These things are always a gross oversimplification, but go ahead, take the Worldview Quiz. It uses 23 questions to put you on a two-axis grid with Carl Sagan in one corner, and Pat Robertson in another. Guess which one I call “neighbor”?
Your rating on science vs. non-science: 10
Your rating on progress for humankind: 10
Your position on the worldview spectrum: (10,10)
Here’s my score and some definitions.
Same position (I suspect you will have a lot of company at 10, 10 among your readers).
I didn’t understand question 22 though.
Jeez, that was easy. Now that we’re neighbors, wanna get some co-evolved yeast fermentation product?
Just a lawyer not a scientist, but I ended up with PZ and Doctor Sagan. I like how Deepak Chopra (an M.D.) ends up lower than the Pope on the science scale.
Neighbor? Sagan currently resides in the Lakeview Cemetary, Ithaca, NY.
photo
(9,9) for me, albeit likely due to quibbles I had with the wording of some of the questions. If I have time later, I may take their invitation to complain.
I’m also 10-10, but I wonder how people answered this one?
13. Are your future thoughts already known by a deity, or are your future thoughts unknown by anyone else?
A.All of my future thoughts are already known by a deity.
B.There is no entity that can know or predict my future thoughts.
C.Other
My ultra-naturalism made me answer C, I wonder how many atheists (and religious people) answer B. I always want to see statistics from these things and not just my own little dot smokin’ weed off in a corner.
Other tests like that one are much better at keeping a neutral tone and not using such leading verbiage in the questions.
Basically a geek’s version of those personality tests in Cosmo, nothing more nor less.
10/10 as well.
P.S. I think the entire point of the whole exercise was to see how Bush and bin Laden ended up being neighbors, and then you were supposed to go, “Oooooh, heavy, man . . . .”
That’s not a very revealing test; anyone in his right mind will end up at (10,10) if they’re answering according to the general idea of the question. Some of them were poorly worded, so we can forgive a few semantic nitpickers down to (9,9).
I know plenty of people who wouldn’t be at 10,10, mostly because of the new-age nonsense that the baby-boomers (like my parents) seem to love. But that’s where I was, right along with Sagan and PZ (very good company).
I had the most problems with question 23:
23. Which do you see as a destiny for humankind:
A. Human life will be wiped out at the End Times, then after-life beings will continue to exist eternally in a heaven and a hell.
B. Humankind and its descendants may continue to evolve, eventually spreading beyond Earth.
C. It’s a mystery
D. None of the above
I wonder how many people selected ‘B’ as the pro-science answer, but I didn’t like the way it conflates the concepts of “evolution” and “human progress”. They are not the same thing.
10/10 as well.
I liked how neighborly Bush and bin Laden were.
I didn’t like this answer.
“Humankind and its descendants may continue to evolve, eventually spreading beyond Earth.”
Of course we’ll continue to evolve, no need for the may. Eventually spreading beyond earth though? That’s a little bit more difficult to predict.
Call me a pessimist but I see extinction right here at home as far more likely than infecting the rest of the universe.
I had to answer “other” and came out (9,10) as a result.
“I liked how neighborly Bush and bin Laden were.”
But neither of them took the test, so it was merely a tired editorial.
I think Bush didn’t get a 0 out of 10 because he’s supposedly trying to get a person to Mars therefore the might go with colonizing other planets eventually.
It’s not hard to answer the survey for him. We’ve all heard his bent logic many times.
Sonja,
I had the same reaction as you on question 23. That’s why I wound up with a 9 instead of a 10 on the science plane, I’m sure. I also couldn’t say “nothing” happens to people who disagree with me after they die. We all decompose.
(9,10) because I do not believe humans will eventually colonize other planets. At this anti-environmentalist, pro-war pace, we’re going to self-destruct.
I thought most of the questions were leading. I support human extinction, yet I ended up being “pro-progress.” The test makes it practically impossible to land in the second quadrant.
