I'm not saying his approach is right, just that his ultimate goal is not political diversity as such. I agree that there are other approaches to correcting bias, and the fact that he doesn't even consider those makes me think something else is going on. Liberals tend to believe that morality is a product of reason. Haidt thinks it comes from innate dispositions or intuitions, which I think is closer to a conservative viewpoint.
How does one justify a sweeping generalization about some group of people while totally ignoring diversity within that group? "I don't care what they truly believe, but methinks they believe that three of my six (not five) moral foundations are unimportant." doesn't sound particularly convincing.
> I'm not saying his approach is right, just that his ultimate goal is not political diversity as such.
That's exactly what I was trying to point out in the GGGP comment. This is little more than a conservative political agenda wrapped in the language of diversity. Yes, some people emphasize some of the "foundations" more than others. But unless Haidt can convince us that we ought to take all of them seriously, his views are utterly uninteresting in the context of ethics.
When religious people demand that creationism be taught at school "for balance", most HNers can easily see through their thinly veiled political agenda. But when a conservative and/or libertarian guy makes an argument that has an identical logical structure, anyone who dares to disagree gets downvoted into oblivion. Funny, but I guess that's exactly how political biases work IRL.
I agree with the authors that homogeneity can be bad for a field, but I don't think this can be fixed by increasing the mindshare of conservatism. There are plenty of people who would pick "liberal" on a "liberal or conservative?" questionnair and still devote their lives to researching, for example, people's relationship with authority. Not personally believing it to be a matter of morality might even help the researcher become more objective.