Politics

The LessWrong survey has a very involved section dedicated to politics. In previous analysis the benefits of this weren't fully realized. In the 2016 analysis we can look at not just the political affiliation of a respondent, but what beliefs are associated with a certain affiliation. The charts below summarize most of the results.

Political Opinions By Political Affiliation

Miscellaneous Politics

There were also some other questions in this section which aren't covered by the above charts.

PoliticalInterest

On a scale from 1 (not interested at all) to 5 (extremely interested), how would you describe your level of interest in politics?

1: 67 (2.182%)

2: 257 (8.371%)

3: 461 (15.016%)

4: 595 (19.381%)

5: 312 (10.163%)

Voting

Did you vote in your country's last major national election? (LW Turnout Versus General Election Turnout By Country)
Group	Turnout
LessWrong	68.9%
Austrailia	91%
Brazil	78.90%
Britain	66.4%
Canada	68.3%
Finland	70.1%
France	79.48%
Germany	71.5%
India	66.3%
Israel	72%
New Zealand	77.90%
Russia	65.25%
United States	54.9%

Numbers taken from Wikipedia, accurate as of the last general election in each country listed at time of writing.

AmericanParties

If you are an American, what party are you registered with?

Democratic Party: 358 (24.5%)

Republican Party: 72 (4.9%)

Libertarian Party: 26 (1.8%)

Other third party: 16 (1.1%)

Not registered for a party: 451 (30.8%)

(option for non-Americans who want an option): 541 (37.0%)

Calibration And Probability Questions

Calibration Questions

I just couldn't analyze these, sorry guys. I put many hours into trying to get them into a decent format I could even read and that sucked up an incredible amount of time. It's why this part of the survey took so long to get out. Thankfully another LessWrong user, Houshalter, has kindly done their own analysis.

All my calibration questions were meant to satisfy a few essential properties:

They should be 'self contained'. I.E, something you can reasonably answer or at least try to answer with a 5th grade science education and normal life experience.
They should, at least to a certain extent, be Fermi Estimable.
They should progressively scale in difficulty so you can see whether somebody understands basic probability or not. (eg. In an 'or' question do they put a probability of less than 50% of being right?)

At least one person requested a workbook, so I might write more in the future. I'll obviously write more for the survey.

Probability Questions


Question	Mean	Median	Mode	Stdev
Please give the obvious answer to this question, so I can automatically throw away all surveys that don't follow the rules: What is the probability of a fair coin coming up heads?	49.821	50.0	50.0	3.033
What is the probability that the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is more or less correct?	44.599	50.0	50.0	29.193
What is the probability that non-human, non-Earthly intelligent life exists in the observable universe?	75.727	90.0	99.0	31.893
...in the Milky Way galaxy?	45.966	50.0	10.0	38.395
What is the probability that supernatural events (including God, ghosts, magic, etc) have occurred since the beginning of the universe?	13.575	1.0	1.0	27.576
What is the probability that there is a god, defined as a supernatural intelligent entity who created the universe?	15.474	1.0	1.0	27.891
What is the probability that any of humankind's revealed religions is more or less correct?	10.624	0.5	1.0	26.257
What is the probability that an average person cryonically frozen today will be successfully restored to life at some future time, conditional on no global catastrophe destroying civilization before then?	21.225	10.0	5.0	26.782
What is the probability that at least one person living at this moment will reach an age of one thousand years, conditional on no global catastrophe destroying civilization in that time?	25.263	10.0	1.0	30.510
What is the probability that our universe is a simulation?	25.256	10.0	50.0	28.404
What is the probability that significant global warming is occurring or will soon occur, and is primarily caused by human actions?	83.307	90.0	90.0	23.167
What is the probability that the human race will make it to 2100 without any catastrophe that wipes out more than 90% of humanity?	76.310	80.0	80.0	22.933

Probability questions is probably the area of the survey I put the least effort into. My plan for next year is to overhaul these sections entirely and try including some Tetlock-esque forecasting questions, a link to some advice on how to make good predictions, etc.

