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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

02:05:44

A conversation with a sociopath (with M.E. Thomas)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/11/13

Are the terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" interchangeable? Are people suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) naturally violent? Are people usually born with these psychopathy, sociopathy, ASPD, or other similar personality disorders; or are they caused by environmental factors? To what extent do sociopaths have a sense of self or relatively fixed personality? Are sociopaths easily manipulated? How do shame and guilt differ? What is "gray rage"? To what extent do the primary "dark"

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01:38:18

Highs and lows on the road out of the replication...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/11/08

Read the full transcript here. How much more robust have the social sciences become since the beginnings of the replication crisis? What fraction of replication failures indicate that the original result was a false positive? What do we know with relative certainty about human nature? How much of a difference is there between how people behave in a lab setting and how they behave out in the world? Why has there been such a breakdown of trust in the sciences over the past few decades? How can

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01:10:44

Suffering and the self (with Jay Garfield)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/10/30

Read the full transcript here. Why do we suffer? Would we still suffer if we got rid of all craving and aversion? Is pain the same thing as suffering? How is suffering connected to the concept of self? Should people in horrible situations attempt to remove themselves from those environments or try to improve their plights in any way; or should they merely free themselves from suffering by releasing their "craving" for well-being and their "aversion" to misery? Why would the dissolution of the self

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00:55:20

Choosing your strategy (with Seth Godin)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/10/23

Read the full transcript here. What are the differences between tactics and strategies? Is the speed of growth of a company the main thing business school graduates should consider when trying to figure out where to launch their careers? How much optimism or pessimism should strategies include? How can we gain footholds for change in systems that are very strongly self-reinforcing? Is it possible to change a system's side effects without changing its purpose? What are the differences between

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01:17:09

How to be productive without burning out (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/10/16

Read the full transcript here. What is "mindful" productivity? Is impostor syndrome linked to main character syndrome? Must increased productivity always come with an increased risk of burn-out? What mistakes do people most commonly make when trying to improve their productivity? Is the best productivity system also the most minimal? What is "plus-minus-next"? How can we use our time more efficiently? What does it mean to have an "experimental" mindset? How many of our passions do we discover at

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00:59:49

Does simply giving people money truly enable them to...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/10/09

Read the full transcript here. Should we give cash directly to people living in poverty? Why do most nonprofits prefer to give services rather than cash? What should be done if the things that a person really needs aren't purchasable near them? (For example, what if a person needs a vaccine that isn't available in their country?) Can most people be trusted to spend money wisely? Are single lump sum transfers more effective than recurring transfers on monthly or yearly bases? What are the most common

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01:16:16

Who really controls US elections? (with Bradley Tusk)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/10/02

Read the full transcript here. What's the reality of how politicians get elected in the US? How much of a role does gerrymandering play? Are Democrats and Republicans equally guilty of gerrymandering? Do the parties secretly collaborate on gerrymandering? Is gerrymandering legal? What determines who wins a primary election? What percent of all government positions are actually contested? What are the five main types of politicians? We use our phones to manage our bank accounts, medical records, and

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01:34:35

Communities of belief vs. communities of chemistry...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/09/25

Read the full transcript here. Do people need more community in their lives? What makes for a good community? Can you really belong to a community if you don't share its core values? Is social chemistry transitive? Do "communities of belief" form and build trust more quickly than "communities of chemistry"? Do rationalists avoid taking "vibes", intuition, or instinct into account when forming communities? Can you learn how to do a thing simply by pretending that you're a pro? What can you learn

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01:21:09

Everyone — including you! — should host more events...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/09/19

Read the full transcript here. Why should people host more events than they do right now? Under what conditions shouldn't a person host more events? Do these suggestions apply to introverts? What's the best RSVP tool? What is "double opt-in"? What's the ideal length of time for a social event? What kinds of ice-breaker activities, if any, should hosts use? What are the primary factors that affect people's enjoyment of an event? What does it mean to "compress and release" in an event or party

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01:21:10

What do we know for sure about human psychology?...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/09/11

Read the full transcript here. How much progress has psychology made on the things that matter most to us? What are some psychological findings we feel pretty confident are true? How much consensus is there about the Big 5 personality traits? What are the points of disagreement about the Big 5? Are traits the best way of thinking about personality? How consistent are the Big 5 traits across cultures? How accurately do people self-report their own personality? When are psychophysical measures more or

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01:18:03

Pattern-breaking ideas, and startups that change the...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/09/04

