Action can be way worse than inaction, if what you end up doing is misleading yourself or doing harm to your cause.
I don’t think what you’ve done is necessarily misleading or harmful, as long as you don’t consider it anything more than incomplete, qualitative research into the range of responses the word “rationality” gets from random people.
But you really, really need to decide what the point of this exercise is. Are you trying to gather useful data, or make people feel more positive about rationality, or just get comfortable talking to random people? It kind of seems like at the moment, you mainly want to find post-hoc reasons why the exercise was “useful”.
Here’s my suggestion: if you’re trying to do a survey, decide on your demographic(s) of interest. Get everyone on Less Wrong to ask around until they find a sympathiser who works in a branding/marketing survey organisation, and can slip in an extra question in a survey, asking how people respond to the term “rationality”.
Failing that, collaboratively draw up a proper survey protocol and get Less Wrongers to administer it to a random sample of a people. Think it through before you do it: e.g. stopping people outside on the street would be more representative than limiting it to a certain building. You could signal that you’re an official survey person by carrying a clipboard (not by wielding a recording device). You could improve participation by stating initially that you only have one question which will take 15 seconds, then not trying to start a discussion. You could improve participation among younger women by making it clear that you’re doing a survey, so they’re not concerned you’re trying to start an abstract philosophical conversation as a pretext to get them into bed.
I think this could have great potential, especially if you comparatively test alternative terms to “rationality”. Richard Dawkins tried to popularise the term “Brights” for people who don’t believe in the supernatural. If he’d done even the amount of field testing you have already done, he would have realised it sounds unsufferably smug. So I think your impulse to do market research is a good one.
It kind of seems like at the moment, you mainly want to find post-hoc reasons why the exercise was “useful”.
I did use all of those reasons to justify why I thought I should do it beforehand. But I have noticed myself repeating those reasons to make myself feel more justified. (Also possible that my primary motivation in doing so in the first place was the social-skill development one)
In any case, I think your recommendations for how to proceed are good ones.
Another idea—if you can’t find someone skilled in market research to do this for you at a discount or free, read a textbook about how to assess potential new brands to help with designing the survey.
Action can be way worse than inaction, if what you end up doing is misleading yourself or doing harm to your cause.
I don’t think what you’ve done is necessarily misleading or harmful, as long as you don’t consider it anything more than incomplete, qualitative research into the range of responses the word “rationality” gets from random people.
But you really, really need to decide what the point of this exercise is. Are you trying to gather useful data, or make people feel more positive about rationality, or just get comfortable talking to random people? It kind of seems like at the moment, you mainly want to find post-hoc reasons why the exercise was “useful”.
Here’s my suggestion: if you’re trying to do a survey, decide on your demographic(s) of interest. Get everyone on Less Wrong to ask around until they find a sympathiser who works in a branding/marketing survey organisation, and can slip in an extra question in a survey, asking how people respond to the term “rationality”.
Failing that, collaboratively draw up a proper survey protocol and get Less Wrongers to administer it to a random sample of a people. Think it through before you do it: e.g. stopping people outside on the street would be more representative than limiting it to a certain building. You could signal that you’re an official survey person by carrying a clipboard (not by wielding a recording device). You could improve participation by stating initially that you only have one question which will take 15 seconds, then not trying to start a discussion. You could improve participation among younger women by making it clear that you’re doing a survey, so they’re not concerned you’re trying to start an abstract philosophical conversation as a pretext to get them into bed.
I think this could have great potential, especially if you comparatively test alternative terms to “rationality”. Richard Dawkins tried to popularise the term “Brights” for people who don’t believe in the supernatural. If he’d done even the amount of field testing you have already done, he would have realised it sounds unsufferably smug. So I think your impulse to do market research is a good one.
I did use all of those reasons to justify why I thought I should do it beforehand. But I have noticed myself repeating those reasons to make myself feel more justified. (Also possible that my primary motivation in doing so in the first place was the social-skill development one)
In any case, I think your recommendations for how to proceed are good ones.
Another idea—if you can’t find someone skilled in market research to do this for you at a discount or free, read a textbook about how to assess potential new brands to help with designing the survey.