I challenge the scores! Number 23 is a doozy. The obviously correct scientific answer is “I don’t know.” I chose “None of the above” because “It’s a mystery” has woo woo and RC connotations, and the stuped thing put me one box from the corner. I claim to be more secular than PZ because his position in the upper right corner clearly shows that he selectd the mystical answer for question number 23. So there.
I see Sonja has already addressed this, but I stand by my protest.
bill clinton surprised me …..i thought he was smarter about science than that
i ended up near the dalai lama ..which figures, he and i agree on a lot of stuff, though im not a buddhist
im not an atheist obviously but i love and understand science (and can’t type)
I think you guys over thought the answer to 23.
Given the other options in that question…
MAY evolve and spread to other planets… not will.
It left open the option for us to blow it.
I regard the test as seriously flawed.
1. According to your worldview, how many gods exist?
Giving a reasonable answer here doesn’t get rid of the ‘God’ question: it crops up again in Q.2, Q.3 andQ.7. And several other questions contain references to divinity or a god or gods or the anti-god or the supernatural.
A single question to deal with that matter might have been more efficient: ‘Do you think the notion of “God” is too silly to discuss?’ An affirmative response could then be rewarded by 6 or 7 points, and more time could be devoted to exploring rational features in various possible worldviews.
Interesting. Pharma and I had problems with the same answer for the same question (B, 23), but for different reasons.
It is my understanding that, as a species, we are actually quite “evolved”.
As a culture, of course, we can continue to “progress”, but as I pointed out in my previous post, that is quite a different thing.
(Agrees with Steve C)
Nc “psh pll.” n hs t wndr hw thy knw th xct nswrs tht Pt Rbrtsn, sm Bn Ldn, Prsdnt Bsh, th Pp, Dpk Chpr, Bll Clntn, th Dl Lm nd Crl Sgn wld gv – prtclrly Sgn, snc h’s DD.
BTW, bfr y “dsmvwl” ths pst, why dn’t y frst xpln hw t’s “trllng?”
Yh, dn’t thnk y’ll xpln t, thr.
I think you guys over thought the answer to 23.
Aren’t scientific types supposed to think things over? ;-)
#23 also bugged me, but I went with it as the ‘best’ answer. We will continue to evolve, but the spreading to other planets part is dubious.
I think some people are putting way too much effort into critiquing this-its ovbiously flawed and non-scientific.
But I googled it, and wow, is it valid in its discrimination between the 8-10’s I see here, and the -10s you might see at:
http://www.gopusa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3329
Oh, and they had trouble with #23 too. I guess some folks think the armageddony-part of the bible is literal-and one side wins, with Christ ruling over a physical garden-of-eden type earth, ?with heaven and hell being cleared out? invalidating A:
“A. Human life will be wiped out at the End Times, then after-life beings will continue to exist eternally in a heaven and a hell.”
So maybe thats why George W isn’t in the -10 -10 corner…
(9,10), probably because I chose “it’s a mystery” for the destiny of mankind. Can’t rule out either some nuclear whoopsies or a Luddite takeover, unfortunately.
Or is that (10,9)? I’ve forgotten already. Humankind is doomed!
I agree with Sonja’s comment on Q.23, but I ended up ticking answer B.
A is just loopy. C is a truism (unless you claim clairvoyance), but stopping there essentially says “the future of my species excites at most idle curiosity in me”. And even despite the current political climate, I think that B is more likely than my option D (“humankind is wiped out by either man-made or natural catastrophe”) – at least until the Big Crunch or heat death of the universe!
What?? No examples in the Extermination/Science quadrant?? I think the Evil Genius segment of the population is under-represented in this study.
There’s just one thing I don’t get. I mean, I understand, about Bill Clinton, who gets around, and the Dalai Lama, who’s pretty approachable, and Pat Robertson, who’s a p.r. whore, but how the heck did they get the pope to take the quiz? That’s pretty damned amazing!
