Russ Roberts: belief

Transcript context

…Last question: what is your next book or project? I have three things I’m working on. I’m working on a video series on data and thinking about numbers. Actually, the latest episode comes out today. That project’s an ongoing project. In terms of books, I think I’m writing a book on data and our need for certainty and our challenge of interpreting numbers authentically and correctly. I think it’s really hard for us to consume numbers. We tend to see them as facts. They’re not facts. Some of them are. Most of them aren’t. And we’re prone to manipulation, I think, from the use of numbers. It causes us to look under the lamppost — which is, I think, a huge failing — where the light is, rather than maybe out in the dark a little bit. We need to edge out into the dark, where the numbers aren’t. That’s one book I’m trying to start. I’m trying to write a book on prayer for people who struggle with prayer, and I think most people do, at least the ones I know. Then I’d like to write a book on forgiveness and the virtues of forgiveness, which is totally alien to me. If you had said to me five years ago, “You’re going to write a book on forgiveness,” I would have said, “Forgiveness is a really mixed bag. Some you should bear a grudge.” I’ve changed my mind on that, and I want to see if I can make the case for forgiving yourself and forgiving others more readily, and how that might actually work. It’s a great cliché: “You need to forgive yourself so you can forgive others.” But most of us struggle to do that. I’m not sure. The connection’s not so obvious. The same thing — you need to love yourself before you can love others. That seems counterintuitive to me. Those kinds of interpersonal, human aspects of life, I think, are fascinating, and maybe I can say something about them. Russ Roberts, thank you very much.…

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