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Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg — Science
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 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, economics, self-help, mental health, and technology. We focus on ideas that can be applied right now to make your life better or to help you better understand yourself and the world, aiming to teach you the best mental tools to enhance your learning, self-improvement efforts, and decision-making. • We take on important, thorny questions like: • What’s the best way to help a friend or loved one going through a difficult time? How can we make our worldviews more accurate? How can we hone the accuracy of our thinking? What are the advantages of using our “gut” to make decisions? And when should we expect careful, analytical reflection to be more effective? Why do societies sometimes collapse? And what can we do to reduce the chance that ours collapses? Why is the world today so much worse than it could be? And what can we do to make it better? What are the good and bad parts of tradition? And are there more meaningful and ethical ways of carrying out important rituals, such as honoring the dead? How can we move beyond zero-sum, adversarial negotiations and create more positive-sum interactions?

Latest Episodes:

Rethinking what it means to learn math (with Eugenia Cheng) Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What should the goals of math education be? What does it mean to "think well"? Is math real? Why are feelings of bewilderment or confusion so common in math classes but not as common in other subjects? Schools now generally offer reading and writing instruction separately — even though both are important for language use — because the skill sets they require can differ so widely; so how might math education benefit from drawing a similar distinction? What should math classes impart to students that will enable them to engage as citizens with complex or controversial issues? What does it mean to ask good questions in math? Can math teach empathy? What is category theory? Can most people learn most things if they just have the right teacher and/or educational materials?

Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, author, public speaker, columnist, concert pianist, composer, and artist. She is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and is now Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Nice, and holds a PhD in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Alongside her research in Category Theory and undergraduate teaching, her aim is to rid the world of "math phobia". Eugenia was an early pioneer of math on YouTube, and her videos have been viewed around 15 million times to date. She has also written several books, including: How to Bake Pi (2015); Beyond Infinity (2017); The Art of Logic (2018); x + y : A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender (2020); The Joy of Abstraction: A Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life (2022); Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics' Deepest Truths (2023); and two children's books: Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries and Bake Infinite Pie with x + y. She also writes the "Everyday Math" column for the Wall Street Journal and has completed mathematical art commissions for Hotel EMC2, 6018 North, the Lubeznik Center, and the Cultural Center, Chicago. She is the founder of the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art song based in Chicago. As a composer she has been commissioned by GRAMMY-nominated soprano Laura Strickling and is one of the composers for the LYNX Amplify series, setting work by autistic poets who are primarily non-speaking. Learn more about her at her website, eugeniacheng.com.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

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Values, principles, and behavior change (with Eric Zimmer) Nov 15, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What can we learn from the parable of the two wolves? What is valuism? Do we choose our own intrinsic values? How quickly do our intrinsic values change over time, if at all? How do values and principles relate to one another? Why is behavior change so hard? What conditions need to be met in order for people to change their behavior? How can people make their behavior changes more persistent and less vulnerable to life's ups and downs?

Eric Zimmer is a behavior coach with 20 years of experience, a Certified Interfaith Spiritual Director, a podcast host, and a writer who is endlessly inspired by the quest for a greater understanding of how our minds work and how we can intentionally create the lives we want to live. He has coached hundreds of people from around the world on how to make significant life changes and create habits that serve them well in achieving the goals they've set for themselves. In addition to his work as a behavior coach, he currently hosts the award-winning podcast, The One You Feed, the title of which is based on an old parable about two wolves at battle within us. Learn more about Eric and his work at oneyoufeed.net.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

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Escaping a cult: physically, mentally, and emotionally (with Daniella Mestyanek Young) Nov 08, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How do the experiences of children born into cults differ from members who join as adults? Why do some cults that grow out of western evangelical Christianity — which is notoriously obsessed with purity culture — often flip the script about sex and turn promiscuity into a virtue? How does age affect the ease with which one internalizes cult programming? To what extent do cult members approve of sexual abuses committed the name of religion? What sort of tactics do cult leaders employ to keep members from leaving? In what ways are militaries like cults? Why has the US military been so slow to fix its culture of rape and abuse of women? What are "thought-stopping" clichés? What defines a cult? What are the often unseen or less tangible consequences of leaving a cult? What sins are considered unforgivable in a cult? What are some examples of cult-like groups that don't necessarily meet every single criterion for cult-ness?

