Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

By Spencer Greenberg

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Category: Social Sciences

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Subscribers: 206
Reviews: 1
Episodes: 207


 Jul 17, 2021

Description

Clearer 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?

Episode Date
Should we pause AI development until we're sure we can do it safely? (with Joep Meindertsma)
Apr 24, 2024
What should the Effective Altruism movement learn from the SBF / FTX scandal? (with Will MacAskill)
Apr 15, 2024
Why are so many people experiencing homelessness in big cities in the U.S., and what can be done to help? (with Kevin Adler)
Apr 10, 2024
Common body language mistakes and how to avoid making them (with Blake Eastman)
Apr 04, 2024
True things, useful things, and the differences between them (with Derek Sivers)
Mar 27, 2024
Should we widen our moral circles to include animals, insects, and AIs? (with Jeff Sebo)
Mar 20, 2024
How to have a positive impact with your career (with Benjamin Hilton)
Mar 13, 2024
Spencer's takeaways after 200 episodes (with Spencer Greenberg)
Mar 06, 2024
Psychological change in a single session (with Jessica Schleider)
Feb 28, 2024
Academic group think, free speech norms, and the psychology of time (with Anne Wilson)
Feb 21, 2024
How can Stoicism improve your life? (with Bill Irvine)
Feb 14, 2024
Is there a grand unified theory of everyone? (with Michael Muthukrishna)
Feb 08, 2024
The alternate histories and possible futures of nuclear weapons (with Carl Robichaud)
Feb 02, 2024
How can AIs know what we want if *we* don't even know? (with Geoffrey Irving)
Jan 24, 2024
Schemas, goals, values, and the pursuit of happiness (with Jeff Perron)
Jan 17, 2024
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and beyond (with David Burns)
Jan 10, 2024
There are shrinks, and then there are SUPER-shrinks (with Daryl Chow)
Jan 03, 2024
Bringing conspiracy theorists back from the brink (with Jesse Richardson)
Dec 28, 2023
Simulacra levels, moral mazes, and low-hanging fruit (with Zvi Mowshowitz)
Dec 20, 2023
Effectively encouraging people to give more (with Josh Greene)
Dec 15, 2023
We can't mitigate AI risks we've never imagined (with Darren McKee)
Dec 06, 2023
What tools do students really need in order to become successful humans? (with AJ Crabill)
Nov 29, 2023
Rethinking what it means to learn math (with Eugenia Cheng)
Nov 22, 2023
Values, principles, and behavior change (with Eric Zimmer)
Nov 15, 2023
Escaping a cult: physically, mentally, and emotionally (with Daniella Mestyanek Young)
Nov 08, 2023
Win-Win vs. Moloch, the many-headed monster that may consume us all (with Liv Boeree)
Nov 01, 2023
Do technological innovations yield net gains in the long run? (with Justin Smith-Ruiu)
Oct 25, 2023
Money, status, power, and sex in nightclubs around the world (with Ashley Mears)
Oct 18, 2023
Is bad air quality slowly harming us? (with Richard Bruns)
Oct 11, 2023
Journalism in the age of AI (with Dylan Matthews)
Oct 04, 2023
Experiments for enlightenment and fundamental wellbeing (with Jeffery Martin)
Sep 27, 2023
Mothers who harm their children for attention (with Andrea Dunlop)
Sep 20, 2023
Is evolutionary psychology just a bunch of "just so" stories? (with Geoffrey Miller)
Sep 13, 2023
Systems of governance built on prediction markets (with Robin Hanson)
Sep 07, 2023
Using metacognitive therapy to break the habit of rumination (with Pia Callesen)
Aug 30, 2023
How quickly is AI advancing? And should you be working in the field? (with Danny Hernandez)
Aug 23, 2023
Can we choose who we are? (with Gavin Leech)
Aug 16, 2023
Normalizing catastrophes and catastrophizing normalcy (with Mike Pesca)
Aug 09, 2023
What's wrong with society, and how can we fix it? (with Tim Urban)
Aug 02, 2023
AI creativity and love (with Joel Lehman)
Jul 26, 2023
Glimpses of enlightenment through nondual meditation (with Michael Taft and Jeremy Stevenson)
Jul 19, 2023
Crumbling institutions, culture wars, and the dismissal economy (with Ashley Hodgson)
Jul 12, 2023
Virtual reality, simulation theory, consciousness, and identity (with David Chalmers)
Jul 05, 2023
