80,000 Hours Podcast
348 episodes - English - Latest episode: 17 days ago - ★★★★★ - 236 ratingsUnusually in-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.
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Produced by Keiran Harris. Hosted by Rob Wiblin and Luisa Rodriguez.
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Episodes
#52 - Glen Weyl on uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society
February 08, 2019 02:00 - 2 hours - 151 MBPro-market economists love to wax rhapsodic about the capacity of markets to pull together the valuable local information spread across all of society about what people want and how to make it. But when it comes to politics and voting - which also aim to aggregate the preferences and knowledge found in millions of individuals - the enthusiasm for finding clever institutional designs often turns to skepticism. Today's guest, freewheeling economist Glen Weyl, won't have it, and is...
#52 - Prof Glen Weyl on uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society
February 08, 2019 02:00 - 2 hours - 151 MBPro-market economists love to wax rhapsodic about the capacity of markets to pull together the valuable local information spread across all of society about what people want and how to make it. But when it comes to politics and voting - which also aim to aggregate the preferences and knowledge found in millions of individuals - the enthusiasm for finding clever institutional designs often turns to skepticism. Today's guest, freewheeling economist Glen Weyl, won't have it, and is on a warpa...
#10 Classic episode - Dr Nick Beckstead on spending billions of dollars preventing human extinction
February 02, 2019 20:00 - 103 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2017. What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project - people like Dr Nick Beckstead. Following a PhD in philosophy, Nick works to figure out where money can do the most good. He’s been involved in major grants in a wide range of areas, including ending factory farming through technological...
#10 Classic Episode - Dr Nick Beckstead on spending billions of dollars preventing human extinction
February 02, 2019 20:00Rebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2017. What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project - people like Dr Nick Beckstead. Following a PhD in philosophy, Nick works to figure out where money can do the most good. He’s been involved in major grants in a wide range of areas, including ending factory farming through technological...
#51 - Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age
January 29, 2019 00:48 - 2 hours - 139 MBPolitics in rich countries seems to be going nuts. What's the explanation? Rising inequality? The decline of manufacturing jobs? Excessive immigration? Martin Gurri spent decades as a CIA analyst and in his 2014 book The Revolt of The Public and Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, predicted political turbulence for an entirely different reason: new communication technologies were flipping the balance of power between the public and traditional authorities. In 1959 the Presid...
#8 Classic episode - Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes
January 16, 2019 22:07 - 178 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in September 2017. Every year tens of billions of animals are raised in terrible conditions in factory farms before being killed for human consumption. Over the last two years Lewis Bollard – Project Officer for Farm Animal Welfare at the Open Philanthropy Project – has conducted extensive research into the best ways to eliminate animal suffering in farms as soon as possible. This has resulted in $30 million in grants to farm animal advocacy....
#9 Classic episode - Christine Peterson on the '80s futurist movement & its lessons for today
January 07, 2019 17:58 - 73 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in October 2017. Take a trip to Silicon Valley in the 70s and 80s, when going to space sounded like a good way to get around environmental limits, people started cryogenically freezing themselves, and nanotechnology looked like it might revolutionise industry – or turn us all into grey goo. In this episode of the 80,000 Hours Podcast, Christine Peterson takes us back to her youth in the Bay Area, the ideas she encountered there, and what the...
#50 - David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8b people through an asteroid/nuclear winter
December 27, 2018 20:45 - 2 hours - 162 MBIf an asteroid impact or nuclear winter blocked the sun for years, our inability to grow food would result in billions dying of starvation, right? According to Dr David Denkenberger, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What: no. If he's to be believed, nobody need starve at all. Even without the sun, David sees the Earth as a bountiful food source. Mushrooms farmed on decaying wood. Bacteria fed with natural gas. Fish and mussels supported by sudden upwelling of ocean nutrient...
