying ‘it fluctuated by this much before’ seems to be misunderstanding Bayesian probability.
Warning: the test requires that you enter your e-mail address to receive results, and does not warn you of this ahead of time.
It does accept mailinator, though.
Thanks—I’d forgotten about mailinator, but I just now tried it and was able to get my results—even though I took the test a few hours ago, it still had the results so I did not have to retake the test.
The test worked well—I found the results to be quite accurate (or at least they were consistent with my own self-perception).
The test took me about 20 minutes.
Maybe you want to tell us about your result:
I’m a [pollid:1173]
My rationality score (the value where the median currently is 55) is [pollid:1174]
Have a look what the results look in another forum: http://personalitycafe.com/sps-temperament-forum-creators/620626-whats-your-thinking-style.html
Some of my colleagues also took the test. There were free spirits, detectives, executies but I was the only rationalist.
So, uh, are people honestly reporting that they got a “rationalist” result from this, or are they just thinking “well, I’m a rationalist, so...”?
The test labeled me as a “rationalist”.
It seems that the test is based on the CART (The Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking) rationality inventory.
Abstract:
Hi
Where can I take “The Comprehensive Assessment of Rational
Thinking” (CART)? This article http://www.keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning_files/Stanovich_EdPsy_2016.pdf
talks about it, where is the actual assessment?
I’ve tried to find a complete version of the test online, and haven’t succeeded in finding one. But there are a decent quantity of sample questions, covering all the question types, in the appendix to his book “The Rationality Quotient: Toward a Test of Rational Thinking”.
Interesting test but i think the questions “How many other causes of death aside from this one did you consider before you arrived at this conclusion?” and “How many weeks would you budget to write this paper?” can be answered in different rational ways.
1) I already know that smoke inhalation is the primary cause of fire deaths. For someone who doesn’t know that, it can be rational to consider several options. But in my case it is enough to recall the aforementioned statitical fact and thus consider only one option to tell which cause of Bill’s death will most likely turn out to be. (So i consider just one cause but according to the test i should consider many causes).
2) The average time of writing each of 3 previous papers is 3 weeks and minimum time is 2 weeks. The fourth paper is about the book i like, it is implied that now i have more thorough knowledge about the book than in previous cases which consequently means that i can devote less time to reading/research/thinking than i usually do. And since the minimum time previously was 2 weeks and in that case the paper was about less familiar book, i assume that writing the fourth paper (about more familiar book) will most likely take no more than 2 weeks. (So i would budget 2 weeks but according to the test i should budget 3 weeks).
What do you think, am i missing something?
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Took the test -
That just seems wrong. This was the data:
March: $55.0 million
April: $43.8 million
May: $59.4 million
June: $49.6 million
July: $46.1 million
August: $54.9 million
September: $44.5 million
The a priori chance of ads increasing sales is high. Bayesian updating increases the chance quite significantly since the result is higher than any one in the past 7 months (albeit quasi-tied with May). How is it not very likely that the increase is due to the ads? Simply saying ‘it fluctuated by this much before’ seems to be misunderstanding Bayesian probability.
I don’t think there’s any reason to write this in the clear without rot13.
What is this, Less Wrong: Cosmos Edition?