Sublime

Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality—people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt summarizes the dilemma in The Righteous Mind, when he writes, “We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs.” It’s easy enough for most of us to spot the flaws in the fairies, because we have no

Statistically speaking, if you want to predict who is predisposed against welfare, you can mostly ignore their economic principles. What you really need to know is their prejudices.

We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.43 Yet friends can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: they can challenge us, giving us reasons and arguments (link 3) that sometimes trigger new intuitions, thereby making it possible for us to change our minds.

The various moralities found on the political left tend to rest most strongly on the Care/harm and Liberty/oppression foundations. These two foundations support ideals of social justice, which emphasize compassion for the poor and a struggle for political equality among the subgroups that comprise society. Social justice movements emphasize

famous Solomon Asch experiment in which people denied the truth of their own eyes when surrounded by actors who claimed a short line and a long line printed on a large card were the same length. A third of subjects bowed to social pressure and said they agreed, though later they said they internally felt at odds with the group. It also led to the

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says that if you find what is sacred to a person, there you will find “rampant irrationality.”

Whatever the label, the latest evidence coming out of social science is clear: humans value being good members of their groups much more than they value being right, so much so that as long as the group satisfies those needs, we will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers.