Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

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Why do humans live as long as they do? Since whales have literally tons more cells than humans, why don't they develop cancers at much higher rates than humans? What can the genetic trade-offs we observe in other organisms teach us about increasing human longevity? Will we eventually be able to put people into some kind of stasis? What is the state of such technology? What counts as being dead? How much brain damage can a person sustain before they're no longer the same person? Is lowering temperature the same thing as slowing time? What does it mean to turn organic tissue into "glass"? Would clones of me be the same person as me? How should we feel about death? What is "palliative" philosophy? Why are people generally supportive of curing diseases but less supportive of increasing human lifespan? Will humans as a species reach 2100 A.D.?

Dr. Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston is a neuroscientist at Monash University, Australia, where he investigates methods for characterising the nature of conscious experiences. In 2019, he obtained his PhD from The University of Melbourne, where he researched how genetic and environmental factors affect cognition. His research interests range from the decline, preservation, and rescue of cognitive function at different stages of the lifespan, through to comparing different people's conscious experience of colour. By contributing to research that clarifies the neurobiological, cognitive, and philosophical basis of what it is to be a person, he hopes to accelerate the development of medical infrastructure that will help prevent him and everyone else from dying. Read his writings on Substack, follow him on Bluesky or X / Twitter, email him at [email protected], or learn more about him on his website.

Further reading

• The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death, by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

How has utilitarianism evolved from early Chinese Mohism to the formulations of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill? On what points did Bentham and Mill agree and disagree? How has utilitarianism shaped Effective Altruism? Does utilitarianism only ever evaluate actions, or does it also evaluate people? Does the "veil of ignorance" actually help to build the case for utilitarianism? What's wrong with just trying to maximize expected value? Does acceptance of utilitarianism require acceptance of moral realism? Can introspection change a person's intrinsic values? How does utilitarianism intersect with artificial intelligence?

Tyler John is a Visiting Scholar at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and an advisor to several philanthropists. His research interests are in leveraging philanthropy for the common good, ethics for advanced AI, and international AI security. Tyler was previously the Head of Research and Programme Officer in Emerging Technology Governance at Longview Philanthropy, where he advised philanthropists on over $60m in grants related to AI safety, biosecurity, and long-term economic growth trajectories. Tyler earned his PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University — New Brunswick, where he researched mechanism design to promote the interests of future generations, political legitimacy, rights and consequentialism, animal ethics, and the foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis. Follow him on X / Twitter at @tyler_m_john.

Further reading

• An Introduction to Utilitarianism
• Intrinsic Values Test by Clearer Thinking
• Blue Dot Impact
• 80,000 Hours

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

What does autism feel like from the inside? Do autistic people lack empathy? What is context insensitivity? What are some ways special interests can manifest in autistic people? What are some less common ways stimming can manifest? What are the main components of autism? Can you be diagnosed with autism if you meet all the diagnostic criteria but didn't have any symptoms in childhood? Is autism only a problem in relation to neurotypical people? Is there a link between IQ and autism? What does the DSM fail to capture about autism? Is there some underlying commonality among all the seemingly disparate symptoms of autism? How have the label and diagnosis changed as the field of psychology has grown and improved? Thinking about autism as a spectrum is better than thinking about it as a binary, but is there an even better way to think about it? How does gender intersect with autism? How does ADHD intersect with autism? How valid is self-diagnosis? How can you better interact with autistic people in your life? What should you do if you think you might have autism?

Dr. Megan Anna Neff is a clinical psychologist, author, and founder of Neurodivergent Insights. She is the author of Self-Care for Autistic People and The Autistic Burnout Workbook. Dr. Neff contributes regularly to Psychology Today and has been featured in outlets like CNN, PBS, ABC, and The Los Angeles Times. After discovering her own neurodivergence at age 37, she became passionate about raising awareness of non-stereotypical presentations of autism and ADHD. Through Neurodivergent Insights, she creates educational and wellness resources for the neurodivergent community, while also co-hosting the Divergent Conversations podcast. Learn more about her at her website, neurodivergentinsights.org, or email her at [email protected].

Further reading

• "How Do I Know if I’m Autistic in Adulthood?" by Megan Neff
• Divergent Conversations (podcast)
  • Episode 48: “What is Autism?” (Part 1): Understanding Autistic Communication
• Embrace Autism
• Is This Autism?

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

Is AI that's both superintelligent and aligned even possible? Does increased intelligence necessarily entail decreased controllability? What's the difference between "safe" and "under control"? There seems to be a fundamental tension between autonomy and control, so is it conceivable that we could create superintelligent AIs that are both autonomous enough to do things that matter and also controllable enough for us to manage them? Is general intelligence needed for anything that matters? What kinds of regulations on AI might help to ensure a safe future? Should we stop working towards superintelligent AI completely? How hard would it be to implement a global ban on superintelligent AI development? What might good epistemic infrastructure look like? What's the right way to think about entropy? What kinds of questions are prediction markets best suited to answer? How can we move from having good predictions to making good decisions? Are we living in a simulation? Is it a good idea to make AI models open-source?

Anthony Aguirre is the Executive Director of the Future of Life Institute, an NGO examining the implications of transformative technologies, particularly AI. He is also the Faggin Professor of the Physics of Information at UC Santa Cruz, where his research spans foundational physics to AI policy. Aguirre co-founded Metaculus, a platform leveraging collective intelligence to forecast science and technology developments, and the Foundational Questions Institute, supporting fundamental physics research. Aguirre did his PhD at Harvard University and Postdoctoral work as a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Learn more about him at his website, anthony-aguirre.com; follow him on X / Twitter at @anthonynaguirre, or email him at [email protected].

