Byron Auguste: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Now, you think conscientiousness is quite important. I agree with that. I also see in the literature from personality psychology, the big five personality traits — they don’t change that much over time. If you’re conscientious when you’re young, you’re probably still pretty conscientious when you’re old. If we have in America, let’s say, 37 percent of people get four-year college degrees. The ones who don’t, on average, are less conscientious. Why think that 10 years later, given their lower conscientiousness, they can be retrained when they either couldn’t get through college, wouldn’t finish, didn’t even start — whatever the case may be? I think there are two problems with what you just said, Tyler. One is, you slipped in the “on average,” whereas a person is not an average. A person is an individual, which is a very big deal because I don’t know what the average level of conscientiousness is for college graduates versus not. But let’s assume that it might be higher on average. What it means is, there are tens of millions of people who don’t have college degrees who would rank very highly on conscientiousness. For example, if you start at college, and you’re a first-generation college student, and then your mother who’s providing for your younger siblings gets sick, and you drop out of college to earn money to support your family, are you less conscientious than the more affluent person who’s taking college? I don’t think so. In other words — That’s not why most people don’t finish, right? Isn’t whether or not you finish college the best test of conscientiousness we have?…

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