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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:

Anti-interoperability, vendor lock-in, and high switching costs (with Cory Doctorow) Dec 07, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is interoperability? What counts as "unauthorized" access to computers or parts of computers? If the rendered design of a web page is copyrighted, then does blocking ads on that page count as copyright infringement by creating a derivative product? Does Facebook really want what's best for its users? Is Google evil? Could blockchain-based solutions provide much-needed privacy or interoperability? Why doesn't the U.S. government (for example) fight harder to prevent vendor lock-in when buying goods and services? Which tech companies, if any, should be broken up?

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. His latest novel is Attack Surface, a standalone adult sequel to Little Brother. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Separating the sinner from the sin (with Khomotso Moshikaro) Nov 30, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is a criminal label? What implications should criminal labels have (or not) for a person's future? To what extent are the long-term social effects considered as part of the sentence for a crime (e.g., not only considering sending a person to prison for 5 years but also considering how likely they are to be shunned socially or to be prevented from working certain kinds of jobs after their release)? How does the concept of dignity differ from the concept of rights? Are human rights infinitely valuable? Can a society that takes dignity seriously also allow for contempt? Under what conditions are rights forfeited by a person who commits a crime? And which rights are forfeited, and why? (For example, should the punishments for theft include a loss of the right to vote? Does the amount or kind of theft matter? Does it matter who the victims are, or how many victims there are?) For what kinds of crimes can we draw conclusions about a person's character? How much should we focus on punishment versus rehabilitation? How do honor, mercy, redemption, dignity, and contempt all relate to one another? How do we know when someone is truly reformed?

Khomotso is a South African and British trained lawyer who completed graduate work at Oxford and is now pursuing his PhD at Cambridge. His research focuses on the morality of criminal punishment, specifically the nature, ontology, and limits of criminal labelling. He currently teaches at the University of Cape Town and reads too much Roman politics and history in the late Republic and Early Imperial period in his spare time.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

