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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:

Rationality and Cognitive Science (with Anna Riedl) Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is the Great Rationality Debate? What are axiomatic rationality and ecological rationality? How irrational are people anyway? What's the connection between rationality and wisdom? What are some of the paradigms in cognitive science? Why do visual representations of information often communicate their meaning much more effectively than other kinds of representations?

Anna Riedl is a cognitive scientist with a primary research interest in judgement and decision-making under unmeasurable uncertainty, a field in the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. She loves the scientific method so much that she regularly spreads her joy about it in various formats of science communication. In the end, she cares about ideas being applied in the real world, solving problems, and benefitting humanity. This means she often plays the role of being an interface between the two worlds of ideas and their application by humans. Over the last years, she has founded and lead different organizations in the DACH region that work on improving the world. You can find more about her at riedlanna.com, follow her on Twitter at @annaleptikon, or email her at annariedl.office@gmail.com.

Further reading

Anna Riedl's Cognitive Science Map

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Self-Improvement and Behavior Change (with James Norris) Jun 26, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How can you live your best life? What's a good definition of "wisdom"? What are some possible taxonomies of life outcomes? What are some low-hanging fruit in the realm of self-improvement? What are some useful behavior change frameworks and techniques?

All his life, James Norris has been searching for the best ways to change himself and change the world. He started as an entrepreneur at age 6 and since has co-founded or helped build 9 businesses and 16 organizations, including the premier conference for the effective altruism movement, the world's first global lifehacking event series, Southeast Asia's first social innovation hackathon series, and a university for today's Leonardo da Vincis. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin as a triple major / quadruple minor. Find more about him at jamesnorris.org and upgradable.org.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Everyday Statistics and Climate Change Strategies (with Cassandra Xia) Jun 23, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What are "shed" and "cake" projects? And how can you avoid "shed" projects? What is the "jobs to be done" framework? What is the "theory of change" framework? How can people use statistics (or statistical intuition) in everyday life? How accurate are climate change models? How much certainty do scientists have about climate change outcomes? What are some promising strategies for mitigating and reversing climate change?

Cassandra Xia (@CassandraXia) is the creator of Adventures in Cognitive Biases and co-founder of the non-profit Work on Climate. She is fascinated by how human biases affect the actions we take as a society and how to hack human psychology to get the change that we want. She is previously affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, MIT CS department, and Google AI. More of Cassandra's work can be found at cassandraxia.com and workonclimate.org.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Conscious Processes and Intelligence (with Richard Nisbett) Jun 19, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What sorts of things do the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds do? How we can make people more intelligent? How much is intelligence heritable vs. environmental? What's the value (or disvalue) of holding interviews during the hiring process? When do we over- and under-use cost-benefit analyses?

Richard E. Nisbett is one of the world's most respected psychologists. His work focuses on issues in social psychology and cognitive science. His newest book Thinking: A Memoir is both an intellectual autobiography and a personal history. It's available for sale on Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, and Barnes and Noble. To learn more, go to RichardNisbett.com.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Educational Restructuring and Investing (with Matt Greenfield) Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How can we restructure schools around student needs? What sorts of skills do people actually need in the 21st century, and how can education systems reorganize themselves around those skills? What sorts of things do impact investors look for when investing in education companies? How can teachers cultivate critical thinking and passion in the classroom? Should prejudice and privilege be addressed at the primary or secondary levels of education?

Matt Greenfield is a managing partner of Rethink Education, a venture capital firm that invests in education technology businesses. He previously helped start Rethink Autism and worked for ABS Ventures. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English from Yale University and has taught at Columbia University, the City University of New York, and Bowdoin College. You can find him on Twitter and Clubhouse.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Chinese Culture and Love Addiction (with Ava King) Jun 12, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How is Chinese culture different from American culture? For what reasons do Chinese people get plastic surgery, and how do those reasons differ from those of their American counterparts? What is love addiction? Are 12-step programs the only way (or the best way) of overcoming addiction?

Ava King is an international singer, songwriter, and producer based out of LA. She was born and raised in France, spent a decade in China, then decided to move to LA to pursue her passion of music. As a songwriter, Ava co-wrote "I Just" for K-pop group Red Velvet's second album that debuted at #1 on the Billboard World charts and #1 on the Korean Pop Charts. The album has since gone on to become 9X Platinum in Korea and has accumulated over 2.3 million plays on Spotify. Her songs have also been featured on The Ellen Show, Empire, and Crazy Rich Asians. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok; and you can email her at avakingbookings@gmail.com.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

User Engagement and Expert Intuition (with Rob Haisfield) Jun 09, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How do you design a product to handle user failure? How do you keep users motivated even when they fail? How do you successfully onboard new users? What are some different kinds of search behavior? How and when does gamifying a product increase user engagement and success? What psychological components do games attempt to engage with? How do we develop expert intuition in a domain?

Rob Haisfield is a behavioral product strategy and gameful design consultant. He applies behavioral science and game design principles to products to influence user behavior. This is based on the thesis that when people use tools in ways that allow them to more effectively accomplish their goals, they gain more value. He also works as a behavioral product strategist for Spark Wave and its various portfolio companies, recently focusing on the onboarding for GuidedTrack. You can learn more about him at robhaisfield.com, follow him on Twitter at @RobertHaisfield, or email him at rob@influenceinsights.io.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Psychological Models and Parenting (with Divia Eden) Jun 05, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

What is the Internal Family Systems model? What kinds of information do our emotions give us? How many agents live in our heads? And, if there's more than one, how well do those agents cooperate? What is operant conditioning? What is attachment theory? How does parenting differ from animal training? Is decision theory able to unify many different psychological theories?

Divia Eden has always been interested in understanding how minds work, and she currently spends most of her time unschooling her three kids. You can find out more about her at becomingeden.com or follow her on Twitter at @diviacaroline.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

Productive Conversations and Feedback Loops (with Julia Carvalho) Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How can we become better leaders? How can we give better feedback to others? How can we be better listeners? How can we give good advice? How do startups (or even existing companies) build great products? What sorts of things do experts actually know? When is it useful to poll customers for feedback?

Julia Carvalho serves as an advisor to startups doing impactful things in the world. She thinks a lot about product strategy, teams, and prioritization. She likes emailing with strangers and can be found at juliawcarvalho@gmail.com.

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

EA Efficacy and Community Norms (with Stefan Schubert) May 30, 2021

Show notes

Read the full transcript here.

How can people be more effective in their altruism? Is it better for people to give to good causes in urgent situations or on a regular basis? What causes people to donate to less effective charities even when presented with evidence that other charities might be more effective? We can make geographically distant events seem salient locally by (for example) showing them on TV, but how can we make possible future events seem more salient? How much more effective are the most effective charities than the average? How do altruists avoid being exploited (in a game theoretic sense)? What sorts of norms are common in the EA community?

Stefan Schubert is a researcher in philosophy and psychology at the University of Oxford, working on questions of relevance for effective altruism. In particular, he studies why most donations don't go to the most effective charities and what we can do to change it. He also studies what norms we should have if we want to do the most good, as well as the psychology of the long-term future. You can email him at stefanfredrikschubert@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at @StefanFSchubert, or learn more about him at stefanfschubert.com.

Further reading

Staff

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

Music

Affiliates

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