Deep canvassing, street epistemology, and other tools of persuasion (with David McRaney)
Jun 28, 2023
Will AI destroy civilization in the near future? (with Connor Leahy)
Jun 21, 2023
Is AI development moving too fast or not fast enough? (with Reid Hoffman)
Jun 14, 2023
Where philosophy meets the real world (with Peter Singer)
Jun 07, 2023
Large language models, deep peace, and the meaning crisis (with Jim Rutt)
May 31, 2023
Censorship, cancel culture, and truth-seeking (with Iona Italia)
May 24, 2023
Why are birth rates plummeting? And how much does it matter? (with Malcolm & Simone Collins)
May 18, 2023
Science is learning from start-ups (with Adam Marblestone)
May 15, 2023
The range of human perceptual experiences (with Anil Seth)
May 03, 2023
The capabilities approach to welfare (with Martha Nussbaum)
Apr 27, 2023
Should you become a charity entrepreneur? (with Joey Savoie)
Apr 19, 2023
Has political polarization been misunderstood? (with Nick Gillespie)
Apr 12, 2023
How can you tell if you're cut out for entrepreneurship? (with Matt Clifford)
Apr 05, 2023
Letting ChatGPT make your decisions for you (with Dax Flame)
Mar 29, 2023
What good is college now that we can learn everything for free on the internet? (with Nick Dirks)
Mar 22, 2023
Not seeing your face as a first step to enlightenment? (with Richard Lang)
Mar 15, 2023
Is giving people a sense of agency better than giving them cash? (with Richard Sedlmayr)
Mar 08, 2023
Are you working on the most important problem in your field? Why not? (with Rohit Krishnan)
Mar 01, 2023
How huge a deal is climate change, really? (with Diana Ürge-Vorsatz and Misha Glouberman)
Feb 22, 2023
Becoming a policy entrepreneur (with Tom Kalil)
Feb 15, 2023
How to build your second brain (with Tiago Forte)
Feb 08, 2023
Does every language have a word for depression? (with Sean Mayberry)
Feb 01, 2023
What things in life *shouldn't* we optimize? (with Christie Aschwanden)
Jan 25, 2023
How can we make science more trustworthy? (with Stuart Ritchie)
Jan 19, 2023
Living a life of service to others (with Tasshin Fogleman)
Jan 12, 2023
Mapping metaethics (with Lance Bush)
Jan 05, 2023
Do organizations have to get slower as they grow? (with Alex Komoroske)
Dec 28, 2022
How can we un-break politics? (with Magnus Vinding)
Dec 21, 2022
Why capitalism doesn't live up to its promises (with Martin Schmalz)
Dec 14, 2022
Anti-interoperability, vendor lock-in, and high switching costs (with Cory Doctorow)
Dec 07, 2022
Separating the sinner from the sin (with Khomotso Moshikaro)
Nov 30, 2022
The FTX catastrophe (with Byrne Hobart, Vipul Naik, Maomao Hu, Marcus Abramovich, and Ozzie Gooen)
Nov 28, 2022
How to find out what people in rural communities really need (with Robert Chambers)
Nov 23, 2022
Building healthy relationships (with Jayson Gaddis)
Nov 16, 2022
Bringing rationality into politics (with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell)
Nov 09, 2022
Sex workers — empowered, or victims? (with Melissa Broudo)
Nov 02, 2022
What, if anything, do AIs understand? (with ChatGPT Co-Creator Ilya Sutskever)
Oct 26, 2022
Forecasting the things that matter (with Peter Wildeford)
Oct 21, 2022
Is the universe a computer? (with Joscha Bach)
Oct 12, 2022
Inventions, stories, and ideas that don't matter (with Pablos Holman)
Oct 05, 2022
Humble-bragging, counter-signalling, and impression management (with Övül Sezer)
Sep 28, 2022
Ambition and expected value at extremes (with Habiba Islam)
Sep 21, 2022
Career science, open science, and inspired science (with Alexa Tullett)
Sep 14, 2022
Estimating the long-term impact of our actions today (with Will MacAskill)
Sep 07, 2022
The differences between analytic and continental philosophy (with Alexander Prescott-Couch)
Aug 31, 2022
Voting method reform in the US (with Aaron Hamlin)
Aug 24, 2022
Critiquing Effective Altruism (with Michael Nielsen and Ajeya Cotra)
Aug 19, 2022
How to form habits effectively (with Jim Davies)
Aug 10, 2022
Are scientific journals just parasites? (with Chris Chambers)
Aug 07, 2022
Human bias in the definition of intelligence (with Alene Anello)
Jul 27, 2022
Guess culture vs. ask culture (with Will Eden and Sam Rosen)
