I agree with everything you say. I’m reminded of Dan Gardner’s terrific book Future Babble on how and why people respond to pundits even though their predictions/calibrations are often woeful.
The thing is, in the same way that there are people who can get away with clearly being in bad faith and not being truthful, I think there are probably some people who can get away with being relatively well-calibrated and up-front about not treating everything in black and white terms, and still be effective communicators, and effective in politics in general.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other factors (something to do with the conveyed social status of the person in question?) that relate to their effectiveness that are in some ways independent of the positions they actually take. Taking the “Is God real?” example, it’s true that the vast majority of people couldn’t get away with that. But there are probably some people who could get away with it.
I’m speculating. And to my mind this is an empirical question. The fact that no one comes to mind probably indicates I’m wrong. But I can always be hopeful!
I’m also writing this in a rush, so apologies if I haven’t been very clear. Thanks for the comments!
I agree with everything you say. I’m reminded of Dan Gardner’s terrific book Future Babble on how and why people respond to pundits even though their predictions/calibrations are often woeful.
The thing is, in the same way that there are people who can get away with clearly being in bad faith and not being truthful, I think there are probably some people who can get away with being relatively well-calibrated and up-front about not treating everything in black and white terms, and still be effective communicators, and effective in politics in general.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other factors (something to do with the conveyed social status of the person in question?) that relate to their effectiveness that are in some ways independent of the positions they actually take. Taking the “Is God real?” example, it’s true that the vast majority of people couldn’t get away with that. But there are probably some people who could get away with it.
I’m speculating. And to my mind this is an empirical question. The fact that no one comes to mind probably indicates I’m wrong. But I can always be hopeful!
I’m also writing this in a rush, so apologies if I haven’t been very clear. Thanks for the comments!