And why didn’t they trace Osama’s Internet connection when he took the exam, huh? Homeland Security might want to look into this.
I agree with many of the above that their are some ambiguous questions, so say the least.
In all honesty, although I got a 10/10 I feel many of the questions were loaded, in a sense. In brief, it was utterly obvious where the author of the quiz would situate him/herself (i.e. where I am).
Quite a few of the questions appeared to be false dichotomies, forcing a “good” answer over a “better” explanation. Then again, it is hard to define natural skepticism in a langauge for the masses.
Nevertheless an interesting exercise, as I am happy to be in such great company.
Funny, I marked other on reincarnation, so I get (9,10). I’d never say there is evidence of reincarnation, but for every one of us their is proof of incarnation. If autonomous life forms result through natural processes, whose to say there isn’t the possibility of some form of rebirth that would bring about another existence. I’m not saying we as individuals really continue in any sense related to ourselves. I voted other though, so while I don’t agree with it, I’m not ruling it out.
I was not a fan of quesiton 8.
where is the option for:
Either discarded, donated for embryonic stem cell research, given to an adoptive couple or remain frozen, at the donor’s discretion. The fertility treatments that result in surplus embryos should remain legal.
Was anyone else bothered by question #9 (the bioterrorism question)? It seems to me that knowledge of evolution is pretty critical to developing bioweapons (to my knowledge, there are currently no truly effective bioweapons outside Judith Miller’s diseased mind), but that the fight against bioterrorism is ultimately political, not technological.
Also, I voted the misanthrope’s default (D – Other) on #23. I think my score was 10,9.
I found the question about if we believed there was a Satan to be mis-Leading. I DO think Satan exists, and his score was very near the lower left-hand corner. He’s a real sweet talker to some, though. He has so many followers willing to blindly follow him anywhere that you’ll likely never meet him. But that’s okay because he is leading his state to the Glory of His Religion!
Crap.
6.
What do you think of these alternative medicines: magnet therapy and homeopathy?
A.
No real evidence that they are better than a placebo
B.
I think they do work and are more than a placebo.
C.
None of the above
What’s the option for – there’s heaps of evidence that they’re a complete waste of time?
11. Does your worldview include the concept of ‘Satan’?
Yes – otherwise known as The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
23. Which do you see as a destiny for humankind:
Surely all of them are “a destiny”? Now, the most likely destiny would be a more answerable question.
The more I think about this, the more I think that better questions and choices would result in some people showing up in the upper-left quadrant. For some of those “D – Other” answers, they could easily substitute “Humanity is bound by ignorance and gagged by superstition” or “I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for the answer to that question.”
As a Misanthrope-American, I’m offended that people with my unremittingly dark and nihilistic worldview are once again denied a seat at the table. (Of course, that’s just what I’ve come to expect from you bastards.)
I wasn’t impressed. I’m about as strong a Positivist as you can find, and I am strongly in favor of human extermination, yet that quiz put me on the pro-humanity side.
The description of the axes suggests that if you accept the idea of evolution, you are automatically presumed to view future human development favorably.
Here’s what I put in the feedback there:
No. 23 is a bit of a problem; since we have no way of knowing for sure about the future, the most correct answer seems to be “It’s a mystery”, but if one is saying what one hopes will be (which is part of one’s worldview) then “B.” would be a good answer.
Well… we will evolve that’s not doubted. Just how far we get is a mystery.
So the spreading to other planets is perhaps a hope rather than a prediction.
Cheer up people!
A perfect 10-10. (Well, ‘perfect’.)
