Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg (Spencer Greenberg)
Explorez tous les épisodes de Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Oct 2020 | Learning and Goal-Setting (with Michael Simmons) | 01:35:06 | |
Read the full transcript here. How much time should we set aside for learning? What are the most effective ways of portraying and communicating ideas? Should we set long-term goals for ourselves, or allow our goals to emerge over time? What are the pros and cons of being a celebrity in a field (or in general)? Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Aesthetics and Polyamory (with Sam Rosen) | 01:31:56 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we improve art museums? Does aesthetics need something equivalent to the effective altruism movement? What is steel-aliening? What are the most important social skills to learn, and how can we learn them? Can anybody become polyamorous? What does it take to succeed in a polyamorous relationships? Why do societies decay over time? Sam Rosen is a rationalist who has studied philosophy and has done psychology research. He writes a lot on his Facebook page. His artblog is called Opulent Joy. And his two favorite blog posts he's written are here and here. If you want to get in touch with Sam, message him on Facebook or email him at samuelblakerosen@gmail.com. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Meditation and Enlightenment (with Jeremy Stevenson) | 01:59:25 | |
What's a good definition of meditation that cuts through all the dogma and differing methodology? What are the techniques, skills, and insights associated with meditation? How does meditation connect to religion and spirituality, and is meditation valuable without those components? And what is enlightenment? Jeremy hails from Adelaide, Australia, and has a PhD in clinical psychology with a dissertation focused on the effects of self-compassion on social anxiety. During his PhD he became intensely interested in meditation, sitting several shorter retreats which eventually culminated in sitting longer retreats, including a 3-month retreat in Nepal. He is now working as a clinical psychology registrar as well as doing research work for both Flinders University and Spark Wave. His current meditation interest is the perplexing skill of nondual mindfulness. Email Jeremy at jeremy.david.stevenson@gmail.com. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Forgiveness and E-Prime (with Josh Castle) | 01:03:19 | |
What is the goal of this podcast? How does a person become a polymath? What are the conceptual difficulties surrounding forgiveness? How can E-Prime help to highlight logical fallacies? How can we improve educational media? You can email Josh at joshrcastle@gmail.com. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Lines of Retreat and Incomplete Maps (with Anna Salamon) | 01:26:32 | |
What does it mean to leave lines of retreat in social contexts? How can we make sense of the current state of the world? What happens when we run out of map? How does the book Elephant in the Brain apply to the above questions? Anna Salamon does work with the Center for Applied Rationality and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. She studied math and great books in undergrad, and philosophy of science for a small bit of grad school before leaving to work on AI-related existential risk. Fav. books include: R:AZ; HPMOR; “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” and “The Closing of the American Mind” (as an intro to the practice of reading books from other places and times, not to evaluate the books, but to gain alternate hypotheses about ourselves by asking how the authors might perceive us). She blogs a bit at lesswrong.com. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | THINKERS Workshop (with Spencer Greenberg) | 00:58:03 | |
Why is it important to learn about cognitive biases? What are the various modes of nuanced thinking? What kind of mindset do people have to have in order to change their minds? When should we make "gut", intuitive decisions? When should we make careful, measured, reflective decisions? This episode was originally recorded on the THINKERS Workshop show. Watch the original recording here, or visit THINKERS Workshop or THINKERS Notebook to learn more. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Death and Story-Telling (with A.J. Jacobs) | 01:09:32 | |
Are there more meaningful and ethical ways of honoring the dead than our traditional rituals? Why is it useful to adopt probabilistic thinking in our everyday lives? What sorts of things do we value intrinsically (i.e., that we would value even if they had no other positive benefits)? What do stories do well and not so well? A.J. Jacobs is an author, lecturer, and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers, including The Year of Living Biblically and Drop Dead Healthy. He is a contributor to NPR, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others. His most recent book is Thanks a Thousand, which chronicled his quest to thank a thousand people who had even the smallest role in his morning cup of coffee. You can find A.J. on Facebook and Twitter, or you can email him at ajjacobs1@gmail.com. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Life Experiments and Philosophical Thinking (with Arden Koehler) | 01:09:20 | |
What is 80,000 Hours? What sorts of people should become entrepreneurs? How can you run cheap experiments on yourself? What are some beneficial modes of philosophical thinking? Arden Koehler is a researcher and writer at 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit whose mission is to help people use their careers to help solve the world's most pressing problems, and an active member of the effective altruism community. Arden has a PhD in philosophy from New York University, with a specialisation in ethics and attitudes toward time, and a B.A. in philosophy from University of California, Berkeley. You can check out her work at 80,000 Hours, and you can email her at arden@80000hours.org. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Negotiation and Psychological Immune Systems (with Julie Kheyfets) | 00:58:39 | |
How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations? What are some tools we can use to overcome physical and psychological pain? How can we develop psychological resilience and stability? Julie is an executive at an A.I. company and winner of the 2019 USA Track & Field's Women's 100-Mile Trail Championship. You can find more about her on LinkedIn. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2020 | Education and Charity (with Uri Bram) | 00:51:55 | |
Are universities a cult? Do charitable interventions like de-worming work? How much should we trust the conclusion of well-respected charity evaluators like GiveWell? Uri is the publisher of The Browser and The Listener, the world's favourite curation newsletters, and the author of Thinking Statistically and The Business of Big Data. Uri can be found at uribram.com or uri@uribram.com. As we mention in the audio, this episode includes a critique of Givewell. Givewell were kind enough to listen to our recording and send us a reply. Here's their reply:
Givewell also mentioned some corrections to some of the claims made in the episode. They said:
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| 20 Oct 2020 | Comfort Languages and Nuanced Thinking (with Kat Woods) | 01:14:01 | |
What's the best way to help someone who's going through a difficult situation? What are the four states of distress? What are "comfort languages"? How can we introduce more nuance into our everyday thinking habits? When gathering information and forming opinions, how do you know who to trust? What's the difference between intelligence and wisdom? Kat Woods is the co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship, a startup incubator for effective altruist charities. It provides training, seed funding, and the other things necessary to kickstart an effective nonprofit. Previously, Kat co-founded Charity Science Outreach, a meta-organization that raised nine counterfactual dollars for high impact charities for every dollar spent. Subsequently she co-founded Charity Science Health, a direct poverty charity that received multiple grants from GiveWell and has served hundreds of thousands of families in India. You can find more about Kat at her website or on Twitter at @kat__woods. Staff
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| 27 Oct 2020 | Psychedelics and Comedy (with Sarah Rose Siskind) | 01:49:53 | |
What are the pros and cons of taking psychedelics? What goes into creating a good setting for psychedelic use? How can experiencing depression change someone's political views? What is comedy? What is the relationship between comedy and social status? Why is it that comedians can get away with saying things that other people can't say? Sarah Rose Siskind is a science comedy writer based in New York City. She's the cofounder of HelloSci.Com, a consulting group that makes smart people funny, and the producer of Drug Test, a show about Psychedelics. Previously, she wrote comedy for Hanson Robotics, StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fox, and several shows on Facebook Watch. She's written jokes for the White House Press Correspondents dinner and spoken at Comic Con! In the words of Marie Curie, "follow me on Twitter." Staff
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| 04 Nov 2020 | Liberalism and Conservatism (with Cassandra Xia and Hank Racette) | 02:16:04 | |
Why do liberals and conservatives disagree so vehemently? Why are things so polarized in the US right now? What are the core values held by liberals and conservatives? How much value does tradition have? Where and why do liberals and conservatives disagree about climate change? Where and why do liberals and conservatives disagree about free speech and political correctness? Cassandra Xia's bio: "Cassandra Xia (@CassandraXia) is the daughter of Chinese scientists who emigrated to the United States. Her parents raised her on a blend of logic, reason, and immigrant can-do attitude. She emerged as a strategic liberal that strongly believes in free speech and compassionate dialogue. She recently left her job as a Google software engineer to work on climate change. Cassandra's work can be found at cassandraxia.com and workonclimate.org." Hank Racette's bio: "I'm an uneducated fifty-something father of six who divides his time between writing industrial automation software and opining about the precariousness of western civilization and the enemies, mostly unwitting, arrayed against it. I'm fascinated by words, mathematics, evolution, human nature, emergent behavior, and saving the most successful nation and culture in history from the innocent mistakes of smart people with good intentions. I'm a free-speech extremist and, in general, what used to be called a classical liberal. I can be found on Ricochet, where I write as Henry Racette, on Facebook, and reached via email at hank.racette@gmail.com." Staff
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| 10 Nov 2020 | Learning and Governance (with Emerson Spartz) | 01:15:19 | |
What's the best way to learn? Why is learning how to learn "the most important skill"? When should we explore, and when should we exploit? What are the merits and demerits of various models of governance? How should we think about the problems around free speech? Named "King of Viral Media" by Forbes, Emerson Spartz is one of the world's leading experts on internet virality and has been featured in major media including CBS, CNBC, CNN, and hundreds more. Spartz was named to both Forbes' and Inc Magazine's "30 Under 30" lists. Spartz is the founder of Dose, a top digital media company with $35 million in funding. Dose's videos generate billions of video views, and the company's broadcast TV show, Morning Dose, airs on CW stations nationwide. Previously, Spartz created 20+ of the world's largest viral content sites, including OMG Facts, attracting 50 million visitors monthly. At age 12, Spartz founded Mugglenet, the #1 Harry Potter site and one of the internet's largest communities. By the age of 19, Spartz became a New York Times bestselling author after publishing his first book. Find out more about Emerson at his website: emersonspartz.com Staff
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| 17 Nov 2020 | 52 Living Ideas and the Four Systems Model (with Shrikant Rangnekar) | 01:00:24 | |
What is 52 Living Ideas? How does the Four Systems Model help to classify parts of human nature? What tools do civilizations create that allow individuals to transact with each other without knowing each other? Why has "form follows function" been the most influential idea ever for Shrikant? What is intuitive analytic shuttling, and how does it help to improve creative output? Shrikant Rangnekar runs 52 Living Ideas, a community of learners engaged in joint exploration of the world, ourselves, and ideas. He conducts daily, open Zoom meetups on psychology, philosophy, and self-improvement. Also, here's the diagram Shrikant mentions in the episode:  Staff
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| 24 Nov 2020 | Scientific Progress and Political Feedback Loops (with Michael Nielsen) | 01:22:34 | |
Is scientific progress speeding up or slowing down? What are the best strategies for funding research? What is "para-academia," and what are the pros and cons of being a para-academic researcher? What are the feedback loops in politics that cause politicians and their constituents to react to each other? Michael Nielsen is a scientist who helped pioneer quantum computing and the modern open science movement. He also has a strong side interest in artificial intelligence. All are part of a broader interest in developing tools that help people think and create, both individually and collectively. His most recent book is Quantum Country, an introduction to quantum computing. Find out more at his website, michaelnielsen.org, or follow him on Twitter at @michael_nielsen. Staff
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| 02 Dec 2020 | Enlightenment and Sex Work (with Aella) | 01:39:32 | |
What is enlightenment? What are the different kinds or definitions of enlightenment? What was Aella's religious upbringing like, and why did she lose her faith? How did Aella get into sex work, and what has her career as a sex worker been like? How do we ask great questions, and what is Askhole? You can find out more about Aella on her website, knowingless.com. Staff
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| 09 Dec 2020 | Scientific Progress and the Replication Crisis (with Geoff Anders) | 01:30:33 | |
NOTE: The beginning of this conversation touches on some of the same themes that were discussed in the recent episode with Michael Nielsen. After that, though, this conversation heads off in other directions. Is scientific progress speeding up or slowing down? How can we understand and explain the replication crisis in the social sciences? In the context of research, does speed have a quality all its own in the same way that quantity has a quality all its own? What are Geoff and Spencer doing in the social science field that's significantly different from what others are doing? Geoff Anders is the founder of Leverage Research, a non-profit research institute that studies the history of science to learn how a better understanding of early stage science can inform scientific efforts today. Geoff is also the co-founder of Paradigm, a training and coaching organization that uses knowledge of learning, thinking, and motivation to help people think better and better pursue their missions. Geoff has a PhD in Philosophy from Rutgers University. You can learn more about Geoff via his website and can follow him on Twitter at @geoffanders. Staff
