Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
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Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Clearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, or are looking for non-BS self-improvement, then we think you'll love this podcast! Each week we invi...
Nedávné epizody
283 epizod
Do facts have an expiration date? (with Samuel Arbesman)
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What does it mean to treat facts as drafts rather than monuments? If truth is something we approach, how do we...
From prisoner to escaping inner prisons (with Shaka Senghor)
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What changes when we treat violence as a human problem rather than a demographic story? Are fear, anger, and sh...
A new paradigm for psychology research (with Slime Mold Time Mold)
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What changes when psychology stops naming traits and starts naming parts - can “entities and rules” turn fuzzy...
Beyond saving lives: happiness and doing good (with Michael Plant)
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Are we trying to maximize moment-to-moment happiness or life satisfaction? Can self-reports really guide policy...
Darwinian Demons: Climate Change and the AI Arms Race (with Kristian Rönn)
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Are existential risks from AI fundamentally different from those posed by previous technologies such as nuclear...
Seeing through cognitive traps (with Alex Edmans)
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How do we distinguish correlation from causation in organizational success? How common is it to mistake luck or...
The most important century (with Holden Karnofsky)
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Has society reached ‘peak progress’? Can we sustain the level of economic growth that technology has enabled ov...
Should we try to live forever? (with Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston)
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Why do humans live as long as they do? Since whales have literally tons more cells than humans, why don't they...
Trying to convince Spencer to be a utilitarian (with Tyler John)
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How has utilitarianism evolved from early Chinese Mohism to the formulations of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart...
A conversation with an autistic person (with Megan Neff)
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What does autism feel like from the inside? Do autistic people lack empathy? What is context insensitivity? Wha...
AI: Autonomous or controllable? Pick one (with Anthony Aguirre)
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Is AI that's both superintelligent and aligned even possible? Does increased intelligence necessarily entail de...
How much does global population decline matter? (with Dean Spears)
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What is the current global birth rate? What factors have contributed, or are currently contributing, to this ra...
Is AI going to ruin everything? (with Gabriel Alfour)
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Is AI going to ruin everything? What kind of AI-related dangers should we be most worried about? What do good i...
What listeners think Spencer's wrong about: steel-manning critiques
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What defines a cult? Is there such a thing as a good cult? Do Clearer Thinking's tools actually help people? Wh...
What do we know about psychology that matters? (with Paul Bloom)
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NOTE: The video version of this conversation is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hWNknrc23Fo
In lig...
Bringing your "A-game" to your relationships (with Annie Lalla)
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What does it mean to bring your "A-game" to relationships? What is emotional "fitness"? What forces do relation...
The rival philosophies to Stoicism that you've never heard about (with Greg Lopez)
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Do we still have a lot to learn from ancient Greco-Roman philosophies? What is telos? What is ataraxia? What is...
What can we all agree on? (with Bradley Tusk)
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In times of such extreme political polarization, where can we find common ground? Should we require disclosure...
Shamanism, witchcraft, and the power of narrative (with Manvir Singh)
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What do westerners misunderstand about "tribal" cultures? How does justice in very small communities differ fro...
Which Spencer is real? Spencer vs. his AI clone
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Can you tell which is the real Spencer and which is his AI clone? How irrational are people really? What do mos...
Too many mental health challenges and not enough psychiatrists (with Jacob Appel)
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How big is the current mental health crisis? What's causing it? What do we know about the age distribution of p...
Misinformation from all sides (with Brian Dunning)
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Why is misinformation a never-ending problem? What fraction of misinformation is intentionally manipulative? Wh...
A conversation with a rigid perfectionist who has OCPD (with Darryl Rossignol)
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What is obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and how does it compare to obsessive compulsive disor...
Simple and effective methods for helping people that nonprofits often ignore (with Kanika Bahl)
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Why do nonprofits often ignore the simplest, most obvious solutions for helping the world? Why do some problems...
How to unleash student potential in education (with Jack Despain Zhou)
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How bad are things in US education? Why does it seem that educational progress has stagnated? What parts of the...
How f***ed is psychology? (with Adam Mastroianni)
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Is the bar for what counts as new knowledge higher in psychology than in other scientific fields? Why did the f...
A conversation with a multiple-time survivor of sexual abuse
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Why might being the victim of sexual abuse increase the likelihood of being re-victimized? What warning signs,...
A story can change the world (with Elizabeth Cox)
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How important is story-telling for changing the world? What counts as a story? How closely should persuasive st...
The heavy price you'll have to pay to have a healthy relationship (with David Burns)
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What are the main causes of problems in romantic relationships? What are the behaviors and patterns that lead t...
The skills every adult human should have (with Raffi Grinberg)
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What life skills do most people fail to learn before adulthood? Why does this failure occur? What should constr...
Rethinking our assumptions about happiness (with Stephanie Harrison)
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What do most people get wrong about happiness? Why doesn't the happiness resulting from success last longer? Is...
Evidence-Based Medicine and its discontents (with Gordon Guyatt)
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How were decisions made about which treatments to trust before the advent of "evidence-based" medicine? How str...
AI, US-China relations, and lessons from the OpenAI board (with Helen Toner)
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Is it useful to vote against a majority when you might lose political or social capital for doing so? What are...
Getting a handle on your goals and big life changes (with Tee Barnett)
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What are the best things to do to help someone achieve their goals? What kind of person should see a personal c...
Avoiding major investment mistakes (with Jim O'Shaughnessy)
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What are the biggest mistakes people make when investing? What's the best thing to do with extra savings? How c...
Creating a new city from scratch (with Erick Brimen)
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What does it take to start a new city, especially one designed to be a special economic zone (SEZ)? What are th...
What's the most effective type of therapy? (with Matthew Smout)
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What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? What are the "cognitive" and "behavioral" parts of CBT? What are so...
A conversation about Borderline Personality Disorder (with Kayla Spicer)
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What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? Why is it so stigmatized relative to other mental health issues?...
Could the placebo effect be bullshit? (with Literal Banana)
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Is the placebo effect bullshit? Are "open-label" placebos just as effective as "closed-label" placebos? How do...
Making better decisions by thinking like an artist (with Elspeth Kirkman)
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What kinds of things really distort our ability to think clearly when making decisions? What is "psychological...