The survey was also too long. I almost didn’t finish filling it out since with 3 kids and a job I have other things to do. Also it would have been nice if it had been formatted a little better (sections were too long which is annoying on a cell phone).
This. I used to fill out these kind of surveys all the time (mainly for SSC) but then I got married and had kids. So now I’m reluctant to fill out long surveys. Given the correlation between having kids and being conservative and/or religious, that could explain the missing conservatives you mentioned.
Hmm, maybe Richard should send a one-question survey about if you have kids (breaking it down by 28 and 43), that would likely get a higher response rate and quickly let him see if there is selection bias.
Your intuition that self-reporting on a survey will leave out a lot of conservatives seems correct. I generally do not put personal information out on the Internet, but for some reason on this one I said what the Hell. I almost didn't. People more hardcore than me would never do it. So, you have lurkers out there. Probably a lot of them.
With 11% of 91 women = 10 people I doubt you can say anything, but I have noticed a small cluster of rationalist-ish bi women. My best guess is it's what happens when you get partial masculinization without the negative experiences that often lead to misandry (a lot of prominent feminists were abused). (The larger pool of women identifying as bi out of support for the LGBT movement probably don't read your blog.)
Jews love to talk about politics. They're overrepresented even in right-wing ideologies as long as those aren't overtly antisemitic (thus all the Jewish libertarians). Stay away from Israel-Palestine as a topic I guess?
As for socially moderate, there are a lot of us who are OK with same-sex marriage (it may have a moderating effect on promiscuity) but don't want Drag Queen Story Hour. Much as everyone likes to talk about Blue and Red Tribes, there are a lot of people in the middle who hold views that don't clearly align with either side and wish everyone would stop screaming at each other.
On the East Asian thing, I wonder if their relative lack of interest in politics is also a sign of a general passivity in social affairs more broadly. Perhaps this can explain why they are less likely to get promoted despite being very competent? In the end, it's the people who care who win (whether in business or in politics).
This is an extremely minor thing, but I wish the y-axes on the household income and age charts were arranged by income level/age bracket rather than by the size of the bar.
But man, this is interesting stuff! I wonder if the demographics of non-responders is different. (Indeed, I’ve always wondered if people who hate surveys and never respond constitute any sort of identifiable group, or if they’re just distributed randomly through the population. Surely some statistician has studied this… although I’m not sure how.)
As a Christian social conservative, I particularly enjoy reading secular-libertarians like Hanania and Pinker because they believe that objective reality is real, and can be understood rationally. I think Hanania is wrong about God, abortion, etc., but he believes in rational discourse and that is more than enough to be worth reading.
"I also thought there would be major sex differences, but there really weren’t"
I would guess the differences come out in the presorting of the overall readership, meaning the females who would contribute the most "differences" to your readership aren't part of your readership--the ones who are part of your readership are more like the males. On average you attract a certain type of reader, whether male or female. I'm no statistician, but I think it would be weird if you attracted, on average, gay liberal men and straight conservative women.....but I could be wrong, of course--lots of distributions are bimodal.
Hi Richard. I am italian and I follow you. Honestly, I decided not to fill it out because of the too many questions devised for Americans. For me they were a bit off-putting (I could not grade in order of importance American Presidents. They mean not to much to me :)).
Nonetheless I follow your political writing with interest. Here in Europe we suffer from censorship out of a illiberal media (even thoigh Italy has still a better situation, compared with places as Germany or the UK). It is therefore natural to follow the ongoing debate in the States.
Hi Richard. I am italian, on the far right of the politicsl spectrum (at least regarding race, statemanship and societal topics), bisexual but at thr moment not with a high income.
I have not filled it out because certain questions put me off, being them too American in their substance.
Anyway, I appreciate your writing. Here in Europe we are very constrained by a monolithic leftist-liberal media, even though Italy is a bit better than the UK for example. So it makes it natural to follow how certain topics are covered by the alt media in America.
Not sure if this topic is open to discussion (feel free to delete this comment if it's not), but I found it very interesting that Jews and Asians we're political opposites, despite looking similar demographically in a lot of ways.
I'm wondering if this is related the fact that, despite both being high IQ populations, Jews are massively overrepresented in intellectual achievements compared to other populations and Asians are fairly unremarkable in that respect.
Maybe it's something to do with openness or conformity, but it definitely seems like Asians are missing some cognitive quality, not encompassed in IQ measurements, that Jews have.
A set of the population in which my recommendation is almost as powerful as Tucker Carlson's! ;)
FWIW, Arnold, your site redirects me to other websites more than any other site. Thanks for the consistent blogging over the past 15 years.....
The survey was also too long. I almost didn’t finish filling it out since with 3 kids and a job I have other things to do. Also it would have been nice if it had been formatted a little better (sections were too long which is annoying on a cell phone).
