How bad is the air quality in the US and around the world? What's the evidence that certain kinds of particles in the air lead to negative health outcomes? Are there differences in air quality among urban, suburban, and rural areas? And if so, then to what extent are negative health outcomes attributable to air quality rather than to (e.g.) poverty, education, or other confounding factors? What are 'PM 2.5' particles? Can some particles be too small to matter? Are _all_ particles of a certain...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How do we distinguish correlation from causation in organizational success? How common is it to mistake luck or data mining for genuine effects in research findings? What are the challenges in interpreting ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) criteria? Why is governance considered distinct from environmental and social impact? How should uncertainty in climate science affect our policy choices? Are regulation and free markets really at odds, or can they be mu...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Has society reached ‘peak progress’? Can we sustain the level of economic growth that technology has enabled over the last century? Have researchers plucked the last of science's "low-hanging fruit?" Why did early science innovators have outsized impact per capita? As fields mature, why does per-researcher output fall? Can a swarm of AI systems materially accelerate research? What does exponential growth hide about the risk of collapse? Will specialized AI outcompete human polymaths? Is q...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Why do humans live as long as they do? Since whales have literally tons more cells than humans, why don't they develop cancers at much higher rates than humans? What can the genetic trade-offs we observe in other organisms teach us about increasing human longevity? Will we eventually be able to put people into some kind of stasis? What is the state of such technology? What counts as being dead? How much brain damage can a person sustain before they're no longer the same person? Is lowering te...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How were decisions made about which treatments to trust before the advent of "evidence-based" medicine? How strong are biological arguments for or against various treatments? When did the Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement begin? How did the EBM movement overcome initial resistance among medical professionals? What resources do doctors have at their disposals to find up-to-date information about treatment efficacies? Why is the pharmaceutical industry allowe...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Is it useful to vote against a majority when you might lose political or social capital for doing so? What are the various perspectives on the US / China AI race? How close is the competition? How has AI been used in Ukraine? Should we work towards a global ban of autonomous weapons? And if so, how should we define "autonomous"? Is there any potential for the US and China to cooperate on AI? To what extent do government officials — especially senior policymake...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are the best things to do to help someone achieve their goals? What kind of person should see a personal coach? And when should they do so? What makes for a good personal coach? How do you know which coaches are legit given that they aren't certified like counselors? Can everyone benefit from meeting with a coach? How can you harness modernity to live the kind of life you want? In what ways do people treat themselves as resources? What are the most common c...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What does it take to start a new city, especially one designed to be a special economic zone (SEZ)? What are the advantages and disadvantages to having a private company as manager of a city? Should governments be profit-maximizing? Can people choose to live in one of the Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (ZEDE) cities in Honduras while also opting out of its specific government services? What are some legitimate reasons governments should regulate busines...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? What are the "cognitive" and "behavioral" parts of CBT? What are some of its most common techniques? What are "negative core beliefs"? What does CBT have to say about situations in which problems come from a person's environment rather than from within the person's mind? What makes a particular belief or behavior "good"? How do we know how effective various psychotherapeutic treatments are? How much can we rely on meta...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? Why is it so stigmatized relative to other mental health issues? What does it mean to be the "favorite person" of someone with BPD? Can people with BPD have multiple favorite persons, or no favorite person at all? What is "splitting"? Why are people with BPD more prone to engage in risky, reckless, or impulsive behaviors? How might BPD overlap with the "dark triad" personality traits (i.e., machiavellianism, narciss...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Is the placebo effect bullshit? Are "open-label" placebos just as effective as "closed-label" placebos? How do placebos differ from dummies? Is the placebo effect just a kind of scientific-sounding "woo"? How does social priming differ from word priming? Why is it important in research to have both placebo and no-treatment groups? What is the Hawthorne effect? What is the John Henry effect? When is it useful to express effect sizes using Cohen's d? If there's no...