Jonathan Haidt: uncertainty

Transcript context

…If you’re in a swing state in, say, proverbial southern Ohio and in a natural setting you meet a person. With what probability do you think you can guess or forecast if they’re left‑wing or right‑wing? Even-up would be 0.5. Probably 0.58, 0.57. People are incredibly variable. I’m a social scientist. Our goal is not to predict with perfect accuracy. We’re just trying to extract what are the regularities under the surface that can explain some things of what we see on the surface. But, look, put it this way. Suppose you’re going to an academic conference. I don’t know about economists but if it was psychologists or people in the humanities, you go into the conference and everybody is wearing a suit and tie. They’re all very neat. You look around, you’d think, “I’m in the wrong room.” You probably are. What Gosling found, people who are conservative, their rooms are more orderly and neat. They have more calendars, more postage stamps. They’re just better prepared to be orderly and neat and get things done. People on the left had more stylistic elements, more high design elements. They had more varied books. So in a variety of ways, our preferences grow out of our innate temperaments. So this is true in all or mostly all cultures.…

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