#50 - Dr David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8b people through an asteroid/nuclear winter
December 27, 2018 20:45 - 2 hours - 162 MBIf an asteroid impact or nuclear winter blocked the sun for years, our inability to grow food would result in billions dying of starvation, right? According to Dr David Denkenberger, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What: no. If he's to be believed, nobody need starve at all. Even without the sun, David sees the Earth as a bountiful food source. Mushrooms farmed on decaying wood. Bacteria fed with natural gas. Fish and mussels supported by sudden upwelling of ocean nutrients - and mor...
#49 - Dr Rachel Glennerster on a year's worth of education for 30c & other development 'best buys'
December 20, 2018 05:19 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBIf I told you it's possible to deliver an extra year of ideal primary-level education for under $1, would you believe me? Hopefully not - the claim is absurd on its face. But it may be true nonetheless. The very best education interventions are phenomenally cost-effective, and they're not the kinds of things you'd expect, says Dr Rachel Glennerster. She's Chief Economist at the UK's foreign aid agency DFID, and used to run J-PAL, the world-famous anti-poverty research centre based in MIT's ...
#49 - Rachel Glennerster on a year's worth of education for 30c & other development 'best buys'
December 20, 2018 05:19 - 1 hour - 87.7 MBIf I told you it's possible to deliver an extra year of ideal primary-level education for under $1, would you believe me? Hopefully not - the claim is absurd on its face. But it may be true nonetheless. The very best education interventions are phenomenally cost-effective, and they're not the kinds of things you'd expect, says Dr Rachel Glennerster. She's Chief Economist at the UK's foreign aid agency DFID, and used to run J-PAL, the world-famous anti-poverty research centre bas...
#6 Classic episode - Dr Toby Ord on why the long-term future matters more than anything else
December 14, 2018 19:29 - 59.7 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in September 2017. Of all the people whose well-being we should care about, only a small fraction are alive today. The rest are members of future generations who are yet to exist. Whether they’ll be born into a world that is flourishing or disintegrating – and indeed, whether they will ever be born at all – is in large part up to us. As such, the welfare of future generations should be our number one moral concern. This conclusion holds true...
#15 Classic episode - Prof Tetlock on chimps beating Berkeley undergrads & when to defer to the wise
December 07, 2018 15:01 - 77.1 MBRebroadcast: this episode was originally released in November 2017. Prof Philip Tetlock is a social science legend. Over forty years he has researched whose predictions we can trust, whose we can’t and why - and developed methods that allow all of us to be better at predicting the future. After the Iraq WMDs fiasco, the US intelligence services hired him to figure out how to ensure they’d never screw up that badly again. The result of that work – Superforecasting – was a media sensation in ...
#48 - Brian Christian on better living through the wisdom of computer science
November 22, 2018 22:27 - 3 hours - 179 MBPlease let us know if we've helped you: Fill out our annual impact survey Ever felt that you were so busy you spent all your time paralysed trying to figure out where to start, and couldn't get much done? Computer scientists have a term for this - thrashing - and it's a common reason our computers freeze up. The solution, for people as well as laptops, is to 'work dumber': pick something at random and finish it, without wasting time thinking about the bigger picture. Bestselling au...
#47 - Catherine Olsson & Daniel Ziegler on the fast path into high-impact ML engineering roles
November 02, 2018 12:47 - 2 hours - 114 MBAfter dropping out of a machine learning PhD at Stanford, Daniel Ziegler needed to decide what to do next. He’d always enjoyed building stuff and wanted to shape the development of AI, so he thought a research engineering position at an org dedicated to aligning AI with human interests could be his best option. He decided to apply to OpenAI, and spent about 6 weeks preparing for the interview before landing the job. His PhD, by contrast, might have taken 6 years. Daniel thinks this ...
#46 - Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness & tackling crucial questions in academia
October 23, 2018 15:54 - 2 hours - 155 MBThe barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re never getting back? According to philosophy Professor Hilary Greaves - Director of Oxford University's Global Priorities Institute, which is hiring - this simple decision will completely change the long-term future by altering the identities of almost all...
#46 - Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness & tackling crucial questions in academia
October 23, 2018 15:54 - 2 hours - 155 MBThe barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re never getting back? According to philosophy Professor Hilary Greaves - Director of Oxford University's Global Priorities Institute, which is hiring - this simple decision will completely change the long-term future by altering the identities of ...
#45 - Tyler Cowen's case for maximising econ growth, stabilising civilization & thinking long-term
October 17, 2018 18:13 - 2 hours - 138 MBI've probably spent more time reading Tyler Cowen - Professor of Economics at George Mason University - than any other author. Indeed it's his incredibly popular blog Marginal Revolution that prompted me to study economics in the first place. Having spent thousands of hours absorbing Tyler's work, it was a pleasure to be able to question him about his latest book and personal manifesto: Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals. Ty...
#44 - Dr Paul Christiano on how we'll hand the future off to AI, & solving the alignment problem
October 02, 2018 16:25 - 3 hours - 212 MBPaul Christiano is one of the smartest people I know. After our first session produced such great material, we decided to do a second recording, resulting in our longest interview so far. While challenging at times I can strongly recommend listening - Paul works on AI himself and has a very unusually thought through view of how it will change the world. This is now the top resource I'm going to refer people to if they're interested in positively shaping the development of AI, and want to unde...
#44 - Paul Christiano on how we'll hand the future off to AI, & solving the alignment problem
October 02, 2018 16:25 - 3 hours - 212 MBPaul Christiano is one of the smartest people I know. After our first session produced such great material, we decided to do a second recording, resulting in our longest interview so far. While challenging at times I can strongly recommend listening - Paul works on AI himself and has a very unusually thought through view of how it will change the world. This is now the top resource I'm going to refer people to if they're interested in positively shaping the development of AI, and wa...
#43 - Daniel Ellsberg on the institutional insanity that maintains nuclear doomsday machines
September 25, 2018 09:36 - 2 hours - 151 MBIn Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film Dr. Strangelove, the American president is informed that the Soviet Union has created a secret deterrence system which will automatically wipe out humanity upon detection of a single nuclear explosion in Russia. With US bombs heading towards the USSR and unable to be recalled, Dr Strangelove points out that “the whole point of this Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret – why didn’t you tell the world, eh?” The Soviet ambassador replies that...
#42 - Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
September 11, 2018 18:21 - 2 hours - 153 MBConsider two familiar moments at a family reunion. Our host, Uncle Bill, takes pride in his barbecuing skills. But his niece Becky says that she now refuses to eat meat. A groan goes round the table; the family mostly think of this as an annoying picky preference. But if seriously considered as a moral position, as they might if instead Becky were avoiding meat on religious grounds, it would usually receive a very different reaction. An hour later Bill expresses a strong objecti...
#42 - Dr Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
September 11, 2018 18:21 - 2 hours - 152 MBConsider two familiar moments at a family reunion. Our host, Uncle Bill, takes pride in his barbecuing skills. But his niece Becky says that she now refuses to eat meat. A groan goes round the table; the family mostly think of this as an annoying picky preference. But if seriously considered as a moral position, as they might if instead Becky were avoiding meat on religious grounds, it would usually receive a very different reaction. An hour later Bill expresses a strong objection to aborti...
#41 - David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
August 28, 2018 19:18 - 2 hours - 126 MBWith 698 inmates per 100,000 citizens, the U.S. is by far the leader among large wealthy nations in incarceration. But what effect does imprisonment actually have on crime? According to David Roodman, Senior Advisor to the Open Philanthropy Project, the marginal effect is zero. * 80,000 HOURS IMPACT SURVEY - Let me know how this show has helped you with your career. * ROB'S AUDIOBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS This stunning rebuke to the American criminal justice system comes from the man H...
