Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
313 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★★ - 119 ratingsClearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, or are looking for non-BS self-improvement, then we think you'll love this podcast! Each week we invite a brilliant guest to bring four important ideas to discuss for an in-depth conversation. Topics include psychology, society, behavior change, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, math, economics, self-help, mental health, and technology. We focus on ideas that can be applied right now to make your life better or to help you better understand yourself and the world, aiming to teach you the best mental tools to enhance your learning, self-improvement efforts, and decision-making. • We take on important, thorny questions like: • What's the best way to help a friend or loved one going through a difficult time? How can we make our worldviews more accurate? How can we hone the accuracy of our thinking? What are the advantages of using our "gut" to make decisions? And when should we expect careful, analytical reflection to be more effective? Why do societies sometimes collapse? And what can we do to reduce the chance that ours collapses? Why is the world today so much worse than it could be? And what can we do to make it better? What are the good and bad parts of tradition? And are there more meaningful and ethical ways of carrying out important rituals, such as honoring the dead? How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations and create more positive-sum interactions?
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Episodes
AI creativity and love (with Joel Lehman)
July 26, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBRead the full transcript here. Where does innovation come from? How common is it for "lone wolf" scientists to make large leaps in innovation by themselves? How can we imbue AIs with creativity? Or, conversely, how can we apply advances in AI creativity to our own personal creative processes? How do creative strategies that work well for individuals differ from creative strategies that work well for groups? To what extent are models like DALL-E and ChatGPT "creative"? Can machines love? Or...
Glimpses of enlightenment through nondual meditation (with Michael Taft and Jeremy Stevenson)
July 19, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 70.6 MBRead the full transcript here. How does nondual meditation differ from other forms of meditation? Is nonduality the sort of thing a person can just "get" immediately? What value is provided by the more effortful, less "sudden" forms of meditation? Is there such a thing as full or complete enlightenment? And what would such a state entail? To what extent do nondual meditation teachers agree about what nonduality is? Are glimpses of enlightenment available to everyone? How long does it usual...
Crumbling institutions, culture wars, and the dismissal economy (with Ashley Hodgson)
July 12, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBRead the full transcript here. What is the New Enlightenment? What might it mean to improve our epistemics with regard to institutions? How should we fix imbalanced salience in contexts where misinformation is a problem (like news media)? How have the economics of institutions deteriorated? How can we continually reinvigorate systems so that they remain ungameable and resistant to runaway feedback loops? In the context of government in particular, how can we move away from "one dollar, one...
Virtual reality, simulation theory, consciousness, and identity (with David Chalmers)
July 05, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 72.4 MBRead the full transcript here. What does philosophy have to say about virtual reality (VR)? Under what conditions is "normal" reality preferable to VR? To what extent are VR experiences "real"? How likely is it that we're living in a simulation? What implications would the discovery that we're living in a simulation have for our beliefs about reality? How common is Bayesian thinking among philosophers? How should we think about identity over time if selves can be split or duplicated? What ...
Deep canvassing, street epistemology, and other tools of persuasion (with David McRaney)
June 28, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 73.3 MBRead the full transcript here. What is persuasion, and what is it not? How does persuasion differ from coercion? What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion? How are the concepts of assimilation and accommodation related to persuasion? Motivated reasoning is usually seen as a cognitive bias or error; but what if all reasoning is motivated? Are we motivated more by physical death or social death? How much evidence would Flat-Earthers need in order to be convinced that Earth...
Will AI destroy civilization in the near future? (with Connor Leahy)
June 21, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBRead the full transcript here. Does AI pose a near-term existential risk? Why might existential risks from AI manifest sooner rather than later? Can't we just turn off any AI that gets out of control? Exactly how much do we understand about what's going on inside neural networks? What is AutoGPT? How feasible is it to build an AI system that's exactly as intelligent as a human but no smarter? What is the "CoEm" AI safety proposal? What steps can the average person take to help mitigate ris...