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| 15 Dec 2020 | Intelligence and Creativity (with Scott Barry Kaufman) | 01:03:36 | |
What are the various components of intelligence? How does intelligence relate to IQ? Can IQ be trained or improved? What is creativity, and how does it relate to intelligence? Can creativity be trained or improved? What is self-actualization, and how does it relate to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? What is transcendence? Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, and well-being at Columbia University, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. He hosts The Psychology Podcast, and is author and/or editor of 9 books, including Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (with Carolyn Gregoire), and Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. In 2015, he was named one of "50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the world" by Business Insider. Find out more at ScottBarryKaufman.com. Staff
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| 22 Dec 2020 | Worldviews and Framing (with Elizabeth Kim) | 00:53:28 | |
How are ideologies like snowglobes? What is "convert communication"? What are some algorithms for creativity? How can framing help us to make better decisions? Elizabeth Kim is an applied behavioral scientist designing products to help people be happier, healthier, and wealthier. She is the music streaming industry's first Behavioral Scientist at Spotify where she uses experimentation to understand and improve user experience. Previously, she has designed experiments at Jet.com/Walmart, the Fabulous (a Google award-winning habit tracking app), and Dan Ariely's behavioral science lab at Duke University. In her free time, she runs studies for prosocial initiatives and spontaneous curiosities. Staff
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| 29 Dec 2020 | Antagonistic Learning and Civilization (with Duncan Sabien) | 01:40:10 | |
Why do "antagonistic" teachers exist in popular culture but not in the classroom? What happens to student outcomes when "antagonistic" learning is implemented in real classrooms? What is the Field Theory of Parenting? What are things that we can do for others but can't do for ourselves? How can we notice and utilize costly and unfakeable signals? What is the core definition of civilization? How can we influence others ethically? Is explicit communication always better than implicit? Duncan wants to leave the universe noticeably different than it was before he arrived, and he's currently trying to do this through making things and teaching people. He has a background in LEGO, parkour, and middle grades education, and is easily manipulated by people quoting Ender's Game. You can find out more about him at thirdfoundation.github.io. Staff
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| 07 Jan 2021 | Self-Improvement and Research Ethics (with Rob Wiblin) | 02:32:34 | |
What are the best strategies for improving ourselves? How are line managers useful? Why does Rob prefer long-form content for the 80,000 Hours podcast? What are the sorts of things humans value and why? In what ways do research ethics considerations fail to achieve their stated objectives? Why are prediction markets useful? Rob Wiblin is the Head of Research at 80,000 Hours where he investigates how people can do more good in the course of their career and produces a long-form interview show called the 80,000 Hours Podcast. He studied genetics and economics in Australia before moving to the UK to help develop the emerging field of effective altruism. You can learn more about Rob at robwiblin.com, learn more about his research work at 80000hours.org, and follow him on social media at @robertwiblin. Staff
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| 13 Jan 2021 | Sexuality and Dominance Hierarchies (with Malcolm Collins) | 01:41:23 | |
Are our brains equipped to handle the increasing velocity of information exchange? What's going on psychologically when we take offense to an idea? Should some kinds of research results be suppressed or hidden? Should some kinds of research be avoided altogether? What are some of the faults in the old paradigms and models in sexuality research? What are some of the surprising findings in the research of sexual attraction? What are dominance hierarchies, and how do they relate to governance? As a neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur-and-investor, Malcolm leverages day jobs in VC, private equity, and business operations in a passionate battle to bring Gentleman Science back into vogue. He founded and directs The Pragmatist Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging pragmatic approaches to life's big challenges—all of which he personally likes to tackle arm-in-arm with his wife, Simone, who he met while getting his MBA at Stanford. Together, they co-founded an art commission startup (ArtCorgi) and subsequently raised a miniature private equity fund to acquire a travel management business (Travelmax), which the couple now operates. Their books are:
You can reach Malcolm via email at collinsmalcolm@gmail.com. And you can learn more about Malcolm and Simone's company at witan.io. Staff
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| 20 Jan 2021 | Decision-Making Under Uncertainty and Entrepreneurship (with Miles Lasater) | 01:19:20 | |
How can we better make decisions under uncertainty? What are some of the different ways of being uncertain? What are some powerful venture patterns? How can founders and venture capitalists reduce risk in their startups and portfolios? What is the nature of innovation? How can investing be used to do good in the world? Miles Lasater has started 3 companies, 2 nonprofits, and 1 family with 4 kids. He has been a founder, VC, angel investor, business school professor, board member, donor, improv comedian, and dancer. He currently is Founding Partner of Purpose Built Ventures and serves on the board of tech nonprofit Curious Learning. Miles also hosts a podcast called Startups for Good (which you can also follow on Twitter at @startups4good). Find out more at mileslasater.com. Staff
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| 27 Jan 2021 | Happiness and Hedonic Adaptation (with Rob Smith) | 01:11:41 | |
Why do we seem to get less and less pleasure from some things over time? And what can we do about it? Are there dimensions along which some people can't be satiated (e.g., perhaps narcissists can't get "enough" adoration)? What are the structures of needs and incentives in cults? How should we think about the pursuit of long-term happiness, which sometimes requires us to sacrifice some amount of short-term happiness? Are people more likely to make choices that verify their identities or that improve their identities? Robert Smith is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He has previously taught at the University of Michigan and Ohio State University. He does research on enjoyment and the many ways that people learn about themselves. You can learn more about him here. Staff
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| 03 Feb 2021 | Past / Future Selves and Intrinsic Values (with Simone Collins) | 01:20:48 | |
How well do we identify with our past and future selves? What are some of the ways we can develop self-awareness and emotional control? How can we learn more and learn faster at a younger age? How can we best express emotions like sadness and anger? What are our intrinsic values, and what should they be? Simone is a Cambridge-educated crumpet addict who joyfully attacks life with her husband Malcolm Collins, with whom she founded an art commission startup (ArtCorgi) and raised a miniature private equity fund to acquire a management business (Travelmax), which the couple presently operates. Together the Collinses founded and run The Pragmatist Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to fighting tribalism and promoting pragmatic approaches to life's challenges. Simone dreams of someday parenting seven children with Vulcan-like logic and grace, but will settle with someday parenting seven children with dogged human endurance. Staff
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| 10 Feb 2021 | Moral Foundations Theory and Constructive Dialogue (with Caroline Mehl) | 01:07:50 | |
What is the Moral Foundations Theory? Is the MFT a model that's only intended to describe human behavior and psychology, or does it also make claims about what's actually true about morality? Why does morality exist in the first place? How can the MFT be used to have better conversations across ideological and cultural divides? What (if anything) helps groups to cohere successfully as they increase in size? Why is internet communication especially hostile and prone to misunderstandings? What common mistakes do people make in in-person communication? What is OpenMind? Caroline Mehl is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of OpenMind, a non-profit EdTech organization that leverages behavioral science to foster openness to diverse perspectives and equip people with skills for constructive dialogue. OpenMind's evidence-based tools have been used by more than 35,000 people across more than 15 countries. As part of her role, Caroline advises workplaces, universities, philanthropists, and communities on how to create more open and inclusive cultures. You can learn more about OpenMind and use it yourself at openmindplatform.org. Staff
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| 17 Feb 2021 | Preference Falsification and Postmodernism (with Michael Vassar) | 01:33:16 | |
Read the full transcript here. How much preference falsification is occurring in society? What's the difference between conflict theory and mistake theory? Why is postmodernism useful to understand? Michael Vassar was the President of the Singularity Institute from 2009 to 2012. Subsequently, he has worked in business consulting, especially in association with cutting edge science, although these days he primarily invests his own assets. You can contact him at michael.vassar@gmail.com. Further reading
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| 24 Feb 2021 | Rationality Education and Dating (with Jacob Falkovich) | 01:15:45 | |
Read the full transcript here. What's the best way to teach rationality? How do you communicate rationalist principles to people who aren't already interested in thinking more clearly? What has COVID taught us about how people typically make decisions and think about problems? Where and how can the rationalist community improve? Does rationalism have anything to say about (for example) exercise, spirituality, art, or other parts of the human experience that aren't typically addressed by rationalists? What are some positive aspects of social media (especially Twitter)? What's going on with recent dating trends? Has dating gotten harder in recent years? How many people does it take to make a pencil? Is there a case to be made for anti-antinatalism? Jacob is the only rationalist with an MBA. He writes Putanumonit.com and is famous for bringing the idea of decision matrices to the pages of the Economist and the New York Times. Jacob is Russian-Israeli and is currently living in Brooklyn with his wife and two guinea pigs. Follow him on Twitter at @yashkaf. Further reading Staff
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| 03 Mar 2021 | Meditation and Ontology (with Daniel Ingram) | 01:49:48 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why should we meditate? What are the typical developmental stages as one progresses along the contemplative path? What does it mean to "hold an ontology loosely"? Are some meditative techniques inappropriate for some practitioners? Are there risks associated with meditation? Further reading
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| 10 Mar 2021 | Superintelligence and Consciousness (with Roman Yampolskiy) | 01:16:10 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is superintelligence? Can a superintelligence be controlled? Why aren't people (especially academics, computer scientists, and companies) more worried about superintelligence alignment problems? Is it possible to determine whether or not an AI is conscious? Do today's neural networks experience some form of consciousness? Are humans general intelligences? How do artificial superintelligence and artificial general intelligence differ? What sort of threats do malevolent actors pose over and above those posed by the usual problems in AI safety? Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy is a Tenured Associate Professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Louisville. He is the founding and current director of the Cyber Security Lab and an author of many books including Artificial Superintelligence: a Futuristic Approach. Dr. Yampolskiy's main areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence Safety and Cybersecurity. Follow him on Twitter at @romanyam. Further reading
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| 17 Mar 2021 | Moral Discourse and the Value of Philosophy (with Ronny Fernandez) | 01:06:36 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is normative hedonism? What's the difference between wanting something and wanting to want something? Should we only care about the experiences of conscious beings? What's wrong with moral discourse? Does philosophy ever actually make progress, or is it still only discussing the things that were discussed a thousand years ago? What is (or should be) the role of intuition in philosophy? Why should people study philosophy (especially as opposed to other disciplines)? What can we do to create more rationality or systematic wisdom in the world? How can we disagree better? Ronny Fernandez is a philosophy PhD student at Rutgers University and high school dropout. He is interested in formal epistemology, human rationality, and AI alignment. He blogs at figuringfiguring.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @TrueBrangus or send him an email at anonnerdfrenzy@gmail.com. Staff
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| 24 Mar 2021 | Poker and Productivity (with Chris Sparks) | 01:26:41 | |
Read the full transcript here. What can people learn from playing poker? What makes someone good at playing games? What is the OODA loop? What is a "premortem" analysis of decision-making? How should we think about decisions that aren't easily (or even possibly) reversible? What do people get wrong when they're trying to be more productive? What is a "forcing function"? How can people create their own forcing functions? Chris Sparks is a professional poker player and the founder and CEO of Forcing Function. You can find his full bio here, follow him on Twitter at @SparksRemarks, or find more of his work via these links: Further reading Staff
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| 31 Mar 2021 | Search Data and Self-Improvement (with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz) | 01:19:21 | |
