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Clearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, or are looking for non-BS self-improvement, then we think you'll love this podcast! Each week we invite a brilliant guest to bring four important ideas to discuss for an in-depth conversation. Topics include psychology, society, behavior change, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, math, ...
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What do we know for sure about human psychology? (with Simine Vazire)
1:21:10
1:21:10
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1:21:10
Read the full transcript here. How much progress has psychology made on the things that matter most to us? What are some psychological findings we feel pretty confident are true? How much consensus is there about the Big 5 personality traits? What are the points of disagreement about the Big 5? Are traits the best way of thinking about personality?…
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Everyone — including you! — should host more events (with Nick Gray)
1:21:09
1:21:09
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1:21:09
Why should people host more events than they do right now? Under what conditions shouldn't a person host more events? Do these suggestions apply to introverts? What's the best RSVP tool? What is "double opt-in"? What's the ideal length of time for a social event? What kinds of ice-breaker activities, if any, should hosts use? What are the primary f…
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Pattern-breaking ideas, and startups that change the world (with Mike Maples)
1:18:03
1:18:03
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1:18:03
Read the full transcript here. What mistakes do investors make when trying to predict which startups will succeed? Which matters more: a startup's team or its central idea? How do startup founders differ from other capitalists? What makes something a "pattern-breaking" idea or behavior? Are startup founders less sensitive to negative feedback than …
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Decision-making and play-testing (with Dan Epstein)
1:09:56
1:09:56
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1:09:56
Read the full transcript here. What sorts of decisions are we making without even realizing we're making them? Are people aware of their own values? Do they know how those values rank relative to each other? What are all the various parties, interests, and values that have to be addressed and balanced when making decisions in a healthcare context? …
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The path to utopia (with Nick Bostrom)
1:03:54
1:03:54
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1:03:54
Read the full transcript here. Why do there seem to be more dystopias than utopias in our collective imagination? Why is it easier to find agreement on what we don't want than on what we do want? Do we simply not know what we want? What are "solved worlds", "plastic worlds", and "vulnerable worlds"? Given today's technologies, why aren't we working…
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Physical limits and the long-term future (with Anders Sandberg)
1:44:04
1:44:04
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1:44:04
Read the full transcript here. How much energy is needed for GDP growth? Would our civilization have developed at the same rate without fossil fuels? Could we potentially do the same things we're currently doing but with significantly less energy? How different would the world look if we'd developed nuclear energy much earlier? Why can't anything g…
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Becoming a goat to avoid existential dread (with Thomas Thwaites)
1:53:29
1:53:29
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1:53:29
Read the full transcript here. How hard is it to construct a toaster from scratch? Do we in modern times individually have more knowledge than individuals living 100 or 1,000 years ago? Should corporations be thought of as a kind of emergent artificial intelligence? To what extent are corporations — and more broadly, whole economies — aligned with …
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AI apocalypticism vs. AI optimism (with Adam Russell)
1:04:48
1:04:48
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1:04:48
Read the full transcript here. What is "apocaloptimism"? Is there a middle ground between apocalypticism and optimism? What are the various camps in the AI safety and ethics debates? What's the difference between "working on AI safety" and "building safe AIs"? Can our social and technological coordination problems be solved only by AI? What is "qua…
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Should we trust papers published in top social science journals? (with Daniel Lakens)
1:41:47
1:41:47
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1:41:47
Read the full transcript here. How much should we trust social science papers in top journals? How do we know a paper is trustworthy? Do large datasets mitigate p-hacking? Why doesn't psychology as a field seem to be working towards a grand unified theory? Why aren't more psychological theories written in math? Or are other scientific fields mathem…
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Is psychology the same across cultures? (with Joseph Henrich)
1:07:53
1:07:53
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1:07:53
Read the full transcript here. What are "WEIRD" cultures? What percentage of the world's population is WEIRD? Why do WEIRD cultures tend to use analytic thinking (as opposed to the wholistic thinking used in non-WEIRD cultures)? Does school make you more intelligent or merely more knowledgeable? Do individualistic cultures tend to innovate more tha…
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Spencer on The 80,000 Hours Podcast discussing money & happiness and hype vs. value (with Rob Wiblin)
2:34:19
2:34:19
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2:34:19
Read the full transcript here. NOTE: Spencer appeared as a guest on The 80,000 Hours Podcast back in March, and this episode is our release of that recording. Thanks to the folks at The 80,000 Hours Podcast for sharing both their audio and transcript with us! Does money make people happy? What's the difference between life satisfaction and wellbein…
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Concrete actions anyone can take to help improve AI safety (with Kat Woods)
1:00:20
1:00:20
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1:00:20
Read the full transcript here. Why should we consider slowing AI development? Could we slow down AI development even if we wanted to? What is a "minimum viable x-risk"? What are some of the more plausible, less Hollywood-esque risks from AI? Even if an AI could destroy us all, why would it want to do so? What are some analogous cases where we slowe…
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What do socialism and effective altruism have in common? (with Garrison Lovely)
1:10:31
1:10:31
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1:10:31
Read the full transcript here. What does effective altruism look like from a leftist / socialist perspective? Are the far left and EA the only groups that take radical egalitarianism seriously? What are some of the points of agreement and disagreement between EA & socialism? Socialists frequently critique the excesses, harms, and failures of capita…
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