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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

01:15:30

What, if anything, do AIs understand? (with ChatGPT...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/10/26

Read 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 what will

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01:32:12

Forecasting the things that matter (with Peter...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/10/21

Read 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 how can

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01:23:25

Is the universe a computer? (with Joscha Bach)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/10/12

Read 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 the

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01:26:36

Inventions, stories, and ideas that don't matter...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/10/05

Read 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 capital firm

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01:05:04

Humble-bragging, counter-signalling, and impression...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/09/28

Read 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 behavioral

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01:05:39

Ambition and expected value at extremes (with Habiba...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/09/21

Read 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 one-on-one,

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01:20:52

Career science, open science, and inspired science...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/09/14

Read 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"? What

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01:06:27

Estimating the long-term impact of our actions today...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/09/07

Read 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 that

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01:16:37

The differences between analytic and continental...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/08/31

Read 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 Noûs and

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01:17:39

Voting method reform in the US (with Aaron Hamlin)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/08/24

Read the full transcript here. Does the US have one of the worst implementations of democracy in the world? Why do people sometimes seem to vote against their own interests? Is it rational for them to do so? How robust are various voting systems to strategic voting? What sorts of changes would we notice in the US if we suddenly switched to other voting systems? How hard would it be to migrate from our current voting systems to something more robust and fair, and what would be required to make that

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01:38:17

Critiquing Effective Altruism (with Michael Nielsen...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/08/19

Read the full transcript here. What is Effective Altruism? Which parts of the Effective Altruism movement are good and not so good? Who outside of the EA movement are doing lots of good in the world? What are the psychological effects of thinking constantly about the trade-offs of spending resources on ourselves versus on others? To what degree is the EA movement centralized intellectually, financially, etc.? Does the EA movement's tendency to quantify everything, to make everything legible to

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01:22:43

How to form habits effectively (with Jim Davies)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/08/10

Read the full transcript here. How can we form good habits more effectively? What roles do reward and punishment play in the habit formation process? And what roles should they play? How should we structure our daily schedules around new habits to maximize the likelihood that they'll stick? If our goal is to do 100 push-ups a day, it's often easier to start with 10 and increase the difficulty over time; but at what level of difficulty should we start, and how quickly should we approach the target

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01:19:50

Are scientific journals just parasites? (with Chris...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/08/07

Read the full transcript here. How is outcome bias especially relevant to science publishing? What are some possible solutions for overcoming outcome bias? In what ways are the publishing and peer review processes flawed? Why do many (or maybe most) scientists perform peer reviews for free? What value do publishers add to the scientific process, especially given that the internet democratizes distribution? How do (and should) scientific journals differ from newspapers? What kinds of changes must

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01:14:01

Human bias in the definition of intelligence (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/07/27

Read the full transcript here. Are all animals equally intelligent but in different ways? Do some animals perceive the passage of time differently from humans? Are our definitions of intelligence biased towards our own human strengths and therefore not fairly applicable to other animals? Is a baby human's pre-linguistic communication (like crying) analogous to the ways other animals communicate? Is civil litigation the best strategy for defending animal rights? Human lawyers represent their

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01:18:58

Guess culture vs. ask culture (with Will Eden and Sam...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/07/20

Read the full transcript here. How straightforwardly should we communicate our preferences to others? How many times does a person need to say "yes" relative to the number of times they say "no" so that a relationship can be maintained? Most people probably use a mix of asking and guessing; but under what conditions should each strategy be employed? What are the costs and benefits for the askers, guessers, and the people of whom the explicit or implicit request is being made? Since even the act of

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01:31:45

Are we all the heroes of our own stories? (with Cate...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/07/13

Read the full transcript here. Is our adoption of beliefs primarily motivated by wanting to be the heroes of our own stories? Why do we have such a hard time understanding the stories other people are telling about themselves and the world? How can we reduce political polarization? How plausible are the various theories (conspiracy or otherwise) around the origins of COVID? Why don't the EA, Rationalist, and related communities focus more on transforming political landscapes? Free speech is

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01:22:23

Content moderation and its dis-content-moderators...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/07/06

Read the full transcript here. How does the current information revolution compare to previous information revolutions? What kind of event or set of events counts as an information revolution? Why do new information technologies usually amplify the most extreme voices first? Why are intentions not very useful as a metric for determining whether a particular kind of censorship is good or bad? When, if ever, is censorship appropriate or morally acceptable? Why were officials of the Inquisition much

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01:03:34

Exploring sex science and pseudo-science (with Mary...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/06/29

Read the full transcript here. What are some surprising discoveries in the science of sex? What should we do when animals break human laws (e.g., when they commit manslaughter, steal, or even jaywalk)? Is a capacity for suffering the primary characteristic — or perhaps even the sole characteristic — that imbues an animal with moral status? How do science writers ensure faithful and accurate accounts of fields in which they may not be experts? Is there any evidence that humans could have psychic

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01:18:25

The worst mistakes people make with diet and exercise...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/06/22

Read the full transcript here. What is willpower, really? What are the differences among willpower, self-control, self-discipline, and other related concepts? What are the best ways to become more self-disciplined? What are the differences between enthusiasm and motivation? What are the most effective motivators? What are fixed, performance, and growth mindsets? It's possible to work too hard and thus degrade our productivity; but is it possible to be too productive? What does it really mean to

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01:07:14

Communicating what you really mean (with Misha...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2022/06/15

Read the full transcript here. Why is most communication advice so fluffy? How can we actually communicate better? Why do we sometimes fail to say what we mean or what needs to be said? What counts as "nonviolent" communication? To what extent is avoidance of conflict and confrontation a result of agreeableness versus cowardice? What aspects of divorce aren't talked about enough?Misha Glouberman helps people communicate and connect better. He teaches a course called How to Talk to People About

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