Michael “Valentine” Smith is a co-founder of CFAR (the Center for Applied Rationality) and the author of influential LessWrong essays including The Hostile Telepaths Problem, Kenshō, and The Intelligent Social Web.

He’s also been described as “one of the most powerful wizards in the Bay Area.”

In this conversation, he explains why your brain creates fog and self-deception to survive social situations, what it actually takes to find clarity, and why "working on yourself" might be the wrong frame entirely. We also do a live coaching demo debugging my own procrastination.

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