Daniella Mestyanek Young was born a third-generation member of the infamous Children of God religious cult. She grew up being trafficked around the world before escaping that life and moving to America at age 15. She put herself through high school and graduated as college valedictorian before commissioning into the US Army as an intelligence officer. She deployed twice to Afghanistan (in 2011 and 2014) and became a member of one of the Army's first Female Engagement Teams (an experiment that put women into deliberate ground combat for the first time in Army history and eventually led to the repeal of the sexist combat ban and the gender desegregation of the entire US military). She is a proud daughter of the 101st (the unit featured in Band of Brothers), a recipient of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award from President Obama, and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology at the Harvard Extension School where she focuses her research on group behavior, social norms, culture, extremism, leadership demagoguery, and cults. Learn more about her at her website, uncultureyourself.com.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

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Win-Win vs. Moloch, the many-headed monster that may consume us all (with Liv Boeree) Nov 01, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

Who's Moloch? And what do we mean when we call something "Molochian"? What does healthy competition look like? How can we avoid or extricate ourselves from Molochian scenarios? Are our instincts about fairness and unfairness usually accurate? Is it possible for today's social media giants to create products that people want to use and that are actually good for people to use? What kinds of problems could conceivably be solved by "trustless" solutions? or "high-trust" solutions? Where do you fall on the "rationality-to-woo" spectrum? When do we not want to find rational explanations for mysterious phenomena? What kinds of new rational explanations might we find if we opened our minds to more "woo"?

Liv Boeree is one of the UK’s most successful poker players, winning multiple titles during her professional career, including a European Poker Tour Championship and World Series of Poker bracelet. Originally trained in astrophysics, she now works as an educator and researcher specializing in the intersection of game theory, technology, and catastrophic risk reduction. Her main focus areas at present are the risks posed by artificial intelligence and other exponential technologies. She is also a co-founder of Raising for Effective Giving (REG), an advisory organization that uses scientific methods to identify and fundraise for the most globally impactful charitable causes. Her latest project is the newly launched Win-Win Podcast, which explores the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Follow her on Twitter at @liv_boeree.

Further reading

Icarus, a documentary about doping in sports
"Meditations on Moloch" by Scott Alexander
Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
Win-Win with Liv Boeree (podcast)

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Do technological innovations yield net gains in the long run? (with Justin Smith-Ruiu) Oct 25, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What are the limits of tech solutionism? Do technological innovations create as many problems as they solve? Or, in other words, do technological innovations improve the world on average over time? Are humans living in the 21st century actually worse off than those that lived in the 11th century? What's the difference between "art" and "content"? If image-generating AIs just produce images that are stylistic averages across all of their training data, then is it even theoretically possible for such models to create art that's edgy, avant-garde, or off the beaten path? Is cinema dead? Is literature dead? Are the humanities dying, especially in the US? And might that be a significant contributing factor to the withering of democracy in the US?

Justin Smith-Ruiu, formerly known as Justin E.H. Smith, is a writer based in Paris. He writes speculative fiction, documentary metafiction, criticism, literary non-fiction, and poetry, and also translates poetry. In 2019-2020, he was the John and Constance Birkelund Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. He is also a professor of philosophy in the department of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. Learn more about him and read his writings at www.the-hinternet.com

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

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Money, status, power, and sex in nightclubs around the world (with Ashley Mears) Oct 18, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What interesting social phenomena can be observed at nightclubs? What are "whales" hoping to achieve by spending big at nightclubs? Trying too obviously to increase social status tends to backfire; so how can people buy status without appearing to do so? What do "promoters" gain from these social interactions? How does their work differ from or overlap with sex work? How can they make money without being seen as "gold-diggers"? What ethnicities tend to comprise these nightclub groups? How do wealthy people attempt to navigate the norms of the various elite substrata which expect them both to put their wealth on display and to do so without being ostentatious or gaudy?

Ashley Mears is a professor of sociology and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Boston University, and she's the co-founder of the Ethnographic Cafe and BU's Precarity Lab. She received her BA in sociology from the University of Georgia in 2002 and her PhD in sociology at New York University in 2009. Working primarily at the intersections of economic and cultural sociology and gender, she studies how societies value people and things; she researches value and exchange in the context of labor, beauty, free stuff, elites, consumption, and social media; and she has written on theory and qualitative methods. She has held visiting positions at the University of Amsterdam and the Central European University in Budapest. In 2021-2022, she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. She currently serves on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review and Qualitative Sociology. Learn more about her at her website, ashleymears.com.

