Bryan Caplan: belief

Transcript context

…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? Let's see. If it’s the sort of kindness towards strangers you meet firsthand, like being willing to feed a homeless guy, then yeah, sure. My guess is that most effective altruists are people who would like to give to homeless people, but just realize that it's not a good use of money. They sort of have to suppress their desire to give to the homeless. Now about the honesty one: this is one where a lot of politicians say that you have to be dishonest to get things done. I would say that there's this whole literature on credibility saying, “No, what you really want is to be honest and in a very credible way such that when you say I'm going to do something in 20 years, people believe you. ” Again, I think that's a lot of what you would have needed for effective decolonization. It would be to have people there of ironclad honesty. When they say, “Look, I am not leaving just because you look like there are terrorist attacks, I'm willing to give up 100,000 British soldiers to be able to carry our attacks before we walk out.” When I say it, I mean it, and I think that is actually an important trait for leadership. Here's the interesting thing. I don't think Tyler will in any way see this as a negative. On one hand, he does like to impishly say, “Oh, well, you have to be dishonest to get things done,” and so on, yet his leadership style is ultra-honest, and it's based upon everyone believing that something was going to be good for them. Afterward, they come away saying, “Wow, that was real leadership.” People leave the deal years later feeling like things worked out. Traits like integrity and honesty; while we can easily come up with hypotheticals where they're bad in a leader, I think the real thing is in the old saying “underpromise and overdeliver,” right? Don't promise more than you're really willing to do and then try to exceed expectations. That, I would say, is a trait of a leader, but I'd say that's not dishonesty. If someone promises something and that they’ll do more for you, people say liar! So you can say “No, it's not a lie. I wasn't a liar. I did what I said, and I also did more.” Now, I know, in general, you're not a fan of revolution, but if you had to choose: What is the best revolution, the most justified, or the one that had the best effects?…

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