Read the full transcript here. What mistakes do investors make when trying to predict which startups will succeed? Which matters more: a startup's team or its central idea? How do startup founders differ from other capitalists? What makes something a "pattern-breaking" idea or behavior? Are startup founders less sensitive to negative feedback than the average person? Is it possible to achieve startup success without challenging the status quo? Is it true that 90% of startups fail? What is

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01:09:56

Decision-making and play-testing (with Dan Epstein)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/08/28

What sorts of decisions are we making without even realizing we're making them? Are people aware of their own values? Do they know how those values rank relative to each other? What are all the various parties, interests, and values that have to be addressed and balanced when making decisions in a healthcare context? What does it mean to "play-test" yourself? What are the best strategies for giving feedback? How much energy is required to make various kinds of decisions? How can we practice and get

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01:03:54

The path to utopia (with Nick Bostrom)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/08/24

Why do there seem to be more dystopias than utopias in our collective imagination? Why is it easier to find agreement on what we don't want than on what we do want? Do we simply not know what we want? What are "solved worlds", "plastic worlds", and "vulnerable worlds"? Given today's technologies, why aren't we working less than we potentially could? Can humanity reach a utopia without superintelligent AI? What will humans do with their time, and/or how will they find purpose in life, if AIs take

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01:44:04

Physical limits and the long-term future (with Anders...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/08/14

Read the full transcript here. How much energy is needed for GDP growth? Would our civilization have developed at the same rate without fossil fuels? Could we potentially do the same things we're currently doing but with significantly less energy? How different would the world look if we'd developed nuclear energy much earlier? Why can't anything go faster than light? Will the heat death of the universe really be "the end" for everything? How can difficult concepts be communicated in simple ways

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01:53:29

Becoming a goat to avoid existential dread (with...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/08/07

Read the full transcript here. How hard is it to construct a toaster from scratch? Do we in modern times individually have more knowledge than individuals living 100 or 1,000 years ago? Should corporations be thought of as a kind of emergent artificial intelligence? To what extent are corporations — and more broadly, whole economies — aligned with human values? Which animals experience the smallest amount of existential dread? Are humans at the top of the evolutionary "pyramid"? Is it possible to

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01:04:48

AI apocalypticism vs. AI optimism (with Adam Russell)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/08/01

Read the full transcript here. What is "apocaloptimism"? Is there a middle ground between apocalypticism and optimism? What are the various camps in the AI safety and ethics debates? What's the difference between "working on AI safety" and "building safe AIs"? Can our social and technological coordination problems be solved only by AI? What is "qualintative" research? What are some social science concepts that can aid in the development of safe and ethical AI? What should we do with things that

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01:41:47

Should we trust papers published in top social...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/07/24

Read the full transcript here. How much should we trust social science papers in top journals? How do we know a paper is trustworthy? Do large datasets mitigate p-hacking? Why doesn't psychology as a field seem to be working towards a grand unified theory? Why aren't more psychological theories written in math? Or are other scientific fields mathematicized to a fault? How do we make psychology cumulative? How can we create environments, especially in academia, that incentivize constructive

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01:07:53

Is psychology the same across cultures? (with Joseph...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/07/17

What are "WEIRD" cultures? What percentage of the world's population is WEIRD? Why do WEIRD cultures tend to use analytic thinking (as opposed to the wholistic thinking used in non-WEIRD cultures)? Does school make you more intelligent or merely more knowledgeable? Do individualistic cultures tend to innovate more than collectivistic cultures? How does moral reasoning differ between WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures? Is the world becoming more WEIRD? How diverse are non-WEIRD cultures?Joseph Henrich is

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02:34:19

Spencer on The 80,000 Hours Podcast discussing money...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/07/10

Read the full transcript here. NOTE: Spencer appeared as a guest on The 80,000 Hours Podcast back in March, and this episode is our release of that recording. Thanks to the folks at The 80,000 Hours Podcast for sharing both their audio and transcript with us!Does money make people happy? What's the difference between life satisfaction and wellbeing? In other contexts, critics are quick to point out that correlation does not equal causation; so why do they so often seem to ignore such equations when

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01:00:21

Concrete actions anyone can take to help improve AI...

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg ·

2024/07/03

Why should we consider slowing AI development? Could we slow down AI development even if we wanted to? What is a "minimum viable x-risk"? What are some of the more plausible, less Hollywood-esque risks from AI? Even if an AI could destroy us all, why would it want to do so? What are some analogous cases where we slowed the development of a specific technology? And how did they turn out? What are some reasonable, feasible regulations that could be implemented to slow AI development? If an AI becomes

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