One of the things I find most interesting is that the effect seems to be strongest for the rationality community.
I would suggest a sister theory to the intellectual curiosity angle that Scott mentioned. Eldest children spend their formative years without another child in the family to look up to. I would think that this would lead to, on average, a lower acceptance of information from authority.
This comes a bit my personal experience—I had an elder brother whose opinion I would take on as my own, even through my teens. I’d be interested to know if other younger siblings in the community have had a similar experience.
It would explain why the effect is so strong in the rationalist community. In Science and Maths it helps to challenge authoritative sources but this is actively encouraged, so the intrinsic effect needs to be less strong to get you to do it. The rationalist community is often challenging things which, culturally, aren’t supposed to be challenged which would give a higher intrinsic bar to entry.
I would suggest Regression to the Mean instead—we are only interested in this hypothesis because of its unusual high number on the survey in the first place.
I wandered about regression to the mean but with the SSC data being so large there isn’t much room for a big effect—even moving 4SD on the SSC data won’t move the mean much.
I’m afraid I don’t know how to do the maths beyond comparing confidence intervals as I did in the text.
You’re right, I should have double-checked the standard deviations before suggesting regression to the mean. I agree that regression doesn’t plausibly explain the data.
One of the things I find most interesting is that the effect seems to be strongest for the rationality community.
I would suggest a sister theory to the intellectual curiosity angle that Scott mentioned. Eldest children spend their formative years without another child in the family to look up to. I would think that this would lead to, on average, a lower acceptance of information from authority.
This comes a bit my personal experience—I had an elder brother whose opinion I would take on as my own, even through my teens. I’d be interested to know if other younger siblings in the community have had a similar experience.
It would explain why the effect is so strong in the rationalist community. In Science and Maths it helps to challenge authoritative sources but this is actively encouraged, so the intrinsic effect needs to be less strong to get you to do it. The rationalist community is often challenging things which, culturally, aren’t supposed to be challenged which would give a higher intrinsic bar to entry.
I would suggest Regression to the Mean instead—we are only interested in this hypothesis because of its unusual high number on the survey in the first place.
I wandered about regression to the mean but with the SSC data being so large there isn’t much room for a big effect—even moving 4SD on the SSC data won’t move the mean much. I’m afraid I don’t know how to do the maths beyond comparing confidence intervals as I did in the text.
You’re right, I should have double-checked the standard deviations before suggesting regression to the mean. I agree that regression doesn’t plausibly explain the data.