How well do you know your country?



  • Spoiler: there aren't as many muslims as you think there are.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    I scored 31 out of 41, above the US at 37.



  • I scored at 15, the rest of the US at 37.


  • FoxDev

    Please give your answer to the nearest 1 million.

    Slider doesn't move in steps of 1 million. In the range I'm selecting, it's 4 million.

    I don't hold much hope for the accuracy of this test.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RaceProUK said in How well do you know your country?:

    Slider doesn't move in steps of 1 million. In the range I'm selecting, it's 4 million.

    :doing_it_wrong:


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    6/41 compared to the UK rank of 2/41. Oops 😆



  • I'm #1! I'm #1!

    0_1481747888232_upload-785fc4cd-ba83-43e3-98ad-a02233d0a382


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anonymous234 I started this, but the controls are shit so I stopped.

    BTW, I was 10 million above the US population they used, which is 5 million below what the US Census Bureau thinks.


  • kills Dumbledore

    Completely broken on mobile. It seems to disable vertical scroll once you select a slider, so I only managed 2 questions


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Jaloopa said in How well do you know your country?:

    Completely broken on mobile

    That's different, etc?



  • I guess I think worse of German attitudes than they really are because I read too much about American opinions.



  • 0_1481756879010_Capture.PNG

    I'm sure I've seen at least one.


  • area_deu

    @coldandtired I guess it must be 0.something. Completely unrelated, was that person a walking abdomen with a cut off top?

    I scored 1. because I actually knew half these statistics, especially population numbers, 82% happiness in germany, 5 out of 100 people are muslims, etc. For the ones you don't know you can usually just go 20-50% more optimistic than what you acutally would have guessed because people who want to change your opinion always want to make their own following seem bigger, which is why public perception almost always is pessimistic, including your own. Even with that method I still consistently estimated way to pessimistic, but still always halfway closer than the average.

    I was most pleasantly surprised when I estimated that only 12% think gay sex is amoral and I still overestimated by +100%

    These public perception missmatches are also why a lot of people think a lot of ideas couldn't work. My favorite was when two economy professors not only did the math on "could you implement unconditional basic income tomorrow, and would it be a advantagous for the economy" (to which the answer was yes btw), but actually went and did a big survey asking people about it. 98% said that they think it couldn't work because everyone is lazy and would stop working. then 70% of them said that they of course are not lazy and would continue their current job anyways because otherwise their life would have no structure. a further 10% said the same, but instead they said they wanted to work something else that would be more interesting but pay less and another 10% said they would first go back to school or start an apprenticeship or something else that requires vocational training.

    I don't know the exact numbers anymore, but basically 98% of everyone with a job thought it wouldn't work because 95% of people wouldn't work anymore, while 95% of them said themself they would still work anyways. I found that very interesting, independant of what you might think of the economics behind all of it, because it is still the most extreme difference between reality and public perception I have ever seen in a survey with a big enaugh sample size to actually mean anything.

    Just think of how many worthwhile political projects might never have left someones head, just because that person thought, "nah, nobody would support this" while the fearmongers use the exact opposite to push their agenda.


  • area_pol

    @anonymous234

    Chinese respondents overestimated the county's future population. The UN estimates that the number of people living in the country will fall between now and 2050, whereas the average survey respondent said the population would grow to 1.4bn by that time, 52 million people more than the UN prediction.

    It is 33 years from now to 2050.
    Enough time for two world wars, or for creation of new technologies and industries, or many economical and political changes.
    The uncertainty of prediction of future population in 30+ years should be big, many times more than the 3.7% (52M / 1400M).

    And news love to report those weak predictions. Instead of saying "quantity X is growing at a high speed now" (which is true) they say "in 2050, quantity X will be huge" (which is unfounded speculation).

    @Quwertzuiopp said in How well do you know your country?:

    98% of everyone with a job thought it wouldn't work because 95% of people wouldn't work anymore, while 95% of them said themself they would still work anyways.

    difference between reality and public perception

    The survey result tells you a lot about human psychology and very little about potential economic effects of universal income.