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What kinds of things really distort our ability to think clearly when making decisions? What is "psychological distance"? What is construal level theory? How can we intentionally increase or decrease psychological distance for ourselves or others who are making decisions? What are "decisionscapes"? When giving toddlers choices, we often artificially limit the number of available options to help smooth out the decision process and avoid decision paralysis. When m...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Which of the world's hardest problems can be solved merely by gathering more data? Why are social problems harder to solve than biological problems? How should power between business owners and unions be balanced? Why do people so often misinterpret research results — sometimes even to the point of concluding exactly the opposite of what the results show? What heuristics should people use when reading research papers? How are culture wars affecting the reliabi...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What do schools do well and not so well? In what contexts is memorization most effective? What's the value in teaching something that will probably be forgotten by most students after graduation? How should educators balance time spent on building skills versus acquiring knowledge? Why do students so often fail to apply the skills learned in school (e.g., fractions, solving for unknown quantities, etc.) to problems encountered in everyday life? What is "transfer...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Are narcissists born with narcissism? What are the core components of narcissism? To what extent do narcissists have their own personality that isn't shaped by what others think of them? Are narcissists overly confident or overly insecure? How are grandiosity and vulnerability related? Why might narcissists be offended by compliments? Would narcissists relinquish their narcissism if given the opportunity? Do most narcissists know that they suffer from Narcissist...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What have we learned about UBI from recent, large-scale studies? What factors contribute to differential attrition in (especially long-term) studies? How much does it cost to run large UBI studies? Where else in the world have major UBI studies been run? What's the difference between "guaranteed income" and UBI? How do people in cash transfer studies tend to spend their money? Should restrictions be placed on what people can spend their study money on? How long ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What interesting things can we learn by studying pre-humans? How many different species of pre-humans were there? Why is there only a single species of human now? If pre-human species wiped each other out for various reasons, why might the ancestors of chimps and bonobos (who are very closely related to humans) have been spared? What roles did language, racism / speciesism, and disease likely play in the shaping of the human evolutionary tree? How is AI developm...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why are sex workers treated so badly in the US? What effects do licensing requirements have on sex workers and their customers? How do sex worker rights connect with privacy rights more broadly? In what philosophical principles ought sex worker rights (and their customers' rights) to be grounded? How do sex work laws affect people who aren't sex workers? Is "whore-phobia" the root of all misogyny? Is misogyny built into human nature, or is it learned? How does t...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. When does productivity become toxic? To which part(s) of ourselves or our lives should we anchor our self-worth? How can we connect our productivity to our values? How does self-esteem intersect with productivity? When should we listen to our bodies and intuitions, and when should we ignore them and perhaps even do the opposite? How should achievements affect our sense of self-worth? What are some techniques for emotional regulation? What is the "narrator mind" ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Are the terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" interchangeable? Are people suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) naturally violent? Are people usually born with these psychopathy, sociopathy, ASPD, or other similar personality disorders; or are they caused by environmental factors? To what extent do sociopaths have a sense of self or relatively fixed personality? Are sociopaths easily manipulated? How do shame and guilt differ? What is "gray rage"? T...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How much more robust have the social sciences become since the beginnings of the replication crisis? What fraction of replication failures indicate that the original result was a false positive? What do we know with relative certainty about human nature? How much of a difference is there between how people behave in a lab setting and how they behave out in the world? Why has there been such a breakdown of trust in the sciences over the past few decades? How can ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why do we suffer? Would we still suffer if we got rid of all craving and aversion? Is pain the same thing as suffering? How is suffering connected to the concept of self? Should people in horrible situations attempt to remove themselves from those environments or try to improve their plights in any way; or should they merely free themselves from suffering by releasing their "craving" for well-being and their "aversion" to misery? Why would the dissolution of the...