It was revealing that such polarized questions seems to be needed to place fundies. May we assume that bin Laden scores higher than Robertson on science due to his liking of guns? Probably the same for Bush…
Experimenting a bit, I found that going from A to D on the first question (from “no god” to “divinity is everywhere”) gets you from 10 to 8. That seems a bit extreme, and would seem to penalize folks like Einstein — who was probably even less theistic than Spinoza — away from being full supporters of the scientific view. Quoting from old Albert himself:
Now, I’m drawn to the wholly materialistic we’re-all-in-this-universe-together idea that Einstein expresses in this quote; we neither originate nor return to the universe, but simply are temporarily sentient clumps of it. From this, I feel compelled to leave open the question as to whether the universe itself embodies a more diffuse sentience. Perhaps “divinity” is too strong a word for this, — I think it is, in any but a poetical sense — but we live in a conscious universe (hey, we’re here, aren’t we, and per Sagan we’re not likely to be unique). No less an authority than C.S. Lewis considered pantheism to be a seductive way-station far down the slope to atheism itself. Clear away some of the underbrush of dogma and mysticism associated with religious pantheism, and the distinction between it and atheism just doesn’t seem to be that great. Not two points great, in any case.
May we assume that bin Laden scores higher than Robertson on science due to his liking of guns?
Bin Laden’s an engineer. Before he got religion, he managed large construction projects. The bin Laden family owns the largest construction firm in the Middle East.
(I know that not all engineers are loony fundies, but I think we can safely say that an engineering background is no barrier to being a loony fundy.)
10,10…sweet.
Canadian Rock Driller/Blaster, hangin’ with the likes of PZ and Carl S. 10’s all the way.
What’s this world coming to?
Question 23 wasn’t all that hard. Man may have to take evolution into his own hands to disign a body that can put up with cosmic raiation in order to hit the cosmic road.
Echo everyone else’s thoughts on #23. I left some feedback for them on what question I would change:
And then in the feedback on the main page:
It’s not crucial; as noted this kind of thing is pretty meaningless. I see what other people said about “may”; but I think the thrust of the question is poorly expressed, and reflects an almost religious belief in “destiny” and “progress”.
Cheers — Chris
I lowered my score to 7,8 by voting for the existence of Satan (#11) and eternal torture for those who do not agree with my worldview (#12). Those answers forced me to say “yes” to #22: “Do you think there should be eternal torture in the Universe?”
Sorry, it was the Dante in me.
“Bin Laden’s an engineer.”
Eermh! I knew he was from a rich family, yet I managed to bury the idea that he probably has some pretty good education. I guess it is the same mechanism that makes me constantly forget that many of the worst terrorists have been intellectuals – I find it hard to intellectually connect education and violence.
10/10 I’ll bring some beer.
Question 23 says
Which do you see as a desirable future for humankind:
Desirable is the key word here i think.
Yes I desire that Humans will go all Star Trek, I only wish it could be in my own lifetime. I hope it happens but can’t say it ever will.
Ack, Torbjorn!
How can you call yourself “educated” if you never met the nun with the ruler?
Well, actually, I didn’t either (hmm, maybe that’s why I’m such a pinhead?)…
Stevie,
Maybe I should have said education and unreasonable violence…
An army can’t stand without intelligent leaders and technology. (Which I guess explains Bush’s abysmal military record.) And the budo sports take some training.
My fellow pagans and I had a lengthy chat about the ‘Satan’ question.
The problem is that ‘Satan’ is quite a complicated myth–not one simplified by the stupid Satanists who insist on making up their own bizarre interpretations in an attempt to be edgy and justify rejecting the social contract. The Judeo-Christian Satan is clearly a conglomeration of at *least* four different entities (Lucifer, the Zoroastrian anti-God, some form of Hades figure, and the Tempter). More careful scholars than I will be able to come up with more, I’m sure. And we’re not even *talking* about what the Satanists say…
Bah. Clearly a quiz written by a recovering Xian (probably a bitter one).
Oh, and I agree, the mad scientist demographic is very poorly represented. I’m going back and taking it again, to see if I can score a (-10,10).
10,10. That was easy.