    Answering "I would stop working" is like saying "I am lazy", most are unwilling to admit that.
    Let's imagine a different survey in which you compare working to other activities considered virtuous:

    What would you do if you got money without working?
    Continue my job / Focus on my hobby / Travel the world / Educate myself / Care for my family

    I would expect "continue my job" to get much less than 95% now. Just change the question to change perception.

    Likewise, observation and experience tells us that people are often lazy, so we project that that majority would stop working. But again, we don't know what would actually happen.

    The society is a very complex system and people adapt and exploit new systems in ingenious ways.
    I have no idea what the effects of universal income would be, I just know that I don't trust the predictions.

    There should be a staging environment for new policy changes :P


  • BINNED

    I know Czech Republic just as well as people in Czech Republic. How well do you know your country? Take the quiz

    *snort*


  • area_deu

    @Adynathos said in How well do you know your country?:

    The survey result tells you a lot about human psychology and very little about potential economic effects of universal income.

    I didn't claim it did, thats why I wrote it the way I did. All of that is merely to contextualize the survey.

    @Adynathos said in How well do you know your country?:

    would expect "continue my job" to get much less than 95% now. Just change the question to change perception.

    Thats literally what they did. You are taking my rephrasing of a study result I read years ago too literal. I think the very first question of the survey was what they would do if a healthy level of income was guaranteed to them no matter what they did. And yes, if I remember the study results correctly, only 20 - 30% said they would quit their job, and the vast majority of them said they would still work, but something different/only after taking a big vacation/a few hours less/only after more school/university/vocational training/yadda yadda.

    But then again the people asked were Swiss and German, wörk wörk wörk yadda yadda. I mean, I could of course simplify all of this and just search for the study but that would be work and I am one of the lazy germans :trollface:

    @Adynathos said in How well do you know your country?:

    There should be a staging environment for new policy changes

    Yes, we should create a simulation of the world as a kind of staging server *Oh god, no, sudden realization, this explains so much of the world aaaaaahhhhh *

    Lets not go down that rabbit hole...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Per adventure

    0_1481776195415_upload-9386c4d3-6a27-44d7-b687-44e06edb56a6

    Well, shit, off to a great start already...

    0_1481776276568_upload-637deb8f-94a5-41d1-a03f-4aba6e3afacf

    Adaptive reasoning FTW!

    0_1481776320193_upload-b588c26a-0bb8-4695-a299-e65c633e77cd

    Not bad.

    0_1481776376374_upload-b1797eb4-38d6-4cf9-9044-bebedd5fc18b

    So, either they will become more numerous here, or others will become less...

    0_1481776462514_upload-c6c96303-1e2b-492d-8b09-15553c98e8b9

    Wild guess. Meh.

    0_1481776506602_upload-dfcce9a9-27cc-4c53-b3fa-7e0e43b7053c

    Spot on! Good for you!

    0_1481776567054_upload-184b7831-3262-4d04-9e02-e54231d8e932

    Oops, I seem to have misunderstood the question...

    0_1481776631521_upload-d4d068e3-b463-4517-ac87-1bc0bb2cbc84

    Seems I have been misled...

    0_1481776810186_upload-753bbb93-fac3-439b-839d-295c38d387d7

    I blame localized bias!

    0_1481776863388_upload-05edc3fa-e9c0-4414-95fb-afdf3c1ccc8b

    Ok...

    0_1481776888157_upload-b47f72c2-b156-4b48-80d3-d69efdb3ecf9

    Uh huh...

    Conclusion: I think I need to spend more time in the Garage?



  • Overall, I thought that I sucked, but I still managed to rank 7.



  • I'm at 25 for Hong Kong questions, but 15 for China questions. 😢


  • BINNED

    Bloody well better than this site, that's for sure!

    0_1481794128226_upload-077c0a07-0681-48ca-8797-5fd6ef4acc79

    Moonland erasure!



  • Heh … I came in first place:

    0_1481796237300_Schermafbeelding 2016-12-15 om 11.02.22.png

    Even though I simply guessed three questions at 50% because I didn’t have a clue at all to a more reasonable guesstimate.



  • @Tsaukpaetra said in How well do you know your country?:

    Adaptive reasoning FTW!

