Jonathan Haidt on making free speech better

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

My very first guest is NYU Professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, best known for his books The Righteous Mind in 2012 and The Coddling of the American Mind with Greg Luckianoff, in 2018.

Jon and I talk about what has been described as a crisis of epistemology - in the very ways in which we discover and generate knowledge and truth. Why has this epistemic crisis hit so many liberal democracies? What lies behind it, and more importantly, what we can do about it? We discuss why Jon hates twitter; how combining the insights of the 18th century philosopher David Hume and the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill can give you "social superpowers"; the way Gen-Z has driven a change in the culture of college campuses and subsequently the corporate world; why kids born in 1996 had such "fundamentally different childhoods" to those born in 1990; and what he sees as a "gravitational change" in the information ecosystem from around 2009.

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Here is our Mill for the modern age: All Minus One (2021)

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Some of Haidt’s related work:

Although Jon doesn’t much like Twitter you should still follow him here.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, with Greg Lukianoff (2018)

(Or you can read the Atlantic essay here.)

The Dark Psychology of Social Networks, with Tobias Rose-Stockwell, The Atlantic, December 2019

Here’s his 2016 Duke lecture on the "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities" (i.e Truth U versus Social Justice U).

Also check out Heterodox Academy

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Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau (2011)

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam (2015)

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud (1930)

Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin (2000)

“The Market for Goods and the Market for Ideas” by Ronald Coase (1974)

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Research: Ashleigh Maciolek

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)