My understanding is that he basically thinks norms associated with social conservatives, in particular Mormons—he lists “savings, mutual assistance, family values and no drug and alcohol abuse” in this NYT piece -- just make people better off. He’s especially big on the teetotaling thing; he thinks alcohol abuse is a major social problem we don’t do enough to address. I don’t exactly know if he thinks it’s more important for EA’s to adopt conservative norms to improve their own welfare/productivity, or if EA’s need to see the value of conservative norms for other people generally and start promoting them.
I don’t think he’s thinking of it as giving EA more mass appeal.
My understanding is that he basically thinks norms associated with social conservatives, in particular Mormons—he lists “savings, mutual assistance, family values and no drug and alcohol abuse” in this NYT piece -- just make people better off. He’s especially big on the teetotaling thing; he thinks alcohol abuse is a major social problem we don’t do enough to address. I don’t exactly know if he thinks it’s more important for EA’s to adopt conservative norms to improve their own welfare/productivity, or if EA’s need to see the value of conservative norms for other people generally and start promoting them.
I don’t think he’s thinking of it as giving EA more mass appeal.