Read the full transcript here. What can we learn about people from search data? What does search data reveal about human nature that surveys and polls fail to reveal? What patterns of searching do people exhibit when they're suffering from mental and physical illnesses? How can we use data to make better decisions, become better parents, date better, and be happier? Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a data scientist, author, consultant, and keynote speaker. His book Everybody Lies was a New York Times bestseller and an Economist and PBS NewsHour Book of the Year. He has worked as a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, a data scientist at Google, and a visiting lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford in philosophy and a PhD in economics from Harvard. Find more about him at sethsd.com, follow him on Twitter at @seths_d, or email him at seth.stephens@gmail.com. Staff
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| 07 Apr 2021 | Social Science and Science Journalism (with Jesse Singal) | 01:02:22 | |
Read the full transcript here. Should we trust social science research? What is the open science movement? What is the "file drawer" effect? How can common sense help social science dig itself out of the replicability crisis? Is social science in the West too focused on interventions for individuals? How useful is the Implicit Association Test? How useful is the concept of "grit"? How should journalists communicate confidence or skepticism about scientific results? What incentive structures stand in the way of honestly and openly critiquing scientific methods or findings? Jesse Singal is a contributing writer at New York Magazine and cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported. He is also the author of The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills, which came out April 6, 2021, and which you can order here. You can read more of his work at jessesingal.substack.com. Further reading
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| 14 Apr 2021 | Scout and Soldier Mindsets (with Julia Galef) | 01:15:30 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are "scout" and "soldier" mindsets? How can we have productive disagreements even when one person isn't in scout mindset? Is knowing about good rationality habits sufficient to reason well? When do we naturally tend to be in scout mindset or soldier mindset? When is each mindset beneficial or harmful? Are humans "rationally irrational"? What are the two different types of confidence? What are some practical strategies for shifting our mindset in the moment from soldier to scout? Find out more about Julia at juliagalef.com. Further reading
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| 21 Apr 2021 | Behavior Change and Interpersonal Connection (with Ting Jiang) | 01:06:59 | |
Read the full transcript here. How does a behavioral scientist apply her knowledge to her own life? What fraction of our behaviors are deliberative, and what fraction are automatic? In what ways are we insufficiently scientific in our attempts to diagnose behavior problems? To what extent is introspection important for behavior change? Can behavior change take place without relatively accurate quantification and measurement? (For example, we know exact values for our bank account balance or our weight on the scale, but we don't know exact values for our level of happiness or how much progress we've made in meditation. To encourage behavior change in those more nebulous domains, is it useful to assign numbers to everything?) Can (and should) "sacred" things be quantified? What's the difference between customs and norms? Why do we often fail to generalize our own skills from one domain to other domains? How can we use stories to encourage behavior change? What are some new and different ways of connecting with others, especially during a pandemic? How can everyday items or events be tweaked to encourage behavior change? Ting Jiang is a global expert and thought leader in behavioral change and innovation. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Economics but publishes findings across a broad range of disciplines. For the past 5 years, until January 1st, 2021, she served as a principal at Dan Ariely's behavioral science lab at Duke University, during which she led projects globally helping diverse organizations, companies, and tech startups to improve the behavioral uptake and retention of programs and products. The work she is most proud of is her own attempt to develop various science-based games for behavioral change, including a board game called "Healthy Money" for forming better spending and saving habits. Most recently, she's been calling for a collective reflection on whether the world is currently in the dark ages of human flourishing despite our advancement in tech and natural sciences. Find out more about her here. Staff
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| 29 Apr 2021 | Crypto Pros and Cons (with Sam Bankman-Fried) | 01:09:01 | |
Read the full transcript here. What's the current state of cryptocurrency? What are the good and bad aspects of crypto? To what extent have the promises of crypto panned out? How do blockchain and cryptocurrency even work anyway? What are "proof of work" and "proof of stake"? What are the differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum? What sorts of transactions are made easy or possible by the blockchain that are difficult or impossible to perform with traditional currencies? What are non-fungible tokens (NFTs)? What (if anything) prevents people from doing nefarious things with cryptocurrencies? What are some of the exciting, positive things coming up on the crypto horizon? Sam Bankman-Fried is the co-founder and CEO of FTX. Before venturing into crypto, Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital's international ETF desk. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities, and designed their automated OTC trading system. He graduated from MIT with a degree in physics. Find him on Twitter at @SBF_FTX. Staff
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| 05 May 2021 | Knowledge Management and Deugenesis (with Jeremy Nixon) | 01:40:39 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "The Index"? What are some benefits of externally compiling and organizing one's knowledge? When is spaced repetition useful? How can we co-opt our visual systems to boost memory? Would we all be more interested in producing an external personal knowledgebase if we could feel on a visceral level how much information is constantly being forgotten? How and when should we move up and down the ladder of abstraction? What sorts of problems can be solved by simulation? What is a generative model (as opposed to a predictive model)? How can constraints improve creativity? How useful are credentials as a guide to how much a person knows and whether or not a person is "allowed" to have an opinion on a topic? What do credentials actually signal about a person? What are "fox" and "hedgehog" thinking? What is deugenesis? Jeremy is the founder of Consilience, an immersive information retrieval company. Previously he did machine learning research at Google Brain and studied Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. Jeremy works relentlessly towards aggregating knowledge, acquiring knowledge, and creating new knowledge. Find him on Twitter at @jvnixon or email him at jnixon2@gmail.com. Staff
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| 08 May 2021 | History and Longevity (with Will Eden) | 01:52:45 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are the benefits of studying history? How do we find useful historical analyses? Can learning about history save us from repeating it? Is America decaying as a nation, empire, and/or leading world power? Generally speaking, what causes empires to fail? Is the aging and decay experienced by organic bodies analogous to the aging and decay experienced by an empire (or by any complex system, for that matter)? What are all the reasons organisms age, decay, and die? What are the most promising avenues of exploration in longevity research? What kind of stressors on our bodies are beneficial? How accurate is the efficient market hypothesis? What kinds of catalysts force a market to value assets at their "intrinsic" value? How rational are markets? William Eden is currently an entrepreneur-in-residence at biotech founder and investor Errik Anderson's family office, Ulysses Diversified. Previously, he worked with Peter Thiel for six years and jointly led the Life Science Investments group at Thiel Capital focused on early-stage breakthrough biomedical technologies. His previous roles include the Chief Analytics Officer of Azumio, a digital health startup, and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the 2008 global financial crisis. His Twitter handle is @WilliamAEden, and he and his wife have additional essays and podcasts and more at their blog. NOTE: After the recording, Will contacted us with the following correction. There is a family lineage with a congenital growth hormone deficiency called Laron Syndrome that lives in villages in Ecuador, but he had incorrectly identified them as indigenous people. They actually migrated there from Spain, where other members of the family still live with the same genetic mutation. They suffer from fewer diseases of aging like cancer and diabetes, but their lifespan is indeed no longer than average due to vulnerability to accidents and injuries. This serves to demonstrate the tradeoff between longevity and robustness under free living conditions for these types of anti-aging interventions. Staff
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| 12 May 2021 | Cults and Social Needs (with Alice Mottola) | 01:16:09 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is a cult? What do people seem to mean when they use the word "cult"? Do cults always have a charismatic and/or narcissistic leader? Are cults always harmful? Are people ever really "tricked" into being in a cult? What needs are met by cults that aren't met by standard social structures? What sorts of interactions induce intimacy and/or solidarity among people? Alice Mottola is a perpetual student with experience in writing software, directing plays, conducting social psychology research, and planning unduly elaborate parties. Her passion for creating spaces that facilitate connection is not unrelated to her long-standing interest in groups that are broadly termed "cults." She is currently pursuing a dual Master's in theology and social work at Boston University. You can email her at alicemottola@gmail.com. Staff
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| 16 May 2021 | Utilitarianism and Its Flavors (with Nick Beckstead) | 01:30:42 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is utilitarianism? And what are the different flavors of utilitarianism? What are some alternatives to utilitarianism for people that find it generally plausible but who can't stomach some of its counterintuitive conclusions? For the times when people do use utilitarianism to make moral decisions, when is it appropriate to perform actual calculations (as opposed to making estimations or even just going with one's "gut")? And what is "utility" anyway? Nick Beckstead is a Program Officer for the Open Philanthropy Project, which he joined in 2014. He works on global catastrophic risk reduction. Previously, he led the creation of Open Phil's grantmaking program in scientific research. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University, where he wrote a dissertation on the importance of shaping the distant future. You can find out more about him on his website. Staff
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| 19 May 2021 | Online and IRL Relationships (with Steve Dean) | 01:32:52 | |
Read the full transcript here. To what extent do we put ourselves, each other, and our relationships in fixed, sharply-defined boxes? Do we exude trust to people we meet? How often do we project our own wants and needs onto other people? How do the experiences of men and women differ on dating apps? Why do men behave so badly towards women (both online and in the meatspace)? How can people improve their dating experiences? How do we tell our own stories? And how do we recognize the ways in which our lives and the lives of others can intersect such that everyone is better off? How can we recognize and avoid "takers"? Steve Dean is an NYC-based dating & relationship coach, researcher, educator, and community builder. He offers dating coaching and experimental events through Dateworking.com, and hosts the Dateworking podcast which explores the nuances across relationships in romance, friendships, workplaces, and communities. You can find Steve on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, and Twitter: @stevenmdean. In his spare time, Steve delights in daylong walks through natural and built environments, punctuated by photography and puppy petting. Staff
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| 22 May 2021 | AI Safety and Solutions (with Robert Miles) | 01:24:30 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why is YouTube such a great way to communicate research findings? Why is AI safety (or alignment) a problem? Why is it an important problem? Why is the creation of AGI (artificial general intelligence) existentially risky for us? Why is it so hard for us to specify what we want in utility functions? What are some of the proposed strategies (and their limitations) for controlling AGI? What is instrumental convergence? What is the unilateralist's curse? Rob Miles is a science communicator focused on AI Safety and Alignment. He has a YouTube channel called Rob Miles AI and runs The Alignment Newsletter Podcast, which presents summaries of the week's research. He also collaborates with research organizations like the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Future of Humanity Institute to help them communicate their work. Staff
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| 26 May 2021 | Explanatory Depth and Growth Mindset (with Daniel Greene) | 01:18:25 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is the illusion of explanatory depth? Are there forms of debate or dialogue that actually help people to change their minds (instead of stacking the incentives such that people feel forced to harden and defend their views)? What is epistemic "debt"? Should people avoid having opinions on things where they haven't thought deeply and carefully about all of the relevant considerations? How does one choose which experts to trust? What is "growth mindset"? How can social science be used to do good in the world? Daniel Greene is a postdoctoral researcher and fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where he works with Dr. Megan Palmer to research methods of engaging life scientists with the potential safety and security risks of their work. He has a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford and worked as a social psychologist and data scientist at the Project for Education Research that Scales. You can find more information about Daniel at danielgreene.net. Staff
