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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3175 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 31, 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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How Rationalist (community) Are You survey. Kind of curious how y'all rank. Its an Aella survey of course.

I got "Highrat: 95-99th percentile" I think this is because I like all the blogs, but apparently there are some counterintuitive questions that I took the "rat" side of

Lightrat. I'm surprised I scored so high, to be quite honest. But I'm curious how people said "studied" for different things. Studied advanced physics like, at a university course you passed, or like on a youtube playlist from a random guy with crazy eyes? But then, maybe the Rats who didn't actually study physics thinking they study physics is what makes them rationalists.

oh, I was a bit confused by those questions, I answered yes for the physics ones because I took grad courses in those subjects. Was the expectation that rats would say they "know how to design nanotechnology" from just reading the sequences or something?

I'm highly skeptical anybody answering that survey actually knows how to design nanotechnology.

Maybe the question should've been "have you read Drexler's Nanosystems and understood all the math?", because "nanotechnology" isn't exactly as well defined as something like quantum mechanics.

Like someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I think those could have been there with intention of capturing a Dunning Kruger effect. Which I think is actually and underused tool in surveys to capture certain overconfident opinions people might have.

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