Is AI development moving too fast or not fast enough? (with Reid Hoffman)
June 14, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 56.2 MBRead the full transcript here. Many people who work on AI safety advocate for slowing the rate of development; but might there be any advantages in speeding up AI development? Which fields are likely to be impacted the most (or the least) by AI? As AIs begin to displace workers, how can workers make themselves more valuable? How likely is it that AI assistants will become better at defending against users who are actively trying to circumvent assistants' guardrails? What effects would the ...
Where philosophy meets the real world (with Peter Singer)
June 07, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 77.5 MBRead the full transcript here. How have animal rights and the animal rights movement changed in the last few decades? How has the scale of animal product consumption grown relative to human population growth? On what principles ought animal ethics to be grounded? What features of human psychology enable humans to empathize with and dislike animal suffering and yet also eat animal products regularly? How does the agribusiness industry convince people to make choices that go against their ow...
Large language models, deep peace, and the meaning crisis (with Jim Rutt)
May 31, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 77.7 MBRead the full transcript here. What are large language models (LLMs) actually doing when they churn out text? Are they sentient? Is scale the only difference among the various GPT models? Google has seemingly been the clear frontrunner in the AI space for many years; so how did they fail to win the race to LLMs? And why are other competing companies having such a hard time catching their LLM tech up to OpenAI's? What are the implications of open-sourcing LLM code, models, and corpora? How ...
Censorship, cancel culture, and truth-seeking (with Iona Italia)
May 24, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBWhen is a certain speech act an opinion versus a call to action? Does that distinction matter for censorship purposes? Why does it seem that human behavior tends towards censorship rather than towards freedom of expression? Is feeling emotionally or politically harmed a valid reason for censoring certain speech acts? Will it always be the case that, given enough time, truth will win out over ignorance, bullshit, misinformation, and lies? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for ...
Why are birth rates plummeting? And how much does it matter? (with Malcolm & Simone Collins)
May 18, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 66.3 MBRead the full transcript here. What is pro-natalism? How fast are birth rates falling around the world? How long will it take for us to really feel the effects of population collapse? What are the primary drivers of population collapse? How does the current difficulty of raising children compare to other periods in history? What roles do various religions and philosophies play in population dynamics? What are some non-coercive ways to encourage population growth? What constitutes an interg...
Science is learning from start-ups (with Adam Marblestone)
May 15, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBRead the full transcript here. What are focused research organizations? Which kinds of research projects lend themselves to the FRO model? Researchers in academia frequently complain about the incentive structures around funding and publishing; so how do FROs change those dynamics? Why must FROs be time-limited, especially if they're successful? Who's in charge in an FRO? How does "field-building" help to improve science? What effects might large language models have on science? Adam Marb...
The range of human perceptual experiences (with Anil Seth)
May 03, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBRead the full transcript here. How does the world differ from our perception of it? Where is color located? Is the self constructed in the same way our concept of the world is constructed? Aside from being interesting bits of trivia, why does any of that really matter? In what ways does perception most often differ among humans? How different are art and science? Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for ...
The capabilities approach to welfare (with Martha Nussbaum)
April 27, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 68.8 MBRead the full transcript here. What is the capabilities approach to welfare? To what is this approach reacting? How should capabilities be balanced or traded off against each other? How do capabilities differ from needs? Are zoos unethical? Can plants be subject to injustice? What are our ethical obligations towards factory farms? How do our ethical obligations to domesticated animals and livestock differ from our ethical obligations to wild animals, if at all? Why is vulnerability importa...
Should you become a charity entrepreneur? (with Joey Savoie)
April 19, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBRead the full transcript here. What is charity entrepreneurship? What sorts of incentives pull charities away from their stated goals? Why is Effective Altruism even a thing when it's already the case that most charities probably try to be as effective as they can be and probably use evidence of some kind to move towards that end? How diverse are the value systems in the EA movement? To what extent should charity funders diversify? Under what conditions does expected value theory break dow...
Has political polarization been misunderstood? (with Nick Gillespie)
April 12, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 65.7 MBRead the full transcript here. Are the US's culture wars a sign of a society falling apart? Is social media a cause or a symptom (or both or neither) of the animosity between political tribes in the US? We've all heard of postmodernism, but what the heck is it? Is libertarianism a right-leaning ideology? Are the current levels of intergenerational animosity unusually high? How will the FTX collapse likely impact cryptocurrencies over the next few decades? Nick Gillespie is an editor at la...
