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belief poll #2
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]
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
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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]
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It is borderline incomprehensible to me that this would be otherwise, given that there doesn't seem to be anything special about the neural hardware for it and animals respond in ways that appear pained when hurt.
2
Skipped question.
I need to know what the asker means by "conscious" here; it's a very slippery term and I don't feel comfortable assuming I know how to read it.
3 Skipped
I do not believe moral statements are truth-apt (non-cognitivism); I believe they express emotional states instead.
4
If you consider other living things to have utility functions. I place a very high aesthetic value on this but don't consider it a meaningful statement outside the context of subjective judgement.
5
See above, but get rid of the business of utility functions (I don't believe they apply to inanimate matter, and only in a weak sort of way to living things). Aesthetically, I place a lot of emphasis on it.
6
No. I believe that general intelligence can make a difference in one's performance, but that it is not the only way to produce high results and that it does not reliably screen for it.
7
No. This is due to cultural and social factors, not genetic ones.
8
I don't know.
9
No; this is due to cultural and social factors, and when those factors are compensate for the difference disappears.
10
I don't know.
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For many of these I would be uncomfortable with responding with a number and leaving it at that. For example, I am at least 95% certain that IQ scores are a meaningful. Anything that produces statistically relevant discrepancies is meaningful. But they are hardly comprehensive, they are unreliable, and they are dangerous to extrapolate from.
And with the chromosome thing, of course having XX chromosomes is likely to put people at a disadvantage on math IQ test. Because IQ tests are administered in this universe, and this is a universe where having XX chromosomes makes you a woman and women are less likely to be encouraged to excel at taking math IQ tests, therefore having XX chromosomes reduces your probability of excelling at math IQ tests. I assume this is not quite what you're asking about, but there are many ways I could interpret the question. In fact, that particular question is sort of phrased as a truism. "The reason why people with different genetics score differently on IQ tests is because of genetics... well yeah, if there's a statistically relevant discrepancy between XX and XY people, then the XX and the XY probably has something to do with it."
Basically my answers would depend a lot on the precise phrasing of the question and on the definitions of words that I assume you are using.
I am tempted to respond using the numbers as a measurement of how confident I am that I interpreted your question correctly. :P
Perhaps ironically, the questions where I am not worried about interpreting the question correctly but I simply don't know the answer are the ones where the confidence metric makes the most sense to me. I don't know much about the stock market, but I'd be happy to hazard a guess somewhere between 0 and 10 for that one. Same for the calorie question. Most of the rest of my answers would be exactly 0 or 10, depending on the interpretation.
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people with XX chromosomes score lower on average on standardized mathematical tests than people with XY chromosomes
I don't know that they DO!
I DO know that the female of the species expresses signif lower VARIANCE on many many metrics, including this one. So, there are way less female math geniuses and total idiots.
Nature takes bigger gambles with males; we're born to be more risk-loving.
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Also, I wasn't sure what to say for the chimpanzee question.
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General Intelligence:
Re: General Intelligence:
Re: General Intelligence: