The Data

0. Population

There were 558 responses over 32 days. The spacing and timing of the responses had hills and valleys because of an experiment I was performing where I'd get the survey advertised in a different place, then watch how many new responses happened in the day or two after that.

Previous surveys have been run over the last decade or so.

2009: 166
2011: 1090
2012: 1195
2013: 1636
2014: 1503
2016: 3083
2017: "About 300"
2020: 61
2022: 186
2023: 558

Last year when I got a hundred and eighty six responses, I said that the cheerfully optimistic interpretation was "cool! I got about as many as Scott did on his first try!" This time I got around half of what Scott did on his second try. A thousand responses feels pretty firmly achievable.

This is also the tenth such [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) The Data

(00:07) 0. Population

(03:56) 1. Demographics

(07:41) 2. Sex, Gender, Relationships

(11:48) 3. Work and Education

(14:50) 4. Politics and Religion

(21:07) 5. Numbers Which Attempt To Measure Intellect

(22:15) 6. LessWrong, the Basics

(29:23) 7. LessWrong and the Community

(35:29) 8. Probability

(40:27) 9. Traditional Census Questions

(44:16) 10. LessWrong Team Questions

(57:08) XI. Questions the LessWrong Team Should Have Asked

(01:02:42) XII. Indulging My Curiosity

(01:12:46) XIII. Detailed Questions We’ve Asked On Previous Surveys

(01:16:40) XIV. Bonus Politics Questions

(01:21:57) XV. Wrapup

(01:22:55) Census Meta

(01:22:58) The Census Over Time

(01:23:02) Age

(01:26:12) IQ

(01:27:20) Gender

(01:28:14) Political Short Answer

(01:29:59) Highest Degree

(01:30:26) The Sequences

(01:31:52) Time in Community

(01:33:30) Meetups

(01:34:48) Referral

(01:37:35) Probability

(01:43:41) Singularity Year

(01:45:02) Census Referrals

(01:47:42) Conclusions

(01:47:45) About the Respondents

(01:49:20) About the Survey

(01:50:44) The public data

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First published:
February 16th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WRaq4SzxhunLoFKCs/2023-survey-results

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“2023 Survey Results” by Screwtape

LessWrong (30+ Karma)