As noted above, the question about knowing thoughts, etc. is plausible, but requires a near-universe size computational ability. Still, given spouses and close friends are often in the neighbourhood using only 3 pounds of equipment, I can’t reject the possibility out of hand. And yes, the evil genius contingent is not properly represented (they didn’t have the “God and Satan both exist, and I’m filling out the form right now”) option. An alternate organization is at
http://www.xeromag.com/fun/personality.html
I scored a little lower than everyone else here on the “science” scale. Some due to wording, others to genuine differences.
For example, the parapsychology question. Given that parapsychology studies things that are currently considered paranormal, it’s almost self-evident to me that at least one of these phenomnena will eventually be explained scientifically. Then perhaps they’ll leave the realm of parapsychology…but they still genuinely exist. For example, maybe we’ll fully explain ghost sightings as certain brain activity activated by certain environmental patterns. The phenomenon which parapsychologists study, then, will have been found to exist (though the mechanism may be different than originally hypothesized). It would be naive to think that science has already discovered everything there is to discover, and so there must still be phenomena which exist but currently fall under the heading of “parapsychology”.
Not that this is a valid survey or anything, but just something to think about.
It’s a pretty easy quiz to get a (10, 10) on. Compare that to the Political Compass, on which it’s impossible to get a straight (-10, -10), and far too extreme for practically all leftists, even radical ones, to get even a composite -17.
Also, PZ, could you stop with the disemvoweling? All it does is make me spend more time reading Jason’s posts.
I’m shocked. I was only an 8,9.
It is easy to get a (10, 10). Are we standing on each other’s shoulders?
10 science; 9 progress. I attribute that to being a semantic stickler. ;-)
Maybe the folks at the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement?
hmmm… 6,10 here. not sure how that happened except that i am a bit cynical on the future of mank ind. (get the jack handey allusion?)
10/8 – damn those (mis)leading questions !
.
Oh, and… could someone be altruistic enough to donate a sniper round to pat robertson ? ( at appropriate impact velocity of course )
I think it’s ironic that most of the comments about question 23 actually demonstrate how unscientific those commenters are. i.e. they didn’t actually read the question carefully enough to spot the word ‘desirable’, despite the fact that the word ‘desirable’ was even italicised to draw attention to it.
Also, PZ, could you stop with the disemvoweling? All it does is make me spend more time reading Jason’s posts.
I’ll second that. The moment I see one of the posts my brain goes into puzzle-solving mode and I can’t move on ’till I’ve got it.
Besides, it’s kinda cute to have a pet troll around, as long as there’s only one of them and few get drawn in by it.
(6,10) here, but I think only because I’m a cynic at heart about humanity’s capability to get *anything* right without turning it into a weapon or a Republican talking point. A Luddite, no, although I lack a cell phone and PDA, and only wear a beeper for work.
Back to lurking…great blog, PZ!
Anybody annoyed by the question 18 ? I did not like this “non-random” selection… Did I misunderstand it ? And in the question 23 I do not believe we will ever go byond Earth…
It’s really a religion/atheism test, with the “religious” end labelled as “non-science/extermination” and the “atheistic” end labelled as “science/progress”. In other words, it’s a propaganda tool. As a scientifically-minded atheist — score (8,10) — I largely approve of the cause the propaganda is for, but it still doesn’t seem terribly honest.
One indication of the fact that it’s really measuring only one thing is the extent to which results are strung out along the line from bottom left to top right.
(1,10) when I answer that humankind and all its progeny should stop existing, and
(10,10) when I answer that we’re going to Space, suckas!
I suppose that answer fluctuates depending on the amount of willful stupidity and hate I see each day.
Still, it does seem that question 23 is given too much weight.
#23 also bugged me, but I went with it as the ‘best’ answer. We will continue to evolve, but the spreading to other planets part is dubious. –PZ
PZ — I’m a little surprised. Isn’t it one of the most common misconceptions about evolution that species never stop evolving? That cheetahs could evolve into lions? Stephen Jay Gould rejected the idea of gradualism and the fossil records show that species appear relatively suddenly and then are either successful or they go extinct. And aren’t humans at that stage in our evolution?