#40 - Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions
August 21, 2018 18:37 - 2 hours - 120 MBExperts believe that artificial intelligence will be better than humans at driving trucks by 2027, working in retail by 2031, writing bestselling books by 2049, and working as surgeons by 2053. But how seriously should we take these predictions? Katja Grace, lead author of ‘When Will AI Exceed Human Performance?’, thinks we should treat such guesses as only weak evidence. But she also says there might be much better ways to forecast transformative technology, and that anticipating s...
#39 - Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions
August 07, 2018 19:51 - 2 hours - 126 MBWill Trump be re-elected? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner? Spencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems. Let’s work through one here: how likely is it that you’ll enjoy listening to this episode? The first step is to figure out your ‘prior probability’; what’s your estimate of how likely you are to enjoy the interview before getting any further evidence? Other than applyi...
#38 - Yew-Kwang Ng on anticipating effective altruism decades ago & how to make a much happier world
July 26, 2018 00:08 - 1 hour - 110 MBWill people who think carefully about how to maximize welfare eventually converge on the same views? The effective altruism community has spent a lot of time over the past 10 years debating how best to increase happiness and reduce suffering, and gradually narrowed in on the world’s poorest people, all animals capable of suffering, and future generations. Yew-Kwang Ng, Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, was independently working on this exac...
#38 - Prof Ng on anticipating effective altruism decades ago & how to make a much happier world
July 26, 2018 00:08 - 1 hour - 109 MBWill people who think carefully about how to maximize welfare eventually converge on the same views? The effective altruism community has spent a lot of time over the past 10 years debating how best to increase happiness and reduce suffering, and gradually narrowed in on the world’s poorest people, all animals capable of suffering, and future generations. Yew-Kwang Ng, Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, was independently working on this exact question ...
#37 - GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.
July 16, 2018 20:41 - 1 hour - 95.4 MBWhat’s the value of preventing the death of a 5-year-old child, compared to a 20-year-old, or an 80-year-old? The global health community has generally regarded the value as proportional to the number of health-adjusted life-years the person has remaining - but GiveWell, one of the world’s foremost charity evaluators, no longer uses that approach. They found that contrary to the years-remaining’ method, many of their staff actually value preventing the death of an adult more than p...
#36 - Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism
July 11, 2018 18:00 - 2 hours - 114 MBAlmost nobody is able to do groundbreaking physics research themselves, and by the time his brilliance was appreciated, Einstein was hardly limited by funding. But what if you could find a way to unlock the secrets of the universe like Einstein nonetheless? Today’s guest, Tanya Singh, sees herself as doing something like that every day. She’s Executive Assistant to one of her intellectual heroes who she believes is making a huge contribution to improving the world: Professor Bostrom...
#35 - Tara Mac Aulay on the audacity to fix the world without asking permission
June 21, 2018 23:31 - 1 hour - 75.7 MB"You don't need permission. You don't need to be allowed to do something that's not in your job description. If you think that it's gonna make your company or your organization more successful and more efficient, you can often just go and do it." How broken is the world? How inefficient is a typical organisation? Looking at Tara Mac Aulay’s life, the answer seems to be ‘very’. At 15 she took her first job - an entry-level position at a chain restaurant. Rather than accept her place...
Rob Wiblin on the art/science of a high impact career
June 08, 2018 02:21 - 1 hour - 83.9 MBToday's episode is a cross-post of an interview I did with The Jolly Swagmen Podcast which came out this week. I recommend regular listeners skip to 24 minutes in to avoid hearing things they already know. Later in the episode I talk about my contrarian views, utilitarianism, how 80,000 Hours has changed and will change in the future, where I think EA is performing worst, how to use social media most effectively, and whether or not effective altruism is any sacrifice. Subscribe and ...
#34 - We use the worst voting system that exists. Here's how Aaron Hamlin is going to fix it.
June 01, 2018 09:44 - 2 hours - 127 MBIn 1991 Edwin Edwards won the Louisiana gubernatorial election. In 2001, he was found guilty of racketeering and received a 10 year invitation to Federal prison. The strange thing about that election? By 1991 Edwards was already notorious for his corruption. Actually, that’s not it. The truly strange thing is that Edwards was clearly the good guy in the race. How is that possible? His opponent was former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. How could Louisiana end up having to ch...