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are the differences between tactics and strategies? Is the speed of growth of a company the main thing business school graduates should consider when trying to figure out where to launch their careers? How much optimism or pessimism should strategies include? How can we gain footholds for change in systems that are very strongly self-reinforcing? Is it possible to change a system's side effects without changing its purpose? What are the differences between ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is "mindful" productivity? Is impostor syndrome linked to main character syndrome? Must increased productivity always come with an increased risk of burn-out? What mistakes do people most commonly make when trying to improve their productivity? Is the best productivity system also the most minimal? What is "plus-minus-next"? How can we use our time more efficiently? What does it mean to have an "experimental" mindset? How many of our passions do we discover...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Should we give cash directly to people living in poverty? Why do most nonprofits prefer to give services rather than cash? What should be done if the things that a person really needs aren't purchasable near them? (For example, what if a person needs a vaccine that isn't available in their country?) Can most people be trusted to spend money wisely? Are single lump sum transfers more effective than recurring transfers on monthly or yearly bases? What are the most...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What's the reality of how politicians get elected in the US? How much of a role does gerrymandering play? Are Democrats and Republicans equally guilty of gerrymandering? Do the parties secretly collaborate on gerrymandering? Is gerrymandering legal? What determines who wins a primary election? What percent of all government positions are actually contested? What are the five main types of politicians? We use our phones to manage our bank accounts, medical record...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Do people need more community in their lives? What makes for a good community? Can you really belong to a community if you don't share its core values? Is social chemistry transitive? Do "communities of belief" form and build trust more quickly than "communities of chemistry"? Do rationalists avoid taking "vibes", intuition, or instinct into account when forming communities? Can you learn how to do a thing simply by pretending that you're a pro? What can you lea...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why should people host more events than they do right now? Under what conditions shouldn't a person host more events? Do these suggestions apply to introverts? What's the best RSVP tool? What is "double opt-in"? What's the ideal length of time for a social event? What kinds of ice-breaker activities, if any, should hosts use? What are the primary factors that affect people's enjoyment of an event? What does it mean to "compress and release" in an event or party ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How much progress has psychology made on the things that matter most to us? What are some psychological findings we feel pretty confident are true? How much consensus is there about the Big 5 personality traits? What are the points of disagreement about the Big 5? Are traits the best way of thinking about personality? How consistent are the Big 5 traits across cultures? How accurately do people self-report their own personality? When are psychophysical measures ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What mistakes do investors make when trying to predict which startups will succeed? Which matters more: a startup's team or its central idea? How do startup founders differ from other capitalists? What makes something a "pattern-breaking" idea or behavior? Are startup founders less sensitive to negative feedback than the average person? Is it possible to achieve startup success without challenging the status quo? Is it true that 90% of startups fail? What is fou...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What sorts of decisions are we making without even realizing we're making them? Are people aware of their own values? Do they know how those values rank relative to each other? What are all the various parties, interests, and values that have to be addressed and balanced when making decisions in a healthcare context? What does it mean to "play-test" yourself? What are the best strategies for giving feedback? How much energy is required to make various kinds of d...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why do there seem to be more dystopias than utopias in our collective imagination? Why is it easier to find agreement on what we don't want than on what we do want? Do we simply not know what we want? What are "solved worlds", "plastic worlds", and "vulnerable worlds"? Given today's technologies, why aren't we working less than we potentially could? Can humanity reach a utopia without superintelligent AI? What will humans do with their time, and/or how will they...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How much energy is needed for GDP growth? Would our civilization have developed at the same rate without fossil fuels? Could we potentially do the same things we're currently doing but with significantly less energy? How different would the world look if we'd developed nuclear energy much earlier? Why can't anything go faster than light? Will the heat death of the universe really be "the end" for everything? How can difficult concepts be communicated in simple w...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How hard is it to construct a toaster from scratch? Do we in modern times individually have more knowledge than individuals living 100 or 1,000 years ago? Should corporations be thought of as a kind of emergent artificial intelligence? To what extent are corporations — and more broadly, whole economies — aligned with human values? Which animals experience the smallest amount of existential dread? Are humans at the top of the evolutionary "pyramid"? Is it pos...