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| 30 May 2021 | EA Efficacy and Community Norms (with Stefan Schubert) | 01:10:29 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can people be more effective in their altruism? Is it better for people to give to good causes in urgent situations or on a regular basis? What causes people to donate to less effective charities even when presented with evidence that other charities might be more effective? We can make geographically distant events seem salient locally by (for example) showing them on TV, but how can we make possible future events seem more salient? How much more effective are the most effective charities than the average? How do altruists avoid being exploited (in a game theoretic sense)? What sorts of norms are common in the EA community? Stefan Schubert is a researcher in philosophy and psychology at the University of Oxford, working on questions of relevance for effective altruism. In particular, he studies why most donations don't go to the most effective charities and what we can do to change it. He also studies what norms we should have if we want to do the most good, as well as the psychology of the long-term future. You can email him at stefanfredrikschubert@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at @StefanFSchubert, or learn more about him at stefanfschubert.com. Further reading
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| 03 Jun 2021 | Productive Conversations and Feedback Loops (with Julia Carvalho) | 01:14:37 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we become better leaders? How can we give better feedback to others? How can we be better listeners? How can we give good advice? How do startups (or even existing companies) build great products? What sorts of things do experts actually know? When is it useful to poll customers for feedback? Julia Carvalho serves as an advisor to startups doing impactful things in the world. She thinks a lot about product strategy, teams, and prioritization. She likes emailing with strangers and can be found at juliawcarvalho@gmail.com. Staff
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| 05 Jun 2021 | Psychological Models and Parenting (with Divia Eden) | 01:38:53 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is the Internal Family Systems model? What kinds of information do our emotions give us? How many agents live in our heads? And, if there's more than one, how well do those agents cooperate? What is operant conditioning? What is attachment theory? How does parenting differ from animal training? Is decision theory able to unify many different psychological theories? Divia Eden has always been interested in understanding how minds work, and she currently spends most of her time unschooling her three kids. You can find out more about her at becomingeden.com or follow her on Twitter at @diviacaroline. Staff
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| 09 Jun 2021 | User Engagement and Expert Intuition (with Rob Haisfield) | 01:11:20 | |
Read the full transcript here. How do you design a product to handle user failure? How do you keep users motivated even when they fail? How do you successfully onboard new users? What are some different kinds of search behavior? How and when does gamifying a product increase user engagement and success? What psychological components do games attempt to engage with? How do we develop expert intuition in a domain? Rob Haisfield is a behavioral product strategy and gameful design consultant. He applies behavioral science and game design principles to products to influence user behavior. This is based on the thesis that when people use tools in ways that allow them to more effectively accomplish their goals, they gain more value. He also works as a behavioral product strategist for Spark Wave and its various portfolio companies, recently focusing on the onboarding for GuidedTrack. You can learn more about him at robhaisfield.com, follow him on Twitter at @RobertHaisfield, or email him at rob@influenceinsights.io. Staff
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| 12 Jun 2021 | Chinese Culture and Love Addiction (with Ava King) | 01:05:32 | |
Read the full transcript here. How is Chinese culture different from American culture? For what reasons do Chinese people get plastic surgery, and how do those reasons differ from those of their American counterparts? What is love addiction? Are 12-step programs the only way (or the best way) of overcoming addiction? Ava King is an international singer, songwriter, and producer based out of LA. She was born and raised in France, spent a decade in China, then decided to move to LA to pursue her passion of music. As a songwriter, Ava co-wrote "I Just" for K-pop group Red Velvet's second album that debuted at #1 on the Billboard World charts and #1 on the Korean Pop Charts. The album has since gone on to become 9X Platinum in Korea and has accumulated over 2.3 million plays on Spotify. Her songs have also been featured on The Ellen Show, Empire, and Crazy Rich Asians. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok; and you can email her at avakingbookings@gmail.com. Staff
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| 17 Jun 2021 | Educational Restructuring and Investing (with Matt Greenfield) | 01:06:12 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we restructure schools around student needs? What sorts of skills do people actually need in the 21st century, and how can education systems reorganize themselves around those skills? What sorts of things do impact investors look for when investing in education companies? How can teachers cultivate critical thinking and passion in the classroom? Should prejudice and privilege be addressed at the primary or secondary levels of education? Matt Greenfield is a managing partner of Rethink Education, a venture capital firm that invests in education technology businesses. He previously helped start Rethink Autism and worked for ABS Ventures. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English from Yale University and has taught at Columbia University, the City University of New York, and Bowdoin College. You can find him on Twitter and Clubhouse. Staff
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| 19 Jun 2021 | Conscious Processes and Intelligence (with Richard Nisbett) | 01:15:36 | |
Read the full transcript here. What sorts of things do the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds do? How we can make people more intelligent? How much is intelligence heritable vs. environmental? What's the value (or disvalue) of holding interviews during the hiring process? When do we over- and under-use cost-benefit analyses? Richard E. Nisbett is one of the world's most respected psychologists. His work focuses on issues in social psychology and cognitive science. His newest book Thinking: A Memoir is both an intellectual autobiography and a personal history. It's available for sale on Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, and Barnes and Noble. To learn more, go to RichardNisbett.com. Staff
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| 23 Jun 2021 | Everyday Statistics and Climate Change Strategies (with Cassandra Xia) | 01:31:47 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are "shed" and "cake" projects? And how can you avoid "shed" projects? What is the "jobs to be done" framework? What is the "theory of change" framework? How can people use statistics (or statistical intuition) in everyday life? How accurate are climate change models? How much certainty do scientists have about climate change outcomes? What are some promising strategies for mitigating and reversing climate change? Cassandra Xia (@CassandraXia) is the creator of Adventures in Cognitive Biases and co-founder of the non-profit Work on Climate. She is fascinated by how human biases affect the actions we take as a society and how to hack human psychology to get the change that we want. She is previously affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, MIT CS department, and Google AI. More of Cassandra's work can be found at cassandraxia.com and workonclimate.org. Staff
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| 26 Jun 2021 | Self-Improvement and Behavior Change (with James Norris) | 01:20:45 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can you live your best life? What's a good definition of "wisdom"? What are some possible taxonomies of life outcomes? What are some low-hanging fruit in the realm of self-improvement? What are some useful behavior change frameworks and techniques? All his life, James Norris has been searching for the best ways to change himself and change the world. He started as an entrepreneur at age 6 and since has co-founded or helped build 9 businesses and 16 organizations, including the premier conference for the effective altruism movement, the world's first global lifehacking event series, Southeast Asia's first social innovation hackathon series, and a university for today's Leonardo da Vincis. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin as a triple major / quadruple minor. Find more about him at jamesnorris.org and upgradable.org. Staff
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| 01 Jul 2021 | Rationality and Cognitive Science (with Anna Riedl) | 00:58:08 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is the Great Rationality Debate? What are axiomatic rationality and ecological rationality? How irrational are people anyway? What's the connection between rationality and wisdom? What are some of the paradigms in cognitive science? Why do visual representations of information often communicate their meaning much more effectively than other kinds of representations? Anna Riedl is a cognitive scientist with a primary research interest in judgement and decision-making under unmeasurable uncertainty, a field in the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. She loves the scientific method so much that she regularly spreads her joy about it in various formats of science communication. In the end, she cares about ideas being applied in the real world, solving problems, and benefitting humanity. This means she often plays the role of being an interface between the two worlds of ideas and their application by humans. Over the last years, she has founded and lead different organizations in the DACH region that work on improving the world. You can find more about her at riedlanna.com, follow her on Twitter at @annaleptikon, or email her at annariedl.office@gmail.com. Further reading Staff
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| 04 Jul 2021 | Genomics and Health Outcomes (with Noor Siddiqui) | 00:56:37 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why has there been such an explosion of progress in genomics recently? What's the right way to think about how genes affect the likelihood of experiencing certain health outcomes? How can people mitigate genetic risks for their potential children? What sorts of moral obligations (if any) do parents have to mitigate potential genetic risks for their children? How does Orchid's focus differ from other companies in the same space? What is "junk" DNA? What percentage of our genes are identical to our siblings, to other humans, and even to other animals? Noor Siddiqui is the Founder and CEO of Orchid, a reproductive technology company. Prior to Orchid, Noor was an AI researcher at Stanford where she worked on applications of deep learning to genomics with Anshul Kundaje and computer vision applied to medical imaging with Sebastian Thrun. Noor has spoken internationally about her work at the intersection of technology and medicine at events like Milken's Global Conference, WebSummit, and Kaiser Permanente's Executive Leadership Summit. Her work has been covered by The Washington Post, Forbes, TechCrunch, among other outlets. Noor is also a recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, a grant program spawned by Paypal founder and Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, supporting breakthrough technology companies. Noor earned her M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website, or email her at noorsiddiqui@orchidhealth.com. Staff
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| 07 Jul 2021 | Statistics Intuitions and Social Science Reproducibility (with Stuart Buck) | 01:13:06 | |
Read the full transcript here. How should math be taught in primary and secondary schools? How much is science denialism caused by statistics illiteracy or lack of statistical intuitions? What do p-values actually mean? Under what conditions should null results be published? What are some of the less well-known factors that may be contributing to the social science reproducibility crisis? Stuart Buck was Vice President of Arnold Ventures (a $2 billion philanthropy) for nine years and led its nationally-renowned work on improving research quality and reproducibility. He has advised DARPA, IARPA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the GAO on rigorous research, and he was recently asked by Nature to publish a commentary on reproducibility. You can find more about him at stuartbuck.com, follow him on Twitter at @stuartbuck1, or email him at stuartbuck@gmail.com. Staff
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| 11 Jul 2021 | Risk-Driven Development and Decentralization (with Satvik Beri) | 01:16:49 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is risk-driven development? How should we weigh advice, best practices, and common sense in a domain? What makes some feedback loops better than others? What's the best way to take System 2 knowledge and convert it to System 1 intuition? What are forward-chaining and backward-chaining? When is it best to use one over the other? What are the advantages and disadvantages of centralization and decentralization? Satvik Beri is a cofounder and head of Data Science at Temple Capital, a quantitative hedge fund specializing in cryptocurrency. He is a big believer in the theory of constraints, and he has a background helping companies find and eliminate major development bottlenecks. Some of his interests include machine learning, functional programming, and mentorship. You can reach him at satvik.beri@gmail.com. Staff
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| 15 Jul 2021 | How can we save the world? (with Toby Ord) | 01:06:22 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "the precipice"? Which kinds of risks (natural or technological) pose the greatest threats to humanity specifically or to life on Earth generally in the near future? What other kinds of existential risks exist beyond mere extinction? What are the differences between catastrophic risks and existential risks? How serious is the threat of climate change on an existential scale? What are the most promising lines of research into the mitigation of existential risks? How should funds be distributed to various projects or organizations working on this front? What would a world with existential security look like? What is differential technological development? What is longtermism? Why should we care about what happens in the very far future? Toby Ord is a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University. His work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity. His current research is on the longterm future of humanity and the risks which threaten to destroy our entire potential. His new book, The Precipice, argues that safeguarding our future is among the most pressing and neglected issues we face. You can find him on Twitter at @tobyordoxford. Staff