#33 - Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war
May 29, 2018 15:57 - 1 hour - 77.7 MBJoseph Stalin had a life-extension program dedicated to making himself immortal. What if he had succeeded? According to our last guest, Bryan Caplan, there’s an 80% chance that Stalin would still be ruling Russia today. Today’s guest disagrees. Like Stalin he has eyes for his own immortality - including an insurance plan that will cover the cost of cryogenically freezing himself after he dies - and thinks the technology to achieve it might be around the corner. Fortunately for humanity t...
#33 - Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war
May 29, 2018 15:57 - 1 hour - 77.8 MBJoseph Stalin had a life-extension program dedicated to making himself immortal. What if he had succeeded? According to our last guest, Bryan Caplan, there’s an 80% chance that Stalin would still be ruling Russia today. Today’s guest disagrees. Like Stalin he has eyes for his own immortality - including an insurance plan that will cover the cost of cryogenically freezing himself after he dies - and thinks the technology to achieve it might be around the corner. Fortunately f...
#32 - Bryan Caplan on whether his Case Against Education holds up, totalitarianism, & open borders
May 22, 2018 11:45 - 2 hours - 133 MBBryan Caplan’s claim in *The Case Against Education* is striking: education doesn’t teach people much, we use little of what we learn, and college is mostly about trying to seem smarter than other people - so the government should slash education funding. It’s a dismaying - almost profane - idea, and one people are inclined to dismiss out of hand. But having read the book, I have to admit that Bryan can point to a surprising amount of evidence in his favour. After all, imagine this...
#31 - Allan Dafoe on defusing the political & economic risks posed by existing AI capabilities
May 18, 2018 13:49 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBThe debate around the impacts of artificial intelligence often centres on ‘superintelligence’ - a general intellect that is much smarter than the best humans, in practically every field. But according to Allan Dafoe - Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University - even if we stopped at today's AI technology and simply collected more data, built more sensors, and added more computing capacity, extreme systemic risks could emerge, including: * Mass labor displacemen...
#31 - Prof Dafoe on defusing the political & economic risks posed by existing AI capabilities
May 18, 2018 13:49 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBThe debate around the impacts of artificial intelligence often centres on ‘superintelligence’ - a general intellect that is much smarter than the best humans, in practically every field. But according to Allan Dafoe - Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University - even if we stopped at today's AI technology and simply collected more data, built more sensors, and added more computing capacity, extreme systemic risks could emerge, including: * Mass labor displacement, unemploym...
#30 - Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
May 15, 2018 17:43 - 2 hours - 111 MBIf we have a study on the impact of a social program in a particular place and time, how confident can we be that we’ll get a similar result if we study the same program again somewhere else? Dr Eva Vivalt is a lecturer in the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University. She compiled a huge database of impact evaluations in global development - including 15,024 estimates from 635 papers across 20 types of intervention - to help answer this question. Her fi...
#30 - Dr Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
May 15, 2018 17:43 - 2 hours - 111 MBIf we have a study on the impact of a social program in a particular place and time, how confident can we be that we’ll get a similar result if we study the same program again somewhere else? Dr Eva Vivalt is a lecturer in the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University. She compiled a huge database of impact evaluations in global development - including 15,024 estimates from 635 papers across 20 types of intervention - to help answer this question. Her finding: not c...
#29 - Anders Sandberg on 3 new resolutions for the Fermi paradox & how to colonise the universe
May 08, 2018 16:17 - 1 hour - 74.6 MBPart 2 out now: #33 - Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war The universe is so vast, yet we don’t see any alien civilizations. If they exist, where are they? Oxford University’s Anders Sandberg has an original answer: they’re ‘sleeping’, and for a very compelling reason. Because of the thermodynamics of computation, the colder it gets, the more computations you can do. The universe is getting exponentially colder as it expan...
