Tyler Cowen Talks with Jonathan Haidt

Self-recommending. Here is one excerpt:

Whenever there was an empire, the empire always ran into trouble. At that point, there are those who say, “Our misfortunes are because we have lost the ways of the elders. The gods are punishing us for departing from the wisdom. We need to return!” Those are the people I would bet who if you could transplant them, they would grow up to be more conservative. They feel the moral decay. They feel the loss of the tradition.

Here is another:

The basic fact about moral argument is that we’re not really listening to each other, we’re not actually open to reasoning. We start with our gut feeling or our partisan loyalty, and at that point we become lawyers. We’re really good at being lawyers and knocking down the other guy’s arguments, and giving them our own…

Once it becomes left versus right over Obamacare, it doesn’t matter however good your arguments are, I’m not listening. I’ve got my team, and we’re on a mission to defeat your team.

But read the whole thing.

7 thoughts on “Tyler Cowen Talks with Jonathan Haidt

  1. All true.

    What has been the most interesting part about the Trump Thang – for me anyway – has been watching people who were team Red allies not more than 6 months ago turn into bitter enemies from different tribes. All of the sudden they speak different languages and filter real events and information through completely different filters. They literally watch the same 30 second video and come to completely opposite conclusions of what they just saw! And everyone seems sincere about how they just cant understand how anyone could see it any other way, its awesome! A real life rashomon, and all because people now suddenly identify with a different faction within a party.

    • Yeah. Alas we’ll never be rid of this notion that Obamacare was a Republican plan. It has now passed into lore where people like Haidt vaguely understand it to be true.

      The funny thing is, as preposterous a claim as it is, I still can’t figure out what good it does democrats to claim it. Well, I get why Haidt is claiming it 😉

      • My favorite D talking point during the Ocare debates was about R hypocrisy over the mandate. Which was true. As was D hypocrisy over the same issue, in the exact opposite direction.

        • My favorite talking point has to be “blame Republicans for ACA’s flaws because they refused to come to the bargaining table.”

  2. “The core idea of Obamacare was first proposed by the Heritage Foundation”

    Ugh

    • “Based on work by Mark Pauly, if you look at the people who are covered by the mandate, they have to pay more for health insurance than it’s worth, actually most of them. So Obamacare is imposing a harm on them.”

      Because (I must assume) it is actually about forcing people into the system who were rationally opting out.

  3. Could you do a post comparing and contrasting your three-axis model with Haidt’s five-or-six parts of mortality? (Care/Harm, Liberty/Oppression, etc.)

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