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| 18 Jul 2021 | Heaven and hell on earth: a trip to the limits of human consciousness (with Anthony David Adams) | 01:49:04 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "metaphysical geometry"? What do we get out of surrendering to the idea of death? Why do some people find the sensation of intense fear to be pleasurable? Is psychosis valuable? Are all mental states valuable? Why are altered states of consciousness typically socially unacceptable, and why should we move towards accepting them? Could oxytocin be used as a less risky alternative to MDMA in therapeutic contexts? Anthony David Adams is a visionary, inventor, activist, artist, entrepreneur, and the transformational coach / trusted advisor to the founders of the worlds greatest organizations and their teams. He's known for his capacity to support the world's most powerful leaders in doing deep inner and outer work. He holds a BA in Psychology from Edinboro University and an MS in Urban Planning from Wisconsin. As an activist, he's one of the country's leading voices on psychedelics and mental health reform — recently becoming the first person to hold space for an "underground" MDMA therapy session on national television. You'll find him in Brooklyn's Prospect Park or Presque Isle's Beach 11 playing Ultimate Frisbee and online at AnthonyDavidAdams.com, BioMythic.com, and FoundersHike.com; you can follow him on Instagram (@anthonydavidadams) or Facebook (@anthonydavidadams); or you can email him at a@175g.com. Staff
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| 21 Jul 2021 | Dances with robots (with Catie Cuan) | 01:07:50 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is a choreographic interface? Is dance for everyone? What is dance for? What can dancers learn from roboticists, and what can roboticists learn from dancers? What are some of the practical difficulties one encounters when programming a robot to dance? Why do robots break or fail so often? What are the pros and cons of using virtual reality to train or test robots? Why don't we see more robots in everyday life? What are some everyday robotics applications coming up on the horizon? Are humans still needed in the robot training process? Can robots create art? Catie Cuan is a dancer, choreographer, and researcher. Catie is currently a PhD Candidate in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford University, where she recently completed a Master's of Science in Mechanical Engineering in Spring, 2020. Her artistic and research work focuses on dance and robotics. She is a 2018 TED Resident, 2018 ThoughtWorks Arts Resident, and the 2017-2018 Artist-in-Residence at the Robotics, Automation, and Dance Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. You can find Catie on Instagram at @itscatie and on her website, catiecuan.com. Staff
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| 25 Jul 2021 | Exploring your shadow and healing your traumas (with Aurora Quinn-Elmore) | 01:11:46 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is metamodernism? How does metamodernism relate to spiral dynamics? What does it look like to apply a metamodern approach to large-scale problems? What are shadow traits, and what is shadow projection? What do our reactions about others' behavior tell us about ourselves? What's going on psychologically and physiologically when we relive past traumas? What dosages of psychedelics are most effective in a therapeutic context? How soon will psychedelic substances likely be decriminalized or legalized at the state and/or federal level in the United States? How can we enter into blissful, ecstatic, intense, or other less common psychological states without drugs or alcohol? What are the pros and cons of (especially intergenerational) co-living? Aurora Quinn-Elmore is on a mission to understand "what's going on, and what should we do about it?" As a labor of love, she executive produced and published an audiobook version of Hanzi Freinacht's The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics. Professionally, she is on a mission to expand legal access and to speed adoption of psychedelic therapies shaped by the wisdom and insights of the deeply rooted psychedelic guide community. She also leads the SoulSupport team at SoulPlay, which is a substance-free festival focused on ecstatic dance, contact improv, and tantric connection games. She helped form and lives in a beautiful intentional community of 12 "hackers, hipsters, and hippies" in Berkeley, California, who use the microcovid.org tool to manage covid risk in a household of diverse needs. Feel free to reach out to Aurora on Facebook at @aurora.q.elmore. Staff
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| 29 Jul 2021 | The secrets of effective learning (with Andy Matuschak) | 01:20:59 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we accelerate learning? Is spaced repetition the best way to absorb information over the long term? Do we always read non-fiction works with the goal of learning? What are some less common but perhaps more valuable types of information that can be put on flash cards? What sorts of things are worth remembering anyway? Why is it important to commit some ideas to memory when so much information is easily findable on the internet? What benefits are derived from being involved in all stages of a project pipeline from concept to execution (as opposed to being involved only in one part, like the research phase)? Why should more researchers be involved in para-academic projects? Where can one find funding for para-academic research? Andy Matuschak invents tools that expand what people can think and do. His current research focuses on a new written medium which makes it much easier to remember what you read. In previous roles, Andy led R&D at Khan Academy and helped build iOS at Apple. You can read more about his work at andymatuschak.org and follow him on Twitter at @andy_matuschak. Staff
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| 04 Aug 2021 | How do you leverage your limitations? (with Oliver Burkeman) | 01:01:29 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we leverage our own limitations? Why does converting the average human lifespan from years to other units (like weeks) give us such a shock? What are the most useful kinds of reactions to contemplating our own mortality? What causes our feeling that time speeds up as we age? What is the "importance trap"? How should we handle the frustration or disappointment caused by our inability to do everything we want or need to do? Why is patience important in the world today? What information sets are available to us in various communication media? Is there — and should there be — a disconnect between the "meatspace" world and the internet world? Which kinds of self-help advice are actually useful? Oliver Burkeman's new book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, published in the US on August 10, 2021. He is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and he wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology, productivity, and self-help culture for The Guardian newspaper called "This Column Will Change Your Life." His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and New Philosopher magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can pre-order Four Thousand Weeks and sign up for Oliver's email newsletter "The Imperfectionist" at oliverburkeman.com or find him on Twitter at @oliverburkeman. Staff
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| 11 Aug 2021 | Utopia on earth and morality without guilt (with Joe Carlsmith) | 01:17:08 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are some of the challenges of defining utopia? What should a utopia look like? What are concrete versus sublime utopias? What are some of the failure modes related to various conceptions of utopia? Is it really that hard to create a shared, positive vision of the future? What is the value (or disvalue) of creating new people, especially in relation to the utopic or dystopic state of the world? What is "whole-hearted morality" versus "morality-as-taxes"? How can we encourage people to be more moral without harming them psychologically (e.g., by loading them down with guilt)? Which sorts of worldview changes are reversible? Where does clinging fit into the constellation of concepts like valuing, caring, envying, etc.? How does non-attachment differ from indifference? Is clinging always bad? Is philosophy making tangible progress as a field? Is philosophy's primary function to show us how our questions are confused rather than to give us direct answers to our questions? Has philosophy given us a clearer picture of what consciousness is or isn't? Joe Carlsmith is a research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on risks to humanity's long-term future. He has a BPhil from Oxford and a BA from Yale, both in philosophy. His website is josephcarlsmith.com, his blog is handsandcities.com, and his Twitter handle is @jkcarlsmith. Staff
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| 19 Aug 2021 | Why do civilizations collapse? And is ours next? (with Samo Burja) | 01:29:13 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become targets? Which destructive factors are particularly salient to modern human civilization? Why is there such a disconnect between our intuition that progress is inevitable and our knowledge that virtually all civilizations have collapsed in the past? In other words, what makes us think that we'll succeed where others have failed? How does a functional social institution differ from a failing one? What is the "great founder" theory? Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society; a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation; and a senior research fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. You can find him on Twitter at @samoburja, on YouTube at @samoburja, or on his website, samoburja.com. Staff
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| 21 Aug 2021 | How to hack your own brain (with Elizabeth Ricker) | 01:18:25 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why should we be doing more experiments on our own lives? How should we approach and get started with self-experimentation? Why are such varying dietary changes able to improve people's well-being? What are some measures and interventions for improving executive function, memory and learning, emotional self-regulation, and creativity? Do brain games actually make you smarter? What are some promising nootropics? Should people use neurostimulation and/or neurofeedback devices at home? What sorts of skills can be trained through video games? When is blue light useful? Elizabeth Ricker is the author of Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done (Little, Brown Spark / Hachette). She's the founder of Neuroeducate, a citizen DIY neuroscience and neurohacking organization, and Ricker Labs, a consultancy that helps organizations unlock mental performance. Ricker's clients have included Silicon Valley venture capital firms, technology startups, schools, and the Fortune 500. Her work has been featured on public broadcast TV, in books, in the popular press, and she's given talks in the US and abroad. Ricker's degrees are from MIT (Brain & Cognitive Science) and Harvard (Mind, Brain, & Education). Her website is ericker.com and her username is @eliricker on Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Staff
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| 28 Aug 2021 | How to communicate better with the people in your life (with Sara Ness) | 01:26:39 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are the "relating" languages? What strategies do we use when interacting with each other under various conditions? How does one formulate a new taxonomy in a field? What information can we glean from our own emotional and physical reactions? What is authenticity? What are the strengths and weaknesses of various personality typologies? Sara Ness is a facilitator, teacher, and community-builder who is internationally known for popularizing the field of Authentic Relating. Among other things, she co-founded and ran two of the longest-running AR communities in the world, compiled the source text for Authentic Relating, and built an online platform for AR and Circling practice that has run events for more than 1,200 consecutive days. Sara has worked with tens of thousands of students in sectors from Google to Mindvalley to Burning Man, teaching authentic leadership and social health. Her passion is in understanding how people can work together to create fulfilling groups that balance belonging, productivity, and self-expression. You can email her at sara@authrev.com or learn more on her website, authrev.org. Staff
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| 02 Sep 2021 | How broken is social science? (with Matt Grossman) | 01:05:24 | |
Read the full transcript here. What makes studying humans harder than studying other parts of the universe? Is social science currently improving its rigor, relevance, and self-reflection? Is it improving its predictive power over time? Why have sample sizes historically been so small in social science studies? Is social science actually able to accumulate knowledge? Have social scientists been able to move the "needle" on real-world problems like vaccine adoption? Is social science becoming more diverse? Specifically, does social science have a political bias? Are universities in crisis? Do the incentive structures in universities make them difficult or even impossible to reform? Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and a Contributor at FiveThirtyEight. He has published analysis in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico, and hosts the Science of Politics podcast. He is the author or co-author of How Social Science Got Better, Asymmetric Politics, Red State Blues, The Not-So-Special Interests, Artists of the Possible, and Campaigns & Elections, as well as dozens of journal articles. You can find more about him on his website. Staff
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| 08 Sep 2021 | Why does psychotherapy work (when it works at all)? (with Scott Miller) | 01:15:31 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we make psychotherapy more effective? How much confidence should psychotherapists have in the efficacy of their methods? How does deliberate practice differ from mere repetition? How can we overcome confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and other blind spots in our own fields of expertise? What are the most significant predictors of positive outcome achievement for clients in psychotherapy? When a patient has a physical ailment, doctors gather data, diagnose the ailment, and prescribe a particular treatment; but to what extent is psychotherapy similar to that model? To what extent do psychological models reflect the culture in which they're created? Has psychotherapy improved its efficacy over the course of its existence? When the therapeutic relationship seems less than optimal or even difficult, how long should clients stick with a therapist before switching to a different one? What are some meta-analyzers getting wrong when they compare treatment methods? Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. is the founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence, an international consortium of clinicians, researchers, and educators dedicated to promoting excellence in behavioral health services. Dr. Miller conducts workshops and training in the United States and abroad, helping hundreds of agencies and organizations, both public and private, to achieve superior results. He is one of a handful of invited faculty whose work, thinking, and research is featured at the prestigious Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference. Email him at info@scottdmiller.com or learn more at scottdmiller.com. Staff
