Kwame Anthony Appiah: belief

Transcript context

…There’s some evidence that people who know just a little about financial literacy do worse than people who know nothing at all because they then think they can go out and make investments, but until they know a lot, that may be counterproductive. Do you ever worry about that with advice? If I thought that I was the only resource [laughs] for the people who are writing the letters, I wouldn’t write the column. All I’m trying to do is to identify something in the question that strikes me as worth thinking about, mostly, as I say, not for the person who wrote to me, but for the million other people who are going to read it. I’ve never had a question where I thought, “If I answer this with what I think is the best advice I have, there’s a risk that something bad will happen. ” I’ve never had that happen. Do you think there’s a risk that people just feel inadequate, that they know somewhat what’s the right thing to do, but they ask you. You confirm their intuition, and then they’re like, “Oh my goodness, I already knew I’m not up to that, but now society is really telling me I’m not up to that,” and they just go away feeling bad?…

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