“Conservatism” means many things these days, but one very useful and important definition is this: intellectual humility. That is, conservatism properly understood aims for the wisdom of which Socrates spoke, which is knowing what it is you don’t or cannot know.

Many conservative policy prescriptions follow from this sort of humility. Conservatives greet radical social change with skepticism because dramatic changes to large complex systems are very risky. Conservatives resist government interventions because unintended consequences are ubiquitous and often hard to predict — there are too many unknown unknowns.