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g and various beliefs
Admin
Just what do smart people actually believe?

I'm interested in carrying out surveys to build on the work on correlations between g and various beliefs. Specifically, I want more fine-grained results about religiousness: positive vs. weak atheism, probability of Christian God, Islamic God, any kind of god.

Earlier research on atheism and g:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/new-meta-analysis-checks-the-correlation-between-intelligence-and-faith/
http://psr.sagepub.com/content/17/4/325
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608001013

Conspiracy theories and g, earlier:
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1835348
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289697900179

There are some surveys about g and political views, but it is US centric and not very fine-grained, e.g at the level of republican, democrat, independent. This won't do.

I want g and opinions on energy policy, immigration, legalization of drugs, sex work, biotechnology, and so on.

Simple IQ tests for a survey. One will need a simple, short IQ test that can be given as part of the survey. I'm thinking of using a multiple choice vocabulary test as has previously been done (WORDSUM).

I have written code that can generate number series, which can easily be part of a survey. Just ask participants to type in the next number in the series. Perhaps 10 series in total, just like wordsum.

Other measures. Educational attainment, parents' education levels, current occupation, if student: what field (list of options), others?

I want to carry this out in Denmark, but we can carry it out in multiple countries.

Anyone interested? :)
The GSS contains most of this material, but only for the US.
It's a very interesting project. However, in this type of studies, the problem of samples' representativeness is very strong.One would have to pick members of the population at random, because focusing only on students or upper class would bias the results. Also calling some opinion "conspiracy" theories already reveals a bias, as this term has acquired a derogatory meaning. Such expressions are often used by the establishment to dub as "crazy" or "paranoid" people that do not agree with mainstream views.
Admin
It's a very interesting project. However, in this type of studies, the problem of samples' representativeness is very strong.One would have to pick members of the population at random, because focusing only on students or upper class would bias the results. Also calling some opinion "conspiracy" theories already reveals a bias, as this term has acquired a derogatory meaning. Such expressions are often used by the establishment to dub as "crazy" or "paranoid" people that do not agree with mainstream views.


I use it exclusively here to mean theories of conspiracies, i.e. "Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act." (dictionary.com).

Using the term does not reveal any bias on the writer.
Admin
The GSS contains most of this material, but only for the US.


That is the problem. US centric studies are not useful for other countries, or indeed for generalizing about humans. US politics is particularly stupid and so studying people's ideas about politics there and attempting to generalize will not bode well.

I'm looking to gather more fine-grained data for other countries.
It's a very interesting project. However, in this type of studies, the problem of samples' representativeness is very strong.One would have to pick members of the population at random, because focusing only on students or upper class would bias the results. Also calling some opinion "conspiracy" theories already reveals a bias, as this term has acquired a derogatory meaning. Such expressions are often used by the establishment to dub as "crazy" or "paranoid" people that do not agree with mainstream views.


I use it exclusively here to mean theories of conspiracies, i.e. "Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act." (dictionary.com).

Using the term does not reveal any bias on the writer.


It does. I will just copy and paste Wikipedia to show that my view is shared by others: Originally a neutral term, since the mid-1960s it has acquired a somewhat derogatory meaning, implying a paranoid tendency to see the influence of some malign covert agency in events.[17] The term is often used to automatically dismiss claims that the critic deems ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish, or irrational.[18] A conspiracy theory that is proven to be correct, such as the notion that United States President Richard Nixon and his aides conspired to cover up Watergate, is usually referred to as something else, such as investigative journalism or historical analysis.[19][20] Despite conspiracy theorists often being dismissed as a "fringe" group, polling suggests that people from a wide variety of economic and cultural backgrounds continue to believe in certain conspiracy theories.[21]
Admin
It's a very interesting project. However, in this type of studies, the problem of samples' representativeness is very strong.One would have to pick members of the population at random, because focusing only on students or upper class would bias the results. Also calling some opinion "conspiracy" theories already reveals a bias, as this term has acquired a derogatory meaning. Such expressions are often used by the establishment to dub as "crazy" or "paranoid" people that do not agree with mainstream views.


I use it exclusively here to mean theories of conspiracies, i.e. "Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act." (dictionary.com).

Using the term does not reveal any bias on the writer.


It does. I will just copy and paste Wikipedia to show that my view is shared by others: Originally a neutral term, since the mid-1960s it has acquired a somewhat derogatory meaning, implying a paranoid tendency to see the influence of some malign covert agency in events.[17] The term is often used to automatically dismiss claims that the critic deems ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish, or irrational.[18] A conspiracy theory that is proven to be correct, such as the notion that United States President Richard Nixon and his aides conspired to cover up Watergate, is usually referred to as something else, such as investigative journalism or historical analysis.[19][20] Despite conspiracy theorists often being dismissed as a "fringe" group, polling suggests that people from a wide variety of economic and cultural backgrounds continue to believe in certain conspiracy theories.[21]


Proves nothing. I specifically said I use it neutrally and include the Nixon conspiracy as well as other well-known historical cases, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot
Admin
Another potentially interesting thing is that g might correlate with a belief in one country, but not in another, or perhaps in the reverse direction. I'm not aware of any examples, but that would be interesting if it was the case for some belief.
It is also interesting to try and predict which direction these correlations will have. That is to say, this analysis should be more theoretical. I am not interested in Kanazawa-style findings such as "people who drink alchool are smarter". Better is to know why there are these correlations.
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