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| 15 Sep 2021 | How to use your career to have a large impact (with Ben Todd) | 01:27:37 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is 80,000 Hours, and why is it so important? Does doing the most good in the world require being completely selfless and altruistic? What are the career factors that contribute to impactfulness? How should people choose among the various problem areas on which they could work? What sorts of long-term AI outcomes are possible (besides merely apocalyptic scenarios), and why is it so important to get AI right? How much should we value future generations? How much should we be worried about catastrophic and/or existential risks? Has the 80,000 Hours organizing shifted its emphasis over time to longer-term causes? How many resources should we devote to meta-research into discovering and rating the relative importance of various problems? How important is personal fit in considering a career? Ben Todd is the CEO and cofounder of 80,000 Hours, a non-profit that has reached millions of people and helped 1000+ people find careers tackling the world's most pressing problems. He helped to start the effective altruism movement in Oxford in 2011. He's the author of the 80,000 Hours Career Guide and Key Ideas series. Find out more about Ben at benjamintodd.org. Staff
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| 23 Sep 2021 | Beyond cognitive biases: improving judgment by reducing noise (with Daniel Kahneman) | 01:15:19 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we apply the theory of measurement accuracy to human judgments? How can cognitive biases affect both the bias term and the noise term in measurement error? How much noise should we expect in judgments of various kinds? Is there reason to think that machines will eventually make better decisions than humans in all domains? How does machine decision-making differ (if at all) from human decision-making? In what domains should we work to reduce variance in decision-making? If machines learn use human decisions as training data, then to what extent will human biases become "baked into" machine decisions? And can such biases be compensated for? Are there any domains where human judgment will always be preferable to machine judgment? What does the "fragile families" study tell us about the limits of predicting life outcomes? What does good decision "hygiene" look like? Why do people focus more on bias than noise when trying to reduce error? To what extent can people improve their decision-making abilities? How can we recognize good ideas when we have them? Humans aren't fully rational, but are they irrational? Daniel Kahneman is Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Kahneman has held the position of professor of psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1970-1978), the University of British Columbia (1978-1986), and the University of California, Berkeley (1986-1994). He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Econometric Society. He has been the recipient of many awards, among them the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (1982) and the Grawemeyer Prize (2002), both jointly with Amos Tversky, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (1995), the Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology (1995), the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2002), the Lifetime Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (2007), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013). He holds honorary degrees from numerous universities. Find out more about him here. Here's the link to the Thought Saver deck that accompanies this episode: https://app.thoughtsaver.com/embed/JGXcbe19e1?start=1&end=17 Staff
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| 30 Sep 2021 | An interview with an A.I. (with GPT-3 and Jeremy Nixon) | 01:53:55 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is machine learning? What are neural networks? How can humans interpret the meaning or functionality of the various layers of a neural network? What is a transformer, and how does it build on the idea of a neural network? Does a transformer have a conceptual advantage over neural nets, or is a transformer basically the equivalent of neural nets plus a lot of compute power? Why have we started hearing so much about neural nets in just the last few years even though they've existed conceptually for many decades? What kind of ML model is GPT-3? What learning sub-tasks are encapsulated in the process of learning how to autocomplete text? What is "few-shot" learning? What is the difference between GPT-2 and GPT-3? How big of a deal is GPT-3? Right now, GPT-3's responses are not guaranteed to contain true statements; is there a way to train future GPT or similar models to say only true things (or to indicate levels of confidence in the truthfulness of its statements)? Should people whose jobs revolve around writing or summarizing text be worried about being replaced by GPT-3? What are the relevant copyright issues related to text generation models? A website's "robots.txt" file or a "noindex" HTML attribute in its pages' meta tags tells web crawlers which content they can and cannot access; could a similar solution exist for writers, programmers, and others who want to limit or prevent their text from being used as training data for models like GPT-3? What are some of the scarier features of text generation models? What does the creation of models like GPT-3 tell us (if anything) about how and when we might create artificial general intelligence? Learn more about GPT-3 here. And learn more about Jeremy Nixon and listen to his episode here. Further reading
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| 07 Oct 2021 | The art of being a creative person (with Georgia Shreve) | 00:57:42 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is positive psychology? What is the PERMA model? From a creativity standpoint, is there a connection between music and writing? In various artistic fields, how hard is it to be creative without first achieving some level of technical mastery? How can one hone the skill of creativity? How useful is optimism for achieving happiness? What are the different sources from which humans derive pleasure? To what extent is western culture conscious of ageism? What does positive psychology have to say about interpersonal relationships? What is the value and purpose of extended education generally and degrees specifically? What is wisdom? Georgia Shreve is a composer, fiction writer, playwright, and poet. She holds degrees from Stanford, Brown, Columbia, and PENN. Her poetry and fiction have been published in magazines such as the New Yorker, New Republic, and New Criterion, and her short story, "The Countess of M-", won the Stanford Magazine Fiction award. Staff
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| 13 Oct 2021 | Major and minor scales of consciousness (with Andrés Gomez Emilsson) | 01:18:14 | |
Read the full transcript here. Should pleasure and pain be measured on logarithmic scales? How might such a scale affect utilitarian calculations? How do harmonic energy waves in the brain correspond to states of (or intensities of) consciousness? What sorts of conclusions can we draw about brain states given the resolutions and sampling rates of tools like fMRI, EEG, and MEG? What is the symmetry theory of homeostatic regulation, and how does it connect to pleasure and pain? Are uncomfortable or confused mental states computationally useful to us? To what extent can the concepts of musical consonance and dissonance map onto energy states in the brain? Andrés Gomez Emilsson has a Master's Degree in Psychology with an emphasis in computational models from Stanford and a professional background in graph theory, statistics, and affective science. Andrés was also the co-founder of the Stanford Transhumanist Association and first place winner of the Norway Math Olympiad. His work at QRI ranges from algorithm design, to psychedelic theory, to neurotechnology development, to mapping and studying the computational properties of consciousness. Andrés blogs at qualiacomputing.com. Staff
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| 24 Oct 2021 | How to measure impact, and why we may have all been doing it wrong (with Michael Plant) | 01:10:24 | |
Read the full transcript here. Researchers in the Effective Altruism movement often view their work through a utilitarian lens, so why haven't they traditionally paid much attention to the psychological research into subjective wellbeing (i.e., people's self-reported levels of happiness, life satisfaction, feelings of purpose and meaning in life, etc.)? Are such subjective measures reliable and accurate? Or rather, which such measures are the most reliable and accurate? What are the pros and cons of using QALYs and DALYs to quantify wellbeing? Why is there sometimes a disconnect between the projected level of subjective wellbeing of a health condition and its actual level (e.g., some people can learn to manage and cope with "major" diseases, but some people with "minor" conditions like depression or anxiety might be in a constant state of agony)? What are some new and promising approaches to quantifying wellbeing? The EA movement typically uses the criteria of scale, neglectedness, and tractability for prioritizing cause areas; is that framework still relevant and useful? How do those criteria apply on a personal level? And how do those criteria taken together differ conceptually from cost-effectiveness? How effective are psychological interventions at improving subjective wellbeing? How well do such interventions work in different cultures? How can subjective wellbeing measures be improved? How can philosophers help us do good better? Michael Plant is the Founder and Director of the Happier Lives Institute, a non-profit research institute that searches for the most cost-effective ways to increase global well-being. Michael is also a Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre, Oxford. He has a PhD in Philosophy from Oxford, and his thesis, entitled Doing Good Badly? Philosophical Issues Related to Effective Altruism, was supervised by Peter Singer and Hilary Greaves. Staff
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| 28 Oct 2021 | Clearer paths and sharper ideas (with Lynette Bye) | 01:00:31 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are "forward-chaining" and "backward-chaining", and how do they connect with theory of change? What sorts of mental habits and heuristics prevent you from brainstorming ideas effectively? How can you harness feedback effectively to sharpen your ideas? From whom should you solicit feedback? How can you view your own products with fresh eyes? What are some common struggles people encounter when starting or changing careers, and how can they be overcome? Why are small experiments so under-used? How can we construct a sustainable work life? What are the best ways to rest and recover from overwork and burnout? Lynette Bye is a productivity coach who works with effective altruists. Before that, she studied the psychology of self-control at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. You can find out more and read her blog at lynettebye.com. Staff
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| 03 Nov 2021 | What causes progress? And how can we stop it from slowing? (with Jason Crawford) | 01:26:04 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is progress? How do we (and should we) measure progress? What are the most important questions to ask in progress studies? What are the factors that lead to progress? Why has large-scale progress taken so long (i.e., why did we not see much progress until the Industrial Revolution)? Why did industrial revolution, scientific revolution, and democratic revolution all seem to start within a relatively short period of time of each other? How can we prevent progress from slowing down, stopping, or even reversing? What factors have contributed to the slowing of progress in the last 50 years? What's the state of progress in nuclear energy? What is the history of attitudes towards progress? And why is it important for people to believe that progress is good? Jason Crawford is the founder of The Roots of Progress, where he writes and speaks about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. Previously, he spent 18 years as a software engineer, engineering manager, and startup founder. Follow him on Twitter at @jasoncrawford. Staff
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| 11 Nov 2021 | When is suffering good? (with Paul Bloom) | 01:25:55 | |
Read the full transcript here. When (if ever) can suffering be good? Is there an optimal ratio of pleasure to pain? What is motivational pluralism? Can large, positive incentives be coercive? (For example, is it coercive to offer to pay someone enormous amounts of money to do something relatively benign or even painful or immoral?) How can moving from making judgments about a person's actions to making judgments about their character solve certain moral puzzles? Why do we sometimes make seemingly irrational judgments about the relative badness of certain actions? How does the level of controversy around an action factor into how much we publicly disapprove of it? What are the differences between compassion and empathy? Is antisocial personality disorder (AKA psychopathy or sociopathy) defined only by a lack of empathy? How have humans evolved (or not) to detect and mitigate the effects of others who feel no remorse? Is altruism especially vulnerable to remorseless people? What are the differences between narcissists and sociopaths? Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of six books, including his most recent, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. Find more about him at paulbloom.net, or follow him on Twitter at @paulbloomatyale. Further reading
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| 17 Nov 2021 | To be successful, should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? (with Anna Paley) | 01:13:02 | |
Read the full transcript here. To increase our chances of success (in whatever domain and using definition of success), should we focus on boosting our strengths or shoring up our weaknesses? Are we harsher in our critiques of ourselves than in our critiques of others? What should an ideal inner monologue be like? What are some useful taxonomies of pain? Are there times when irrational, magical, emotionally-driven, and/or delusional types of thinking are useful? Anna Paley is insatiably curious about how best to live our lives. She is a behavioral scientist and marketing professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She received her PhD from New York University, Stern School of Business in 2017. You can reach her at a.paley@tilburguniversity.edu. Staff
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| 24 Nov 2021 | What does humanity need to survive after a global catastrophe? (with David Denkenberger) | 00:56:18 | |
