belief poll #2

[spoonless]

This time I made sure that the lower end of the range is 0 rather than 1, to make it symmetric with the 10. I don't know why lj defaults to 1-10... I was lazy last time and just left it how they set it up.

I know different people mean different things by choosing different numbers, so to standardize try and do it this way: pick 10 if you are 95%-100% confident that the statement is true. Pick 0 if you are 0-5% confident (in other words, 95%-100% confident it's false). Pick 9 if you are 85%-95% confident it's true. Pick 5 if you are 45-55% confident it's true (in other words, you don't know). I'm going to take browascension's suggestion this time and say that if you're unfamiliar with the topic, just skip it rather than picking 5.

I tried to pick questions that I was a little more agnostic on this time... last time I had too many extreme responses, both from myself and from everyone, so hopefully this one will be more mixed.

[Poll #1438874]

Comments

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, interesting. I picked them because they are all statements I've heard people expressing strong opinions about both ways (by different people)... so they all seem contentious in that sense to me.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

I have found that people often express strong opinions rooted in ignorance. It often takes wisdom to be tentative.

Some elaboration on my responses may be helpful (or maybe not!).

You asked if chimpanzees are conscious and acknowledge that the question relates to the poll-taker's concept of consciousness. Although I'm no Daniel Dennet, I've done enough studies in consciousness to know that many view prokaryote/eukaryote cells as conscious (albeit of a qualitatively different variety from our own).

Then you ask whether it's "morally wrong to hurt animals unnecessarily". Obviously, the poll-taker's concept of morality factors in here, but whatever your take on morality, causing unnecessary suffering is generally wrong.

Personally, I think preserving the Earth's ecosystem has very little to do with utility.

The IQ questions might be contentious among some, but are decidedly less-so for me. As a teacher involved with screening "gifted" students, I recognize the ambiguity of 'g', and have seen IQ tests consistently fail. Further, the question of Ashkenazi Jews seems to insinuate a static g, but that's not a very well-supported perspective these days.

The stock market question was just an issue of awareness. If people think the price of stocks has anything to do with the 'value' of stocks, they're ignorant of how the stock market and crony capitalism works.

The XX/XY/math question was likewise an issue of awareness. Studies in Europe have shown females score higher on standardized mathematical tests. It's cultural and environmental, but there may be a genetic component somewhere in the background (and far less relevant).

Last, the calorie/fat/diet question holds less relevance to me.

Hopefully that helped clarify why I didn't find this particular set of questions as contentious as the last. :)

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think preserving the Earth's ecosystem has very little to do with utility.

If that were true, then I believe it would not be possible for anyone to care about preserving the Earth's ecosystem. I think utility just has a much wider definition than many people realize. For example, I enjoy sunlight, so I derive more utility from an office with windows than one without at my workplace.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Based on your comment here, I would have expected you to pick 0 for that question, but I just noticed that you picked 10.

Did you mean to pick 10, or was that a mistake? I just wrote a whole new post on this topic explaining my beliefs on the subject.

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

I picked 10 because I assign a non-zero probability to something outside the groups you list (i.e. animals) caring.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Ok, well I assign a non-zero probability to anything, including that. But as long as the probability you assigned was less than 5% you were supposed to pick 0. Only if you were at least 95% sure were you supposed to pick 10. ?

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

Ah. True. I think I don't really have a good idea what probability to assign, except that it's not 0, and I'd like to communicate that with my answer. When I filled it out, I guess I aimed high.