The Importance of Intellectual History

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When I was younger, this made it seem to me like there's just low-hanging fruit everywhere to improve everything. As I've grown older, what I've realized is that identifying these kinds of problems is often like 10 or even 100 times easier than correcting them. And so I've just updated on, yes, you can identify all kinds of inadequacies in human civilization, but how do you actually solve them? That's really the challenge. Not to say it's always easy, but that is the easy part.

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Is it possible to be both agreeable and skeptical in conversations? How can you give feedback and challenge people constructively without triggering their automatic self-defense mechanisms? More generally, how can you challenge people intellectually without riling them up emotionally? What skills are needed to be able to have detailed, productive conversations across a wide range of topics? How can you push through plateaus in the process of self-improvement? What are podcasts as a medium good for?

Find more about Spencer through his website, spencergreenberg.com.

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