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PODCAST

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

Spencer Greenberg

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,

science social sciences

All Episodes

01:02:47

AI creativity and love (with Joel Lehman)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/07/26

Read 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 can they

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01:17:06

Glimpses of enlightenment through nondual meditation...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/07/19

Read 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 usually take a

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01:03:01

Crumbling institutions, culture wars, and the...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/07/12

Read 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 vote"

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01:19:02

Virtual reality, simulation theory, consciousness,...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/07/05

Read 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 might it

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01:20:06

Deep canvassing, street epistemology, and other tools...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/06/28

Read 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 is

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01:25:26

Will AI destroy civilization in the near future?...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/06/21

Read 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 risks from

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01:01:24

Is AI development moving too fast or not fast enough?...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/06/14

Read 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

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01:24:40

Where philosophy meets the real world (with Peter...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/06/07

Read 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 own values

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01:24:49

Large language models, deep peace, and the meaning...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/05/31

Read 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 concerned

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01:06:09

Censorship, cancel culture, and truth-seeking (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/05/24

When 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 creating

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01:12:23

Why are birth rates plummeting? And how much does it...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/05/18

Read 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

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01:13:39

Science is learning from start-ups (with Adam...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/05/15

Read 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 Marblestone is

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01:08:11

The range of human perceptual experiences (with Anil...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/05/03

Read 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 more than

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01:15:08

The capabilities approach to welfare (with Martha...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/04/27

Read 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 important? Is

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01:09:06

Should you become a charity entrepreneur? (with Joey...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/04/19

Read 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 down? Is it

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01:11:44

Has political polarization been misunderstood? (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/04/12

Read 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 large at

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01:11:41

How can you tell if you're cut out for...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/04/05

Read 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 before

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01:02:50

Letting ChatGPT make your decisions for you (with Dax...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/03/29

Read 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 form

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01:02:53

What good is college now that we can learn everything...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/03/22

Read 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 quality

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01:12:45

Not seeing your face as a first step to...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2023/03/15

Read 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

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308 results

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