Read the full transcript here. What kinds of catastrophic risks could drastically impact global food supply or large-scale electricity supply? What kinds of strategies could help mitigate or recover from such outcomes? How can we plan for and incentivize cooperation in catastrophic scenarios? How can catastrophic and existential risks be communicated more effectively to the average person? What factors cause people to cooperate or not in disaster scenarios? Where should we be spending resources right now to prepare for catastrophe? Why does it seem that governments are largely uninterested in these questions? Dr. David Denkenberger (also known as 3D) received his master's from Princeton in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in Building Systems (dissertation on his patented heat exchanger). He is an assistant professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks in Mechanical Engineering. He cofounded and directs the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) and donates half his income to it. He received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, is a Penn State distinguished alumnus, and is a registered professional engineer. He has 73 peer reviewed publications and is the third most prolific author in the existential and global catastrophic risk field. His work has been featured in more than 25 countries in over 200 articles, including articles in Science. Staff
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| 01 Dec 2021 | The pre/trans fallacy, and why you should learn the skill of coaching (with Eben Pagan) | 01:23:33 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is the vertical conception of cognitive development? Do developmental stages always occur in a predictable order? To what extent are adult humans able to continue their cognitive development? Is it better to be a specialist or a generalist? What is the "pre/trans" fallacy? What is the importance of coaching as a meta-skill? What sorts of questions precipitate insights and/or clarifications of values? Eben Pagan is a well-known entrepreneur, teacher, and technology investor. He's launched and invested in many companies, selling over $100 million in products and services in the process. Staff
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| 08 Dec 2021 | Freezing to (not) death: cryonics and the quest for immortality (with Max Marty) | 01:34:22 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is cryonics? And how does it work? What do we know right now about reversing death? And what would we have to learn to make resurrection from a cryogenically frozen state feasible? How much does cryonics cost? What incentives would future people have for reviving a cryo-frozen person? How likely is it that a cryo-frozen person will be brought back in the future? Why do people (even pro-cryonics people) "cryoprastinate" and put off considering cryonics for a later time? What sorts of risks are involved in being frozen and later revived? What philosophical and ethical issues are at stake with cryonics? Would a revived person be able to integrate into a future society? Why is there stigma around cryonics in some cultures? Max Marty is an entrepreneur and futurist who lived and worked in the Bay Area for 10 years. He's now in Austin and has been working to build the Cryonics community, including co-hosting the Cryonics Underground podcast and running the largest Cryonics discord community: The Cryosphere. He looks forward to getting back into startups in the future, this time in biotech. Further reading
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| 15 Dec 2021 | Tyler's three laws and twelve rules (with Tyler Cowen) | 00:56:44 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why might it be the case that "all propositions about real interest rates are wrong"? What, if anything, are most economists wrong about? Does political correctness affect what economists are willing to write about? What are the biggest open questions in economics right now? Is there too much math in economics? How has the loss of the assumption that humans are perfectly rational agents shaped economics? Is Tyler's worldview unusual? Should people hold opinions (even loosely) on topics about which they're relatively ignorant? Why is there "something wrong with everything" (according to Cowen's First Law)? How can we learn how to learn from those who offend us? What does it mean to be a mentor? What do we know and not know about success? What is lookism? Why is raising someone else's aspirations a high-return activity? Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. Read more at his website, tylercowen.com. Staff
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| 22 Dec 2021 | The clash between social justice and anti-wokeness (with Amber Dawn and Holly Elmore) | 02:18:55 | |
Is it okay for anyone to have opinions about marginalized communities even if they're not a part of those communities? Do people in marginalized groups have special knowledge (especially tacit knowledge) about their groups that can't be known or experienced from the outside? To what extent can we know and empathize with others' experiences regardless of differences in race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, etc.? Do oppression and discrimination tend to be caused more by active bigotry or by mere lack of care and awareness? What information (if any) does intersectionality fail to capture about people? Is describing someone intersectionally an end in itself, or is it just a way of correcting (or over-correcting) for the suppression of marginalized voices? Should ideas be discussed absent their context or implications (see: decoupling norms vs. contextualizing norms)? To what extent should we focus on individuals versus groups when attempting to fix inequities? Are individuals or groups responsible for redressing the atrocities of their ancestors? Should people be "cancelled" for their views (including their past views, even if their current views are different)? To what extent is the shifting of moral ground around social justice issues unpredictable and/or disorienting? How can democratic societies balance the need to debate difficult ideas with the risk of giving reprehensible ideas a platform? Should rules about offensiveness be enforced from the top down (e.g., from a government, a school administration, a company's board of directors, or even parents)? Is offense only "in the eye of the beholder"? Amber Dawn is an itinerant UChicago PhD student working on Plato and Lucretius. She is interested in philosophy, emotions, mental health and therapy, effective altruism, ethics, gender, sex, anarchism, and social justice. You can find more about Amber on Facebook, Twitter, or Medium, or you can email her at contemplatonist@gmail.com. Holly Elmore is an effective altruist with a background in evolutionary biology. After organizing EA groups at Harvard throughout her PhD, she left academia and conducts EA-style wild animal welfare research. She witnessed the rise of wokism from within American universities, and has followed developments in social justice culture both as an adversary and an interested amateur sociologist. You can find more about her at her blog. Amber and Holly would like for us to remind you that the views they express in this conversation are their own and do not reflect the views held by their employers. Staff
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| 05 Jan 2022 | Behind the scenes of the online dating world (with Tom Quisel) | 01:20:51 | |
Read the full transcript here. How do men and women differ in their approach to online dating? How do online dating services deal with the fact that men send many times more messages to women than women send to men? How can online dating services' recommendation algorithms avoid merely recommending the most attractive people over and over to everyone? To what extent do users of such services agree about what makes a person attractive? How do transactions and interactions on these platforms shape the way users pursue short-term and/or long-term relationships? What surprising effects emerge in aggregate as a result of these transactions? How well do people really know themselves? How well do they know what kind of relationship partners would actually make them happy? How does gay male online dating (especially on Grindr) differ from heterosexual online dating? What makes for effective management and/or leadership? Is anger a useful tool for managers? How should managers weight the importance of various hiring tools (e.g., résumés, interviews, work samples, personality tests, contract periods, etc.)? What are some tools for designing highly effective self-experiments? Is there alien life in the universe? Should we be trying to reach out to aliens? Tom Quisel is the CTO at Grindr, where he practices servant leadership and works to build a culture that values diversity, collaboration, ownership, and quality craft. He's passionate about making a positive impact on the world and is an online dating veteran with 9 years of experience in the industry, including 2.5 years as OkCupid's CTO. He has a BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon, with a background in software engineering, distributed systems, data science, and machine learning. Tom lives in Santa Barbara and loves to mountain bike, explore philosophy with friends, and pursue life-long learning. Staff
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| 12 Jan 2022 | Are you a wamb or a nerd? (with Tom Chivers) | 00:55:37 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is a "wamb"? What are the differences between wambs and nerds? When is it appropriate (or not) to decouple concepts from their context? What are some common characteristics of miscommunications between journalists and writers / thinkers in the EA and Rationalist communities? What are "crony" beliefs? How can you approach discussions of controversial topics without immediately getting labelled as being on one team or another? What sorts of quirks do members of the EA and Rationalist communities typically exhibit in social contexts? Tom is a freelance science writer and the science editor at UnHerd.com. He has twice been awarded a Royal Statistical Society "statistical excellence in journalism" prize, in 2018 and 2020, and was declared the science writer of the year by the Association of British Science Writers in 2021. His first book, The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who are Trying to Solve Humanity's Future (originally titled The AI Does Not Hate You), was declared one of the Times's science books of 2019. He worked for seven years at the Telegraph and three years at BuzzFeed before going freelance in 2018, and was once described by Sir Terry Pratchett as "far too nice to be a journalist". Find out more about Tom on Twitter, UnHerd, and tomchivers.com. Staff
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| 19 Jan 2022 | How many minds do you have? (with Kaj Sotala) | 01:27:36 | |
Read the full transcript here. What are the advantages of viewing the mind through the multi-agent model as opposed to (say) the rational / optimizing agent model? What is the "global workspace" theory of consciousness? What's going on during concentration meditation according to the global workspace theory? If our brains are composed of multiple sub-agents, then what does it mean when I say, "I believe such-and-such"? Are beliefs context-dependent (i.e., you believe P in one context and not-P in a different context)? What effects do the various therapeutic modalities and meditation practices have on our beliefs? What are the advantages of transformational therapy over other approaches? Kaj Sotala is interested in finding ways that would allow everyone to reach their fullest potential with regard to agency, inner harmony, and well-being. He believes that the upper limits on these are somewhere very high indeed. Kaj has worked as an emotion coach, software developer, and researcher focusing on the long-term consequences of advanced artificial intelligence. One of his last research projects was the Multiagent Models of Mind article series, combining perspectives from a variety of fields ranging from psychotherapy to AI and neuroscience, for better understanding how the mind works. His website is kajsotala.fi, and he also posts articles on lesswrong.com. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook or email him at kaj.sotala@gmail.com. Staff
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| 26 Jan 2022 | Can the economy grow indefinitely? (with Alyssa Vance) | 01:16:45 | |
Read the full transcript here. How is the economy like a differential equation? Can the economy grow indefinitely? Are there economic attractor states? Or are economic outcomes chaotic and/or extremely sensitive to certain variables? What should we know about progress in genetic engineering? Can you (and should you) do genetic engineering in your garage? What are some common mistakes people make when thinking about AI? Should we expect AI abilities to converge in some domains and diverge in others? Why do we sometimes collectively forget important ideas? Have we as a species grown wiser over the course of our history? How can we form high-trust communities on the internet? In the context of social media, is ease of access at cross-purposes with membership screening and/or costs, or is it possible to have both? What should we make of ephemeral communities that appear briefly, do something huge, and then disappear (like the WallStreetBets subreddit phenomenon)? What are the various types of misinformation being used in the US, Russia, China, and elsewhere? Alyssa Vance is an engineer of AI systems, a futurist, and an entrepreneur. She is currently serving as an independent consultant for a variety of organizations interested in AI. She was previously the first employee at Apprente, which developed conversational AI for the McDonald's drive-thru and was acquired by McDonald's in 2019. She was a founder of CandleCRM, MetaMed, and GetBitcoin, and served as Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association. She also hosts the Long Term World Improvement mailing list and other groups for discussing future technology. Alyssa has recently joined Twitter at @alyssamvance and can be reached via email at alyssamvance@gmail.com. Staff
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| 02 Feb 2022 | Evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings (with Jamie Woodhouse) | 01:17:27 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we encourage people to increase their critical thinking and reliance on evidence in the current information climate? What types of evidence "count" as valid, useful, or demonstrative? And what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of those types? Could someone reasonably come to believe just about anything, provided that they live through very specific sets of experiences? What does it mean to have a "naturalistic" epistemology? How does a philosophical disorder differ from a moral failure? Historically speaking, where does morality come from? Is moral circle expansion always good or praiseworthy? What sorts of entities deserve moral consideration? Jamie Woodhouse works on the Sentientism worldview ("evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings") — refining the philosophy, raising awareness of the idea, and building communities and movements around it. After a quarter century in the corporate world he is a now an independent consultant, coach, and volunteer. You can follow Jamie on Twitter at @JamieWoodhouse or email him at hello@sentientism.info. Here are a few more links related to Sentientism:
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| 10 Feb 2022 | The science of addiction (with Crystal Dilworth) | 01:11:57 | |