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is "apocaloptimism"? Is there a middle ground between apocalypticism and optimism? What are the various camps in the AI safety and ethics debates? What's the difference between "working on AI safety" and "building safe AIs"? Can our social and technological coordination problems be solved only by AI? What is "qualintative" research? What are some social science concepts that can aid in the development of safe and ethical AI? What should we do with things th...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How much should we trust social science papers in top journals? How do we know a paper is trustworthy? Do large datasets mitigate p-hacking? Why doesn't psychology as a field seem to be working towards a grand unified theory? Why aren't more psychological theories written in math? Or are other scientific fields mathematicized to a fault? How do we make psychology cumulative? How can we create environments, especially in academia, that incentivize constructive cr...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are "WEIRD" cultures? What percentage of the world's population is WEIRD? Why do WEIRD cultures tend to use analytic thinking (as opposed to the wholistic thinking used in non-WEIRD cultures)? Does school make you more intelligent or merely more knowledgeable? Do individualistic cultures tend to innovate more than collectivistic cultures? How does moral reasoning differ between WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures? Is the world becoming more WEIRD? How diverse are ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. NOTE: Spencer appeared as a guest on The 80,000 Hours Podcast back in March, and this episode is our release of that recording. Thanks to the folks at The 80,000 Hours Podcast for sharing both their audio and transcript with us! Does money make people happy? What's the difference between life satisfaction and wellbeing? In other contexts, critics are quick to point out that correlation does not equal causation; so why do they so often seem to ignore such equatio...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why should we consider slowing AI development? Could we slow down AI development even if we wanted to? What is a "minimum viable x-risk"? What are some of the more plausible, less Hollywood-esque risks from AI? Even if an AI could destroy us all, why would it want to do so? What are some analogous cases where we slowed the development of a specific technology? And how did they turn out? What are some reasonable, feasible regulations that could be implemented to ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What does effective altruism look like from a leftist / socialist perspective? Are the far left and EA the only groups that take radical egalitarianism seriously? What are some of the points of agreement and disagreement between EA & socialism? Socialists frequently critique the excesses, harms, and failures of capitalism; but what do they have to say about the effectiveness of capitalism to produce wealth, goods, and services? Is socialism just a top-down mirro...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How easy is it to shift our baseline level of happiness? What sorts of things can most effectively shift that baseline? And are they highly specific to each individual or generalizable to most people? What are the differences between conceptual and phenomenal self-love? Why might it be useful to view shame as a kink? How does self-love or self-acceptance differ from indulging or even just tolerating the worst parts of yourself? What's the best way to think about...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How does Emmett's worldview differ from the standard Silicon Valley worldview? What's the difference between an ideology and a worldview? What's middle management useful for? How might democracy be improved? How important is optimism? Why do people seem to get less done each day than they expect to get done? When is high variance beneficial? Does every startup have a point where it seems like they're going to fail? What's the best and worst startup advice out th...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Should people spend more time becoming better decision-makers? What are the main things that determine how our lives turn out? What's wrong with pro / con lists? When should we deviate from making decisions based on expected value calculations? What kinds of uncertainty might we encounter in the decision-making process? Are explicit decision calculations self-defeating? How similar is intuitive decision-making to decision-making that's based on calculations? How...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How do we know what's true in nutrition? Why aren't nutrition studies seemingly as "definitive" as (e.g.) physics experiments often seem to be? What is the "hierarchy of evidence"? Why is there such a disconnect between the kinds of evidence that actually seem to persuade people and the kinds of evidence that scientists view as valid and meaningful? How can we talk about specific foods in ways that avoid labelling them as always good or always bad? Is the Medite...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Can we measure everything that matters to us? When is measuring the correlates of a thing pretty much just as good as measuring the thing itself? Why are some people resistant to measuring certain things? What are some things people should be measuring but aren't? What's the connection between measuring things and assigning probabilities to events? How much do we know about how well human intuition performs against "doing the math"? How inconsistent are we at ap...