    Same for me and it applies on a lot of questions that follow each other (muslim now vs. later, or abortion/homosexuality/out of marriage...).

    I think this partly explains why most people doing this online quizz will rank better than the average of their country: I'm guessing that when these stats were made, respondants did not have the answer to the previous question before being asked the next one, so they did not have a chance to adapt their answer.

    0_1481776567054_upload-184b7831-3262-4d04-9e02-e54231d8e932

    Oops, I seem to have misunderstood the question...

    That one might indeed be tricky to understand for most people. It took me a few seconds of reasoning to get an idea of what a typical value would be (hint: much, much less than 70%!), so I don't expect most people being asked the question in the street to really get it right...


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @Quwertzuiopp said in How well do you know your country?:

    a few hours less

    That'd be my vote: I would dearly love to cut back to 36 or even 30 hours a week, and it wouldn't hurt my ability to meet my deadlines at this point, but I need to keep up the appearances of 40 for some reason. Being less dependant on salary would give me a bargaining chip -- my skills are hard to find in this area, but I can't negotiate for something that's that unthinkable, I'm not a good enough salesman.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    13


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Adynathos said in How well do you know your country?:

    Likewise, observation and experience tells us that people are often lazy, so we project that that majority would stop working. But again, we don't know what would actually happen.

    I'd expect interest in immigration to massively increase.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said in How well do you know your country?:

    but I need to keep up the appearances of 40 for some reason

    https://what.thedailywtf.com


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @boomzilla How do you think I got to be a mod ;)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Yamikuronue said in How well do you know your country?:

    @boomzilla How do you think I got to be a mod ;)

    Boomzilla wouldn't understand. He got grandfathered in when they built the Internet around him.

    Well, actually, they built the Internet around the Telegraph station he was in.

    Well, actually, they built the Telegraph station around him, because... look, I think we all know where this is going.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said in How well do you know your country?:

    @boomzilla How do you think I got to be a mod ;)

    I know exactly how.

    @Lorne-Kates said in How well do you know your country?:

    @Yamikuronue said in How well do you know your country?:

    @boomzilla How do you think I got to be a mod ;)

    Boomzilla wouldn't understand. He got grandfathered in when they built the Internet around him.

    Well, actually, they built the Internet around the Telegraph station he was in.

    Well, actually, they built the Telegraph station around him, because... look, I think we all know where this is going.

    They? They? Then some guy has the nerve to tell me that I didn't build that? Well, sure, it looked like hard work. Of course I didn't build any of it.



  • I don't know how they performed the original questionnaire, but the online version has big flaws. It asked me what percentage considers having an abortion was morally unacceptable. That percentage was lower than I expected. The next question was the same but for sex between unmarried adults. Of course that number has to be lower. So the questionnaire informs you, thereby invalidating the score.



  • @Hanzo said in How well do you know your country?:

    I don't know how they performed the original questionnaire, but the online version has big flaws. It asked me what percentage considers having an abortion was morally unacceptable. That percentage was lower than I expected. The next question was the same but for sex between unmarried adults. Of course that number has to be lower. So the questionnaire informs you, thereby invalidating the score.

    LA Times poll:

    Among those interviewed, 61% said they believe abortion to be "morally wrong."

    Gallup poll:

    In the May survey, 58% said premarital sex is morally acceptable (41% say it is morally wrong). The figure recorded for morally acceptable a year ago was five points lower at 53%.

    Answer depends a lot on how the question is asked. But perhaps as much as 20% of people obviously do not connect these issues, from a moral standpoint.


  • Java Dev

    @CoyneTheDup "You can have premarital sex no problem, but preconception and abortion are evil?"


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @boomzilla said in How well do you know your country?:

    @Yamikuronue said in How well do you know your country?:

    @boomzilla How do you think I got to be a mod ;)

    I know exactly how.

    Dude! Ew! No!



  • @PleegWat said in How well do you know your country?:

    @CoyneTheDup "You can have premarital sex no problem, but preconception and abortion are evil?"

    To reiterate, apparently about 20% of the US would shout, "YES!"


  • Considered Harmful

    @PleegWat said in How well do you know your country?:

    @CoyneTheDup "You can have premarital sex no problem, but preconception and abortion are evil?"

