Haidt’s writings promise these powerful players something elusive: a scientific, social-scientific explanation of the crises they face, combined with the Silicon Valley founder’s level of confidence in how to fix them. (Mr. Haidt often seems like what might occur if the fairy Cassandra swallowed Dale Carnegie: concerned concerning the disasters humans have wrought, but persistently jokes that we will undo them.)
Toby Shannan, former chief operating officer of e-commerce company Shopify, turned to Mr. Haidt for advice on coping with ideological battles within the workplace. He said Haidt guided him through a difficult period within the run-up to Donald J. Trump’s 2016 election, when a few of his employees were furious that Shopify was running online merchandise stores for right-wing groups like Breitbart News. On Mr. Haidt’s advice, Shopify determined that users could sell goods with political commentary but without explicit calls for harm.
“He was sort of a philosopher on a dial,” Mr. Shannan said.
It was his work on “The Coddling of the American Mind,” diagnosing what became generally known as cancel culture, that put Mr. Haidt at the middle of a debate that for years occupied columnists, blue check Twitter accounts and everybody’s dads. He rode on a wave of tension concerning the rising generation and have become the voice of people that didn’t want to ally with right-wing anti-cancel culture warriors, but at the identical time felt alienated by the opposite side. In the opinion of his readers, Mr. Haidt gave credence to the left’s irritation against the left – and, inevitably, also to the precise’s irritation against the left.
Mr. Haidt was interviewed by podcast heavyweights Ezra Klein, Kara Swisher, Sam Harris, Dax Shepard, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Tim Ferris. At Bari Weiss’s podcast, he linked the chaos and confusion of the present world to what humanity experienced after the destruction of the Tower of Babel: “We may never again be able to understand each other.”
Priscilla Chan, co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, liked “Pampering the American Mind,” so, she recalls, she contacted Mr. Haidt they usually had dinner along with her husband, Mark Zuckerberg. Mr. Haidt also spent the day lecturing at Meta on the impact of social media on mental health and democracy. Patrick Collison, CEO of payment processing startup Stripe, can be a friend of mine, Haidt said, and has praised “Spoiling”. Bill Gates vouched for “Pampering”. It seems that Barack Obama can be a reader of Haidt. Gave speech in 2015, which mentioned coddling students and seemed to repeat it themes of the Atlantic cover story which Mr. Haidt wrote with a co-author as a precursor to the book.