Further reading

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

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Is bad air quality slowly harming us? (with Richard Bruns) Oct 11, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How bad is the air quality in the US and around the world? What's the evidence that certain kinds of particles in the air lead to negative health outcomes? Are there differences in air quality among urban, suburban, and rural areas? And if so, then to what extent are negative health outcomes attributable to air quality rather than to (e.g.) poverty, education, or other confounding factors? What are "PM 2.5" particles? Can some particles be too small to matter? Are all particles of a certain size harmful, or only specific types of particles? Do damaging particles accumulate in the body over time? What can the average person do to reduce their exposure to unhealthy air? Opening windows in our homes can let in fresh air, but it can also let in harmful particles; so is opening windows a good idea or not? How relatively bad are trans fats and saturated fats? Does the FDA regulate drugs too much or not enough? Why do side effect labels usually list all possible side effects without any indication of how common those side effects are? What should a bureacracy be and not be? How can bureacracies train employees to follow rules and produce consistent outcomes without stifling individual initiative and creativity?

Richard Bruns is an economist who specializes in cost-benefit analysis of novel public health policy. He is currently a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is an Open-Philanthropy-funded think tank devoted to protecting the world from catastrophic biological risks. For the past few years, much of his work has been focused on how indoor air quality improvements can protect us from disease. Before that, he was an economist in the food part of the Food and Drug Administration. Feel free to email him at bruns@jhu.edu about any topic in this episode, or learn more about him at his website.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Journalism in the age of AI (with Dylan Matthews) Oct 04, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

Will large language models (LLMs) replace journalists any time soon? On what types of writing tasks do LLMs outperform humans? Have the US news media become less truth-seeking in recent decades? Or is truth-seeking behavior merely an aberration from a norm of propagandizing? How should we redistribute economic surplus from AI? Have any AI companies committed to a Windfall Clause? Instead of bothering to negotiate with us, wouldn't a superintelligent AI be able to get much more done by first wiping us all out? What are some subtler or less-well-known ways subscription models reshape incentive structures for journalists? Why is collective action so hard?

Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he cofounded Future Perfect, a section devoted to exploring ways to do good. He writes frequently about economics, philanthropy, global health, and more. You can email him at dylan@vox.com.

NOTE: This episode was recorded live at EAGxNYC!

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Experiments for enlightenment and fundamental wellbeing (with Jeffery Martin) Sep 27, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

Is enlightenment the same as being happy all the time? Or being at peace all the time? Or something else? What is "fundamental wellbeing"? What are the "locations" within fundamental wellbeing? What is "persistent non-symbolic experience"? How effective is the Finders Course? Are control groups necessary when researching enlightenment?

Jeffery Martin is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness (nonsymbolic.org) and a research professor and director of the Transformative Technology Lab (transtechlab.org). Prior to his current affiliation with Stanford University, he was Distinguished University Professor, William James Professor of Consciousness, and Dean of Research at Sofia University. He spent the last 15+ years conducting the largest international study on persistent non-symbolic experience (PNSE) — or as it's publicly known, Fundamental Wellbeing — which includes the types of consciousness commonly known as: persistent awakening, enlightenment, nonduality, the peace that passeth understanding, unitive experience, and hundreds of others. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited over 20 books and numerous other publications. Learn more about him at his website, drjefferymartin.com.

Further reading

"Effects of Two Online Positive Psychology and Meditation Programs on Persistent Self-Transcendence" by Martin et al.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

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Mothers who harm their children for attention (with Andrea Dunlop) Sep 20, 2023

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is Munchausen syndrome? How does Munchausen syndrome differ from malingering? Does Munchausen usually correlate with lying or exaggerating in other contexts (i.e., pathological lying)? What is "Munchausen by Proxy" (AKA "factitious disorder imposed on another", or FDIA)? Why are women the offenders in the overwhelming majority of cases? What are some consistent patterns of behavior exhibited by people with MBP? What is a "reality distortion field"? How do people with MBP tend to deflect requests for facts? Do such people believe their own stories? How does MBP relate to sociopathy or psychopathy? How common is MBP?

Andrea Dunlop is an author and podcaster based out of Seattle, WA with two decades of experience in book publishing. She is the author of four novels: Losing the Light (February 2016; Atria), She Regrets Nothing (February 2018; Atria), We Came Here to Forget (July 2019; Atria), and Women Are the Fiercest Creatures (March 2023; Zibby Books). Andrea is host and creator of the popular true crime investigative podcast about Munchausen by Proxy called Nobody Should Believe Me, which was a New & Noteworthy pick for Apple's Dark Side collection. Her non-fiction book on the same topic is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press. She is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by Proxy Committee and is the founder of Munchausen Support, which is dedicated to providing resources for frontline professionals, families, and survivors dealing with MBP. Learn more about her on her website, andreadunlop.net.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

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