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why does it seem that many people read self-help books with no intention of actually doing what the books prescribe? Why are self-help books often less clear than it seems they ought to be? What are self-help books actually designed to do? Why do self-help authors continue to write as though their ideas will help everyone when it seems fairly obvious that no single self-help book has ever been a global panacea? Should self-help advice differ based on the gender ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are the best ways to define "values" and "meaning"? How can democratic processes harness people's intrinsic values and sources of meaning to increase their agency, cooperation, participation, equality, etc.? To what extent do political rivals — or even the bitterest of political enemies — actually value many of the same things? Might we be able to use AIs as "neutral" third-party mediators to help reduce political polarization, especially on an interper...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What exactly is quantum computing? How much should we worry about the possibility that quantum computing will break existing cryptography tools? When will a quantum computer with enough horsepower to crack RSA likely appear? On what kinds of tasks will quantum computers likely perform better than classical computers? How legitimate are companies that are currently selling quantum computing solutions? How can scientists help to fight misinformation and misunderst...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Should we pause AI development? What might it mean for an AI system to be "provably" safe? Are our current AI systems provably unsafe? What makes AI especially dangerous relative to other modern technologies? Or are the risks from AI overblown? What are the arguments in favor of not pausing — or perhaps even accelerating — AI progress? What is the public perception of AI risks? What steps have governments taken to migitate AI risks? If thoughtful, prudent, c...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are the facts around Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX about which all parties agree? What was the nature of Will's relationship with SBF? What things, in retrospect, should've been red flags about Sam or FTX? Was Sam's personality problematic? Did he ever really believe in EA principles? Does he lack empathy? Or was he on the autism spectrum? Was he naive in his application of utilitarianism? Did EA intentionally install SBF as a spokesperson, or did he put himsel...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How big of a problem is homelessness in the US? How many people in large cities like New York City or Los Angeles are unhoused? What's the best language to use when discussing this issue? How is "homelessness" defined? We usually don't label people without food or water as "foodless" or "waterless"; so why do we label people without homes as "homeless"? Why do we so often look away from the problem, both literally and figuratively? What are the most common event...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are some common techniques for quantifying body language? How hard is it to identify poker "tells"? Are there any facial expressions or body movements that have universal meaning? What can be discerned about group dynamics just from watching a meeting over video call? What are the most common body language mistakes people make when going on dates or trying to make friends? What are the strongest indicators of charisma? How do people signal their social stat...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Is nothing objectively true? What kinds of things are we trying to communicate with the stories we tell? Why do we feel the need to take a side on every issue? Which sorts of issues should be tied to our identities? How can we set the definitions for terms in a conversation, if possible? Should people just believe whatever works for them? Is it better to try to compensate for our biases or to reduce them? Should we strive to have lower confidence in ourselves an...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How did we end up with factory farming? How many animals do we kill every year in factory farms? When we consider the rights of non-human living things, we tend to focus mainly on the animal kingdom, and in particular on relatively larger, more complex animals; but to what extent should insects, plants, fungi, and even single-celled organisms deserve our moral consideration? Do we know anything about what it's like (or not) to be an AI? To what extent is the per...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What's the best way to think about building an impactful career? Should everyone try to work in fields related to existential risks? Should people find work in a problem area even if they can't work on the very "best" solution within that area? What does it mean for a particular job or career path to be a "good fit" for someone? What is "career capital"? To what extent should people focus on developing transferable skills? What are some of the most useful cross-...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. It's our 200th episode! 🥳 What important things has Spencer gleaned from these 200 episodes? What has he learned about how to have better conversations? On what topics has he updated his views? What makes for a great question? Thank you, listeners, for listening, following, rating, reviewing, supporting, and communicating with us! You've helped the show continue to grow, improve, and thrive! Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director Josh Castle — Producer...