Dominic Cummings: belief

Transcript context

…That lesson with incentives, for example, is isomorphic to other institutions you’ve seen, or was that specific to Russia? Everything is crazier and more insane in Russia, but I think it definitely helped me deal with other failures. You always learn a lot, I think, from total failures and having to confront the fact that you just totally misunderstood what on earth you were getting into. And I completely misunderstood what I was getting into there on every level. So I think it was very useful for me, actually. When I came back to Britain and then got involved with politics, I was much more careful about trying not to fool myself and trying to figure out what’s real and question my own assumptions about things. Speaking of which, a character you’ve highlighted who exemplifies that sort of epistemic humility is Bismarck. You’ve done a deep dive on him so I just want to ask you a bunch of questions, not only about him, but maybe just a study of history in general. First of all, where in the world do you think a Lee Kuan Yew or Bismarck type figure is most likely to emerge as the leader of that country? Where is it most likely today?…

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