Jul 20, 2022
Are we all the heroes of our own stories? (with Cate Hall)
Jul 13, 2022
Content moderation and its dis-content-moderators (with Ada Palmer)
Jul 06, 2022
Exploring sex science and pseudo-science (with Mary Roach)
Jun 29, 2022
The worst mistakes people make with diet and exercise (with Menno Henselmans)
Jun 22, 2022
Communicating what you really mean (with Misha Glouberman)
Jun 15, 2022
Taking pleasure in being wrong (with Buck Shlegeris)
Jun 08, 2022
A philosophical theory of jerks (with Eric Schwitzgebel)
Jun 01, 2022
How meanings get words and social sciences get broken (with Literal Banana)
May 25, 2022
Dealing with our "groupstruckness" and "boundedness" (with Katja Grace)
May 18, 2022
Math as a perspective on life (with Marcus du Sautoy)
May 11, 2022
A former Al-Qaeda recruiter speaks (with Jesse Morton)
May 04, 2022
Cognitive biases and animal welfare (with Leah Edgerton)
Apr 27, 2022
Is it bad to coerce yourself to do unpleasant things? (with Matt Goldenberg)
Apr 20, 2022
Our 100th episode! (with Uri Bram and Spencer Greenberg)
Apr 13, 2022
Volunteering to be infected with COVID — for science! (with Josh Morrison)
Apr 06, 2022
What we really mean when we say that something will "probably" happen (with Walt Hickey)
Mar 30, 2022
Why is self-compassion so hard? (with Kristin Neff)
Mar 23, 2022
Why it's so hard to have confidence that charities are doing good (with Elie Hassenfeld)
Mar 16, 2022
Shovelgloves and extreme moderation (with Reinhard Engels)
Mar 09, 2022
Mental models that apply across disciplines (with Blas Moros)
Mar 02, 2022
Accessing pure consciousness at any moment (with Loch Kelly)
Feb 23, 2022
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn (with Sasha Raskin)
Feb 16, 2022
The science of addiction (with Crystal Dilworth)
Feb 10, 2022
Evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings (with Jamie Woodhouse)
Feb 02, 2022
Can the economy grow indefinitely? (with Alyssa Vance)
Jan 26, 2022
How many minds do you have? (with Kaj Sotala)
Jan 19, 2022
Are you a wamb or a nerd? (with Tom Chivers)
Jan 12, 2022
Behind the scenes of the online dating world (with Tom Quisel)
Jan 05, 2022
The clash between social justice and anti-wokeness (with Amber Dawn and Holly Elmore)
Dec 22, 2021
Tyler's three laws and twelve rules (with Tyler Cowen)
Dec 15, 2021
Freezing to (not) death: cryonics and the quest for immortality (with Max Marty)
Dec 08, 2021
The pre/trans fallacy, and why you should learn the skill of coaching (with Eben Pagan)
Dec 01, 2021
What does humanity need to survive after a global catastrophe? (with David Denkenberger)
Nov 24, 2021
To be successful, should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? (with Anna Paley)
Nov 17, 2021
When is suffering good? (with Paul Bloom)
Nov 11, 2021
What causes progress? And how can we stop it from slowing? (with Jason Crawford)
Nov 03, 2021
Clearer paths and sharper ideas (with Lynette Bye)
Oct 28, 2021
How to measure impact, and why we may have all been doing it wrong (with Michael Plant)
Oct 24, 2021
Major and minor scales of consciousness (with Andrés Gomez Emilsson)
Oct 13, 2021
The art of being a creative person (with Georgia Shreve)
Oct 07, 2021
An interview with an A.I. (with GPT-3 and Jeremy Nixon)
Sep 30, 2021
Beyond cognitive biases: improving judgment by reducing noise (with Daniel Kahneman)
Sep 23, 2021
How to use your career to have a large impact (with Ben Todd)
Sep 15, 2021
Why does psychotherapy work (when it works at all)? (with Scott Miller)
Sep 08, 2021
How broken is social science? (with Matt Grossman)
Sep 02, 2021
How to communicate better with the people in your life (with Sara Ness)
Aug 28, 2021
How to hack your own brain (with Elizabeth Ricker)
Aug 21, 2021
Why do civilizations collapse? And is ours next? (with Samo Burja)
Aug 19, 2021
Utopia on earth and morality without guilt (with Joe Carlsmith)
Aug 11, 2021
How do you leverage your limitations? (with Oliver Burkeman)
Aug 04, 2021
The secrets of effective learning (with Andy Matuschak)
Jul 29, 2021
Exploring your shadow and healing your traumas (with Aurora Quinn-Elmore)
Jul 25, 2021
Dances with robots (with Catie Cuan)
Jul 21, 2021