Read the full transcript here. Why do people get addicted to cigarettes? Should people use nicotine as a stimulant (without smoking it, of course)? What percent of people have a hard time quitting smoking once they start? What genetic factors predispose a person to nicotine addiction? How addictive is alcohol relative to nicotine? Is vaping less addictive and/or less negatively impactful on cardiovascular health than smoking? How can we train scientists to be better leaders? How valuable are graduate students to their advisors, mentors, and departments in various fields? How can researchers tell better stories about the data they've collected? Why are there fewer girls and women in science? Why can educators do to encourage more girls and women to work in scientific fields? Will increasing diversity in science improve science? Dr. Crystal Dilworth is a neuroscientist, dancer/choreographer, and television host on a mission to help others better understand themselves and their world. Saturday Mornings you can find her on CBS as Mission Unstoppable's "Dr. Brain" or weekly on Voice of America as the host of VOA-Tek. Behind the camera, the Caltech-trained neuroscientist coaches both public and private organizations in how to foster meaningful communication and understanding within internal teams and externally to the public, and she loves leveraging her unconventional background in the performing arts to creatively produce large-scale public events championing science and technology. Dr. Dilworth is an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador for STEM and lives in Jakarta, Indonesia with her husband and two cats. Find her on Instagram at @PolycrystalhD. Further reading
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| 16 Feb 2022 | Fight, flight, freeze, fawn (with Sasha Raskin) | 01:16:34 | |
Read the full transcript here. When does positivity become toxic? When is it appropriate (or not) to give advice? Can depression really be healed without systemic changes? What are some ways that society at large gaslights people? Why do women sometimes not come forward after sexual assault? What is "freeze or faun"? Do men suffer as much under patriarchy as women? Sasha Raskin is the Founder of A Beautiful Mess (ABM), a mental health organization that runs corporate talks and events to combat loneliness, depression, and mental health stigma, while fostering connection, intimacy, and equality. She founded ABM to be the resource she wished she had when she was struggling the most. You can learn more about her story here. For her mental health work, she has delivered talks for platforms ranging from Venture University to The World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community; she has been named a Young Social Impact Hero by Thrive Global in partnership with Authority Magazine; and she'll be delivering a TEDx talk shortly titled, "The Other Pandemic: We Must End Mental Health Stigma Now". Sasha's contact info:
Sasha also asked us to include this in the show notes:
Further reading Staff
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| 23 Feb 2022 | Accessing pure consciousness at any moment (with Loch Kelly) | 01:35:42 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "awakening"? What is a "stateless" state? What is nonduality? Why and how do some spiritual practitioners experience a dissolution of their sense of self? Do these altered or enlightened states require thousands of hours of practice to achieve, or are they always inside us, waiting to be noticed and accessed at any time? Can these states be accessed through a variety of paths and methods? Is there a certain kind of person that does better or worse at achieving these states? Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is an award-winning author, licensed psychotherapist, and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. He is the founder of the nonprofit Effortless Mindfulness Institute and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters, and counseled family members of 9/11 victims. Loch graduated from Columbia University and received a fellowship to study in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn, and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing. Loch is dedicated to reducing suffering and supporting people to live from open-hearted awareness. He is known for his warm sense of humor and his trust that awakening is the next natural stage of development. He teaches the advanced-yet-simple nondual pointers and direct methods of Effortless Mindfulness, informed by psychology and social justice. Loch lives in upstate New York with his wife Paige and their cat Duffy. Please go to lochkelly.org/em to find more information and free practices. Staff
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| 02 Mar 2022 | Mental models that apply across disciplines (with Blas Moros) | 00:43:53 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is a mental model? What are "the three buckets"? How can Galilean relativity and alloying apply to non-science parts of life? What is the goal-gradient hypothesis? Why is it useful to know about signalling, especially in a social context? How can the concept of marginal safety apply outside of investing? More generally, why should people learn about mental models? Blas Moros is writer, thinker, and entrepreneur. He's the CEO of Frontier and the founder of Latticework. Find more about him at blas.com, or follow him on Twitter at @blasmoros. Staff
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| 09 Mar 2022 | Shovelgloves and extreme moderation (with Reinhard Engels) | 00:54:42 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is "extreme" moderation? What is the "No S" diet? What is a "shovelglove"? Why be a luddite only on the weekend? What are some better alternatives to traditional habit tracking? In the real world, Reinhard Engels is a librarian, software engineer, and father of three. But on the Internet, he's a diet, exercise, and productivity guru. His shtick is something called "Systematic Moderation": simple, common-sense, psychology-based rules for building sustainable good habits — and a touch of humour to help you laugh away the ridiculous excuses you'll come up with trying to get out of them. Find out more about Reinhard at everydaysystems.com, watch his shovelglove demonstration, or email him at reinhard.engels@gmail.com. Staff
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| 16 Mar 2022 | Why it's so hard to have confidence that charities are doing good (with Elie Hassenfeld) | 01:55:51 | |
Read the full transcript here. How does GiveWell's approach to charity differ from other charitable organizations? Why does GiveWell list such a small number of recommended charities? How does GiveWell handle the fact that different moral frameworks measure causes differently? Why has GiveWell increased its preference for health-related causes over time? How does GiveWell weight QALYs and DALYs? How much does GiveWell rely on a priori moral philosophy versus people's actual moral intuitions? Why does GiveWell have such low levels of confidence in some of its most highly-recommended charities or interventions? What should someone do if they want to be more confident that their giving is actually having a positive impact? Why do expected values usually tend to drop as more information is gathered? How does GiveWell think about second-order effects? How much good does the median charity do? Why is it so hard to determine how impactful charities are? Many charities report on the effectiveness of individual projects, but why don't more of them report on their effectiveness overall as an organization? Venture capitalists often diversify their portfolios as much as possible because they know that, even though most startups will fail, one unicorn can repay their investments many times over; so, in a similar way, why doesn't GiveWell fund as many projects as possible rather than focusing on a few high performers? Why doesn't GiveWell recommend more animal charities? Does quantification sometimes go too far? Elie Hassenfeld co-founded GiveWell in 2007 and currently serves as its CEO. He is responsible for setting GiveWell's strategic vision and has grown the organization into a leading funder in global health and poverty alleviation, directing over $500 million annually to high-impact giving opportunities. Since 2007, GiveWell has directed more than $1 billion to outstanding charities. Elie co-led the development of GiveWell's research methodology and guides the research team's agenda. He has also worked closely with donors to help them define their giving strategies and invest toward them. Prior to founding GiveWell, Elie worked in the hedge fund industry. He graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a B.A. in religion. Staff
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| 23 Mar 2022 | Why is self-compassion so hard? (with Kristin Neff) | 01:01:52 | |
Read the full transcript here. What is self-compassion? Why do people struggle so much to show themselves the same kind of compassion that they regularly show to others? How can parents find a successful middle ground between authoritativeness / harshness and permissiveness / love? Should our love for ourselves be unconditional? What's the difference between shame and guilt? What should we make of people who are neither compassionate nor cruel to themselves because they simply don't practice self-reflection? What factors during childhood lead to higher or lower self-compassion in adults? What religious, cultural, socioeconomic, or other factors contribute to differences in self-compassion? How can we still treat ourselves compassionately when we feel legitimate guilt over mistakes that have moral dimensions? Are there differences in self-compassion between men and women? What are the various components of self-compassion? How does compassion differ from related concepts like pity, sympathy, empathy, etc.? Why is it so important to us to have our feelings validated by others? Is it possible to have too much self-compassion? Do extremely antisocial people — like psychopaths or sociopaths, who typically seem not to have compassion for others — have self-compassion? Narcissists seem to "love" themselves, but is that the same as having compassion towards oneself? What are some common misconceptions about self-compassion? Kristin Neff is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion nearly twenty years ago. She has been recognized as one of the most influential researchers in psychology worldwide. She is author of the bestselling book Self-Compassion. Along with her colleague Chris Germer, she developed the Mindful Self-Compassion program, taught internationally, and co-wrote The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. Her newest book is Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. For more info, go to self-compassion.org. Further reading Staff
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| 30 Mar 2022 | What we really mean when we say that something will "probably" happen (with Walt Hickey) | 01:09:34 | |
Read the full transcript here. Graphic novels have been around for a long time, so why have graphic novel sales skyrocketed suddenly in the last year or two? Is that growth representative of a possible trend away from reading text-only books? Do animated movies and TV shows allow for greater suspension of disbelief than their live-action counterparts? Does animation make it easier for movies and TV shows to push the boundaries of what's culturally acceptable? What is "soft" power, and why is it so important? How important has America's soft power been relative to its hard power over the past century? How is America's soft power affected by Americans' own views of their country? What's lacking or misguided in the ways most people think and talk about probabilities and statistics? Is it better to report predictions with very specific probabilities (e.g., "It's 67.5% likely to rain today") or with looser, more casual probabilities (e.g., "I think it'll probably rain today")? Walt Hickey is a data journalist who founded and writes Numlock News, a daily morning newsletter about fascinating numbers buried in the news. His primary interests are in pop culture data journalism and how journalists can better integrate stats into stories. He's currently writing a book about how pop culture impacts its consumers and is the senior editor for data at Insider. He previously worked as the chief culture writer at FiveThirtyEight and has written for Marvel.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @WaltHickey and subscribe to his newsletter at NumlockNews.com.
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| 06 Apr 2022 | Volunteering to be infected with COVID — for science! (with Josh Morrison) | 01:24:52 | |
Read the full transcript here. How can we develop vaccines more quickly? What kinds of study designs are used (or could be used) during vaccine development? In pandemic situations, we need to roll out vaccines quickly; but even if we can develop and test a vaccine quickly and thoroughly, how confident can we be that there won't be long-term risks? Between ethics and pragmatics, which facet should communicators emphasize when trying to convince organizations and institutions to adopt certain vaccine development strategies? Informed consent is, of course, a hugely important requirement for using human volunteers in challenge trials; so if some people are informed, eager, and willing to volunteer their health and safety for such trials in order to aid vaccine development, then why aren't they being used more (if at all)? Since IRBs are often "all brakes and no gas", could they be given powers to accelerate research in addition to their current powers to slow or halt research? How can bioethics reviews be improved? Josh Morrison is a serial social entrepreneur and aspiring effective altruist who has founded 1Day Sooner, Waitlist Zero, and the Rikers Debate Project. His work — in the fields of clinical trials, living organ donation, and criminal justice reform — focuses on empowering particular identity groups (research participants, kidney donors, and incarcerated people) to improve decision-making processes so as to achieve impactful policy. His projects have been covered globally in outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, the Financial Times, the BBC, Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, and the South China Morning Post. His writing has been published in the Washington Post, the American Journal of Bioethics, Clinical Infectious Disease, Vaccine, Risk Analysis, Vox, STAT News, and BMJ Opinion. You can email him at josh@1daysooner.org. Staff
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| 13 Apr 2022 | Our 100th episode! (with Uri Bram and Spencer Greenberg) | 00:58:00 | |
Read the full transcript here. Is it possible to be both agreeable and skeptical in conversations? How can you give feedback and challenge people constructively without triggering their automatic self-defense mechanisms? More generally, how can you challenge people intellectually without riling them up emotionally? What skills are needed to be able to have detailed, productive conversations across a wide range of topics? How can you push through plateaus in the process of self-improvement? What are podcasts as a medium good for? Find more about Spencer through his website, spencergreenberg.com. Staff
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