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Is it possible to change someone's life with a really short psychological intervention? What features do turning points in people's lives tend to share in common? What single-session interventions can work well for depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues? What expectations should reasonably be held in advance of a single-session intervention? By what mechanisms do these interventions spark the desire for change in participants? How useful is qualitat...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How does psychological time differ from clock time? How does a person's perception of time relate to their personal identity? How does a person's view of their past shape how they view their future? To what extent do people differ in the degree to which they feel like a single, continuous person across time? What effects does a person's perception of time have on their assessment of injustices? Why aren't there more adversarial collaborations in academia? Is aca...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why is Stoicism important and useful today? What are the main ideas of Stoicism? How can you tell if you're "living well"? And if you're not living well, then how can you move yourself in that direction? How can we learn to accept and embrace life as it comes without losing our desire to improve ourselves and the world around us? Do people vary in the degree to which Stoic practices might be beneficial for them? What's the relationship between Stoicism and CBT? ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is a "theory of everyone"? Do the social sciences currently have enough firm knowledge to synthesize such a theory? Have we been getting smarter as a species over the last few hundred years? Were great historical thinkers smarter than today's greatest minds? Why are governments so prone to corruption? What is the COMPASS framework? What is the "no hyphen" immigration model? What is the "umbrella" immigration model? How can governments change how they think ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Has the world been "lucky" so far with respect to nuclear weapons? How many people have died from nuclear weapons? To what extent do nuclear weapons actually deter aggression? How many countries currently have nuclear weapons or are in the process of building them? How can we discourage continued proliferation of (or even the desire to own) nuclear weapons? How tightly linked are the technologies required to build nuclear energy programs and nuclear weapons prog...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What does it really mean to align an AI system with human values? What would a powerful AI need to do in order to do "what we want"? How does being an assistant differ from being an agent? Could inter-AI debate work as an alignment strategy, or would it just result in arguments designed to manipulate humans via their cognitive and emotional biases? How can we make sure that all human values are learned by AIs, not just the values of humans in WEIRD societies? Ar...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What does it mean to have conflicts between our schemas and our values? What is schema therapy? How do schema therapy's claims differ from the "common sense" view that we develop tools for interacting with the world in childhood? How do our "inner critic" and "vulnerable child" connect to our schemas? How do these things differ from the IFS (Internal Family Systems) model of psychotherapy? How do these things map onto Buddhism, Stoicism, and other religious or p...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What was therapy like in the years leading up to the advent of CBT? Has CBT now been over-sold? How does CBT differ from "the power of positive thinking"? How can therapists who use CBT avoid invalidating clients' feelings? When, if ever, should people listen to their negative thoughts? To what extent can a person's good qualities contribute to their depression? Can empathy be learned? Is it possible to cure depression in a single psychotherapy session? What is ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is a "super-shrink"? Which factors in the therapist-client relationship are most predictive of positive client outcomes over time: the therapist's personality, the client's personality, the therapist's methodology, or other factor(s)? How can therapists use and teach evidence-based practices and behaviors while also respecting and working within an individual client's belief system? What should clients look for when shopping for therapists? Why do clients o...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Have conspiracy theories been more prevalent, more persuasive, or more convoluted in the last few decades than at other points in human history? Is the presence of conspiracy theorists a feature of every society? The phrase "conspiracy theory" usually implies a false theory, even though some are eventually proven to be true; so how can we update our language to better differentiate between disconfirmed and not-yet-confirmed conspiracy theories? How can people wh...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why do we leave so much low-hanging fruit unharvested in so many parts of life? In what contexts is it better to do a thing than to do a symbolic representation of the thing, and vice versa? How can we know when to try to fix a problem that hasn't yet been fixed? In a society, what's the ideal balance of explorers and exploiters? What are the four simulacra levels? What is a moral "maze"? In the context of AI, can solutions for the problems of generation vs. eva...