How can you tell if you're cut out for entrepreneurship? (with Matt Clifford)
April 05, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 65.6 MBRead the full transcript here. What are "variance-amplifying" and "variance-dampening" institutions? Has the world been getting weirder recently? Should entrepreneurs aim for variance amplification or variance dampening? What percentage of people should be entrepreneurs? What traits and skills are necessary for successful entrepreneurship? How has ambition changed over the course of history? How can entrepreneurs know if they're really changing the world, or just doing something slightly b...
Letting ChatGPT make your decisions for you (with Dax Flame)
March 29, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBRead the full transcript here. What would happen if you chose to let ChatGPT control your life for a year? If products like ChatGPT help us (e.g.) to write something important, then should we give it credit as a co-author or merely act as though it's a high-powered Grammarly? How would you feel if you received a hand-written card from a romantic partner but later found out that everything they'd written had been authored by ChatGPT? How can we learn to get along with — and perhaps even for...
What good is college now that we can learn everything for free on the internet? (with Nick Dirks)
March 22, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 57.6 MBRead the full transcript here. Why are colleges and universities valuable to societies? Why does formal post-secondary education seem unnecessary for some fields like programming, where a person can learn everything they need from internet resources? Do universities have a monopoly on credentials? If so, is that monopoly warranted and desirable, or does it stifle innovation and reduce competition? Why have tuition costs been skyrocketing over the past few decades? How does the quantity and...
Not seeing your face as a first step to enlightenment? (with Richard Lang)
March 15, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 66.6 MBRead the full transcript here. What is The Headless Way? What are we like before we accept the names, roles, and narratives given to us by other people? What does it mean for consciousness to be "boundless" or "infinite"? What are the benefits of adopting a "headless" perspective? How can we visit (and feel relatively confident that we've visited) this perspective? Where is this perspective situated relative to the larger constellation of meditation and mindfulness concepts from other trad...
Is giving people a sense of agency better than giving them cash? (with Richard Sedlmayr)
March 08, 2023 23:59 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBRead the full transcript here. Can giving people a sense of agency and dignity be better than giving them access to food, shelter, clothing, or cash? And what exactly can be done in practice to expand human agency? How does the value of agency-oriented interventions compare to the value of more tangible interventions? How robust are the findings about all of the above in light of the replication crisis? In general, how much confidence should we place (with or without the replication crisis...
Are you working on the most important problem in your field? Why not? (with Rohit Krishnan)
March 01, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 61.3 MBRead the full transcript here. How are curiosity and innovation connected? What's the most important problem in your field? And are you working on it? Why or why not? Is curiosity the best heuristic — either for an individual or for society at large — for finding valuable problems to work on? What mental models do people tend to use by default? How much is an academic degree worth these days? What are some alternatives to degrees that could count as valid credentials, i.e., as unfakeable (...
How huge a deal is climate change, really? (with Diana Ürge-Vorsatz and Misha Glouberman)
February 22, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 213 MBRead the full transcript here. How huge a deal is climate change, really? What's the right metric for determining how bad climate change effects will be? How do the forecasts made by climate experts differ from those made by superforecasters? Which pieces of the climate change puzzle are we absolutely sure about right now, and which pieces are still speculative or under investigation? Where can we find trustworthy information about climate change? How can we navigate conversations about th...
Becoming a policy entrepreneur (with Tom Kalil)
February 15, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 59.7 MBRead the full transcript here. What is a "policy entrepreneur"? Can people become policy entrepreneurs if they're not already a political office holder? Aside from literally speaking to the POTUS, what are some ways that policy entrepreneurs can make progress on their goals? Why is it so hard for some people to articulate actionable plans that would accomplish their goals? What is market shaping? Why do some government departments have no budget for R&D? Tom Kalil is Chief Innovation Offi...