    The intersection between the anti-abortion and the anti-preconception camp is probably close to nil.


  • Considered Harmful

    @remi said in How well do you know your country?:

    That one might indeed be tricky to understand for most people. It took me a few seconds of reasoning to get an idea of what a typical value would be (hint: much, much less than 70%!), so I don't expect most people being asked the question in the street to really get it right...

    If the least wealthy own 79.8% that leaves 20.2% for the wealthiest 30%. How can that be anything but a contradiction?
    Funny how everyone but the British underestimates inequality.



  • @PleegWat said in How well do you know your country?:

    @CoyneTheDup "You can have premarital sex no problem, but preconception and abortion are evil?"

    Where does it say anything about contraceptives? To many (hell, probably most people) wearing a condom is not nearly as immoral as abortion.

    And I'd assume there's a sizeable amount of anti-abortionists who don't have a problem with people having sex as long as they either use protection properly, or own up to the kid in case of an accident.

    Where exactly is your moral dissonance?



  • @Maciejasjmj said in How well do you know your country?:

    @PleegWat said in How well do you know your country?:

    @CoyneTheDup "You can have premarital sex no problem, but preconception and abortion are evil?"

    Where does it say anything about contraceptives? To many (hell, probably most people) wearing a condom is not nearly as immoral as abortion.

    And I'd assume there's a sizeable amount of anti-abortionists who don't have a problem with people having sex as long as they either use protection properly, or own up to the kid in case of an accident.

    Where exactly is your moral dissonance?

    You're assuming I have a moral dissonance? I do, but not on this topic.

    There are a lot of people who do, though. I remember being told once, by a woman, about a guy she had intercourse with, out of wedlock. No condom, because he didn't like those; and afterward he asks if she was on the pill. But he was strongly anti-abortion...

    Addendum And the final blow to the dissonance bell: 95% of Americans have had premarital sex.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @CoyneTheDup said in How well do you know your country?:

    95% of Americans have had premarital sex.

    I suppose there's still time...



  • @CoyneTheDup said in How well do you know your country?:

    There are a lot of people who do, though. I remember being told once, by a woman, about a guy she had intercourse with, out of wedlock. No condom, because he didn't like those; and afterward he asks if she was on the pill. But he was strongly anti-abortion...

    Uh, that's not a moral dissonance.

    "He said he was against murdering prostitutes, but he had unprotected sex with one! Haha, what a hypocrite, he doesn't understand that knocking up a prostitute logically means that you have to shank her and throw the body in the dumpster! Right, guys?"



  • Interesting.

    Apparently, I am completely uninformed about the state of my country.

    0_1482138211361_Screenshot_20161219-095903.png

    Biggest surprises.

    0_1482138231828_Screenshot_20161219-095628.png

    0_1482138242229_Screenshot_20161219-095655.png



  • @LaoC said in How well do you know your country?:

    @remi said in How well do you know your country?:

    That one might indeed be tricky to understand for most people. It took me a few seconds of reasoning to get an idea of what a typical value would be (hint: much, much less than 70%!), so I don't expect most people being asked the question in the street to really get it right...

    If the least wealthy own 79.8% that leaves 20.2% for the wealthiest 30%. How can that be anything but a contradiction?

    I know (and for the record my guess was more around 30%... still got it wrong...), but my point is that understanding that question requires some mathematical fluency. When you see how people struggle with simple things such as rebates in shops ("an item priced 200 has a 50% rebate, how much does it cost?" -> many, many people will say 150, or 50, or anything but the right answer...), I expect that many people had trouble not with the idea behind the question but with the question itself.



  • @Adynathos said in How well do you know your country?:

    @anonymous234

    Chinese respondents overestimated the county's future population. The UN estimates that the number of people living in the country will fall between now and 2050, whereas the average survey respondent said the population would grow to 1.4bn by that time, 52 million people more than the UN prediction.

    It is 33 years from now to 2050.
    Enough time for two world wars, or for creation of new technologies and industries, or many economical and political changes.
    The uncertainty of prediction of future population in 30+ years should be big, many times more than the 3.7% (52M / 1400M).