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How can people be encouraged in ways that are more natural and less manipulative to increase the amounts they give to charities? Why are arguments based on the effectiveness of charitable organizations less compelling to most people than we'd like for them to be? What percentages of a social group should be "doves", "hawks", "eagles", or something else? To what extent should our knowledge about our evolutionary history shape our values? Why are children more lik...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How can we find and expand the limitations of our imaginations, especially with respect to possible futures for humanity? What sorts of existential threats have we not yet even imagined? Why is there a failure of imagination among the general populace about AI safety? How can we make better decisions under uncertainty and avoid decision paralysis? What kinds of tribes have been forming lately within AI fields? What are the differences between alignment and contr...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why did students struggle so much to learn through video meetings during the locked-down days of the pandemic? What are "student-led restorative practices"? What is "self-connection practice"? What tools are students lacking? When is violence the optimal solution to a problem? What are the biggest problems in education right now? What do students need in order to be successful humans? How can schools give students more agency and autonomy? What happens if studen...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What should the goals of math education be? What does it mean to "think well"? Is math real? Why are feelings of bewilderment or confusion so common in math classes but not as common in other subjects? Schools now generally offer reading and writing instruction separately — even though both are important for language use — because the skill sets they require can differ so widely; so how might math education benefit from drawing a similar distinction? What sh...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What can we learn from the parable of the two wolves? What is valuism? Do we choose our own intrinsic values? How quickly do our intrinsic values change over time, if at all? How do values and principles relate to one another? Why is behavior change so hard? What conditions need to be met in order for people to change their behavior? How can people make their behavior changes more persistent and less vulnerable to life's ups and downs? Eric Zimmer is a behavior ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How do the experiences of children born into cults differ from members who join as adults? Why do some cults that grow out of western evangelical Christianity — which is notoriously obsessed with purity culture — often flip the script about sex and turn promiscuity into a virtue? How does age affect the ease with which one internalizes cult programming? To what extent do cult members approve of sexual abuses committed the name of religion? What sort of tacti...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Who's Moloch? And what do we mean when we call something "Molochian"? What does healthy competition look like? How can we avoid or extricate ourselves from Molochian scenarios? Are our instincts about fairness and unfairness usually accurate? Is it possible for today's social media giants to create products that people want to use and that are actually good for people to use? What kinds of problems could conceivably be solved by "trustless" solutions? or "high-t...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What are the limits of tech solutionism? Do technological innovations create as many problems as they solve? Or, in other words, do technological innovations improve the world on average over time? Are humans living in the 21st century actually worse off than those that lived in the 11th century? What's the difference between "art" and "content"? If image-generating AIs just produce images that are stylistic averages across all of their training data, then is it...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What interesting social phenomena can be observed at nightclubs? What are "whales" hoping to achieve by spending big at nightclubs? Trying too obviously to increase social status tends to backfire; so how can people buy status without appearing to do so? What do "promoters" gain from these social interactions? How does their work differ from or overlap with sex work? How can they make money without being seen as "gold-diggers"? What ethnicities tend to comprise ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The Clearer Thinking Podcast offers deep conversations on psychology, decision-making, and human nature with leading experts. Listen, learn, and think clearly.| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
A conversation with an autistic person (with Megan Neff) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How has utilitarianism evolved from early Chinese Mohism to the formulations of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill? On what points did Bentham and Mill agree and disagree? How has utilitarianism shaped Effective Altruism? Does utilitarianism only ever evaluate actions, or does it also evaluate people? Does the "veil of ignorance" actually help to build the case for utilitarianism? What's wrong with just trying to maximize expected value? Does acceptance of util...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The skills every adult human should have (with Raffi Grinberg) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
