That’s not even the worst one: “Which is worse: starving children or abused animals?” with possible answers “Starving children”, “Abused animals”, “Neither, both are good” and “Neither, they are equally bad.” I’m curious to know whether there’s actually somebody who picks “Neither, both are good.”
Making jokes in data that’s going to have statistics done on by computers is one of my pet peeves. For example, I’ve seen obviously sarcastic book reviews on Amazon.com where the number of stars matched the letter of the review rather than its spirit. (And IIRC, Yvain mentioned how people answered stuff like “over 9000” in the LW survey.)
Oh yeah! I remember that one now that you mention it! I wish I knew how they came up with these.
I think, personally, I would answer “Both are bad, but I’m not going to bother quantifying which is worse until I am confronted with an actual situation in which I have to.” Which is definely not the same as “both are equally bad.” Bah!
That’s not even the worst one: “Which is worse: starving children or abused animals?” with possible answers “Starving children”, “Abused animals”, “Neither, both are good” and “Neither, they are equally bad.” I’m curious to know whether there’s actually somebody who picks “Neither, both are good.”
I saw someone who answered that way, but it must have been as a joke. Not a good thing to do for matching purposes...
Making jokes in data that’s going to have statistics done on by computers is one of my pet peeves. For example, I’ve seen obviously sarcastic book reviews on Amazon.com where the number of stars matched the letter of the review rather than its spirit. (And IIRC, Yvain mentioned how people answered stuff like “over 9000” in the LW survey.)
Oh yeah! I remember that one now that you mention it! I wish I knew how they came up with these.
I think, personally, I would answer “Both are bad, but I’m not going to bother quantifying which is worse until I am confronted with an actual situation in which I have to.” Which is definely not the same as “both are equally bad.” Bah!