Read the full transcript here. What are "forward-chaining" and "backward-chaining", and how do they connect with theory of change? What sorts of mental habits and heuristics prevent you from brainstorming ideas effectively? How can you harness feedback effectively to sharpen your ideas? From whom should you solicit feedback? How can you view your own products with fresh eyes? What are some common struggles people encounter when starting or changing careers, and how can they be overcome? Why are ...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Read the full transcript here. Researchers in the Effective Altruism movement often view their work through a utilitarian lens, so why haven't they traditionally paid much attention to the psychological research into subjective wellbeing (i.e., people's self-reported levels of happiness, life satisfaction, feelings of purpose and meaning in life, etc.)? Are such subjective measures reliable and accurate? Or rather, which such measures are the most reliable and accurate? What are the pros and con...
Oct 24, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Read the full transcript here. Should pleasure and pain be measured on logarithmic scales? How might such a scale affect utilitarian calculations? How do harmonic energy waves in the brain correspond to states of (or intensities of) consciousness? What sorts of conclusions can we draw about brain states given the resolutions and sampling rates of tools like fMRI, EEG, and MEG? What is the symmetry theory of homeostatic regulation, and how does it connect to pleasure and pain? Are uncomfortable o...
Oct 13, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Read the full transcript here. What is positive psychology? What is the PERMA model? From a creativity standpoint, is there a connection between music and writing? In various artistic fields, how hard is it to be creative without first achieving some level of technical mastery? How can one hone the skill of creativity? How useful is optimism for achieving happiness? What are the different sources from which humans derive pleasure? To what extent is western culture conscious of ageism? What does ...
Oct 07, 2021•58 min
Read the full transcript here. What is machine learning? What are neural networks? How can humans interpret the meaning or functionality of the various layers of a neural network? What is a transformer , and how does it build on the idea of a neural network? Does a transformer have a conceptual advantage over neural nets, or is a transformer basically the equivalent of neural nets plus a lot of compute power? Why have we started hearing so much about neural nets in just the last few years even t...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 54 min
Read the full transcript here. How can we apply the theory of measurement accuracy to human judgments? How can cognitive biases affect both the bias term and the noise term in measurement error? How much noise should we expect in judgments of various kinds? Is there reason to think that machines will eventually make better decisions than humans in all domains? How does machine decision-making differ (if at all) from human decision-making? In what domains should we work to reduce variance in deci...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Read the full transcript here. What is 80,000 Hours, and why is it so important? Does doing the most good in the world require being completely selfless and altruistic? What are the career factors that contribute to impactfulness? How should people choose among the various problem areas on which they could work? What sorts of long-term AI outcomes are possible (besides merely apocalyptic scenarios), and why is it so important to get AI right? How much should we value future generations? How much...
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 28 min
Read the full transcript here. How can we make psychotherapy more effective? How much confidence should psychotherapists have in the efficacy of their methods? How does deliberate practice differ from mere repetition? How can we overcome confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and other blind spots in our own fields of expertise? What are the most significant predictors of positive outcome achievement for clients in psychotherapy? When a patient has a physical ailment, doctors gather data,...
Sep 08, 2021•1 hr 16 min
Read the full transcript here. What makes studying humans harder than studying other parts of the universe? Is social science currently improving its rigor, relevance, and self-reflection? Is it improving its predictive power over time? Why have sample sizes historically been so small in social science studies? Is social science actually able to accumulate knowledge? Have social scientists been able to move the "needle" on real-world problems like vaccine adoption? Is social science becoming mor...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Read the full transcript here. What are the "relating" languages? What strategies do we use when interacting with each other under various conditions? How does one formulate a new taxonomy in a field? What information can we glean from our own emotional and physical reactions? What is authenticity? What are the strengths and weaknesses of various personality typologies? Sara Ness is a facilitator, teacher, and community-builder who is internationally known for popularizing the field of Authentic...
Aug 28, 2021•1 hr 27 min
Read the full transcript here. Why should we be doing more experiments on our own lives? How should we approach and get started with self-experimentation? Why are such varying dietary changes able to improve people's well-being? What are some measures and interventions for improving executive function, memory and learning, emotional self-regulation, and creativity? Do brain games actually make you smarter? What are some promising nootropics? Should people use neurostimulation and/or neurofeedbac...
