164 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
164 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
Prevalence of belief in "human biodiversity" amongst self-reported EA respondents in the 2020 SlateStarCodex Survey
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=====================================================================================================================
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Note: This post presents some data which might inform downstream questions, rather than providing a fully cooked perspective on its own. For this reason, I have tried to not really express many opinions here. Readers might instead be interested in more fleshed out perspectives on the Bostrom affair, e.g., [here](https://rychappell.substack.com/p/text-subtext-and-miscommunication) in favor or [here](https://www.pasteurscube.com/why-im-personally-upset-with-nick-bostrom-right-now/) against.
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## Graph
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## Discussion
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### Selection effects
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I am not sure whether EAs who answered the EA forum are a representative sample of all EAs. It might not be, if SSC readers have shared biases and assumptions distinct from those of the EA population as a whole. That said, raw numerical numbers will be accurate, e.g., we can say that "at least 57 people who identified as EAs in 2020 strongly agree with the human biodiversity hypothesis".
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### Question framing effects
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I think the question as phrased is likely to *overestimate* belief in human biodiversity, because the phrasing seems somewhat inocuous, and in particular because "biodiversity" has positive mood affiliation. I think that fewer people would answer positively to a less inocuous sounding version, e.g., "How would you describe your opinion of the the idea of "human biodiversity",\n eg the belief that some races are genetically stupider than others? (1 = very unfavorable, 5 = very favorable)".
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For a review of survey effects, see [A review of two books on survey-making](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DCcciuLxRveSkBng2/a-review-of-two-books-on-survey-making).
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### Interpreting as a probability
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This isn't really all that meaningful, but we can assign percentages to each answer as follows:
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- 1: 5%
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- 2: 20%
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- 3: 50%
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- 4: 80%
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- 5: 95%
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- NA: 50%
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The above requires a judgment call to assign probabilities to numbers in a Likert scale. In particular, I am making the judgment call that 1 and 5 correspond to 5% and 95%, rather than e.g., 0% and 100%, or 1% and 99%, based on my forecasting experience.
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And then we can calculate an implicit probability as follows
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```
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( 174 * 0.03 + 227 * 0.2 + 288 * 0.5 + 175 * 0.8 + 57 * 0.95 + 22 * 0.5) / 993
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```
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The above calculation outputs 0.4025..., which, in a sense, means that SSC survey respondents which self-identified as EA assigned, as a whole, a 40% credence to the human biodiversity hypothesis.
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### Comparison with all SSC respondents
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## Code to replicate this
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In an R runtime, run:
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```
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## Libraries
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library(ggplot2)
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## Read data
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setwd("/home/loki/Documents/core/ea/fresh/misc/ea-hbd") ## change to the folder in your computer
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data <- read.csv("2020ssc_public.csv", header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
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## Restrict analysis to EAs
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data_EAs <- data[data["EAID"] == "Yes",]
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View(data_EAs)
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n=dim(data_EAs)[1]
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n
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## Find biodiversity question
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colnames(data_EAs)
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colnames(data_EAs)[47]
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## Process biodiversity question for EAs
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tally <- list()
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tally$options = c(1:5, "NA")
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tally$count = sapply(tally$options, function(x){ sum(data_EAs[47] == x, na.rm = TRUE) })
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tally$count[6] = sum(is.na(data_EAs[47]))
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tally$count
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tally = as.data.frame(tally)
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tally
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## Plot prevalence of belief within EA
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titulo='Prevalence of attitudes towards "human biodiversity"\n amongst EA SlateStarCodex survey respondents in 2020'
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subtitulo='"How would you describe your opinion of the the idea of "human biodiversity",\n eg the belief that races differ genetically in socially relevant ways?"\n (1 = very unfavorable, 5 = very favorable), n=993'
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(ggplot(data = tally, aes(x =options, y = count)) +
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geom_histogram(
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stat="identity",
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position= position_stack(reverse = TRUE),
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fill="navyblue"
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))+
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scale_y_continuous(limits = c(0, 300))+
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labs(
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title=titulo,
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subtitle=subtitulo,
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x="answers",
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y="answer count",
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legend.title = element_blank(),
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legend.text.align = 0
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)+
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theme(
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legend.title = element_blank(),
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plot.subtitle = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
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plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
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legend.position="bottom"
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) +
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geom_text(aes(label=count, size = 2), colour="#000000",size=2.5, vjust = -0.5)
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height=5
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width=height*(1+sqrt(5))/2
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ggsave("q_hbd_EAs.png" , units="in", width=width, height=height, dpi=800)
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## Process biodiversity question for all SSC respondents
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tally_all_ssc <- list()
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tally_all_ssc$options = c(1:5, "NA")
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tally_all_ssc$count = sapply(tally_all_ssc$options, function(x){ sum(data[47] == x, na.rm = TRUE) })
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tally_all_ssc$count[6] = sum(is.na(data[47]))
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tally_all_ssc$count
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tally_all_ssc = as.data.frame(tally_all_ssc)
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tally_all_ssc
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tally
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## Plot
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titulo='Prevalence of attitudes towards "human biodiversity"\n amongst all SlateStarCodex survey respondents in 2020'
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subtitulo='"How would you describe your opinion of the the idea of "human biodiversity",\n eg the belief that races differ genetically in socially relevant ways?"\n (1 = very unfavorable, 5 = very favorable), n=993'
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(ggplot(data = tally_all_ssc, aes(x =options, y = count)) +
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geom_histogram(
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stat="identity",
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position= position_stack(reverse = TRUE),
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fill="navyblue"
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))+
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scale_y_continuous(limits = c(0, 2000))+
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labs(
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title=titulo,
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subtitle=subtitulo,
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x="answers",
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y="answer count",
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legend.title = element_blank(),
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legend.text.align = 0
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)+
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theme(
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legend.title = element_blank(),
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plot.subtitle = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
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plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
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legend.position="bottom"
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) +
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geom_text(aes(label=count, size = 2), colour="#000000",size=2.5, vjust = -0.5)
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height=5
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width=height*(1+sqrt(5))/2
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ggsave("q_hbd_all.png" , units="in", width=width, height=height, dpi=800)
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```
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The file 2020ssc_public.csv is no longer available in the [SSC blogpost](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/), but it can easily be created from the .xlsx file, or I can make it available for a small donation to the AMF.
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<p><section id='isso-thread'>
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<noscript>Javascript needs to be activated to view comments.</noscript>
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</section></p>
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