Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What about becoming a peace activist or something who advocates that the South China Sea is just not worth destroying the world over? Advocates just being very reluctant to have any significant war with a major power? Well, the Chinese have already had their way in the South China Sea. We may have arrived at that outcome, whether we wanted it or not. I don’t know how influential peace activists are on many issues. They were influential in getting us out of the Vietnam War, so there’re clearly some cases of success. But the emotions of voters run so high in foreign policy, and the elites are so oriented toward other considerations, I’m not sure a lot of peace activism really matters much. Do you think a lot of listeners should potentially go join Philip Tetlock’s research agenda as a way of having more foresight about the problems we’ll face and how we might solve them?…

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