The FTX catastrophe (with Byrne Hobart, Vipul Naik, Maomao Hu, Marcus Abramovich, and Ozzie Gooen) Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here. What the heck happened with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried? Were there early warning signs that most people failed to notice? What could've been done differently, and by whom? What effects will this have on the EA movement going forward? Timestamps: 00:01:37 — Intro & timeline 00:51:48 — Byrne Hobart 01:39:52 — Vipul Naik 02:18:35 — Maomao Hu 02:41:19 — Marcus Abramovitch 02:49:38 — Ozzie Gooen 03:21:40 — Wrap-up & outro Byrne Hobart writes The Diff, a newsletter covering inflections in finance and tech, which has 47,000+ readers. Previously he worked at a hedge fund covering Internet and media companies. Follow Byrne on Twitter at @ByrneHobart or subscribe to The Diff at thediff.co. Vipul Naik holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago and is currently the head of data science at Equator Therapeutics, a drug discovery startup. He previously worked at a tech startup called LiftIgniter and then at The Arena Group, a media / tech company that acquired LiftIgniter. Learn more about him at his website, vipulnaik.com. Maomao Hu is a blockchain, fintech, and AI entrepreneur and thought leader. He has been involved in organizations ranging from leading investment banks to new startups, to solve both microstructure problems like market surveillance and macrostructure problems like capital allocation. Currently, he leads development and quantitative research at asset manager Zerocap. Learn more about him at his website, thefirenexttime.com. Marcus Abramovich is a managing partner at Enlightenment Ventures, an EA-aligned cryptocurrency hedge fund. Marcus also leads a Facebook group and Discord community of effective altruists focused on accumulating capital to donate to EA causes, and advises several cryptocurrency projects. Marcus discovered effective altruism as a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo and professional poker player. Email him at marcus.s.abramovitch@gmail.com. Ozzie Gooen is the president of The Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute. He has a background in programming and research. He previously founded Guesstimate and worked at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. Follow him on Twitter at @ozziegooen or learn more about his current work at quantifieduncertainty.org. Further Reading: "Clarifications on diminishing returns and risk aversion in giving" by Rob Wiblin @ the EA forum on why he disagrees with the SBF's risk-taking approach [link] References: 0xhonky. (November 13, 2022, 03:12 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/0xhonky/status/1591630071915483136. Twitter. [link] alamedatrabucco. (April 22, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/alamedatrabucco/status/1385180941186789384. Twitter. [link] Allison, I.. (November 2, 2022). Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda's Balance Sheet. Coindesk. [link] Austin. (November 14, 2022). In Defense of SBF. Effective Altruism Forum. [link] autismcapital. (November 12, 2022, 07:33 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/autismcapital/status/1591333446995283969. Twitter. [link] Berwick, A.. (November 13, 2022). Exclusive: At least $1 billion of client funds missing at failed crypto firm FTX. Reuters. [link] carolinecapital. (April 5, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1379036346300305408. Twitter. [link] corybates1895. (November 10, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/corybates1895/status/1590836167867760641. Twitter. [link] cz_binance. (November 6, 2022, 03:47 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589283421704290306. Twitter. [link] cz_binance. (November 8, 2022). https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1590013613586411520. Twitter. [link] Faux, Z.. (April 3, 2022). A 30-Year-Old Crypto Billionaire Wants to Give His Fortune Away. Bloomberg. [link] Ellison, C.. (September 21, 2021). https://worldoptimization.tumblr.com/post/642664297644916736/slatestarscratchpad-all-right-more-really-stupid [deleted]. World Optimization. [link] ftxfuturefund. (February 8, 2022, 05:32 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/ftxfuturefund/status/1498350483206860801. Twitter. [link] Gach, E.. (November 14, 2022). Crypto's Biggest Crash Saw Guy Playing League Of Legends While Luring Investors [Update]. Kotaku. [link] Hussein, F.. (November 16, 2022). House panel to hold hearing on cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapse. PBS News Hour. [link] Jenkinson, G.. (November 17, 2022). SBF received $1B in personal loans from Alameda: FTX bankruptcy filing. Cointelegraph. [link] Kulish, N.. (November 13, 2022). FTX's Collapse Casts a Pall on a Philanthropy Movement. The New York Times. [link] Levine, M.. (November 14, 2022). FTX's Balance Sheet Was Bad. Bloomberg. [link] Ligon,C., Reynolds, S., Kessler, S., De, N., & Decker, R.. (November 11, 2022). 'FTX Has Been Hacked': Crypto Disaster Worsens as Exchange Sees Mysterious Outflows Exceeding $600M. Coindesk. [link] Morrow, A.. (November 18, 2022). ‘Complete failure:' Filing reveals staggering mismanagement inside FTX . CNN. [link] Nick_Beckstead, leopold, ab, & ketanrama. (November 10, 2022). The FTX Future Fund team has resigned. Effective Altruism Forum. [link] Partz, H.. (November 9, 2022). FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried removes “assets are fine” flood from Twitter. Cointelegraph. [link] Piper, K.. (November 16, 2022). Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself. Vox. [link] Regan, M.P. & Hajric, V.. (November 12, 2022). SBF vs CZ: How 2 crypto billionaires' social media “bloodsport” went from keyboard warrior shenanigans to a $32 billion blowup. Fortune. [link] Rosenberg, E., Khartit, K., & McClay, R.. (August 26, 2022). What Is Yield Farming in Cryptocurrency?. The Balance. [link] sbf_ftx. (December 2, 2020, 09:25 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1334247283081138178. Twitter. [link] sbf_ftx. (December 11, 2020, 04:19 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1337250686870831107. Twitter. [link] sbf_ftx. (November 8, 2022, 04:03 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1590012124864348160. Twitter. [link] sbf_ftx. (November 10, 2022, 02:13 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1590709195892195329. Twitter. [link] sbf_ftx. (November 11, 2022, 03:23 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1591089317300293636. Twitter. [link] Sigalos, M. & Rooney, K.. (November 9, 2022). Binance backs out of FTX rescue, leaving the crypto exchange on the brink of collapse. CNBC. [link] tara_macaulay. (November 16, 2022, 08:57 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/tara_macaulay/status/1592985303262072834. Twitter. [link] taylorpearsonme. (November 10, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/taylorpearsonme/status/1590826638429650944. Twitter. [link] Tsipursky, G.. (November 16, 2022). SBF's dangerous decision-making philosophy that brought down FTX. Fortune. [link] whalechart. (November 15, 2022, 06:46 AM UTC). https://twitter.com/whalechart/status/1592408565402464259. Twitter. [link] Wiblin, R. & Harris, K.. (April 14, 2022). Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good. 80,000 Hours. [link] Yaffe-Bellany, D.. (November 14, 2022). How Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Collapsed. The New York Times. [link] yashkaf. (November 12, 2022, 07:18 PM UTC). https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1591606925149540353. Twitter. [link] FTX (company). Wikipedia. [link] Sam Bankman-Fried. Wikipedia. [link] Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director Josh Castle — Producer Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer Uri Bram — Factotum Miles Kestran — Marketing Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift

Full show notes at the publisher

How to find out what people in rural communities really need (with Robert Chambers) Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is the field of development? What are the differences between rapid and participatory rural appraisal? Under what conditions should qualitative surveys be preferred over quantitative and vice versa? What is participatory mapping? How has the field of development changed over the last few decades? Why do people get taller when sanitation improves?

Robert Chambers is a British academic and development practitioner. He spent his academic career at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. In 2013, he became an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social Studies. He has been one of the leading advocates for putting the poor, destitute, and marginalized at the center of the processes of development policy since the 1980s. Learn more about him here.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Building healthy relationships (with Jayson Gaddis) Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What are the main categories of interpersonal relationship problems? What's really going on when most people say they have a "communication" problem? What are the criteria for being a good listener? What's the "right" amount of conflict to have in a healthy relationship? How can we best express our wants and needs? What sorts of requests are reasonable (or not) to make of our relationship partners? People can get along just fine when they differ on little things, like the best flavor of ice cream; but how can people maintain relationships when they have deep differences in their core values?

Jayson Gaddis is an author, relationship expert, and coach who teaches people the one class they didn't get in school: "How To Do Relationships." Jayson leads one of the most in-depth and comprehensive relationship educational programs and trains relationship coaches all over the world. Jayson is the host of The Relationship School Podcast, the founder of The Relationship School, and the author of Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships. Learn more about Jayson and his work via these links:

Jayson:

The Relationship School:

Further reading

"Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication" by ClearerThinking.org
Getting to Zero by Jayson Gaddis

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Bringing rationality into politics (with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell) Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How do campaign and election dynamics affect the sorts of people that politicians court and the kinds of platforms they build? How well can we really know non-voters' preferences? What would your life be like if your most treasured belief turned out to be false? What are all the ramifications of voting against your own party? To what extent is "political capital" a real, legit thing? Do politicians actually manage to get anything useful done despite the constant flip-flopping of power? How can we expect non-experts to write robust regulations in fields that are extremely complicated? What percent of politicians exhibit higher-than-average levels of the Dark Triad traits? How does becoming a politician change one's personality? How accurate are Bradley Tusk's political personality types (the rare breed, the typical politician, the ideologue, the "I'm just happy to be here", and the corrupt politician)? How similar are state politics to federal politics?

Elizabeth Edwards-Appell is a former New Hampshire legislator who currently works as a political consultant. As a member of the effective altruism movement, her work focuses on policy change to reduce catastrophic risks. She lives near Manchester with her wife, their cat, and their brand new baby daughter.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Sex workers — empowered, or victims? (with Melissa Broudo) Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

Content warning: Please be aware that rape and sexual abuse are discussed in this episode. If you are particularly sensitive to these issues, then please take care when listening.

How have identity politics and social media changed sex work? To what extent is sex work work? Under what conditions is a sex worker a victim of abuse? Why does rape seem so much worse than other kinds of physical abuse? Does an increase in access to sex workers necessarily cause an increase in infidelity? Are there psychological risks associated with sex work even for people that enjoy the work and are not otherwise harmed or abused? (For example, compared to the average person, is it harder for sex workers to form romantic relationships with others?) Does sex work reinforce or even amplify unwanted objectification and commodification of bodies? What are the various legal models of sex work being used around the world right now?