Further reading

• Keep The Future Human
• The Future of Life Institute
• "Unification of observational entropy with maximum entropy principles" by Joseph Schindler, Philipp Strasberg, Niklas Galke, Andreas Winter, and Michael G. Jabbour

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

What is the current global birth rate? What factors have contributed, or are currently contributing, to this rate? What outcomes will we experience as a result, and when? How accurate are demographers' projections on this topic? How much of a problem is local over-population? Could a low global birth rate eventually be overcome by high birth rates within a few specific groups? Why does any of this matter? How is average age in the US changing? What should the American government do to address this change, if anything? Is there a correlation between religiosity and birth rates? How are birth rates connected to the culture wars in the US? Will artificial wombs someday help to stabilize the global population? What's the "right" or "best" size of the global population? Could global depopulation solve climate change?

Dean Spears is an economic demographer at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding executive director of r.i.c.e., a nonprofit working for children’s health in rural north India. He is the author of After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People. See more of Dean’s research at deanspears.net.

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

Is AI going to ruin everything? What kind of AI-related dangers should we be most worried about? What do good institutions look like? Should designing better institutions be a major priority for modern civilizations? What are the various ways institutions decay? How much should we blame social media for the current state of our institutions? Under what conditions, if any, should the flow of information be regulated? What are some of the lesser-known kinds of AI disalignment? What actions should we take in light of the lack of consensus about AI?

Gabe Alfour has a background in theoretical computer science and has long been interested in understanding and tackling fundamental challenges of advancing and shaping technological progress. Fresh out of university, he developed a new programming language and founded a successful French crypto consultancy. Gabe has long had an interest in artificial intelligence, which he expected to be a major accelerator of technological progress. But after interacting with GPT-3, he became increasingly concerned with the catastrophic risks frontier AI systems pose, and decided to work on mitigating them. He studied up on AI and joined online open-source AI community EleutherAI, where he met Connor Leahy. In 2022, they co-founded Conjecture, an AI safety start-up. Gabe is also an advisor with ControlAI, an AI policy nonprofit. Email Gabe at [email protected], follow him on Twitter / X at @Gabe_cc, or read his writings on his blog at site.cognition.cafe.

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

What defines a cult? Is there such a thing as a good cult? Do Clearer Thinking's tools actually help people? Why does Clearer Thinking share its tools for free for everyone to use? How legitimate is the research Clearer Thinking does to create its tools? Is that research too reliant on self-report? Do Clearer Thinking's tools focus too much on the average person and fail to account for significant variance among people? Should AI companies be required to create and release text watermarking tools? Should smart, knowledgeable people speak out more? Would the average person think (without priming or knowledge of the discourse around it) that Elon Musk's gesture at the inauguration was a Nazi salute? Does Spencer sometimes coin new terms where useful terms already exist? Does Spencer think that everyone should adopt valuism, his life philosophy? Is magic real? What critiques have stuck with Spencer over the years and shaped his work?

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

NOTE: The video version of this conversation is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hWNknrc23Fo

In light of the replication crisis, should social scientists try to replicate every major finding in the field's history? Why is human memory so faulty? And since human memory is so faulty, why do we take eyewitness testimony in legal contexts so seriously? How different are people's experiences of the world? What are the various failure modes in social science research? How much progress have the social sciences made implementing reforms and applying more rigorous standards? Why does peer review seem so susceptible to importance hacking? When is observation more important than interpretation, and vice versa? Do the top journals contain the least replicable papers? What value do Freud's ideas still provide today? How useful are neo-Freudian therapeutic methods? Should social scientists run studies on LLMs? Which of Paul's books does ChatGPT like the least?

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of seven books, including his most recent, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. Find more about him at paulbloom.net, or follow his Substack.

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

What does it mean to bring your "A-game" to relationships? What is emotional "fitness"? What forces do relationships need to balance to remain stable and healthy? Are we attracted to a particular brand of heartbreak? What are "original attachment wounds"? Can Dark Triad traits be tamed? What emergent properties do relationships exhibit? What nourishes a relationship? When should relationships end? Why might people choose to maintain abusive relationships? How can trauma victims regain their sense of agency? What is self-care really about?

As a cutting-edge Relationship Coach, Annie Lalla maps the emotional complexities of long-term romance. She helps clients & students build romantic esteem by cultivating collaboration skills that go beyond power struggles, shame, or blame. Annie stands for True Love and is world-class at supporting relational growth across a lifetime. Follow her on Instagram at @lallabird, email her at [email protected], or learn more about her on her website, annielalla.com.

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift

Read the full transcript here.

Do we still have a lot to learn from ancient Greco-Roman philosophies? What is telos? What is ataraxia? What is "dark" Stoicism? What is the "resilient asshole" problem? What is (or what has) value according to Stoicism? What are the similarities and differences between Stoicism and Buddhism? Why might someone prefer a life "philosophy" over a set of life "hacks"? What is good? And how do you know? How could you know if you potentially adopted the wrong life philosophy? What value can modern humans find in Stoicism, Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism, and Cyrenaicism?

Gregory Lopez has been practicing Stoicism for over a decade and Buddhism a bit longer. He is co-author of A Handbook for New Stoics and Beyond Stoicism. He is also the founder of the New York City Stoics, co-founder of The Stoic Fellowship, a member of the Modern Stoicism team, and a faculty member of Stoa Nova. Additionally, he co-facilitates Stoic Camp New York annually with Massimo Pigliucci. You can find out more and contact him at his website, greglopez.me.

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift