Most of the Big Five answers are slightly correlated (around +/-0.25, or 90+/-15 degrees) with each other, but not with anything else except the Autism Score. Shouldn’t well-designed personality traits be orthogonal, ideally?
It might just pick out the cluster of “Less Wrong personality type”.
CFAR question 7 (guess of height of redwood) was negatively correlated with Height
Obviously it’s a matter of perspective. Tall people just tower over those redwoods.
It might just pick out the cluster of “Less Wrong personality type”.
In that case, it says something about the cluster as well. For example, Openness and Extraversion wouldn’t be positively correlated just because most LWers are both open and extraverted (or because most LWers are closed and introverted). We’d have to have something that specifically makes “open and extraverted” more likely to happen together than individually.
It might just pick out the cluster of “Less Wrong personality type”.
Obviously it’s a matter of perspective. Tall people just tower over those redwoods.
In that case, it says something about the cluster as well. For example, Openness and Extraversion wouldn’t be positively correlated just because most LWers are both open and extraverted (or because most LWers are closed and introverted). We’d have to have something that specifically makes “open and extraverted” more likely to happen together than individually.
Something like Berkson’s paradox (people who are neither open nor introverted are unlikely to read LW)?
Good point. Objection retracted (in the conversational sense).