Robin Hanson: evaluation

Transcript context

…Sure, it’s on your home page. Right. The cynic’s conundrum is that the cynic is assigning low motives to other people’s behavior, and the conundrum is that, when you ask why is the cynic behaving as a cynic or speaking cynically, the most plausible explanation is that they have low motives for their behavior. In fact, it does seem that on average, people who talk cynically, especially in this sort of whiny, complainy, cynical voice, do have low motives for that, and they are somewhat failures and people you don’t want to affiliate with. There’s a sense in which most people don’t want to seem cynical because the people who seem cynical are not the sort of people you want to seem. We didn’t want to seem that sort of a whiny, cynical, complainy sort of person who plausibly is a failure and a loser, and not the sort of person you want to listen to or associate with. We want to be, honestly, what we are. We like humans. We like people. We think people have great potential, and even if they aren’t what they seem, we are happy with them. With that, I thank you all for coming. Robin Hanson, thank you very much.…

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