Melissa Sontag Broudo, JD, MPH, has been part of the sex-worker-rights and harm-reduction movements since the late 1990s, furthering policy, advocacy, and capacity-building efforts that support the rights of sex workers and survivors of human trafficking. She has been able to push rights-based policies and legislative initiatives that support sex workers and survivors of human trafficking, including: expanded criminal record relief for survivors of trafficking, immunity for victims of crimes who engage in sexual labor, and the formation of study commissions to review data related to better health outcomes for all people in the sex industry. She won the first-ever vacatur motion for a survivor of human trafficking and provided technical expertise on these critical motions throughout New York state and the country. Melissa received her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in gender studies in 2001. She received her Master of Public Health from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center through their dual degree program in 2006. Read more about Melissa's work at DecriminalizeSex.Work, or follow her on Instagram at @decrimsexwork or on Twitter at @decrimsex.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

What, if anything, do AIs understand? (with ChatGPT Co-Creator Ilya Sutskever) Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

Can machines actually be intelligent? What sorts of tasks are narrower or broader than we usually believe? GPT-3 was trained to do a "single" task: predicting the next word in a body of text; so why does it seem to understand so many things? What's the connection between prediction and comprehension? What breakthroughs happened in the last few years that made GPT-3 possible? Will academia be able to stay on the cutting edge of AI research? And if not, then what will its new role be? How can an AI memorize actual training data but also generalize well? Are there any conceptual reasons why we couldn't make AIs increasingly powerful by just scaling up data and computing power indefinitely? What are the broad categories of dangers posed by AIs?

Ilya Sutskever is Co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI, which aims to build artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity. He leads research at OpenAI and is one of the architects behind the GPT models. Prior to OpenAI, Ilya was co-inventor of AlexNet and Sequence to Sequence Learning. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto. Follow him on Twitter at @ilyasut.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

Affiliates

Forecasting the things that matter (with Peter Wildeford) Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How can we change the way we think about expertise (or the trustworthiness of any information source) using forecasting? How do prediction markets work? How can we use prediction markets in our everyday lives? Are prediction markets more trustworthy than large or respectable news outlets? How long does it take to sharpen one's prediction skills? In (e.g.) presidential elections, we know that the winner will be one person from a very small list of people; but how can we reasonably make predictions in cases where the outcomes aren't obviously multiple-choice (e.g., predicting when artificial general intelligence will be created)? How can we move from the world we have now to a world in which people think more quantitatively and make much better predictions? What scoring rules should we use to keep track of our predictions and update accordingly?

Peter Wildeford is the co-CEO of Rethink Priorities, where he aims to scalably employ a large number of well-qualified researchers to work on the world's most important problems. Prior to running Rethink Priorities, he was a data scientist in industry for five years at DataRobot, Avant, Clearcover, and other companies. He is also recognized as a Top 50 Forecaster on Metaculus (international forecasting competition) and has a Triple Master Rank on Kaggle (international data science competition) with top 1% performance in five different competitions. Follow him on Twitter at @peterwildeford.

Further reading

ClearerThinking.org's "Calibrate Your Judgment" practice program
Metaculus (forecasting platform)
Manifold Markets
Polymarket
"Calibration Scoring Rules for Practical Prediction Training", a paper by Spencer Greenberg

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist

Music

Affiliates

Is the universe a computer? (with Joscha Bach) Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is intelligence? What exactly does an IQ test measure? What are the similarities and differences between the structure of GPT-3 and the structure of the human brain (so far as we understand it)? Is suffering — as the Buddhists might say — just a consequence of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world? What's left (if anything) of the human mind if we strip away the "animal" parts of it? We've used our understanding of the human brain to inform the construction of AI models, but have AI models yielded new insights about the human brain? Is the universe is a computer? Where does AI go from here?

Joscha Bach was born in Eastern Germany, and he studied computer science and philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin and computer science at Waikato University in New Zealand. He did his PhD at the Institute for Cognitive Science in Osnabrück by building a cognitive architecture called MicroPsi, which explored the interaction of motivation, emotion, and cognition. Joscha researched and lectured about the Future of AI at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard, and worked as VP for Research at a startup in San Francisco before joining Intel Labs as a principal researcher. Email him at joscha.bach@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at @plinz, or subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Further reading

The 7 Realms of Truth

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist

Music

Affiliates

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