Heaven and hell on earth: a trip to the limits of human consciousness (with Anthony David Adams)
Jul 18, 2021
How can we save the world? (with Toby Ord)
Jul 15, 2021
Risk-Driven Development and Decentralization (with Satvik Beri)
Jul 11, 2021
Statistics Intuitions and Social Science Reproducibility (with Stuart Buck)
Jul 07, 2021
Genomics and Health Outcomes (with Noor Siddiqui)
Jul 04, 2021
Rationality and Cognitive Science (with Anna Riedl)
Jul 01, 2021
Self-Improvement and Behavior Change (with James Norris)
Jun 26, 2021
Everyday Statistics and Climate Change Strategies (with Cassandra Xia)
Jun 23, 2021
Conscious Processes and Intelligence (with Richard Nisbett)
Jun 19, 2021
Educational Restructuring and Investing (with Matt Greenfield)
Jun 17, 2021
Chinese Culture and Love Addiction (with Ava King)
Jun 12, 2021
User Engagement and Expert Intuition (with Rob Haisfield)
Jun 09, 2021
Psychological Models and Parenting (with Divia Eden)
Jun 05, 2021
Productive Conversations and Feedback Loops (with Julia Carvalho)
Jun 03, 2021
EA Efficacy and Community Norms (with Stefan Schubert)
May 30, 2021
Explanatory Depth and Growth Mindset (with Daniel Greene)
May 26, 2021
AI Safety and Solutions (with Robert Miles)
May 22, 2021
Online and IRL Relationships (with Steve Dean)
May 19, 2021
Utilitarianism and Its Flavors (with Nick Beckstead)
May 16, 2021
Cults and Social Needs (with Alice Mottola)
May 12, 2021
History and Longevity (with Will Eden)
May 08, 2021
Knowledge Management and Deugenesis (with Jeremy Nixon)
May 05, 2021
Crypto Pros and Cons (with Sam Bankman-Fried)
Apr 29, 2021
Behavior Change and Interpersonal Connection (with Ting Jiang)
Apr 21, 2021
Scout and Soldier Mindsets (with Julia Galef)
Apr 14, 2021
Social Science and Science Journalism (with Jesse Singal)
Apr 07, 2021
Search Data and Self-Improvement (with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz)
Mar 31, 2021
Poker and Productivity (with Chris Sparks)
Mar 24, 2021
Moral Discourse and the Value of Philosophy (with Ronny Fernandez)
Mar 17, 2021
Superintelligence and Consciousness (with Roman Yampolskiy)
Mar 10, 2021
Meditation and Ontology (with Daniel Ingram)
Mar 03, 2021
Rationality Education and Dating (with Jacob Falkovich)
Feb 24, 2021
Preference Falsification and Postmodernism (with Michael Vassar)
Feb 17, 2021
Moral Foundations Theory and Constructive Dialogue (with Caroline Mehl)
Feb 10, 2021
Past / Future Selves and Intrinsic Values (with Simone Collins)
Feb 03, 2021
Happiness and Hedonic Adaptation (with Rob Smith)
Jan 27, 2021
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty and Entrepreneurship (with Miles Lasater)
Jan 20, 2021
Sexuality and Dominance Hierarchies (with Malcolm Collins)
Jan 13, 2021
Self-Improvement and Research Ethics (with Rob Wiblin)
Jan 07, 2021
Antagonistic Learning and Civilization (with Duncan Sabien)
Dec 29, 2020
Worldviews and Framing (with Elizabeth Kim)
Dec 22, 2020
Intelligence and Creativity (with Scott Barry Kaufman)
Dec 15, 2020
Scientific Progress and the Replication Crisis (with Geoff Anders)
Dec 09, 2020
Enlightenment and Sex Work (with Aella)
Dec 02, 2020
Scientific Progress and Political Feedback Loops (with Michael Nielsen)
Nov 24, 2020
52 Living Ideas and the Four Systems Model (with Shrikant Rangnekar)
Nov 17, 2020
Learning and Governance (with Emerson Spartz)
Nov 10, 2020
Liberalism and Conservatism (with Cassandra Xia and Hank Racette)
Nov 04, 2020
Psychedelics and Comedy (with Sarah Rose Siskind)
Oct 27, 2020
Comfort Languages and Nuanced Thinking (with Kat Woods)
Oct 20, 2020
Learning and Goal-Setting (with Michael Simmons)
Oct 13, 2020
Aesthetics and Polyamory (with Sam Rosen)
Oct 13, 2020
Meditation and Enlightenment (with Jeremy Stevenson)
Oct 13, 2020
Forgiveness and E-Prime (with Josh Castle)
Oct 13, 2020
Lines of Retreat and Incomplete Maps (with Anna Salamon)
Oct 13, 2020
THINKERS Workshop (with Spencer Greenberg)
Oct 13, 2020
Death and Story-Telling (with A.J. Jacobs)
Oct 13, 2020
Life Experiments and Philosophical Thinking (with Arden Koehler)
Oct 13, 2020
Negotiation and Psychological Immune Systems (with Julie Kheyfets)
Oct 13, 2020
Education and Charity (with Uri Bram)
Oct 13, 2020