Futurology

This section got a bit of a facelift this year. Including new cryonics questions, genetic engineering, and technological unemployment in addition to the previous years.

Cryonics

Cryonics

Are you signed up for cryonics?

Yes - signed up or just finishing up paperwork: 48 (2.9%)

No - would like to sign up but unavailable in my area: 104 (6.3%)

No - would like to sign up but haven't gotten around to it: 180 (10.9%)

No - would like to sign up but can't afford it: 229 (13.8%)

No - still considering it: 557 (33.7%)

No - and do not want to sign up for cryonics: 468 (28.3%)

Never thought about it / don't understand: 68 (4.1%)

CryonicsNow

Do you think cryonics, as currently practiced by Alcor/Cryonics Institute will work?

Yes: 106 (6.6%)

Maybe: 1041 (64.4%)

No: 470 (29.1%)

Interestingly enough, of those who think it will work with enough confidence to say 'yes', only 14 are actually signed up for cryonics.

sqlite> select count(*) from data where CryonicsNow="Yes" and Cryonics="Yes - signed up or just finishing up paperwork";

14

sqlite> select count(*) from data where CryonicsNow="Yes" and (Cryonics="Yes - signed up or just finishing up paperwork" OR Cryonics="No - would like to sign up but unavailable in my area" OR "No - would like to sign up but haven't gotten around to it" OR "No - would like to sign up but can't afford it");

34

CryonicsPossibility

Do you think cryonics works in principle?

Yes: 802 (49.3%)

Maybe: 701 (43.1%)

No: 125 (7.7%)

LessWrongers seem to be very bullish on the underlying physics of cryonics even if they're not as enthusiastic about current methods in use.

The Brain Preservation Foundation also did an analysis of cryonics responses to the LessWrong Survey.

Singularity

SingularityYear

By what year do you think the Singularity will occur? Answer such that you think, conditional on the Singularity occurring, there is an even chance of the Singularity falling before or after this year. If you think a singularity is so unlikely you don't even want to condition on it, leave this question blank.

Mean: 8.110300081581755e+16

Median: 2080.0

Mode: 2100.0

Stdev: 2.847858859055733e+18

I didn't bother to filter out the silly answers for this.

Obviously it's a bit hard to see without filtering out the uber-large answers, but the median doesn't seem to have changed much from the 2014 survey.

Genetic Engineering

ModifyOffspring

Would you ever consider having your child genetically modified for any reason?

Yes: 1552 (95.921%)

No: 66 (4.079%)

Well that's fairly overwhelming.

GeneticTreament

Would you be willing to have your child genetically modified to prevent them from getting an inheritable disease?

Yes: 1387 (85.5%)

Depends on the disease: 207 (12.8%)

No: 28 (1.7%)

I find it amusing how the strict "No" group shrinks considerably after this question.

GeneticImprovement

Would you be willing to have your child genetically modified for improvement purposes? (eg. To heighten their intelligence or reduce their risk of schizophrenia.)

Yes : 0 (0.0%)

Maybe a little: 176 (10.9%)

Depends on the strength of the improvements: 262 (16.2%)

No: 84 (5.2%)

Yes I know 'yes' is bugged, I don't know what causes this bug and despite my best efforts I couldn't track it down. There is also an issue here where 'reduce your risk of schizophrenia' is offered as an example which might confuse people, but the actual science of things cuts closer to that than it does to a clean separation between disease risk and 'improvement'.

This question is too important to just not have an answer to so I'll do it manually. Unfortunately I can't easily remove the 'excluded' entries so that we're dealing with the exact same distribution but only 13 or so responses are filtered out anyway.

sqlite> select count(*) from data where GeneticImprovement="Yes";

1100

>>> 1100 + 176 + 262 + 84
1622
>>> 1100 / 1622
0.6781750924784217

67.8% are willing to genetically engineer their children for improvements.

GeneticCosmetic

Would you be willing to have your child genetically modified for cosmetic reasons? (eg. To make them taller or have a certain eye color.)

