“Results from the Population Ethics Quiz” by MichaelDickens

<p> Two weeks ago, I released a population ethics quiz. 582 people took it. Here's what I learned from reading the responses.</p>

<p> Cross-posted from my website.</p>

<p><strong> Preamble, and a new edition of the quiz</strong></p>

<p> I was worried that I'd only get like four people taking the quiz. But that turned out not to be a problem, because people really like taking quizzes! Even when they're about difficult philosophical subjects! Some people even reported that this quiz helped them learn about population ethics. That wasn't part of my plan, but I'm glad it turned out to be a useful educational tool.</p>

<p> I have released version 2 of the quiz. Version 2 includes some additional questions to distinguish between the total view and four different flavors of negative-leaning view.</p>

<p> Now for my findings. I did not pre-register any hypotheses; I just looked at the data to see what seemed interesting.</p>

<p><strong> Which classes of views were most popular?</strong></p>

<p> The quiz classified people's responses into one of five standard views of population ethics. Most responses clustered near a standard view, but there was a long tail of responses that couldn't be classified.</p>

<p> (Note: This classification was [...]</p> <p>---</p><p><strong>Outline:</strong></p><p>(00:23) Preamble, and a new edition of the quiz</p><p>(01:12) Which classes of views were most popular?</p><p>(01:54) Most people were unconflicted</p><p>(02:59) Did people answer differently if they were already familiar with population ethics?</p><p>(05:33) The people were divided (except for me and my cool friends)</p><p>(06:18) Which questions were the most divisive?</p><p>(06:49) The great debate: A vs. B</p><p>(09:36) The "most normal" view was held by almost no one</p><p>(12:03) Clusters of answers</p><p>(13:25) Cluster 1 - Total utilitarianism</p><p>(14:03) Cluster 2 - Some flavor of intuitionism</p><p>(15:11) Cluster 3 - Average utilitarianism</p><p>(15:46) Which conflicts arose the most?</p><p>(16:19) Which bullets were bitten the most?</p><p>(16:48) Lizardman's constant is hard to estimate, but maybe it's 1%</p><p>(19:21) I spent way too much time wrestling with the details of views that almost nobody believed in, and still managed to miss some views</p><p>(20:57) Future work: Does this teach us anything about population ethics?</p><p>(22:59) AI usage disclosure</p><p>(23:32) Appendix A: Complete list of possible conflicts and bullets bitten</p><p>(23:50) Appendix B