How to build your second brain (with Tiago Forte)
February 08, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBRead the full transcript here. What is a "commonplace book"? What traits are desirable in "second brain" tools? What are some common mistakes people make in note-taking? What should we take notes about? What are some useful methods of organizing, distilling, remembering, and taking action on notes? How much information should we hold in our brains and how much should be offloaded to a second brain? What are creative convergence and divergence? Tiago Forte is the founder of Forte Labs and ...
Does every language have a word for depression? (with Sean Mayberry)
February 01, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 55.2 MBRead the full transcript here. Why is depression on the rise globally? We've all heard that social media is a big cause of depression, but what other factors might we have overlooked? Why are anxiety and depression so closely linked? What is group interpersonal therapy? How does it differ from cognitive behavioral therapy and other treatment modalities? Which languages lack an equivalent to the word "depression"? Sean Mayberry is a former diplomat and social marketer who believes that tre...
What things in life *shouldn't* we optimize? (with Christie Aschwanden)
January 25, 2023 23:59 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBRead the full transcript here. Why should we not optimize some things in life? Should some things (e.g., interpersonal relationships) be "off-limits" for optimization? How much time spent being unproductive is good for us? What can we learn by paying attention to our moods? Does science make progress and produce knowledge too slowly? Why is research methodology applied so inconsistently, especially in the social sciences? Christie Aschwanden is author of Good to Go: What the Athlete in Al...
How can we make science more trustworthy? (with Stuart Ritchie)
January 19, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBRead the full transcript here. How can we make science more trustworthy? When scientists break into factions around a particular topic, whom should we trust, and why? Why did trust in science as an institution plummet drastically during COVID? What is the state of the evidence for the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or vitamin D against COVID? Why is controlling for variables so difficult? What evidence is there for how well IQ represents intelligence and predicts useful t...
Living a life of service to others (with Tasshin Fogleman)
January 12, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBRead the full transcript here. What is a "quasi-monk"? How hard is it to govern one's own speech and thoughts? What is "maximum deep benefit"? And how does it differ from effective altruism? How can we best direct our energy, time, and resources to do good in the world? Should more people become monks and/or adopt a lifestyle of service to others? Tasshin Fogleman is an extremely online wandering quasi-monk on indefinite pilgrimage for the benefit of all beings. He lives a simple life, de...
Mapping metaethics (with Lance Bush)
January 05, 2023 23:59 - 1 hour - 90.5 MBRead the full transcript here. What is metaethics? Is moral objectivism the same thing as moral realism? When philosophers examine sentences like "Murder is wrong", are they generally more interested in (1) the role that the language is playing in a social interaction (e.g., that it's an imperative or that it expresses an emotion) or (2) the concepts themselves and their relations? Could it be the case that all moral statements are false? What do we know about how people actually use moral...
Do organizations have to get slower as they grow? (with Alex Komoroske)
December 28, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBRead the full transcript here. Why do organizations get slower as they grow? What can organizations learn from slime molds? What are the advantages of top-down organization versus bottom-up organization, and vice versa? How can organizations encourage serendipity? What use are doorbells in jungles? Why is it so hard for organizations to set a "north star" that is at once plausible, coherent, and good? Alex Komoroske has over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a product manager...
How can we un-break politics? (with Magnus Vinding)
December 21, 2022 23:59 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBRead the full transcript here. How can we as individuals and as societies un-break politics? What is the two-step ideal of reasoned politics? How might this ideal apply to specific political issues, like free speech? Is it possible to reach agreement or even compromise on political issues that are rooted in intrinsic values? How can we reduce our own political biases? Are there some political issues which must always or by definition be zero-sum, or can all issues conceivably become positi...
Why capitalism doesn't live up to its promises (with Martin Schmalz)
December 14, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 70.3 MBRead the full transcript here. Why doesn't capitalism seem to be living up to its promises of free and fair competition, low prices, and high quality goods and services (at least in Western nations)? What did Adam Smith fail to foresee about the ways economic systems would change on the way to 2022? What is "common ownership", and what effects does it have on economies? What interventions should be implemented to keep an economy healthy? Is it easier to put pressure on business leaders or ...
