Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours (April 2021) Four: Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions
02:17:12
Distinguish Intrinsic From Instrumental Values
- Distinguish intrinsic vs instrumental values to avoid 'value traps' and inefficient plans.
- Knowing your intrinsic values helps craft direct plans to achieve what you actually want rather than intermediate goals.
Use Goal‑Factoring To Plan Better
- Do goal‑factoring: break goals into why‑reasons and search for alternative plans to yield the same intrinsic values.
- Use this to find shorter or less costly ways to obtain what you truly value.
Design Futures For Multiple Values
- Building an appealing long‑term world requires supporting multiple intrinsic values, not just one.
- Moral uncertainty and plural values argue for compromise and multi‑value futures.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app 1 chevron_right 2 chevron_right 3 chevron_right 4 chevron_right 5 chevron_right 6 chevron_right 7 chevron_right 8 chevron_right 9 chevron_right 10 chevron_right 11 chevron_right 12 chevron_right 13 chevron_right 14 chevron_right 15 chevron_right 16 chevron_right 17 chevron_right 18 chevron_right 19 chevron_right 20 chevron_right 21 chevron_right 22 chevron_right 23 chevron_right 24 chevron_right 25 chevron_right 26 chevron_right 27 chevron_right 28 chevron_right 29 chevron_right 30 chevron_right 31 chevron_right 32 chevron_right 33 chevron_right 34 chevron_right 35 chevron_right 36 chevron_right 37 chevron_right 38 chevron_right 39 chevron_right 40 chevron_right 41 chevron_right 42 chevron_right 43 chevron_right 44 chevron_right 45 chevron_right 46 chevron_right 47 chevron_right 48 chevron_right 49 chevron_right 50 chevron_right 51 chevron_right 52 chevron_right 53 chevron_right 54 chevron_right 55 chevron_right 56 chevron_right 57 chevron_right 58 chevron_right
Introduction
00:00 • 2min
How to Reason Through Difficult Questions
02:16 • 5min
How to Get More Happy Thoughts Everyday?
06:56 • 2min
Is There a Value for Its Own Sake?
08:38 • 2min
Are You a Conservative or a Liberal?
10:22 • 2min
What Are the Differences Between Universal and None Universal Values?
12:33 • 2min
What Do Inte Rial Values Really Mean?
14:57 • 2min
How to Find Your Own Intrinsic Values
17:00 • 2min
Do You Think That Money Is Inherently Valuable?
18:47 • 2min
Learning for Its Own Sake
20:20 • 3min
The Human Brain Doesn't Clearly Differ Between Value and Integrity
23:03 • 6min
I'm Going on Vacation, I'll Value My Own Wealtare Mo Ham It
28:34 • 3min
The Best World Is Just Hook Aryone Up to Happiness Machine in Riting
31:24 • 3min
Human Brains Have Multiple Integrative Values
33:55 • 2min
Are You Over Confident?
35:56 • 2min
Are You Over Confident?
37:31 • 3min
The Martial Arts One Lines Up Pretty Well
40:13 • 2min
Are You Confident?
42:21 • 2min
The Five Trades That Were Able to Discover
44:07 • 3min
Is There a Myth About Spinach?
46:38 • 2min
How Much Should You Change Your Belief Based on Evidence?
48:25 • 4min
Do You Work With Odds or Opponents?
52:04 • 3min
Is It Subject of Judgment?
54:43 • 5min
What Is the Base Factor?
59:20 • 3min
When Should We Trust Common Sense?
01:02:20 • 3min
Are You Good at Reading Social Information?
01:04:54 • 4min
The Fallacy of Aggregation
01:08:44 • 2min
Is There a Replica of Power Posing?
01:10:27 • 3min
Is It a Small Effect?
01:13:49 • 2min
Do You Believe That Possibility Can Affect Mood?
01:15:43 • 3min
How to Optimize a Reference Class?
01:18:47 • 3min
How Long Will It Take You to Finish a Project?
01:21:54 • 2min
Do You Have a Planning Fallacy?
01:23:58 • 2min
Predicting the Future With Models and Theories
01:25:38 • 2min
Using Multiple Models to Predict a Thing
01:27:48 • 2min
Is There Evidence That Chocolate Reduces or Improves Cardiovascular Health?
01:29:25 • 2min
Is the Base Factor a Hundred?
01:31:18 • 2min
Qualitative Frameworks Can Be Used to Destimate Things
01:33:36 • 3min
Is There a Difference Between a Number and Nothing?
01:36:26 • 3min
How Many Presidents Have Colluded With Foreign Powers?
01:39:00 • 2min
Is He a Russa Colluder?
01:40:40 • 2min
The Probability of China and the United States Going to War in the 20th Century
01:42:11 • 2min
What's the Bas Factor of War?
01:43:58 • 2min
Are They Going to Give Up Their Nuclear Weapons?
01:45:46 • 2min
The Right Model Isn't Quite the Right Model
01:47:40 • 3min
Is There a Base Factor in Sugar?
01:50:50 • 2min
Is the Diet Change the Cause of the Arthritis Going Away?
01:53:13 • 2min
How to Estimate the Odds of a Trump Being Reelected?
01:55:03 • 2min
Can You Beat the Production Market?
01:57:15 • 2min
I Think the Effect Size of the Study Goes Up, and the Probability of a Real Result Goes Down.
01:58:51 • 2min
Liquid Prediction Markets
02:00:34 • 2min
Is This Really a Fraud?
02:02:10 • 2min
Faith Healer
02:03:47 • 2min
Is It Really That Unforgivable?
02:05:47 • 3min
Do You Feel Better Now?
02:08:31 • 3min
Is This Really a Dodgy Company?
02:11:26 • 2min
Is There a Smoke Detector Alarm?
02:13:06 • 2min
The Importance of Rethinking Your Expectations
02:15:20 • 2min
Will SpaceX land people on Mars in the next decade? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner?
Spencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems.
In this conversation from 2018, Spencer walks us through how to reason through difficult questions more accurately, and when we should expect to be overconfident or underconfident.
This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on August 7, 2018. Some related episodes include:
• #7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
• #11 – Dr Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm.
• #15 – Prof Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
• #30 – Dr Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
• #40 – Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions.
• #48 – Brian Christian on better living through the wisdom of computer science
• #78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and measuring some of the most important drivers of AI progress
Series produced by Keiran Harris.