This. I used to fill out these kind of surveys all the time (mainly for SSC) but then I got married and had kids. So now I’m reluctant to fill out long surveys. Given the correlation between having kids and being conservative and/or religious, that could explain the missing conservatives you mentioned.
Hmm, maybe Richard should send a one-question survey about if you have kids (breaking it down by 28 and 43), that would likely get a higher response rate and quickly let him see if there is selection bias.
Your intuition that self-reporting on a survey will leave out a lot of conservatives seems correct. I generally do not put personal information out on the Internet, but for some reason on this one I said what the Hell. I almost didn't. People more hardcore than me would never do it. So, you have lurkers out there. Probably a lot of them.
There were some questions I didn’t want to answer truthfully bc I could just feel myself being watched. Prob irrational but who knows.
I'm always saying that we're lucky we don't get all the government we pay for.
With 11% of 91 women = 10 people I doubt you can say anything, but I have noticed a small cluster of rationalist-ish bi women. My best guess is it's what happens when you get partial masculinization without the negative experiences that often lead to misandry (a lot of prominent feminists were abused). (The larger pool of women identifying as bi out of support for the LGBT movement probably don't read your blog.)
Jews love to talk about politics. They're overrepresented even in right-wing ideologies as long as those aren't overtly antisemitic (thus all the Jewish libertarians). Stay away from Israel-Palestine as a topic I guess?
As for socially moderate, there are a lot of us who are OK with same-sex marriage (it may have a moderating effect on promiscuity) but don't want Drag Queen Story Hour. Much as everyone likes to talk about Blue and Red Tribes, there are a lot of people in the middle who hold views that don't clearly align with either side and wish everyone would stop screaming at each other.
Average SAT or gtfo
On the East Asian thing, I wonder if their relative lack of interest in politics is also a sign of a general passivity in social affairs more broadly. Perhaps this can explain why they are less likely to get promoted despite being very competent? In the end, it's the people who care who win (whether in business or in politics).
@richard, sorry about this ...I did not contribute as survey looked way too long...so little time...so much to read .....boomer Aussie MD...
This is an extremely minor thing, but I wish the y-axes on the household income and age charts were arranged by income level/age bracket rather than by the size of the bar.
But man, this is interesting stuff! I wonder if the demographics of non-responders is different. (Indeed, I’ve always wondered if people who hate surveys and never respond constitute any sort of identifiable group, or if they’re just distributed randomly through the population. Surely some statistician has studied this… although I’m not sure how.)
As a Christian social conservative, I particularly enjoy reading secular-libertarians like Hanania and Pinker because they believe that objective reality is real, and can be understood rationally. I think Hanania is wrong about God, abortion, etc., but he believes in rational discourse and that is more than enough to be worth reading.
I'm conservative and didn't take your survey. The less known about me (that could be used against me at some later point), the better.
"I also thought there would be major sex differences, but there really weren’t"
I would guess the differences come out in the presorting of the overall readership, meaning the females who would contribute the most "differences" to your readership aren't part of your readership--the ones who are part of your readership are more like the males. On average you attract a certain type of reader, whether male or female. I'm no statistician, but I think it would be weird if you attracted, on average, gay liberal men and straight conservative women.....but I could be wrong, of course--lots of distributions are bimodal.
Have you always been nonreligious? I thought I remembered an earlier podcast where you were religious?
Hi Richard. I am italian and I follow you. Honestly, I decided not to fill it out because of the too many questions devised for Americans. For me they were a bit off-putting (I could not grade in order of importance American Presidents. They mean not to much to me :)).
Nonetheless I follow your political writing with interest. Here in Europe we suffer from censorship out of a illiberal media (even thoigh Italy has still a better situation, compared with places as Germany or the UK). It is therefore natural to follow the ongoing debate in the States.
Hi Richard. I am italian, on the far right of the politicsl spectrum (at least regarding race, statemanship and societal topics), bisexual but at thr moment not with a high income.
I have not filled it out because certain questions put me off, being them too American in their substance.
Anyway, I appreciate your writing. Here in Europe we are very constrained by a monolithic leftist-liberal media, even though Italy is a bit better than the UK for example. So it makes it natural to follow how certain topics are covered by the alt media in America.
Not sure if this topic is open to discussion (feel free to delete this comment if it's not), but I found it very interesting that Jews and Asians we're political opposites, despite looking similar demographically in a lot of ways.
I'm wondering if this is related the fact that, despite both being high IQ populations, Jews are massively overrepresented in intellectual achievements compared to other populations and Asians are fairly unremarkable in that respect.
Maybe it's something to do with openness or conformity, but it definitely seems like Asians are missing some cognitive quality, not encompassed in IQ measurements, that Jews have.