The Importance of Listening

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"I used to think everybody should come to their own opinion," he says. "But I also think there's this idea that, you know, each individual person or you can look at society as a whole and you can think, okay, well, each person, there's a division of labor." Some people are better at coming to good conclusions than other people, so it might be best for most people to go with what makes them feel like they're doing the right thing by deferring to others who have given more thought to something.

What's the best way to help someone who's going through a difficult situation? What are the four states of distress? What are "comfort languages"? How can we introduce more nuance into our everyday thinking habits? When gathering information and forming opinions, how do you know who to trust? What's the difference between intelligence and wisdom?

Kat Woods is the co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship, a startup incubator for effective altruist charities. It provides training, seed funding, and the other things necessary to kickstart an effective nonprofit. Previously, Kat co-founded Charity Science Outreach, a meta-organization that raised nine counterfactual dollars for high impact charities for every dollar spent. Subsequently she co-founded Charity Science Health, a direct poverty charity that received multiple grants from GiveWell and has served hundreds of thousands of families in India. You can find more about Kat at her website or on Twitter at @kat__woods.

Staff