Scott Alexander shares the results of the 2024 Astral Codex Ten survey, providing access to data and promising future analyses. Longer summary

Scott Alexander presents the results of the 2024 Astral Codex Ten survey, which had 5,981 participants. He provides links to the survey questions and results, and offers a downloadable dataset of responses from those who agreed to share their data publicly. Scott mentions that more detailed analyses will be published throughout the year, and invites readers to explore the data themselves. He also notes some measures taken to protect respondents' anonymity in the public dataset. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2024 ACX Survey, inviting readers to participate and potentially win a free subscription. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces his annual reader survey for 2024, which serves to gather information about his readership and to replicate psychological findings. He mentions some interesting results from past surveys, explains that the survey will take 15-30 minutes, and offers free one-year paid subscriptions to five randomly-selected respondents as an incentive. Scott provides a link to the survey and asks readers to report any significant issues with the questions. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the results of the 2022 ACX survey, providing links to questions, results, and downloadable datasets, with notes on privacy measures and future analyses. Longer summary

This post announces the results of the 2022 Astral Codex Ten survey, which had 7,341 participants. Scott Alexander provides links to the survey questions and results, and offers downloadable datasets for public use. He mentions that more detailed analyses will be published over the coming year. The post also includes information on data anonymization measures taken to protect respondents' privacy, and notes some limitations and peculiarities in the data collection process. Scott encourages readers to explore the data themselves and offers to provide more complete information upon request. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2022 ACX Survey, highlighting past findings and offering incentives for participation. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2022 ACX Survey, an annual reader survey that helps him understand his audience and investigate interesting hypotheses. He highlights some findings from previous years, estimates the survey will take 20-40 minutes to complete, and offers free one-year paid subscriptions to five randomly-selected respondents as an incentive. The survey will be open until January 15, and readers are encouraged to report any problems in the comments. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander argues that selection bias, while a concern, is not a valid reason to automatically reject amateur online surveys, as professional studies also face similar limitations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses the issue of selection bias in amateur online surveys, arguing that it's not a valid reason to dismiss their results outright. He points out that professional scientific studies also suffer from selection bias, often using unrepresentative samples like psychology students. The post explains that while selection bias is problematic for polls or census-like studies aiming to determine population-wide statistics, it's less of an issue for correlation studies. Scott argues that the key is to consider the mechanism being studied and how it might generalize, rather than dismissing studies based solely on their sample selection method. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces a formalized 2023 Prediction Contest with 50 questions, multiple modes of play, and cash prizes. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2023 Prediction Contest, a formalized version of his annual predictions. The contest includes 50 forecasting questions and 5 demographic questions. Participants can play in Blind Mode (limited research, no external sources) or Full Mode (unlimited research). There are multiple prizes, including $500 for winners in different categories. The contest aims to create a standard for comparing forecasters and forecasting sites, with plans to correlate personality traits with forecasting accuracy in a future ACX Survey. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander describes a now-closed reader survey project supporting ACX community studies, with instructions on survey completion and content warnings. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is conducting a reader survey project to support studies by ACX community members. The post provides instructions for readers to fill out multiple surveys, starting with a general demographic survey and then proceeding based on their birth date. The surveys cover various topics, some targeted at specific populations. Scott notes that some surveys deal with sensitive topics and advises readers to skip any that make them uncomfortable. He also mentions that the project is now closed and no further responses will be counted. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander is finalizing preparations for a Reader Survey, asking participants to confirm their inclusion and make necessary adjustments before the Friday start date. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is preparing for a Reader Survey and is asking participants to confirm their inclusion in the list of surveys. He provides a list of surveys planned, noting some specifics about targeting and demographics collection. Scott also shares a link to a draft demographics survey and asks participants to review it, make necessary changes to their own surveys, and finalize everything before Friday when he plans to start the process. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the ACX Reader Research Survey, inviting researchers to submit questions for the blog's readership by July 10. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces the ACX Reader Research Survey, inviting researchers to submit questions for the blog's readership. The survey aims to gather data on specific demographics among ACX readers, such as those in tech, science, meditation/drugs/biohacking, with unusual genders/sexualities, or psychiatric issues. Researchers are asked to email Scott with their project details and a Google Form containing their questions by July 10. The survey structure is still being finalized, but will likely involve assigning User IDs and asking basic demographic questions before directing participants to complete a selection of submitted surveys. The survey will run until August 1, with results potentially leading to blog posts or academic papers. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces a new survey on nootropics experiences, inviting readers to participate in the 2020 SSC Nootropics Survey. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is conducting a new survey on nootropics experiences, following up on a similar survey from a few years ago. He invites readers with nootropics experience to participate in the 2020 SSC Nootropics Survey, which is expected to take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey aims to gather information on user experiences with various nootropic substances, including newer ones that have emerged since the last survey. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander analyzes survey data to investigate whether assortative mating among highly analytical people increases autism risk in their children, finding no significant evidence for this hypothesis. Longer summary

