Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…[laughs] No. And it also found some evidence of openness. But it’s a very small sample. I didn’t look at the statistical analysis very closely. It’s interesting. It coincides with what people report. But whether that’s a strong enough study to hang our hats on, I’m not sure. Let’s say I had this fear. Five-factor personality theory only captures a small amount of what people are, like any theory. We don’t know, but it’s at least possible one part of your personality changes. There are many other parts of your personality we don’t measure, we can’t measure. It would seem weird if only one part of you changed. Quite possibly three, four other, more parts of you are changing. You don’t know what it’s going to be. If you like how you are and you’re risk averse, why go down this path? I think that you have to be open to the idea that you could be better. Certainly on the dimension of openness, I think most of us could stand to be somewhat more open. As we age, I think we tend to get stuck in grooves and ideologies and get less good at considering other points of view. Plus, points of view come up that didn’t exist when our personalities were formed. New information, our environment changes. Being open . . . I think we all have room for improvement on that dimension. Lowering neuroticism, if indeed that is the case, that seems like a positive. I like myself, too. I was pretty satisfied with who I was. But I had some problems with being so satisfied with who I was. [laughs] So I was open. I had a lot of curiosity. I guess I didn’t set out to change myself. I set out to learn about myself.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.