Spencer Greenberg - How do other people think?

Subversive w/Alex Kaschuta

This is the first half of our conversation. The full episode and the complete archive of Subversive episodes, including exclusive episodes and my writing, are available on Substack. You can also subscribe to the podcast sans writing on Patreon for a bit less. This is how the show is financed and grows, so I appreciate every contribution! Please subscribe at: https://www.alexkaschuta.com/ https://www.patreon.com/aksubversive

Our conversation explores the concept of worldviews as self-contained snow globes that represent specific cardinal virtues. We discuss the four common elements of every worldview: what is good, where good and bad come from, who deserves good, and how to do good. The conversation also delves into the challenges of understanding and evaluating different worldviews, the role of in-group signaling, and the importance of understanding other perspectives. We also discuss Valueism as a life philosophy based on intrinsic values and effective action to increase them, the decline of traditional religion, the search for alternative forms of community and meaning, group differences, and the extremes of the distribution, language ambiguity, and imprecision used to hide behind claims and avoid accountability - and much more.

Spencer Greenberg is the founder of ClearerThinking.org and Spark Wave and host of the Clearer Thinking podcast.

A few notes on things mentioned in our chat:

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg (podcast) - a recent episode with Sasha Chapin: https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/215/sasha-chapin-raising-our-happiness-baseline/

The Intrinsic Values Test: https://programs.clearerthinking.org/intrinsic_values_test.html

Valuism: doing what you value as a life philosophy: https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2023/02/doing-what-you-value-as-a-way-of-life-an-introduction-to-valuism/

A theory of worldviews: https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/understand-how-other-people-think-a-theory-of-worldviews

Clearer Thinking's 80 free tools on topics like critical thinking, decision-making, etc.: https://www.clearerthinking.org/tools

Oversimplified vs. Difference Deniers: https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2023/12/oversimplifiers-vs-difference-deniers-a-dynamic-regarding-group-differences-that-leads-to-rage-and-confusion/

Tails in distributions: https://x.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1795806828015837226

Precision and measurability as B.S. detectors: https://x.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1804923269092442580

Chapters

00:00 Exploring Worldviews as Self-Contained Snow Globes

01:20 The Four Elements of Every Worldview

29:09 The Decline of Traditional Religion and the Search for Meaning

30:40 Adapting Religions to Modern Ideas

31:37 The Appeal of Traditional and Hardcore Religion

32:25 Interpretations and Sects within Religions

34:38 Constant Splitting and Factionalism in Online Communities

36:05 Balancing Group Differences and Individual Assessments

40:02 Understanding Average Group Differences

41:55 The Power of Language Ambiguity and Imprecision

54:19 Recognizing and Overcoming Biases