#29 - Dr Anders Sandberg on 3 new resolutions for the Fermi paradox & how to colonise the universe
May 08, 2018 16:17 - 1 hour - 74.6 MBPart 2 out now: #33 - Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war The universe is so vast, yet we don’t see any alien civilizations. If they exist, where are they? Oxford University’s Anders Sandberg has an original answer: they’re ‘sleeping’, and for a very compelling reason. Because of the thermodynamics of computation, the colder it gets, the more computations you can do. The universe is getting exponentially colder as it expands, and as t...
#28 - Owen Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & fast AI progresses
April 27, 2018 22:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBA researcher is working on creating a new virus – one more dangerous than any that exist naturally. They believe they’re being as careful as possible. After all, if things go wrong, their own life and that of their colleagues will be in danger. But if an accident is capable of triggering a global pandemic – hundreds of millions of lives might be at risk. How much additional care will the researcher actually take in the face of such a staggering death toll? In a new paper Dr Owen C...
#28 - Dr Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & fast AI progresses
April 27, 2018 22:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBA researcher is working on creating a new virus – one more dangerous than any that exist naturally. They believe they’re being as careful as possible. After all, if things go wrong, their own life and that of their colleagues will be in danger. But if an accident is capable of triggering a global pandemic – hundreds of millions of lives might be at risk. How much additional care will the researcher actually take in the face of such a staggering death toll? In a new paper Dr Owen Cotton-Barra...
#27 - Dr Tom Inglesby on careers and policies that reduce global catastrophic biological risks
April 18, 2018 01:30 - 2 hours - 125 MBHow about this for a movie idea: a main character has to prevent a new contagious strain of Ebola spreading around the world. She’s the best of the best. So good in fact, that her work on early detection systems contains the strain at its source. Ten minutes into the movie, we see the results of her work – nothing happens. Life goes on as usual. She continues to be amazingly competent, and nothing continues to go wrong. Fade to black. Roll credits. If your job is to prevent catastro...
#26 - Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is made & what's needed to get it in every supermarket
April 10, 2018 16:52 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBFirst, decide on the type of animal. Next, pick the cell type. Then take a small, painless biopsy, and put the cells in a solution that makes them feel like they’re still in the body. Once the cells are in this comfortable state, they'll proliferate. One cell becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, and so on. Continue until you have enough cells to make a burger, a nugget, a sausage, or a piece of bacon, then concentrate them until they bind into solid meat. It's all surp...
#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
March 28, 2018 17:20 - 2 hours - 146 MBOn February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the public they kept them abreast of the King’s treatment regimen. King Charles was made to swallow a toxic metal; had blistering agents applied to his scalp; had pigeon droppings attached to his feet; was prodded with a red-hot poker; given forty drops of ooze from “the skull of a man that was never buried”; and, finally, had crushed stone...
#25 - Prof Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
March 28, 2018 17:20 - 2 hours - 146 MBOn February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the public they kept them abreast of the King’s treatment regimen. King Charles was made to swallow a toxic metal; had blistering agents applied to his scalp; had pigeon droppings attached to his feet; was prodded with a red-hot poker; given forty drops of ooze from “the skull of a man that was never buried”; and, finally, had crushed stones from th...
#24 - Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause
March 20, 2018 16:56 - 55 minutes - 50.4 MBHow honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying – should we go along with those lax standards? Or, should we attempt to set a new norm for ourselves? Dr Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at Oxford University, has been modelling this in the context of the effective altruism community. He thinks people trying to improve the world should hold themsel...
#24 - Stefan Schubert on why it's a bad idea to break the rules, even if it's for a good cause
March 20, 2018 16:56 - 55 minutes - 50.4 MBHow honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying - should we go along with those lax standards? Or, should we attempt to set a new norm for ourselves? Dr Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at Oxford University, has been modelling this in the context of the effective altruism community. He thinks people trying to improve the world should hold themselves to ve...