Scott Alexander investigates whether assortative mating among highly analytical people in Silicon Valley increases the risk of autism in their children. He uses data from the 2020 Slate Star Codex survey, which included 8,043 respondents from highly analytical backgrounds. The study found that while the sample had higher rates of autism (4-8%) than the general population (2.5-5%), there was no significant increase in autism rates among children of couples where both partners were highly analytical. The autism rate for children in the sample was 3.7-5.2%, with only 0.6% having severe autism. Scott concludes that while the study has limitations, it provides evidence against strong versions of the assortative mating hypothesis for autism risk. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the last chance to take the 2020 SSC survey, providing brief instructions and thanking participants. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is announcing the final opportunity for readers to participate in the 2020 SSC (Slate Star Codex) survey. The survey is open to all blog readers, takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, and Scott cautions participants to be careful about clicking links to avoid losing their progress. He expresses gratitude to those who have already taken the survey and indicates that he will be sharing the results in the near future. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander finds a correlation between animals' cortical neuron count and people's intuitive perception of their moral value, based on a small survey. Longer summary

This post explores the correlation between the number of cortical neurons in animals and humans' intuitive perceptions of their moral value. Scott Alexander conducted a survey asking people to estimate how many of each animal would equal one human in moral value. He then compared these results to the relative number of cortical neurons each animal has compared to humans. The results showed a surprisingly close match, with some exceptions like lobsters. Scott suggests this adds credibility to intuitive ways of thinking about animal moral value, though he acknowledges the need for further research with a larger, more representative sample. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander tests the claim that mathematicians' preference for algebra or analysis predicts their corn-eating style, finding no significant correlation in a survey of over 2,600 respondents. Longer summary

Scott Alexander investigates a claim made by Ben Tilly that mathematicians' preference for algebra or analysis predicts how they eat corn (in rows or spirals). Scott included questions about math preference and corn-eating style in his 2019 Slate Star Codex reader survey. Analyzing 2,683 responses, including a subset of PhD mathematicians, he found no significant correlation between math preference and corn-eating style, contradicting Tilly's observation. Scott suggests the original claim might be due to the power of suggestion or selective memory. He also explores demographic factors influencing corn-eating styles, finding some cultural differences but no clear explanation for the variability. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander reports on a survey about nighttime ventilation interventions, finding modest overall improvements but some individual success stories. Longer summary

Scott Alexander presents the results of a survey on nighttime ventilation conducted after his previous post on carbon dioxide levels. The survey, with 129 participants, explored various interventions to improve sleep quality by reducing CO2 levels. While the overall results were modest, with an average improvement of 1.4 on a 0-5 scale, some participants reported significant benefits. The most common intervention was sleeping with an open window. Despite the underwhelming results, most participants planned to continue their interventions. Scott concludes that the results are essentially negative, both for nighttime ventilation and for the reliability of informal blog surveys in producing confident data. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2017 SSC survey and requests readers to provide simple, machine-readable answers for easier processing. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces the 2017 SSC survey and encourages readers who have read at least one SSC post to participate. He warns that the survey is quite long. Scott also adds an edit emphasizing the importance of providing simple, machine-readable answers for easier processing, giving examples of good and bad responses to illustrate his point. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander's bet about readers misinterpreting an article on economists' views on school vouchers is settled through two surveys, confirming his argument. Longer summary