;-)
What’s the mechanism for stopping the evolution of a species? Extinction?
That seems wrong. ;)
I wasn’t sure what to make of question 2, whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God or are equally misguided. As best I understand it, both are true. If Christians worshipped Yahweh and Muslims worshipped Zeus, I think it would be meaningful and fair to say that they worship different (nonexistent) Gods, but within their own frames of reference, I think they worship the same (nonexistent) God. So how do you answer the question?
Well even if they do… they are both misguided.
True, but then there’s a loss of information. There is a meaningful distinction between religions that misguidedly worship the same nonexistent entity (Yahweh/Allah) and religions that misguidedly worship different nonexistent entities (Yahweh/Baal), and the phrasing of the question leaves this real and meaningful possibility out.
Question 23 says
Which do you see as a desirable future for humankind:
Desirable is the key word here i think.
I didn’t save a copy of the question as it was posed when I answered, but perhaps they changed it in response to feedback? I think I would’ve answered other than “it’s a mystery” if it had been presented as you quote above. Actually, overall I found the questions much better than most of these online quiz thingies. Usually I stop partway through one due to unanswerable questions (no reasonable answer for me in the choices given) — this one had very little of that.
9/10 thanks to my semantic nit-picking.
I’m still just about as far away from George W. Bush as you can get, and that’s just fine by me.
Stephen Jay Gould rejected the idea of gradualism and the fossil records show that species appear relatively suddenly and then are either successful or they go extinct.
Gould was talking about drastic morphological change for the most part. AFAIK he never implied that all changes in allele frequency follow that pattern. (And empirically, we know they don’t–allele frequencies are shifting up and down all the time in human populations.)
I got a 9,9. To be honest, I thought I’d score “less” (ie. not as “well” as the bias of creator of the quiz) because of my fairly agnostic answers to some questions, so I was suprised that I was that high.
23 was loaded. : continue to evolve and colonize space ? Call me a pessimist. Ever considered that climate predictions might be off and instead of a couple degrees C the earth will warm up, oh, let’s say by 10 degrees C ? We can all kiss our (by then) toasted butts goodbye. Besides, no species lives forever and why should ours be different ??
Me and Carl are neighbors, too.
(10,10) for me too, though the question about predicting actions bothered me.
Mike: Same. I think neuroscience is perhaps 100 years away from “mindreading”.
Sonja: Maybe I’m a bigger nitpicker, but that “may” in “B” is quite a weasel-word. :)
7,3 – just to the ‘progress’ side of the Dalai Lama. But then I do have views of religion that are not favored by Our Host. Of course, this was not a scientific test, either. (Some of those questions had *very* loaded answers.)
As was said, Q23.B asks (at least, in the current version) what you see as a DESIRABLE future for humanity, not a likely one. So thinking that we probably will kill ourselves off one way or another doesn’t matter. It also says “give rise to offspring beyond the Earth”; we’re not limited to Homo sapiens sapiens here.
I had copied and pasted the original question 23 in my earlier post. It was: Which do you see as a destiny for humankind. It is very interesting that they changed it, but I don’t think they solved the problems with the question. With the word desirable added, why not pick A (life after death)?
It might be desirable to have life after death or to evolve into a new race of sexy super-humans that colonize other worlds but there just isn’t any evidence and it isn’t a reasonable outcome given what we do know. And that’s OK. What is does is focus our attention on what we can reasonably do for the continuation of our species. In other words, I’m a progressive about politics, science, medicine, education, etc.
The quiz confuses evolution with progress. Evolution doesn’t progress; evolution isn’t directed towards any goal whether by God or aliens or whatever. I wonder whether this quiz was written by a closet creationist?
8-9, but then I’m a cynic
It would be great if all the neighborhoods I wander about in were this intelligent and wonderful.
How do Bush and Pat Robertson get in the bottom left hand corner? They would not be fans of ESP or any other new age crap; which would push them up the scale a bit.
Just another liberal who perverts science to his own political end.