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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2666 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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https://aella.substack.com/p/chaos-survey-results-pt-1

Some choice gender differences:

Statements most disproportionately agreed upon by women

(number in parentheses is the difference in score between women and men)

  • I prefer written pornography to visual. (1.74)

  • I keep a journal. (1.21)

  • I would feel violated if I learned that my opposite-sex friend was imagining what I would be like to have sex with. (1.19)

Statements most disproportionately agreed upon by men

  • The primary reason I interact with Aella's web presence is a (dimly) conscious desire to do something sexual with her. (1.93)

  • I often imagine having sex with stranger I see in public. (1.79)

  • I would bang a hot 15yo if I had enthusiastic consent and a certainty of getting away with it (1.58)

We should just ignore these surveys, the selection effects for people who respond are much too strong. Doesn't tell us much about regular people.

This is a weakness of any survey conducted ever. Can you put forward a mechanistic reason why that effect would be especially bad for this specific survey?

"The selection effects are much too strong" is not true of all surveys. Sure, many select for "people who answer the phone" or "people who answer the door", but either of those categories is much more similar to the average American than "people who follow Aella."

Alright how is people who follow Aella going to confound the results of this specific survey.

It should be obvious. Anyone who follows Aella and is willing to complete (an average of) 100 questions is highly atypical relative to the average person. They'll generally be far more sex-focused, techy, liberal, young, urban, intelligent, white, unmarried, open to new experiences, etc. than the average person. This will have an enormous effect on survey results, especially since most of them are so focused on sex. It's like taking a survey on religious beliefs, but only including active scientologists. Sure, there is probably something to learn from the survey, but if you're trying to generalize to any larger population, the noise will far, far outweigh the signal.

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