Bryan Caplan: belief

Transcript context

…That's really interesting because in your book on political demagoguery, you make the point that if we were to judge political leaders by normal moral standards, we would think they're monsters. The interesting thing with the Gandhi example is that maybe the people who are moral heroes in an ordinary context would make the worst politicians. Do you think there's any correlation between how moral somebody is as a human and how moral the government they lead is? They’re definitely not the worst people. The very worst people are people who come to power self-consciously and want to commit mass murder. Those are the worst. Now, if you have a very conventional moral view where the only thing that you judge people by is how caring they are, then yeah, I think those people make bad leaders. If you have an effective altruism point of view, however, where it's not just feeling a lot of caring emotions, but being very committed to thinking clearly about the best way to get good results, then I'll say those people are more heroic people in my view. Those people, I think actually, if any of them ever got power, would generally be good leaders. Again, EAs need some experience too, but basically, that is the right profile for a good leader: someone who is very caring, but at the same time very logical. Is there a correlation between conventional virtues like honesty and being kind towards strangers and being good in an effective altruist sense? Or are those just completely unrelated?…

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