Thanks for sharing! The speakers on the podcast might not have had the time to make detailed arguments, but I find their arguments here pretty uncompelling. For example:
They claim that “many belief systems they have a way of segregating and limiting the impact of the most hardcore believers.” But (at least from skimming) their evidence for this seems to be just the example of monastic traditions.
A speaker claims that “the leaders who take ideas seriously don’t necessarily have a great track record.” But they just provide a few cherry-picked (and dubious) examples, which is a pretty unreliable way of assessing a track record.
Counting Putin a “man of ideas” because he made a speech with lots of historical references—while ignoring the many better leaders who’ve also made history-laden speeches—looks like especially egregious cherry-picking.
So I think, although their conclusions are plausible, these arguments don’t pass enough of an initial sanity check to be worth lots of our attention.
Thanks for sharing! The speakers on the podcast might not have had the time to make detailed arguments, but I find their arguments here pretty uncompelling. For example:
They claim that “many belief systems they have a way of segregating and limiting the impact of the most hardcore believers.” But (at least from skimming) their evidence for this seems to be just the example of monastic traditions.
A speaker claims that “the leaders who take ideas seriously don’t necessarily have a great track record.” But they just provide a few cherry-picked (and dubious) examples, which is a pretty unreliable way of assessing a track record.
Counting Putin a “man of ideas” because he made a speech with lots of historical references—while ignoring the many better leaders who’ve also made history-laden speeches—looks like especially egregious cherry-picking.
So I think, although their conclusions are plausible, these arguments don’t pass enough of an initial sanity check to be worth lots of our attention.
I share this impression of the actual data points being used feeling pretty flimsy