Anti-interoperability, vendor lock-in, and high switching costs (with Cory Doctorow)
December 07, 2022 23:59 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBRead the full transcript here. What is interoperability? What counts as "unauthorized" access to computers or parts of computers? If the rendered design of a web page is copyrighted, then does blocking ads on that page count as copyright infringement by creating a derivative product? Does Facebook really want what's best for its users? Is Google evil? Could blockchain-based solutions provide much-needed privacy or interoperability? Why doesn't the U.S. government (for example) fight harder...
Separating the sinner from the sin (with Khomotso Moshikaro)
November 30, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 65.7 MBRead the full transcript here. What is a criminal label? What implications should criminal labels have (or not) for a person's future? To what extent are the long-term social effects considered as part of the sentence for a crime (e.g., not only considering sending a person to prison for 5 years but also considering how likely they are to be shunned socially or to be prevented from working certain kinds of jobs after their release)? How does the concept of dignity differ from the concept o...
The FTX catastrophe (with Byrne Hobart, Vipul Naik, Maomao Hu, Marcus Abramovich, and Ozzie Gooen)
November 28, 2022 23:59 - 3 hours - 281 MBWhat the heck happened with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried? Were there early warning signs that most people failed to notice? What could've been done differently, and by whom? What effects will this have on the EA movement going forward? Timestamps: 00:01:37 — Intro & timeline 00:51:48 — Byrne Hobart 01:39:52 — Vipul Naik 02:18:35 — Maomao Hu 02:41:19 — Marcus Abramovitch 02:49:38 — Ozzie Gooen 03:21:40 — Wrap-up & outro Byrne Hobart writes The Diff, a newsletter covering inflections in...
How to find out what people in rural communities really need (with Robert Chambers)
November 23, 2022 23:59 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBRead the full transcript here. What is the field of development? What are the differences between rapid and participatory rural appraisal? Under what conditions should qualitative surveys be preferred over quantitative and vice versa? What is participatory mapping? How has the field of development changed over the last few decades? Why do people get taller when sanitation improves? Robert Chambers is a British academic and development practitioner. He spent his academic career at the Inst...
Building healthy relationships (with Jayson Gaddis)
November 16, 2022 23:59 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBRead the full transcript here. What are the main categories of interpersonal relationship problems? What's really going on when most people say they have a "communication" problem? What are the criteria for being a good listener? What's the "right" amount of conflict to have in a healthy relationship? How can we best express our wants and needs? What sorts of requests are reasonable (or not) to make of our relationship partners? People can get along just fine when they differ on little thi...
Bringing rationality into politics (with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell)
November 09, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 70.7 MBRead the full transcript here. How do campaign and election dynamics affect the sorts of people that politicians court and the kinds of platforms they build? How well can we really know non-voters' preferences? What would your life be like if your most treasured belief turned out to be false? What are all the ramifications of voting against your own party? To what extent is "political capital" a real, legit thing? Do politicians actually manage to get anything useful done despite the const...
Sex workers — empowered, or victims? (with Melissa Broudo)
November 02, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 98.1 MBRead the full transcript here. Content warning: Please be aware that rape and sexual abuse are discussed in this episode. If you are particularly sensitive to these issues, then please take care when listening. How have identity politics and social media changed sex work? To what extent is sex work work? Under what conditions is a sex worker a victim of abuse? Why does rape seem so much worse than other kinds of physical abuse? Does an increase in access to sex workers necessarily cause a...
What, if anything, do AIs understand? (with ChatGPT Co-Creator Ilya Sutskever)
October 26, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 69.1 MBRead the full transcript here. Can machines actually be intelligent? What sorts of tasks are narrower or broader than we usually believe? GPT-3 was trained to do a "single" task: predicting the next word in a body of text; so why does it seem to understand so many things? What's the connection between prediction and comprehension? What breakthroughs happened in the last few years that made GPT-3 possible? Will academia be able to stay on the cutting edge of AI research? And if not, then wh...
What, if anything, do AIs understand? (with Ilya Sutskever)
October 26, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 69.1 MBCan machines actually be intelligent? What sorts of tasks are narrower or broader than we usually believe? GPT-3 was trained to do a "single" task: predicting the next word in a body of text; so why does it seem to understand so many things? What's the connection between prediction and comprehension? What breakthroughs happened in the last few years that made GPT-3 possible? Will academia be able to stay on the cutting edge of AI research? And if not, then what will its new role be? How can...
Forecasting the things that matter (with Peter Wildeford)
October 21, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 84.4 MBRead the full transcript here. How can we change the way we think about expertise (or the trustworthiness of any information source) using forecasting? How do prediction markets work? How can we use prediction markets in our everyday lives? Are prediction markets more trustworthy than large or respectable news outlets? How long does it take to sharpen one's prediction skills? In (e.g.) presidential elections, we know that the winner will be one person from a very small list of people; but ...
Is the universe a computer? (with Joscha Bach)
October 12, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 76.4 MBRead the full transcript here. What is intelligence? What exactly does an IQ test measure? What are the similarities and differences between the structure of GPT-3 and the structure of the human brain (so far as we understand it)? Is suffering — as the Buddhists might say — just a consequence of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world? What's left (if anything) of the human mind if we strip away the "animal" parts of it? We've used our understanding of the human brain to inform t...
Inventions, stories, and ideas that don't matter (with Pablos Holman)
October 05, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBRead the full transcript here. How does 3D-printed food work? How do hackers and inventors think? What are some ideas that don't matter? Why are humans so driven by stories? What are the current sentiments around nuclear energy? What is an "information DMZ"? Is "cryptocurrency regulation" a contradiction in terms? What are "deep" and "shallow" technologies? How could we handle intellectual property rights more fairly? Pablos is a hacker and inventor that runs Deep Future, a venture capita...
Humble-bragging, counter-signalling, and impression management (with Övül Sezer)
September 28, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBRead the full transcript here. What should we do (or not do) to make a good first impression on others? Is "humble-bragging" better or worse than straightforward bragging? Or is completely hiding our successes an even better strategy than humble-bragging or straightforward bragging? When do our attempts to signal something about ourselves actually end up signalling something else that we don't intend? What are some long-term strategies for gaining others' respect? Övül Sezer is a behavior...
Ambition and expected value at extremes (with Habiba Islam)
September 21, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBRead the full transcript here. Are ambition and altruism compatible? How ambitious should we be if we want to do as much good in the world as possible? How should we handle expected values when the probabilities become very small and/or the values of the outcomes become very large? What's a reasonable probability of success for most entrepreneurs to aim for? Are there non-consequentialist justifications for longtermism? Habiba Islam is an advisor at 80,000 Hours where she talks to people ...
Career science, open science, and inspired science (with Alexa Tullett)
September 14, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 74 MBRead the full transcript here. How much should we actually trust science? Are registered reports more trustworthy than meta-analyses? How does "inspired" science differ from "open" science? Open science practices may make research more defensible, but do they make it more likely to find truth? Do thresholds (like p < 0.05) represent a kind of black-and-white thinking, since they often come to represent a binary like "yes, this effect is significant" or "no, this effect is not significant"?...
Estimating the long-term impact of our actions today (with Will MacAskill)
September 07, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBRead the full transcript here. What is longtermism? Is the long-term future of humanity (or life more generally) the most important thing, or just one among many important things? How should we estimate the chance that some particular thing will happen given that our brains are so computationally limited? What is "the optimizer's curse"? How top-down should EA be? How should an individual reason about expected values in cases where success would be immensely valuable but the likelihood of ...
The differences between analytic and continental philosophy (with Alexander Prescott-Couch)
August 31, 2022 23:59 - 1 hour - 70.2 MBRead the full transcript here. What is the genetic fallacy? How do the analytic and continental philosophical traditions differ? What is the role and value of intuition in analytic philosophy? Is continental philosophy too poetic for its own good? Alexander Prescott-Couch is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is currently writing a book on genealogy that is under contract with Oxford University Press. His academic work has appeared in journals such as Noû...