    And news love to report those weak predictions. Instead of saying "quantity X is growing at a high speed now" (which is true) they say "in 2050, quantity X will be huge" (which is unfounded speculation).

    China changed its one child policy. The Chinese have every reason to expect their population number rate to change.


  • area_pol

    @xaade said in How well do you know your country?:

    China changed its one child policy. The Chinese have every reason to expect their population number rate to change.

    While, if I understood correctly, the prediction they cite says their population is projected to be smaller in the future.



  • @LaoC said in How well do you know your country?:

    British underestimates inequality.

    Funny how the government overestimates its knowledge of what the poor have. :trollface:



  • @LaoC said in How well do you know your country?:

    inequality

    That's going to continue for as long as people are lured into working for employers. Nothing will change it.

    The only thing history has been able to do, is make the top 1% into government instead of private citizens.



  • @Maciejasjmj said in How well do you know your country?:

    Uh, that's not a moral dissonance.

    "He said he was against murdering prostitutes, but he had unprotected sex with one! Haha, what a hypocrite, he doesn't understand that knocking up a prostitute logically means that you have to shank her and throw the body in the dumpster! Right, guys?"

    I'll highlight the important part:

    There are a lot of people who do, though. I remember being told once, by a woman, about a guy she had intercourse with, out of wedlock. No condom, because he didn't like those; and afterward he asks if she was on the pill. But he was strongly anti-abortion...



  • @xaade said in How well do you know your country?:

    @LaoC said in How well do you know your country?:

    inequality

    That's going to continue for as long as people are lured into working for employers. Nothing will change it.

    Not with that mindset, for sure... Inequality will always exist, but that doesn't mean we cannot strive to reduce it -- or make it easier for the individuals to reduce it for themselves, if you prefer that formulation.

    The only thing history has been able to do, is make the top 1% into government instead of private citizens.

    The way I see it, there is inequality between members of society at a given time and there is how it changes for individuals across time. Since you're talking of history, one thing that I believe has changed a lot are the individual perspectives for changes. In other words, a few centuries ago, if you were born poor, there was basically nothing you could do about it (yeah, there are always exceptions...). It's easier (I'm not saying easy!) now.



  • @remi said in How well do you know your country?:

    Not with that mindset, for sure... Inequality will always exist, but that doesn't mean we cannot strive to reduce it -- or make it easier for the individuals to reduce it for themselves, if you prefer that formulation.

    Inequality is only a problem where the poor don't have enough, and THE reason they don't have enough is because the rich somehow make it impossible for them to have enough BY taking too much money.

    Otherwise inequality is not THE problem, poverty is.

    So far, I'm not convinced that you've proven any of the IFF above.

    @remi said in How well do you know your country?:

    In other words, a few centuries ago, if you were born poor, there was basically nothing you could do about it (yeah, there are always exceptions...). It's easier (I'm not saying easy!) now.

    No, there's nothing you can do about inequality.

    However, you do have more personal mobility to avoid poverty, than you did in the past.



  • @xaade said in How well do you know your country?:

    Otherwise inequality is not THE problem, poverty is.

    Poverty is the biggest problem, we can agree on that. But one thing is that poverty is actually a relative thing (you always compare yourself to your neighbours etc.), so an ideal (as in "that only exists in imagination", not necessarily as in "the perfect one") society without poverty must have a relatively low level of inequality, otherwise there will always be feelings of poverty.

    (now, feel free to mock feelz > realz and that having enough to feed yourself or whatever metric you choose make people not-poor whatever they may say, but that won't change the fact what matters in an ideal society is as much the feeling of poverty than the real thing)

    And then there is the moral standpoint about inequality, and I disagree with it. As a matter of principle, I believe that keeping the inequality under control should be one goal of our society.

    No, there's nothing you can do about inequality.

    That is flat out wrong. There are many things that can be done to reduce inequality, and many things that are done by almost all countries, such as progressive taxation, free education, public healthcare, means-tested subsidies (in any form or shape)...

    You can say that there is nothing that doesn't have worse side-effects (e.g. nationalisation of everything...), or that there is nothing that fully suppresses inequality, but you can't say that there is nothing that can be done to reduce it.


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