Scott Alexander follows up on his previous post about economists' views on school vouchers as reported in a news article. He had argued that the article misrepresented economists' opinions, and to settle the disagreement, he proposed a bet that most people would misinterpret the article. Two independent surveys were conducted on Mechanical Turk, both showing that a large majority of readers (91% and 78%) misinterpreted the article to claim that economists opposed privatizing education. This empirically settled the disagreement, with Scott winning the bet. He expresses satisfaction at being able to decisively resolve a dispute through experimentation. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander requests participants of last month's AI persuasion experiment survey to complete a brief followup survey, providing a link. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is requesting participants who took part in the AI persuasion experiment survey last month to complete a brief followup survey. He provides a link to the survey and assures participants that they don't need to read anything this time. He specifically asks those who didn't participate in the original survey not to take this followup. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander is running an experiment to test the effectiveness of persuasive essays about AI risk, asking readers to participate by reading an essay and answering questions. Longer summary

Scott Alexander is conducting an experiment to measure the effectiveness of persuasive essays about AI risk. He's asking readers to participate by reading an essay on AI risk and answering questions about it. The experiment is split into two versions based on the reader's surname. Scott emphasizes that everyone is welcome to participate, especially those unfamiliar with or skeptical about AI risk. He notes that readers don't have to finish long essays if they lose interest, as this is part of what makes an essay persuasive. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander surveys people's preferences between suffering and oblivion, finding split opinions and weak correlations between different scenarios and real-world beliefs. Longer summary

Scott Alexander conducts a survey to explore people's preferences between suffering and oblivion in various scenarios. He presents five hypotheses and tests them using the survey results. The survey includes questions about preferring death over a difficult life, choosing between long unhappy life and short happy life, and population ethics. The results show that people are indeed split on these issues, with strong feelings on both sides. There are weak correlations between answers to different questions, suggesting a general factor of oblivion-preference versus suffering-preference. However, this factor does not strongly predict views on population ethics. The study finds weak correlations between oblivion preference and support for euthanasia, interest in cryonics, and personal happiness. Shorter summary

Scott celebrates the blog's first birthday, announces travel plans, and makes various requests and announcements related to the blog and community. Longer summary

This is a housekeeping post marking the blog's first anniversary. Scott announces his upcoming visit to the Bay Area, seeking information about rationalist community events during his stay. He thanks volunteers for helping with Ozy's thesis on romance novels. Scott also requests access to journal articles and announces the completion of the Less Wrong Survey, inviting readers to participate in a new survey about nootropics. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander provides updates on the Less Wrong survey, his NYC trip, an upcoming meetup, and asks for lawn care advice. Longer summary

This is a housekeeping post by Scott Alexander covering four main points. First, he promotes the 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey with a monetary reward. Second, he announces his attendance at Raemon's solstice celebration in New York City, seeking accommodation and a date. Third, he mentions an upcoming Detroit/Ann Arbor meetup at his house. Lastly, he asks for advice about his lawn turning brown in patches. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander creates an amateur utility measurement test to explore the feasibility of comparing utilities in utilitarianism, inviting readers to participate despite its limitations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses the feasibility of measuring and comparing utilities in utilitarianism. He mentions a searchable database of health outcome utilities at Tufts, but notes its limitations. Frustrated by the lack of utility measurements for non-health states, Scott creates his own amateur utility measurement test. He invites readers to participate in this 15-30 minute survey, acknowledging its confusing nature but encouraging participants to guess his intentions and skip unclear questions. Shorter summary