Why not? LW and SSC do this without issue, and IQ is a very important variable for many things. What’s the point of doing a survey if not to understand your population?
I’ve taken those surveys for years, and it’s true that they’ve often contained questions that would get this (EA) community’s jimmies severely rustled, without any problems or complaints or concern trolling. At least, that’s my impression, as someone more familiar with the rationalist community than the EA one.
The best IQ proxy questions are demographic variables anyway (age, years of education, and occupation), which predict about 50% of the variance in full-scale IQ—see papers shared here: http://jmp.sh/b/V717o7yuqvQutQYTHIMh
It wouldn’t be hard to plug data we’re going to get anyway into Crawford’s regression equation—the only extra work would be plugging in occupations to the standardized occupational classification system. Reporting it could be bad PR, but it wouldn’t hurt for anyone who’s interested to take a look.
Not convinced that we want to measure iq but I think the whole point of doing it would be to see if eas are on the whole a lot smarter than would be predicted by demographic variables, like LessWrong seems to be. However, LessWrong’s annual process of measuring their iq and then arguing about whether or not it’s accurate is a bit of a fiasco, and probably not one that we want to engage in.
I haven’t read any of LW’s debates on this, so I’m not sure why one would be interested in whether the relationship between demographics and intelligence in EAs is weaker than usual, or what that would imply about EA. Mainly, I’d like to know by what routes people with predicted-to-be-average intelligence and average educational backgrounds are coming to EA, so I hope age, years of education, and occupation will be included so that the option exists of using the estimation techniques referred to above.
Having said that—intelligence research is politically toxic, and I’d also worry that people could spread bad ideas about how to use IQ estimates (e.g., general bragging rights, or “the smartest EAs focus on X, so we should pay more attention to X”), so I wouldn’t argue for including anything related to IQ estimation in publicly-announced results.
Mainly, I’d like to know by what routes people with predicted-to-be-average intelligence and average educational backgrounds are coming to EA, so I hope age, years of education, and occupation will be included so that the option exists of using the estimation techniques referred to above.
Last time we asked about age, income last year and highest level of education completed. Pending the community feedback we were planning to keep these, and add a free text box for ‘current occupation or career’. Does that all cover it OK? Is asking for years in education better, and if so why? Is it comparable across countries? Is it years of post-secondary education?
Having said that—intelligence research is politically toxic, and I’d also worry that people could spread bad ideas about how to use IQ estimates (e.g., general bragging rights, or “the smartest EAs focus on X, so we should pay more attention to X”), so I wouldn’t argue for including anything related to IQ estimation in publicly-announced results.
I personally agree, though the survey team as a whole will be influenced by the community view (which hasn’t had a strong consensus in favour of asking about IQ, either last time or—so far—this time).
Let’s not do this.
Why not? LW and SSC do this without issue, and IQ is a very important variable for many things. What’s the point of doing a survey if not to understand your population?
I’ve taken those surveys for years, and it’s true that they’ve often contained questions that would get this (EA) community’s jimmies severely rustled, without any problems or complaints or concern trolling. At least, that’s my impression, as someone more familiar with the rationalist community than the EA one.
The best IQ proxy questions are demographic variables anyway (age, years of education, and occupation), which predict about 50% of the variance in full-scale IQ—see papers shared here: http://jmp.sh/b/V717o7yuqvQutQYTHIMh
It wouldn’t be hard to plug data we’re going to get anyway into Crawford’s regression equation—the only extra work would be plugging in occupations to the standardized occupational classification system. Reporting it could be bad PR, but it wouldn’t hurt for anyone who’s interested to take a look.
Not convinced that we want to measure iq but I think the whole point of doing it would be to see if eas are on the whole a lot smarter than would be predicted by demographic variables, like LessWrong seems to be. However, LessWrong’s annual process of measuring their iq and then arguing about whether or not it’s accurate is a bit of a fiasco, and probably not one that we want to engage in.
I haven’t read any of LW’s debates on this, so I’m not sure why one would be interested in whether the relationship between demographics and intelligence in EAs is weaker than usual, or what that would imply about EA. Mainly, I’d like to know by what routes people with predicted-to-be-average intelligence and average educational backgrounds are coming to EA, so I hope age, years of education, and occupation will be included so that the option exists of using the estimation techniques referred to above.
Having said that—intelligence research is politically toxic, and I’d also worry that people could spread bad ideas about how to use IQ estimates (e.g., general bragging rights, or “the smartest EAs focus on X, so we should pay more attention to X”), so I wouldn’t argue for including anything related to IQ estimation in publicly-announced results.
Last time we asked about age, income last year and highest level of education completed. Pending the community feedback we were planning to keep these, and add a free text box for ‘current occupation or career’. Does that all cover it OK? Is asking for years in education better, and if so why? Is it comparable across countries? Is it years of post-secondary education?
I personally agree, though the survey team as a whole will be influenced by the community view (which hasn’t had a strong consensus in favour of asking about IQ, either last time or—so far—this time).
I doubt it would be done without issue here and I doubt the information would be useful for any purposes. But I’m willing to consider otherwise.
Agree, would have downvoted if I could, but have upvoted you instead!