Aug 21, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Read the full transcript here. What is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become ta...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 29 min
Read the full transcript here. What are some of the challenges of defining utopia? What should a utopia look like? What are concrete versus sublime utopias? What are some of the failure modes related to various conceptions of utopia? Is it really that hard to create a shared, positive vision of the future? What is the value (or disvalue) of creating new people, especially in relation to the utopic or dystopic state of the world? What is "whole-hearted morality" versus "morality-as-taxes"? How ca...
Aug 11, 2021•1 hr 17 min
Read the full transcript here. How can we leverage our own limitations? Why does converting the average human lifespan from years to other units (like weeks) give us such a shock? What are the most useful kinds of reactions to contemplating our own mortality? What causes our feeling that time speeds up as we age? What is the "importance trap"? How should we handle the frustration or disappointment caused by our inability to do everything we want or need to do? Why is patience important in the wo...
Aug 04, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Read the full transcript here. How can we accelerate learning? Is spaced repetition the best way to absorb information over the long term? Do we always read non-fiction works with the goal of learning? What are some less common but perhaps more valuable types of information that can be put on flash cards? What sorts of things are worth remembering anyway? Why is it important to commit some ideas to memory when so much information is easily findable on the internet? What benefits are derived from...
Jul 29, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Read the full transcript here. What is metamodernism? How does metamodernism relate to spiral dynamics? What does it look like to apply a metamodern approach to large-scale problems? What are shadow traits, and what is shadow projection? What do our reactions about others' behavior tell us about ourselves? What's going on psychologically and physiologically when we relive past traumas? What dosages of psychedelics are most effective in a therapeutic context? How soon will psychedelic substances ...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 12 min
Read the full transcript here. What is a choreographic interface? Is dance for everyone? What is dance for ? What can dancers learn from roboticists, and what can roboticists learn from dancers? What are some of the practical difficulties one encounters when programming a robot to dance? Why do robots break or fail so often? What are the pros and cons of using virtual reality to train or test robots? Why don't we see more robots in everyday life? What are some everyday robotics applications comi...
Jul 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Read the full transcript here. What is "metaphysical geometry"? What do we get out of surrendering to the idea of death? Why do some people find the sensation of intense fear to be pleasurable? Is psychosis valuable? Are all mental states valuable? Why are altered states of consciousness typically socially unacceptable, and why should we move towards accepting them? Could oxytocin be used as a less risky alternative to MDMA in therapeutic contexts? Anthony David Adams is a visionary, inventor, a...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 49 min
Read the full transcript here. What is "the precipice"? Which kinds of risks (natural or technological) pose the greatest threats to humanity specifically or to life on Earth generally in the near future? What other kinds of existential risks exist beyond mere extinction? What are the differences between catastrophic risks and existential risks? How serious is the threat of climate change on an existential scale? What are the most promising lines of research into the mitigation of existential ri...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Read the full transcript here. What is risk-driven development? How should we weigh advice, best practices, and common sense in a domain? What makes some feedback loops better than others? What's the best way to take System 2 knowledge and convert it to System 1 intuition? What are forward-chaining and backward-chaining? When is it best to use one over the other? What are the advantages and disadvantages of centralization and decentralization? Satvik Beri is a cofounder and head of Data Science ...
Jul 11, 2021•1 hr 17 min
Read the full transcript here. How should math be taught in primary and secondary schools? How much is science denialism caused by statistics illiteracy or lack of statistical intuitions? What do p -values actually mean? Under what conditions should null results be published? What are some of the less well-known factors that may be contributing to the social science reproducibility crisis? Stuart Buck was Vice President of Arnold Ventures (a $2 billion philanthropy) for nine years and led its na...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Read the full transcript here. Why has there been such an explosion of progress in genomics recently? What's the right way to think about how genes affect the likelihood of experiencing certain health outcomes? How can people mitigate genetic risks for their potential children? What sorts of moral obligations (if any) do parents have to mitigate potential genetic risks for their children? How does Orchid's focus differ from other companies in the same space? What is "junk" DNA? What percentage o...
Jul 04, 2021•57 min
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-...
Jul 01, 2021•58 min
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 organization...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 21 min
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...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 32 min
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 Think...
Jun 19, 2021•1 hr 16 min
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...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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 p...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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 app...
Jun 09, 2021•1 hr 11 min
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 ...
Jun 05, 2021•1 hr 39 min