Yes: 500 (31.0%)

Maybe a little: 381 (23.6%)

Depends on the strength of the improvements: 277 (17.2%)

No: 455 (28.2%)

These numbers go about how you would expect, with people being progressively less interested the more 'shallow' a genetic change is seen as.

GeneticOpinionD

What's your overall opinion of other people genetically modifying their children for disease prevention purposes?

Positive: 1177 (71.7%)

Mostly Positive: 311 (19.0%)

No strong opinion: 112 (6.8%)

Mostly Negative: 29 (1.8%)

Negative: 12 (0.7%)

GeneticOpinionI

What's your overall opinion of other people genetically modifying their children for improvement purposes?

Positive: 737 (44.9%)

Mostly Positive: 482 (29.4%)

No strong opinion: 273 (16.6%)

Mostly Negative: 111 (6.8%)

Negative: 38 (2.3%)

GeneticOpinionC

What's your overall opinion of other people genetically modifying their children for cosmetic reasons?

Positive: 291 (17.7%)

Mostly Positive: 290 (17.7%)

No strong opinion: 576 (35.1%)

Mostly Negative: 328 (20.0%)

Negative: 157 (9.6%)

All three of these seem largely consistent with peoples personal preferences about modification. Were I inclined I could do a deeper analysis that actually takes survey respondents row by row and looks at correlation between preference for ones own children and preference for others.

Technological Unemployment

LudditeFallacy

Do you think the Luddite's Fallacy is an actual fallacy?

Yes: 443 (30.936%)

No: 989 (69.064%)

We can use this as an overall measure of worry about technological unemployment, which would seem to be high among the LW demographic.

UnemploymentYear

By what year do you think the majority of people in your country will have trouble finding employment for automation related reasons? If you think this is something that will never happen leave this question blank.

Mean: 2102.9713740458014

Median: 2050.0

Mode: 2050.0

Stdev: 1180.2342850727339

Question is flawed because you can't distinguish answers of "never happen" from people who just didn't see it.

Interesting question that would be fun to take a look at in comparison to the estimates for the singularity.

EndOfWork

Do you think the "end of work" would be a good thing?

Yes: 1238 (81.287%)

No: 285 (18.713%)

Fairly overwhelming consensus, but with a significant minority of people who have a dissenting opinion.

EndOfWorkConcerns

If machines end all or almost all employment, what are your biggest worries? Pick two.


Question	Count	Percent
People will just idle about in destructive ways	513	16.71%
People need work to be fulfilled and if we eliminate work we'll all feel deep existential angst	543	17.687%
The rich are going to take all the resources for themselves and leave the rest of us to starve or live in poverty	1066	34.723%
The machines won't need us, and we'll starve to death or be otherwise liquidated	416	13.55%

Question is flawed because it demanded the user 'pick two' instead of up to two.

The plurality of worries are about elites who refuse to share their wealth.

Existential Risk

XRiskType

Which disaster do you think is most likely to wipe out greater than 90% of humanity before the year 2100?

Nuclear war: +4.800% 326 (20.6%)

Asteroid strike: -0.200% 64 (4.1%)

Unfriendly AI: +1.000% 271 (17.2%)

Nanotech / grey goo: -2.000% 18 (1.1%)

Pandemic (natural): +0.100% 120 (7.6%)

Pandemic (bioengineered): +1.900% 355 (22.5%)

Environmental collapse (including global warming): +1.500% 252 (16.0%)

Economic / political collapse: -1.400% 136 (8.6%)

Other: 35 (2.217%)

Significantly more people worried about Nuclear War than last year. Effect of new respondents, or geopolitical situation? Who knows.

Charity And Effective Altruism

Charitable Giving

Income

What is your approximate annual income in US dollars (non-Americans: convert at www.xe.com)? Obviously you don't need to answer this question if you don't want to. Please don't include commas or dollar signs.

Sum: 66054140.47384

Mean: 64569.052271593355

Median: 40000.0

Mode: 30000.0

Stdev: 107297.53606321265

IncomeCharityPortion

How much money, in number of dollars, have you donated to charity over the past year? (non-Americans: convert to dollars at http://www.xe.com/ ). Please don't include commas or dollar signs in your answer. For example, 4000

Sum: 2389900.6530000004

Mean: 2914.5129914634144

Median: 353.0

Mode: 100.0

Stdev: 9471.962766896671

XriskCharity

How much money have you donated to charities aiming to reduce existential risk (other than MIRI/CFAR) in the past year?

Sum: 169300.89

Mean: 1991.7751764705883

Median: 200.0

Mode: 100.0

Stdev: 9219.941506342007

CharityDonations

How much have you donated in US dollars to the following charities in the past year? (Non-americans: convert to dollars at http://www.xe.com/) Please don't include commas or dollar signs in your answer. Options starting with "any" aren't the name of a charity but a category of charity.


Question	Sum	Mean	Median	Mode	Stdev
Against Malaria Foundation	483935.027	1905.256	300.0	None	7216.020
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative	47908.0	840.491	200.0	1000.0	1618.785
Deworm the World Initiative	28820.0	565.098	150.0	500.0	1432.712
GiveDirectly	154410.177	1429.723	450.0	50.0	3472.082
Any kind of animal rights charity	83130.47	1093.821	154.235	500.0	2313.493
Any kind of bug rights charity	1083.0	270.75	157.5	None	353.396
Machine Intelligence Research Institute	141792.5	1417.925	100.0	100.0	5370.485
Any charity combating nuclear existential risk	491.0	81.833	75.0	100.0	68.060
Any charity combating global warming	13012.0	245.509	100.0	10.0	365.542
Center For Applied Rationality	127101.0	3177.525	150.0	100.0	12969.096
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Research Foundation	9429.0	554.647	100.0	20.0	1156.431
Wikipedia	12765.5	53.189	20.0	10.0	126.444
Internet Archive	2975.04	80.406	30.0	50.0	173.791
Any campaign for political office	38443.99	366.133	50.0	50.0	1374.305
Other	564890.46	1661.442	200.0	100.0	4670.805

"Bug Rights" charity was supposed to be a troll fakeout but apparently...

This table is interesting given the recent debates about how much money certain causes are 'taking up' in Effective Altruism.

Effective Altruism

Vegetarian

Do you follow any dietary restrictions related to animal products?

Yes, I am vegan: 54 (3.4%)

Yes, I am vegetarian: 158 (10.0%)

Yes, I restrict meat some other way (pescetarian, flexitarian, try to only eat ethically sourced meat): 375 (23.7%)

No: 996 (62.9%)

EAKnowledge

Do you know what Effective Altruism is?

Yes: 1562 (89.3%)

No but I've heard of it: 114 (6.5%)

No: 74 (4.2%)

EAIdentity

Do you self-identify as an Effective Altruist?

Yes: 665 (39.233%)

No: 1030 (60.767%)

The distribution given by the 2014 survey results does not sum to one, so it's difficult to determine if Effective Altruism's membership actually went up or not but if we take the numbers at face value it experienced an 11.13% increase in membership.

EACommunity

Do you participate in the Effective Altruism community?

Yes: 314 (18.427%)

No: 1390 (81.573%)

Same issue as last, taking the numbers at face value community participation went up by 5.727%

EADonations

Has Effective Altruism caused you to make donations you otherwise wouldn't?

Yes: 666 (39.269%)

No: 1030 (60.731%)

Wowza!

Effective Altruist Anxiety

EAAnxiety

Have you ever had any kind of moral anxiety over Effective Altruism?

Yes: 501 (29.6%)

Yes but only because I worry about everything: 184 (10.9%)

No: 1008 (59.5%)

There's an ongoing debate in Effective Altruism about what kind of rhetorical strategy is best for getting people on board and whether Effective Altruism is causing people significant moral anxiety.

It certainly appears to be. But is moral anxiety effective? Let's look:

Sample Size: 244
Average amount of money donated by people anxious about EA who aren't EAs: 257.5409836065574

Sample Size: 679
Average amount of money donated by people who aren't anxious about EA who aren't EAs: 479.7501384388807

Sample Size: 249 Average amount of money donated by EAs anxious about EA: 1841.5292369477913

Sample Size: 314
Average amount of money donated by EAs not anxious about EA: 1837.8248407643312

It seems fairly conclusive that anxiety is not a good way to get people to donate more than they already are, but is it a good way to get people to become Effective Altruists?

Sample Size: 1685
P(Effective Altruist): 0.3940652818991098
P(EA Anxiety): 0.29554896142433235
P(Effective Altruist | EA Anxiety): 0.5

Maybe. There is of course an argument to be made that sufficient good done by causing people anxiety outweighs feeding into peoples scrupulosity, but it can be discussed after I get through explaining it on the phone to wealthy PR-conscious donors and telling the local all-kill shelter where I want my shipment of dead kittens.

EAOpinion

What's your overall opinion of Effective Altruism?

Positive: 809 (47.6%)

Mostly Positive: 535 (31.5%)

No strong opinion: 258 (15.2%)

Mostly Negative: 75 (4.4%)

Negative: 24 (1.4%)

EA appears to be doing a pretty good job of getting people to like them.

Interesting Tables

Charity Donations By Political Affilation
Affiliation	Income	Charity Contributions	% Income Donated To Charity	Total Survey Charity %	Sample Size
Anarchist	1677900.0	72386.0	4.314%	3.004%	50
Communist	298700.0	19190.0	6.425%	0.796%	13
Conservative	1963000.04	62945.04	3.207%	2.612%	38
Futarchist	1497494.1099999999	166254.0	11.102%	6.899%	31
Left-Libertarian	9681635.613839999	416084.0	4.298%	17.266%	245
Libertarian	11698523.0	214101.0	1.83%	8.885%	190
Moderate	3225475.0	90518.0	2.806%	3.756%	67
Neoreactionary	1383976.0	30890.0	2.232%	1.282%	28
Objectivist	399000.0	1310.0	0.328%	0.054%	10
Other	3150618.0	85272.0	2.707%	3.539%	132
Pragmatist	5087007.609999999	266836.0	5.245%	11.073%	131
Progressive	8455500.440000001	368742.78	4.361%	15.302%	217
Social Democrat	8000266.54	218052.5	2.726%	9.049%	237
Socialist	2621693.66	78484.0	2.994%	3.257%	126

Number Of Effective Altruists In The Diaspora Communities
Community	Count	% In Community	Sample Size
LessWrong	136	38.418%	354
LessWrong Meetups	109	50.463%	216
LessWrong Facebook Group	83	48.256%	172
LessWrong Slack	22	39.286%	56
SlateStarCodex	343	40.98%	837
Rationalist Tumblr	175	49.716%	352
Rationalist Facebook	89	58.94%	151
Rationalist Twitter	24	40.0%	60
Effective Altruism Hub	86	86.869%	99
Good Judgement(TM) Open	23	74.194%	31
PredictionBook	31	51.667%	60
Hacker News	91	35.968%	253
#lesswrong on freenode	19	24.675%	77
#slatestarcodex on freenode	9	24.324%	37
#chapelperilous on freenode	2	18.182%	11
/r/rational	117	42.545%	275
/r/HPMOR	110	47.414%	232
/r/SlateStarCodex	93	37.959%	245
One or more private 'rationalist' groups	91	47.15%	193

Effective Altruist Donations By Political Affiliation
Affiliation	EA Income	EA Charity	Sample Size
Anarchist	761000.0	57500.0	18
Futarchist	559850.0	114830.0	15
Left-Libertarian	5332856.0	361975.0	112
Libertarian	2725390.0	114732.0	53
Moderate	583247.0	56495.0	22
Other	1428978.0	69950.0	49
Pragmatist	1442211.0	43780.0	43
Progressive	4004097.0	304337.78	107
Social Democrat	3423487.45	149199.0	93
Socialist	678360.0	34751.0	41