What's the most effective type of therapy? (with Matthew Smout) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Making better decisions by thinking like an artist (with Elspeth Kirkman) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Beyond cognitive biases: improving judgment by reducing noise (with Daniel Kahneman) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Is AI going to ruin everything? (with Gabriel Alfour) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Is AI that's both superintelligent and aligned even possible? Does increased intelligence necessarily entail decreased controllability? What's the difference between "safe" and "under control"? There seems to be a fundamental tension between autonomy and control, so is it conceivable that we could create superintelligent AIs that are both autonomous enough to do things that matter and also controllable enough for us to manage them? Is general intelligence needed...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is the current global birth rate? What factors have contributed, or are currently contributing, to this rate? What outcomes will we experience as a result, and when? How accurate are demographers' projections on this topic? How much of a problem is local over-population? Could a low global birth rate eventually be overcome by high birth rates within a few specific groups? Why does any of this matter? How is average age in the US changing? What should the Am...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The FTX catastrophe (with Byrne Hobart, Vipul Naik, Maomao Hu, Marcus Abramovich, and Ozzie Gooen) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
What do we know about psychology that matters? (with Paul Bloom) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
What defines a cult? Is there such a thing as a good cult? Do Clearer Thinking's tools actually help people? Why does Clearer Thinking share its tools for free for everyone to use? How legitimate is the research Clearer Thinking does to create its tools? Is that research too reliant on self-report? Do Clearer Thinking's tools focus too much on the average person and fail to account for significant variance among people? Should AI companies be required to create and release text watermarking t...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The rival philosophies to Stoicism that you've never heard about (with Greg Lopez) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What does it mean to bring your "A-game" to relationships? What is emotional "fitness"? What forces do relationships need to balance to remain stable and healthy? Are we attracted to a particular brand of heartbreak? What are "original attachment wounds"? Can Dark Triad traits be tamed? What emergent properties do relationships exhibit? What nourishes a relationship? When should relationships end? Why might people choose to maintain abusive relationships? How ca...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Which Spencer is real? Spencer vs. his AI clone | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. In times of such extreme political polarization, where can we find common ground? Should we require disclosure of AI authorship? Should AI companies be required to provide fingerprinting tools that can identify when something has been generated by one of their models? Should movie theaters be required to report when movies actually start? Should members of Congress be prohibited from insider trading? Should gerrymandering be outlawed? Should there be age limits ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What do westerners misunderstand about "tribal" cultures? How does justice in very small communities differ from justice in large nation-states? Why do some cultures have bride prices (i.e., groom's family pays bride's family) and others have dowries (i.e., bride's family pays groom's family)? How do cultures differ with respect to the body parts they sexualize? How many cultures across time have used psychedelics? Do all religions make moral demands? How do rel...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Misinformation from all sides (with Brian Dunning) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. How big is the current mental health crisis? What's causing it? What do we know about the age distribution of people suffering from mental health issues right now? Is the crisis just that more people are suffering from anxiety and depression, or is there an increase in other disorders as well? Why are psychiatrists seemingly very picky about which insurance policies they'll accept? What percent of hospital psychiatric patients are repeat visitors? What would an ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
How to unleash student potential in education (with Jack Despain Zhou) | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. What is obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and how does it compare to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)? Why is it relatively prevalent and yet also relatively unheard-of? What can people with OCPD do well? What does OCPD feel like from the inside? Which fictional characters might have OCPD? How do people with OCPD typically engage with religion? How can you have better relationships with people in your life who have OCPD? What should you do if ...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Why do nonprofits often ignore the simplest, most obvious solutions for helping the world? Why do some problems get a lot of attention while others — often of equal or greater importance — go completely unaddressed? Why is behavior change so hard? When should or shouldn't NGOs collaborate with governments? Why are deworming effects not as immediately noticeable as might be expected? What sorts of incentive structures surround charities? How can NGOs and nonp...| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
A conversation with a multiple-time survivor of sexual abuse | Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — the podcast about ideas that matter| Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg