Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

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Should we pause AI development? What might it mean for an AI system to be "provably" safe? Are our current AI systems provably unsafe? What makes AI especially dangerous relative to other modern technologies? Or are the risks from AI overblown? What are the arguments in favor of not pausing ? or perhaps even accelerating ? AI progress? What is the public perception of AI risks? What steps have governments taken to migitate AI risks? If thoughtful, prudent, cautious actors pause their AI development, won't bad actors still keep going? To what extent are people emotionally invested in this topic? What should we think of AI researchers who agree that AI poses very great risks and yet continue to work on building and improving AI technologies? Should we attempt to centralize AI development?

Joep Meindertsma is a database engineer and tech entrepreneur from the Netherlands. He co-founded the open source e-democracy platform Argu, which aimed to get people involved in decision-making. Currently, he is the CEO of Ontola.io, a software development firm from the Netherlands that aims to give people more control over their data; and he is also working on a specification and implementation for modeling and exchanging data called Atomic Data. In 2023, after spending several years reading about AI safety and deciding to dedicate most of his time towards preventing AI catastrophe, he founded PauseAI and began actively lobbying for slowing down AI development. He's now trying to grow PauseAI and get more people in action. Learn more about him on his GitHub page.

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What are the facts around Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX about which all parties agree? What was the nature of Will's relationship with SBF? What things, in retrospect, should've been red flags about Sam or FTX? Was Sam's personality problematic? Did he ever really believe in EA principles? Does he lack empathy? Or was he on the autism spectrum? Was he naive in his application of utilitarianism? Did EA intentionally install SBF as a spokesperson, or did he put himself in that position of his own accord? What lessons should EA leaders learn from this? What steps should be taken to prevent it from happening again? What should EA leadership look like moving forward? What are some of the dangers around AI that are not related to alignment? Should AI become the central (or even the sole) focus of the EA movement?

William MacAskill is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. He also cofounded the nonprofits Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and 80,000 Hours, which together have moved over $300 million to effective charities. He's the author of What We Owe The Future, Doing Good Better, and Moral Uncertainty.

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How big of a problem is homelessness in the US? How many people in large cities like New York City or Los Angeles are unhoused? What's the best language to use when discussing this issue? How is "homelessness" defined? We usually don't label people without food or water as "foodless" or "waterless"; so why do we label people without homes as "homeless"? Why do we so often look away from the problem, both literally and figuratively? What are the most common events or circumstances that cause people to lose their housing options? What does research show about how unhoused people actually spend their money? What percentage of an average city's unhoused population is represented by the "visible" portion, the people we see on street corners or in tent camps? What percent of unhoused people struggle with mental health problems or substance abuse? What's the average life expectancy of an unhoused person? How much do governments (local, state, and/or federal) spend on homelessness annually? What's the best predictor of whether or not a person will suffer from chronic homelessness? What help ? from government institutions, religious organizations, nonprofits, etc. ? is available to unhoused people? How hard is it to meet your basic needs when you don't have a place to live? What should we do about unhoused people who refuse help or treatment for mental illnesses or substance abuse? Which nonprofits are working on homelessness? And what kinds of impacts have they made? What interventions are actually effective at solving homelessness on a large scale? What mistakes have the political left and right (in the US) made as they've tried to address homelessness? Demographically speaking, what kinds of people tend to make up unhoused populations in the US?

Kevin F. Adler is a social entrepreneur, sociologist, and author who never learned the word "stranger", and tries to live accordingly. Currently, he is the Founder-In-Residence and Chairman of the Board of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit organization that helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security through family reunification services, a phone buddy program, and the first basic income pilot for unhoused individuals in the US. He is also the bestselling author of When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America, which Publishers Weekly called "a must-read for anyone interested in solving the problem of homelessness." Kevin's pioneering work on homelessness and "relational poverty" as an overlooked form of poverty has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, LA Times, and in his TED Talk. Motivated by his late mother's work teaching at underserved adult schools and nursing homes, and his late uncle's 30 years living on the streets, Kevin believes in a future where everyone is seen as invaluable and interconnected. Learn more about Kevin and his work at his website, kevinfadler.com, follow him on Instagram at @kevinfadler, or email him at [email protected].

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What are some common techniques for quantifying body language? How hard is it to identify poker "tells"? Are there any facial expressions or body movements that have universal meaning? What can be discerned about group dynamics just from watching a meeting over video call? What are the most common body language mistakes people make when going on dates or trying to make friends? What are the strongest indicators of charisma? How do people signal their social status? What are the most effective ways to deal with trolls? How valid is the concept of micro-expressions?

Blake Eastman is the founder of The Nonverbal Group, a behavioral research and education company. With a focus on teaching high-level people skills, Eastman has coached executives and teams, and his company is building the world's largest database of contextually coded human interactions. He also founded Behavioral Robotics, an AI deep tech startup teaching machines to read human behavior, and he's known for conducting the largest behavioral study on poker players through his Beyond Tells project. Follow him on Instagram, Twitter / X, and LinkedIn; or email him at [email protected].

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Is nothing objectively true? What kinds of things are we trying to communicate with the stories we tell? Why do we feel the need to take a side on every issue? Which sorts of issues should be tied to our identities? How can we set the definitions for terms in a conversation, if possible? Should people just believe whatever works for them? Is it better to try to compensate for our biases or to reduce them? Should we strive to have lower confidence in ourselves and our abilities? How should we think about assigning blame when something goes wrong? When should we say yes or no to new opportunities? To what degree should we try to optimize our lives?

Derek Sivers is an author of philosophy and entrepreneurship known for his surprising, quotable insights and pithy, succinct writing style. Formerly a musician, programmer, TED speaker, and circus clown, he sold his first company for $22 million and gave all the money to charity. Sivers? books (How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Your Music and People, and Anything You Want) and newest projects are at his website: sive.rs

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How did we end up with factory farming? How many animals do we kill every year in factory farms? When we consider the rights of non-human living things, we tend to focus mainly on the animal kingdom, and in particular on relatively larger, more complex animals; but to what extent should insects, plants, fungi, and even single-celled organisms deserve our moral consideration? Do we know anything about what it's like (or not) to be an AI? To what extent is the perception of time linked to the speed at which one's brain processes information? What's the difference between consciousness and sentience? Should an organism be required to have consciousness and/or sentience before we'll give it our moral consideration? What evidence do we have that various organisms and/or AIs are conscious? What do we know about the evolutionary function of consciousness? What's the "rebugnant conclusion"? What might it mean to "harm" an AI? What can be done by the average person to move the needle on these issues? What should we say to people who think all of this is ridiculous? What is Humean constructivism? What do all of the above considerations imply about abortion? Do we (or any organisms or AIs) have free will? How likely is it that panpsychism is true?

Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies; Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law; Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program; Director of the Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program; and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. He is the author of Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (2022) and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights (2018) and Food, Animals, and the Environment (2018). He is also an executive committee member at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, a senior research fellow at the Legal Priorities Project, and a mentor at Sentient Media.

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What's the best way to think about building an impactful career? Should everyone try to work in fields related to existential risks? Should people find work in a problem area even if they can't work on the very "best" solution within that area? What does it mean for a particular job or career path to be a "good fit" for someone? What is "career capital"? To what extent should people focus on developing transferable skills? What are some of the most useful cross-domain skills? To what extent should people allow their passions and interests to influence how they think about potential career paths? Are there formulas that can be used to estimate how impactful a career will be for someone? And if there are, then how might people misuse them? Should everyone aim to build a high-leverage career? When do people update too much on new evidence?

Benjamin Hilton is a research analyst at 80,000 Hours, where he's written on a range of topics from career strategy to nuclear war and the risks from artificial intelligence. He recently helped re-write the 80,000 Hours career guide alongside its author and 80,000 Hours co-founder, Ben Todd. Before joining 80,000 Hours, he was a civil servant, working as a policy adviser across the UK government in the Cabinet Office, Treasury, and Department for International Trade. He has master?s degrees in economics and theoretical physics, and has published in the fields of physics, history, and complexity science. Learn more about him on the 80,000 Hours website, or email him at [email protected].

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It's our 200th episode! ? What important things has Spencer gleaned from these 200 episodes? What has he learned about how to have better conversations? On what topics has he updated his views? What makes for a great question?

Thank you, listeners, for listening, following, rating, reviewing, supporting, and communicating with us! You've helped the show continue to grow, improve, and thrive!

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Is it possible to change someone's life with a really short psychological intervention? What features do turning points in people's lives tend to share in common? What single-session interventions can work well for depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues? What expectations should reasonably be held in advance of a single-session intervention? By what mechanisms do these interventions spark the desire for change in participants? How useful is qualitative research in the social sciences? What can single-session interventions accomplish that longer-term interventions can't? Do single-session interventions for teens work equally well for adults, and vice versa? Are some people more prone to experiencing turning points in their lives than others?

Jessica Schleider is Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, where she directs the Lab for Scalable Mental Health. Schleider completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Harvard University, her doctoral internship in clinical and community psychology at Yale School of Medicine, and her BA in psychology at Swarthmore College. Her research on brief, scalable interventions for youth depression and anxiety has been recognized via numerous awards, including a National Institutes of Health Director's Early Independence Award; the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) President's New Researcher Award; and Forbes's "30 Under 30 in Healthcare." Learn more about her work at her lab website, schleiderlab.org.

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How does psychological time differ from clock time? How does a person's perception of time relate to their personal identity? How does a person's view of their past shape how they view their future? To what extent do people differ in the degree to which they feel like a single, continuous person across time? What effects does a person's perception of time have on their assessment of injustices? Why aren't there more adversarial collaborations in academia? Is academia generally politically left-leaning? How does lack of political diversity in academia compare to (e.g.) lack of gender or economic diversity? Are liberal or progressive academics openly willing to discriminate against conservative academics when, for example, the latter have opportunities for career advancement? Is anyone in the US actually calling for legal changes around free speech laws, or are they only discussing how people ought to be socially ostracized or punished for expressing certain viewpoints? And is there a meaningful difference between legal and social punishments for those who make illegal or taboo statements? Are we in the midst of an ideological war right now? And if so, ought we to quash in-group criticism to avoid giving ammunition to our ideological enemies? Academia seems to have hemorrhaged public trust over the last few decades; so what can be done to begin restoring that trust?

Anne Wilson is a professor of social psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Much of her research focuses on self and identity over time both for individual self and collective identities like nation, race, and gender. Her work illuminates the often-motivated malleability of our reconstructions of the past, forecasts of the future, and subjective perceptions of time itself. Her broad focus on motivated reasoning and cognitive bias has also led to more recent research on intergroup misperception, political polarization, and how speech suppression and censorship can inhibit collective bias correction. Follow her on Twitter / X at @awilson_WLU, email her at [email protected], or learn more about her work at her labe website: annewilsonpsychlab.com.

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Why is Stoicism important and useful today? What are the main ideas of Stoicism? How can you tell if you're "living well"? And if you're not living well, then how can you move yourself in that direction? How can we learn to accept and embrace life as it comes without losing our desire to improve ourselves and the world around us? Do people vary in the degree to which Stoic practices might be beneficial for them? What's the relationship between Stoicism and CBT? What do Stoics have to say about the value or disvalue of emotions? Has Stoicism changed much since its inception? What does it mean to be a "reasonable" person? What are some clear signs that a person is a thinker or a feeler? How might we modify social media and/or ourselves so that our cognitive biases can't as easily be weaponized for political or economic ends? It's easy to see cognitive biases in others; but how can we learn to see them in ourselves?

William B. Irvine is emeritus professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, USA. He is the author of eight books that have been translated into more than twenty languages. His A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy played a key role in the Stoic renaissance that has taken place in recent years. His subsequent Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient provides a strategy for dealing, in proper Stoic manner, with the setbacks we experience in daily living. He is currently at work on a book about thinking critically, but with an open mind, in the age of the internet.

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What is a "theory of everyone"? Do the social sciences currently have enough firm knowledge to synthesize such a theory? Have we been getting smarter as a species over the last few hundred years? Were great historical thinkers smarter than today's greatest minds? Why are governments so prone to corruption? What is the COMPASS framework? What is the "no hyphen" immigration model? What is the "umbrella" immigration model? How can governments change how they think and talk about immigration so that racism is less likely to find its way into immigration policy?

Michael Muthukrishna is an award-winning professor of economic psychology and affiliate in developmental economics and data science at the London School of Economics. His research has been featured in CNN, BBC, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Economist, Scientific American, Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, and many other news outlets. He is the author of A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going. Learn more about him at his website, follow him on Twitter at @mmuthukrishna; or read his writings on his Substack.

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Has the world been "lucky" so far with respect to nuclear weapons? How many people have died from nuclear weapons? To what extent do nuclear weapons actually deter aggression? How many countries currently have nuclear weapons or are in the process of building them? How can we discourage continued proliferation of (or even the desire to own) nuclear weapons? How tightly linked are the technologies required to build nuclear energy programs and nuclear weapons programs? How does the International Atomic Energy Agency verify that countries have exactly the nuclear programs and materials they claim to have? What are the best nonproliferation or disarmament interventions being considered right now? What can the average citizen do to make a difference on these enormous issues?

Carl Robichaud co-leads Longview's program on nuclear weapons policy and co-manages Longview's Nuclear Weapons Policy Fund. For more than a decade, Carl led grantmaking in nuclear security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic fund which grants over $30 million annually to strengthen international peace and security. Carl previously worked with The Century Foundation and the Global Security Institute, where his extensive research spanned arms control, international security policy, and nonproliferation.

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What does it really mean to align an AI system with human values? What would a powerful AI need to do in order to do "what we want"? How does being an assistant differ from being an agent? Could inter-AI debate work as an alignment strategy, or would it just result in arguments designed to manipulate humans via their cognitive and emotional biases? How can we make sure that all human values are learned by AIs, not just the values of humans in WEIRD societies? Are our current state-of-the-art LLMs politically left-leaning? How can alignment strategies take into account the fact that our individual and collective values occasionally change over time?

Geoffrey Irving is an AI safety researcher at DeepMind. Before that, he led the Reflection Team at OpenAI, was involved in neural network theorem proving at Google Brain, cofounded Eddy Systems to autocorrect code as you type, and worked on computational physics and geometry at Otherlab, D. E. Shaw Research, Pixar, and Weta Digital. He has screen credits on Ratatouille, WALL?E, Up, and Tintin. Learn more about him at his website, naml.us.

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What does it mean to have conflicts between our schemas and our values? What is schema therapy? How do schema therapy's claims differ from the "common sense" view that we develop tools for interacting with the world in childhood? How do our "inner critic" and "vulnerable child" connect to our schemas? How do these things differ from the IFS (Internal Family Systems) model of psychotherapy? How do these things map onto Buddhism, Stoicism, and other religious or philosophical traditions? What are the values that lead to a life of happiness? Why are teachings about embracing impermanence and reducing craving found in ancient religious and philosophical traditions but not in modern psychology? And, conversely, why are practices for building "flow" and healthy self-esteem present in modern psychology but not in ancient religious and philosophical traditions?

Jeff Perron is a Clinical Psychologist and Author of The Psychology of Happiness, a Substack with over 15,000 subscribers. He writes detailed guides that explain evidence-based concepts associated with mental well-being and happiness. In his clinical work, he has spent years helping professionals align their lives more closely with their goals and values, supporting them in moving away from unnecessary suffering and towards meaning and fulfillment. Dr. Perron also holds an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and in the past has worked in the corporate strategy world. He holds a dual research-clinical PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Ottawa and is a Clinical Associate of the Ottawa Institute of CBT.

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What was therapy like in the years leading up to the advent of CBT? Has CBT now been over-sold? How does CBT differ from "the power of positive thinking"? How can therapists who use CBT avoid invalidating clients' feelings? When, if ever, should people listen to their negative thoughts? To what extent can a person's good qualities contribute to their depression? Can empathy be learned? Is it possible to cure depression in a single psychotherapy session? What is TEAM-CBT? Is exposure therapy cruel? What are some strategies for silencing the voices in our heads that lead to depression, anxiety, and other negative mental states?

David Burns is Adjunct Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is involved in research and teaching. He has previously served as Acting Chief of Psychiatry at the Presbyterian / University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (1988) and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School (1998), and is certified by the National Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has received numerous awards, including the A. E. Bennett Award for his research on brain chemistry, the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology through the Media Award, and the Outstanding Contributions Award from the National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists. He has been named Teacher of the Year three times from the class of graduating residents at Stanford University School of Medicine, and feels especially proud of this award. In addition to his academic research, Dr. Burns has written a number of popular books on mood and relationship problems. His best-selling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, has sold over 4 million copies in the United States, and many more worldwide. When he is not crunching statistics for his research, he can be found teaching his famous Tuesday evening psychotherapy training group for Stanford students and community clinicians, or giving workshops for mental health professionals throughout the United States and Canada. Learn more about him at feelinggood.com.

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What is a "super-shrink"? Which factors in the therapist-client relationship are most predictive of positive client outcomes over time: the therapist's personality, the client's personality, the therapist's methodology, or other factor(s)? How can therapists use and teach evidence-based practices and behaviors while also respecting and working within an individual client's belief system? What should clients look for when shopping for therapists? Why do clients often choose to be less open and honest with their therapists than would be beneficial for them? How can non-therapists be good, therapeutic friends to others?

Originally from Singapore, Daryl Chow, MA, Ph.D. is a practicing psychologist based in Perth, Western Australia. He presents to and trains other psychotherapists around the world. He has authored / co-authored several books, including: The First Kiss: Undoing the Intake Model and Igniting First Sessions in Psychotherapy (2018), Better Results: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Therapeutic Outcomes (APA, 2021), The Field Guide to Better Results (APA, 2023), and Creating Impact (2022). He is also the co-author of many articles, and is co-editor and contributing author of The Write to Recovery: Personal Stories & Lessons About Recovery from Mental Health Concerns. Daryl's newsletter, blogs, and podcast (Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development) are all aimed at inspiring and sustaining practitioners' individualised professional development. Read his writings on Substack; learn more about him on his website, darylchow.com; or email him at [email protected].

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Have conspiracy theories been more prevalent, more persuasive, or more convoluted in the last few decades than at other points in human history? Is the presence of conspiracy theorists a feature of every society? The phrase "conspiracy theory" usually implies a false theory, even though some are eventually proven to be true; so how can we update our language to better differentiate between disconfirmed and not-yet-confirmed conspiracy theories? How can people who've really gone down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole come back back from the brink? More generally, what conditions need to be met for a person to change their mind about anything? What are the key motivators of conspiratorial thinking? Why do so many conspiracy theories incorporate strong antisemitic elements? To what degree are conspiracy theorists swayed by arguments from the requisite number of co-conspirators in a conspiracy? How should people research a conspiracy theory? Which personality traits are correlated with conspiratorial thinking? What's a good definition of wisdom? And how could wisdom help us combat the epistemic crisis through which we seem to be living right now? When, if ever, is it useful to approach a topic adversarially? Which would better mitigate the epistemic crisis: education reform or cultural change?

Jesse Richardson is an internationally award-winning creative director and the founder of the nonprofit The School of Thought, which is dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and understanding. The Creative Commons resources The School of Thought has produced have so far reached over 30 million people and are being used in thousands of schools, universities, and companies worldwide. Their latest project is The Conspiracy Test, which is a gamified way to help increase healthy skepticism about conspiracy theories. It can been accessed for free at theconspiracytest.org. Learn more about Jesse and The School of Thought at schoolofthought.org.

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Why do we leave so much low-hanging fruit unharvested in so many parts of life? In what contexts is it better to do a thing than to do a symbolic representation of the thing, and vice versa? How can we know when to try to fix a problem that hasn't yet been fixed? In a society, what's the ideal balance of explorers and exploiters? What are the four simulacra levels? What is a moral "maze"? In the context of AI, can solutions for the problems of generation vs. evaluation also provide solutions for the problems of alignment and safety? Could we solve AI safety issues by financially incentivizing people to find exploits (à la cryptocurrencies)?

Zvi Mowshowitz is the author of Don't Worry About the Vase, a widely spanning substack trying to help us think about, model, and improve the world. He is a rationalist thinker with experience as a professional trader, game designer and competitor, and startup founder. His blog spans diverse topics and is currently focused on extensive weekly AI updates. Read his writings at thezvi.substack.com, or follow him on Twitter / X at @TheZvi.

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How can people be encouraged in ways that are more natural and less manipulative to increase the amounts they give to charities? Why are arguments based on the effectiveness of charitable organizations less compelling to most people than we'd like for them to be? What percentages of a social group should be "doves", "hawks", "eagles", or something else? To what extent should our knowledge about our evolutionary history shape our values? Why are children more likely than adults to engage in prosocial behaviors towards strangers? Aside from anecdotal evidence, how do we know that political polarization in the US has been increasing over the last few decades? How can bridges of respect and trust be built between warring political tribes? How can people even begin to undertake the project of building bridges across political divides if they have no interest in understanding or engaging with the other side ? especially if they believe that the other side is completely deranged, evil, or otherwise unfit to govern at any level? What is "deep pragmatism"? What might a "psychologically-informed" version of utilitarianism look like?

Josh Greene is Professor of Psychology and a member of the Center for Brain Science faculty at Harvard University. Much of his research has focused on the psychology and neuroscience of moral judgment, examining the interplay between emotion and reason in moral dilemmas. His more recent work studies critical features of individual and collective intelligence. His current neuroscientific research examines how the brain combines concepts to form thoughts and how thoughts are manipulated in reasoning and imagination. His current behavioral research examines strategies for improving social decision-making and alleviating intergroup conflict. He is also the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. Learn more about him at his website, joshua-greene.net.

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How can we find and expand the limitations of our imaginations, especially with respect to possible futures for humanity? What sorts of existential threats have we not yet even imagined? Why is there a failure of imagination among the general populace about AI safety? How can we make better decisions under uncertainty and avoid decision paralysis? What kinds of tribes have been forming lately within AI fields? What are the differences between alignment and control in AI safety? What do people most commonly misunderstand about AI safety? Why can't we just turn a rogue AI off? What threats from AI are unique in human history? What can the average person do to help mitigate AI risks? What are the best ways to communicate AI risks to the general populace?

Darren McKee (MSc, MPA) is the author of the just-released Uncontrollable: The Threat of Artificial Superintelligence and the Race to Save the World. He is a speaker and sits on the Board of Advisors for AIGS Canada, the leading safety and governance network in the country. McKee also hosts the international award-winning podcast, The Reality Check, a top 0.5% podcast on Listen Notes with over 4.5 million downloads. Learn more about him on his website, darrenmckee.info, or follow him on X / Twitter at @dbcmckee.

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Why did students struggle so much to learn through video meetings during the locked-down days of the pandemic? What are "student-led restorative practices"? What is "self-connection practice"? What tools are students lacking? When is violence the optimal solution to a problem? What are the biggest problems in education right now? What do students need in order to be successful humans? How can schools give students more agency and autonomy? What happens if students refuse to participate in restorative processes? How do our societal goals shape our educational goals?

AJ Crabill's focus is improving student outcomes. He serves as Conservator at DeSoto, Texas ISD; and during his guidance, DeSoto improved from F ratings in academics, finance, and governance to B ratings. He's also Faculty at the Leadership Institute of Nevada and Director of Governance at the Council of the Great City Schools. He served as Deputy Commissioner at the Texas Education Agency and spearheaded reforms as board chair of Kansas City Public Schools that doubled the percentage of students who are literate and numerate. Crabill is the author of Great On Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective, and is a recipient of the Education Commission of the State's James Bryant Conant Award. Learn more about him at his website, ajc7.com, or follow him on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter / X.

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What should the goals of math education be? What does it mean to "think well"? Is math real? Why are feelings of bewilderment or confusion so common in math classes but not as common in other subjects? Schools now generally offer reading and writing instruction separately ? even though both are important for language use ? because the skill sets they require can differ so widely; so how might math education benefit from drawing a similar distinction? What should math classes impart to students that will enable them to engage as citizens with complex or controversial issues? What does it mean to ask good questions in math? Can math teach empathy? What is category theory? Can most people learn most things if they just have the right teacher and/or educational materials?

Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, author, public speaker, columnist, concert pianist, composer, and artist. She is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and is now Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Nice, and holds a PhD in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Alongside her research in Category Theory and undergraduate teaching, her aim is to rid the world of "math phobia". Eugenia was an early pioneer of math on YouTube, and her videos have been viewed around 15 million times to date. She has also written several books, including: How to Bake Pi (2015); Beyond Infinity (2017); The Art of Logic (2018); x + y : A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender (2020); The Joy of Abstraction: A Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life (2022); Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics' Deepest Truths (2023); and two children's books: Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries and Bake Infinite Pie with x + y. She also writes the "Everyday Math" column for the Wall Street Journal and has completed mathematical art commissions for Hotel EMC2, 6018 North, the Lubeznik Center, and the Cultural Center, Chicago. She is the founder of the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art song based in Chicago. As a composer she has been commissioned by GRAMMY-nominated soprano Laura Strickling and is one of the composers for the LYNX Amplify series, setting work by autistic poets who are primarily non-speaking. Learn more about her at her website, eugeniacheng.com.

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What can we learn from the parable of the two wolves? What is valuism? Do we choose our own intrinsic values? How quickly do our intrinsic values change over time, if at all? How do values and principles relate to one another? Why is behavior change so hard? What conditions need to be met in order for people to change their behavior? How can people make their behavior changes more persistent and less vulnerable to life's ups and downs?

Eric Zimmer is a behavior coach with 20 years of experience, a Certified Interfaith Spiritual Director, a podcast host, and a writer who is endlessly inspired by the quest for a greater understanding of how our minds work and how we can intentionally create the lives we want to live. He has coached hundreds of people from around the world on how to make significant life changes and create habits that serve them well in achieving the goals they've set for themselves. In addition to his work as a behavior coach, he currently hosts the award-winning podcast, The One You Feed, the title of which is based on an old parable about two wolves at battle within us. Learn more about Eric and his work at oneyoufeed.net.

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How do the experiences of children born into cults differ from members who join as adults? Why do some cults that grow out of western evangelical Christianity ? which is notoriously obsessed with purity culture ? often flip the script about sex and turn promiscuity into a virtue? How does age affect the ease with which one internalizes cult programming? To what extent do cult members approve of sexual abuses committed the name of religion? What sort of tactics do cult leaders employ to keep members from leaving? In what ways are militaries like cults? Why has the US military been so slow to fix its culture of rape and abuse of women? What are "thought-stopping" clichés? What defines a cult? What are the often unseen or less tangible consequences of leaving a cult? What sins are considered unforgivable in a cult? What are some examples of cult-like groups that don't necessarily meet every single criterion for cult-ness?

Daniella Mestyanek Young was born a third-generation member of the infamous Children of God religious cult. She grew up being trafficked around the world before escaping that life and moving to America at age 15. She put herself through high school and graduated as college valedictorian before commissioning into the US Army as an intelligence officer. She deployed twice to Afghanistan (in 2011 and 2014) and became a member of one of the Army's first Female Engagement Teams (an experiment that put women into deliberate ground combat for the first time in Army history and eventually led to the repeal of the sexist combat ban and the gender desegregation of the entire US military). She is a proud daughter of the 101st (the unit featured in Band of Brothers), a recipient of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award from President Obama, and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology at the Harvard Extension School where she focuses her research on group behavior, social norms, culture, extremism, leadership demagoguery, and cults. Learn more about her at her website, uncultureyourself.com.

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Who's Moloch? And what do we mean when we call something "Molochian"? What does healthy competition look like? How can we avoid or extricate ourselves from Molochian scenarios? Are our instincts about fairness and unfairness usually accurate? Is it possible for today's social media giants to create products that people want to use and that are actually good for people to use? What kinds of problems could conceivably be solved by "trustless" solutions? or "high-trust" solutions? Where do you fall on the "rationality-to-woo" spectrum? When do we not want to find rational explanations for mysterious phenomena? What kinds of new rational explanations might we find if we opened our minds to more "woo"?

Liv Boeree is one of the UK?s most successful poker players, winning multiple titles during her professional career, including a European Poker Tour Championship and World Series of Poker bracelet. Originally trained in astrophysics, she now works as an educator and researcher specializing in the intersection of game theory, technology, and catastrophic risk reduction. Her main focus areas at present are the risks posed by artificial intelligence and other exponential technologies. She is also a co-founder of Raising for Effective Giving (REG), an advisory organization that uses scientific methods to identify and fundraise for the most globally impactful charitable causes. Her latest project is the newly launched Win-Win Podcast, which explores the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Follow her on Twitter at @liv_boeree.

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What are the limits of tech solutionism? Do technological innovations create as many problems as they solve? Or, in other words, do technological innovations improve the world on average over time? Are humans living in the 21st century actually worse off than those that lived in the 11th century? What's the difference between "art" and "content"? If image-generating AIs just produce images that are stylistic averages across all of their training data, then is it even theoretically possible for such models to create art that's edgy, avant-garde, or off the beaten path? Is cinema dead? Is literature dead? Are the humanities dying, especially in the US? And might that be a significant contributing factor to the withering of democracy in the US?

Justin Smith-Ruiu, formerly known as Justin E.H. Smith, is a writer based in Paris. He writes speculative fiction, documentary metafiction, criticism, literary non-fiction, and poetry, and also translates poetry. In 2019-2020, he was the John and Constance Birkelund Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. He is also a professor of philosophy in the department of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. Learn more about him and read his writings at www.the-hinternet.com

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What interesting social phenomena can be observed at nightclubs? What are "whales" hoping to achieve by spending big at nightclubs? Trying too obviously to increase social status tends to backfire; so how can people buy status without appearing to do so? What do "promoters" gain from these social interactions? How does their work differ from or overlap with sex work? How can they make money without being seen as "gold-diggers"? What ethnicities tend to comprise these nightclub groups? How do wealthy people attempt to navigate the norms of the various elite substrata which expect them both to put their wealth on display and to do so without being ostentatious or gaudy?

Ashley Mears is a professor of sociology and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Boston University, and she's the co-founder of the Ethnographic Cafe and BU's Precarity Lab. She received her BA in sociology from the University of Georgia in 2002 and her PhD in sociology at New York University in 2009. Working primarily at the intersections of economic and cultural sociology and gender, she studies how societies value people and things; she researches value and exchange in the context of labor, beauty, free stuff, elites, consumption, and social media; and she has written on theory and qualitative methods. She has held visiting positions at the University of Amsterdam and the Central European University in Budapest. In 2021-2022, she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. She currently serves on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review and Qualitative Sociology. Learn more about her at her website, ashleymears.com.

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How bad is the air quality in the US and around the world? What's the evidence that certain kinds of particles in the air lead to negative health outcomes? Are there differences in air quality among urban, suburban, and rural areas? And if so, then to what extent are negative health outcomes attributable to air quality rather than to (e.g.) poverty, education, or other confounding factors? What are "PM 2.5" particles? Can some particles be too small to matter? Are all particles of a certain size harmful, or only specific types of particles? Do damaging particles accumulate in the body over time? What can the average person do to reduce their exposure to unhealthy air? Opening windows in our homes can let in fresh air, but it can also let in harmful particles; so is opening windows a good idea or not? How relatively bad are trans fats and saturated fats? Does the FDA regulate drugs too much or not enough? Why do side effect labels usually list all possible side effects without any indication of how common those side effects are? What should a bureacracy be and not be? How can bureacracies train employees to follow rules and produce consistent outcomes without stifling individual initiative and creativity?

Richard Bruns is an economist who specializes in cost-benefit analysis of novel public health policy. He is currently a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is an Open-Philanthropy-funded think tank devoted to protecting the world from catastrophic biological risks. For the past few years, much of his work has been focused on how indoor air quality improvements can protect us from disease. Before that, he was an economist in the food part of the Food and Drug Administration. Feel free to email him at [email protected] about any topic in this episode, or learn more about him at his website.

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Will large language models (LLMs) replace journalists any time soon? On what types of writing tasks do LLMs outperform humans? Have the US news media become less truth-seeking in recent decades? Or is truth-seeking behavior merely an aberration from a norm of propagandizing? How should we redistribute economic surplus from AI? Have any AI companies committed to a Windfall Clause? Instead of bothering to negotiate with us, wouldn't a superintelligent AI be able to get much more done by first wiping us all out? What are some subtler or less-well-known ways subscription models reshape incentive structures for journalists? Why is collective action so hard?

Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he cofounded Future Perfect, a section devoted to exploring ways to do good. He writes frequently about economics, philanthropy, global health, and more. You can email him at [email protected].

NOTE: This episode was recorded live at EAGxNYC!

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Is enlightenment the same as being happy all the time? Or being at peace all the time? Or something else? What is "fundamental wellbeing"? What are the "locations" within fundamental wellbeing? What is "persistent non-symbolic experience"? How effective is the Finders Course? Are control groups necessary when researching enlightenment?

Jeffery Martin is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness (nonsymbolic.org) and a research professor and director of the Transformative Technology Lab (transtechlab.org). Prior to his current affiliation with Stanford University, he was Distinguished University Professor, William James Professor of Consciousness, and Dean of Research at Sofia University. He spent the last 15+ years conducting the largest international study on persistent non-symbolic experience (PNSE) ? or as it's publicly known, Fundamental Wellbeing ? which includes the types of consciousness commonly known as: persistent awakening, enlightenment, nonduality, the peace that passeth understanding, unitive experience, and hundreds of others. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited over 20 books and numerous other publications. Learn more about him at his website, drjefferymartin.com.

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What is Munchausen syndrome? How does Munchausen syndrome differ from malingering? Does Munchausen usually correlate with lying or exaggerating in other contexts (i.e., pathological lying)? What is "Munchausen by Proxy" (AKA "factitious disorder imposed on another", or FDIA)? Why are women the offenders in the overwhelming majority of cases? What are some consistent patterns of behavior exhibited by people with MBP? What is a "reality distortion field"? How do people with MBP tend to deflect requests for facts? Do such people believe their own stories? How does MBP relate to sociopathy or psychopathy? How common is MBP?

Andrea Dunlop is an author and podcaster based out of Seattle, WA with two decades of experience in book publishing. She is the author of four novels: Losing the Light (February 2016; Atria), She Regrets Nothing (February 2018; Atria), We Came Here to Forget (July 2019; Atria), and Women Are the Fiercest Creatures (March 2023; Zibby Books). Andrea is host and creator of the popular true crime investigative podcast about Munchausen by Proxy called Nobody Should Believe Me, which was a New & Noteworthy pick for Apple's Dark Side collection. Her non-fiction book on the same topic is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press. She is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by Proxy Committee and is the founder of Munchausen Support, which is dedicated to providing resources for frontline professionals, families, and survivors dealing with MBP. Learn more about her on her website, andreadunlop.net.

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Why do even people who accept evolutionary explanations for most biological phenomena often push back against evolutionary explanations for human psychology? To what extent should humans adjust their behavior in light of evopsych findings? How do evopsych researchers avoid formulating "just so" stories to explain specific behaviors? What can we infer about human behavior from the behaviors of chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or orangutans? What is the evopsych view of incest (which most people seem to find disgusting but which is also one of the most popular porn categories)? Are emotions primarily shaped by evolution or by culture? How can evopsych findings be applied to everyday things like dating? A safely-aligned AI system should presumably support the majority of human values; so how should AI alignment researchers think about religious values, which are generally held by the majority of humans but which differ radically in their specifics from group to group? What are some other rarely-considered AI alignment blind spots?

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist best known for his books The Mating Mind (2001), Mating Intelligence (2008), Spent (2009), and Mate (2015). He also has over 110 academic publications addressing sexual selection, mate choice, signaling theory, fitness indicators, consumer behavior, marketing, intelligence, creativity, language, art, music, humor, emotions, personality, psychopathology, and behavior genetics. He holds a B.A. in biology and psychology from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University, and he is a tenured associate professor at University of New Mexico. Follow him on Twitter at @primalpoly, or find out more about him on his website, primalpoly.com.

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What is futarchy? Why does it seem to be easier to find social innovations rather than technical innovations? How does it differ from democracy? In what ways might a futarchy be gamed? What are some obstacles to implementing futarchy? Do we actually like for our politicians to be hypocritical to some degree? How mistaken are we about our own goals for social, political, and economic institutions? Do we enjoy fighting (politically) more than actually governing well and improving life for everyone? What makes something "sacred"? What is a tax career agent?

Robin Hanson is associate professor of economics at George Mason University and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science from California Institute of Technology, master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago, and nine years experience as a research programmer at Lockheed and NASA. He has over ninety academic publications in major journals across a wide variety of fields and has written two books: The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth (2016), and The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life (2018, co-authored with Kevin Simler). He has pioneered prediction markets, also known as information markets and idea futures, since 1988; and he suggests "futarchy" as a form of governance based on prediction markets. He also coined the phrase "The Great Filter" and has recently numerically estimated it via a model of "Grabby Aliens". Learn more about Robin at his GMU page or follow him on the-website-formerly-known-as-Twitter at @robinhanson.

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What is metacognitive therapy? How does MCT differ from CBT, DBT, and other mental health therapy paradigms? How do we know we're spending time worrying about the right things? How much time spent worrying is actually useful? How aware are we of our own tendencies to ruminate on certain negative thoughts? Does MCT avoid all content-based problem-solving? What is the state of the evidence for MCT?

Dr. Pia Callesen is one of Denmark's most educated and experienced metacognitive psychologists. She has more than 25 years of experience as a therapist and has completed the official 2-year metacognitive certification training in Manchester at the MCT Institute and the subsequent 1-year advanced level masterclass in Oxford by Professor Adrian Wells. At the end of 2016, she completed her PhD at Manchester University with Professor Adrian Wells. The PhD contained a large randomised controlled trial with research into the effects of metacognitive therapy treatment for depression.

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Along what axes and at what rates is the AI industry growing? What algorithmic developments have yielded the greatest efficiency boosts? When, if ever, will we hit the upper limits of the amount of computing power, data, money, etc., we can throw at AI development? Why do some people seemingly become fixated on particular tasks that particular AI models can't perform and draw the conclusion that AIs are still pretty dumb and won't be taking our jobs any time soon? What kinds of tasks are more or less easily automatable? Should more people work on AI? What does it mean to "take ownership" of our friendships? What sorts of thinking patterns employed by AI engineers can be beneficial in other areas of life? How can we make better decisions, especially about large things like careers and relationships?

Danny Hernandez was an early AI researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic. He's best known for measuring macro progress in AI. For example, he helped show that the compute of the largest training runs was growing at 10x per year between 2012 and 2017. He also helped show an algorithmic equivalent of Moore's Law that was faster, and he's done work on scaling laws and mechanistic interpretability of learning from repeated data. He is currently focused on alignment research.

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Can we really deeply change who we are? Can we choose our preferences, intrinsic values, or personality more generally? What are some interventions people might use to make big changes in their lives? Why might it be harder to be a generalist than a specialist? What are some of the most well-known "findings" from the social sciences that have failed to replicate? Do some replications go too far? Should we just let Twitter users take over the peer-review process? Why hasn't forecasting made major inroads into (e.g.) government yet? Why does it seem like companies sometimes commission forecasts and then ignore them? How worried should we be about deepfakes?

Gavin Leech cofounded the consultancy Arb Research. He's also a PhD candidate in AI at the University of Bristol, a head of camp at the European Summer Programme on Rationality, and a blogger at gleech.org. He's internet famous for collecting hundreds of failed replications in psychology and for having processed most of Isaac Asimov's nonfiction of the mid-twentieth-century to score his predictive performance.

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Besides the need to attract attention, what are some other drivers behind the news media's tendency to "catastrophize the normal"? To what extent does paltering take place on the politically left and right ends of the new media spectrum? Should journalists try to be as objective and unbiased as possible, or should they strive to make a difference in the world by highlighting particular issues that are important to them? Is the US on the verge of a civil war? Are prophecies of civil war self-fulfilling? Is it (and should it be) okay to reference certain taboo phrases by saying them explicitly? To what extent do journalists pull their punches because they fear angering the wrong crowd?

Mike Pesca is host of The Gist, the longest running daily news podcast in history, consistently ranked in Apple's Top 20 Daily News charts. During his 10 years as a correspondent for NPR, Mike guest hosted All Things Considered and the news quiz Wait, Wait, Don?t Tell Me. His work has been featured on This American Life, Radiolab, and Planet Money. He has frequently appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and The PBS Newshour, and written for The Washington Post, The Guardian, GQ, Slate, and Baseball Prospectus. Listen to Mike on The Gist, or follow him on Twitter at @pescami.

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What's wrong with society? And what can we do to fix it? Centuries ago, a person's grandparents lived in a world that was basically identical to that person's world; but what are the implications of living in a time when the rate of technological change is such that our grandparents' world was almost nothing like ours, and ours will be almost nothing like our grandchildren's? How do Tim's concepts of the "primitive mind" and the "higher mind" map onto System 1 and System 2 thinking types? What thinking styles exist along the spectrum from primitive mind to higher mind? Why are there either lots of Nazis or virtually none at all? Are there more "golems" or "genies" in the world right now? Are the American political left and right wings just equal but opposite groups, or are there significant asymmetries between them? How does social justice activism differ from "wokeness"? What is "idea supremacy"? Does liberalism need to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch (perhaps as something else entirely) or merely repaired and revamped? Is illiberalism the biggest threat facing the world right now ? bigger even than AI, climate change, etc.?

Tim Urban is the writer/illustrator and co-founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a monthly average of half a million visitors. He has produced dozens of viral articles on a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence to social anxiety to humans becoming a multi-planetary species. Tim's 2016 TED main stage talk is the third most-watched TED talk in history with 67 million views. In 2023, Tim published his bestselling book What's Our Problem? A Self Help Book for Societies.

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Where does innovation come from? How common is it for "lone wolf" scientists to make large leaps in innovation by themselves? How can we imbue AIs with creativity? Or, conversely, how can we apply advances in AI creativity to our own personal creative processes? How do creative strategies that work well for individuals differ from creative strategies that work well for groups? To what extent are models like DALL-E and ChatGPT "creative"? Can machines love? Or can they only ever pretend to love? We've worried a fair bit about AI misalignment; but what should we do about the fact that so many humans are misaligned with humanity's own interests? What might it mean to be "reverent" towards science?

Joel Lehman is a machine learning researcher interested in algorithmic creativity, AI safety, artificial life, and intersections of AI with psychology and philosophy. Most recently he was a research scientist at OpenAI co-leading the Open-Endedness team (studying algorithms that can innovate endlessly). Previously he was a founding member of Uber AI Labs, first employee of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), and a tenure track professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He co-wrote with Kenneth Stanley a popular science book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned on what AI search algorithms imply for individual and societal accomplishment. Follow him on Twitter at @joelbot3000 or email him at [email protected].

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How does nondual meditation differ from other forms of meditation? Is nonduality the sort of thing a person can just "get" immediately? What value is provided by the more effortful, less "sudden" forms of meditation? Is there such a thing as full or complete enlightenment? And what would such a state entail? To what extent do nondual meditation teachers agree about what nonduality is? Are glimpses of enlightenment available to everyone? How long does it usually take a person to stabilize their ability to return to a nondual way of seeing the world? What are some common ways people get "stuck" while learning nondual meditation? How important are meditation retreats? Though the paths themselves are obviously quite distinct from one another, do all forms of meditation ultimately share a common goal? How are all of these things related to spirituality or religion?

Michael Taft is a teacher of nondual meditation and host of the Deconstructing Yourself podcast and website. He is the author of The Mindful Geek, and co-founder of The Alembic, a Berkeley-based center for meditation, movement, citizen neuroscience, and visionary culture. Having lived all over the world and practiced deeply in several traditions, Michael currently makes his home in California. Email him at [email protected], or learn more about him at his website, deconstructingyourself.com.

Jeremy Stevenson hails from Adelaide, Australia, and has a PhD in clinical psychology with a dissertation focused on the effects of self-compassion on social anxiety. During his PhD he became intensely interested in meditation, sitting several shorter retreats which eventually culminated in sitting longer retreats, including a 3-month retreat in Nepal. He is now working as a clinical psychologist as well as doing research work for Spark Wave. His ongoing meditation interest is the perplexing skill of nondual mindfulness. Email him at [email protected], or listen to his previous episode on this podcast here.

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What is the New Enlightenment? What might it mean to improve our epistemics with regard to institutions? How should we fix imbalanced salience in contexts where misinformation is a problem (like news media)? How have the economics of institutions deteriorated? How can we continually reinvigorate systems so that they remain ungameable and resistant to runaway feedback loops? In the context of government in particular, how can we move away from "one dollar, one vote" and back towards "one person, one vote"? At what levels or layers should institutional interventions be applied? What can we do to increase trust across social differences and reduce contempt among groups? Under what conditions is it rational to feel contempt for an out-group? How can we make conflict and "dunking" less appealing, and make openmindedness and careful consideration more appealing? What is the "dismissal" economy? How can we deal with information overload? How might the adversarial economic model be used to improve academia?

Ashley Hodgson is an Associate Professor of Economics and a YouTuber. She teaches behavioral economics, digital industries, health care economics, and blockchain economics. Her YouTube channel, The New Enlightenment, explores topics related to economics, governance, and epistemics ? that is, the determination of truth and validity ? in a world of social media and increasing power concentration. She also has another YouTube channel with her economics lectures.

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What does philosophy have to say about virtual reality (VR)? Under what conditions is "normal" reality preferable to VR? To what extent are VR experiences "real"? How likely is it that we're living in a simulation? What implications would the discovery that we're living in a simulation have for our beliefs about reality? How common is Bayesian thinking among philosophers? How should we think about identity over time if selves can be split or duplicated? What might it look like for our conception of identity to undergo a "fall from Eden"? What do people mean when they say that consciousness is an illusion? Finding a grand unified theory of physics seems at least in principle the sort of thing that science can do, even if we haven't done it yet; but can science even in principle solve the hard problem of consciousness? Might consciousness just be a fundamental law of the universe, an axiom which we must accept but for which there might be no explanation? Is consciousness needed in order to attain certain levels of biological evolution? How conscious (or not) are our current AI models? Statistically speaking, what are the most prevalent views held by philosophers?

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind (1996) and Reality+ (2022). He is known for formulating the "hard problem" of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard's play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the "extended mind," which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds. Learn more about him at consc.net.

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What is persuasion, and what is it not? How does persuasion differ from coercion? What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion? How are the concepts of assimilation and accommodation related to persuasion? Motivated reasoning is usually seen as a cognitive bias or error; but what if all reasoning is motivated? Are we motivated more by physical death or social death? How much evidence would Flat-Earthers need in order to be convinced that Earth is round? What are "deep" canvassing and "street" epistemology? In what contexts are they most effective? Under what conditions is persuasion morally acceptable?

David McRaney is a science journalist fascinated with brains, minds, and culture. He created the podcast You Are Not So Smart based on his 2009 internationally bestselling book of the same name and its followup, You Are Now Less Dumb. Before that, he cut his teeth as a newspaper reporter covering Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and in the Pine Belt region of the Deep South. Later, he covered things like who tests rockets for NASA, what it is like to run a halfway home for homeless people who are HIV-positive, and how a family sent their kids to college by making and selling knives. Since then, he has been an editor, photographer, voiceover artist, television host, journalism teacher, lecturer, and tornado survivor. Most recently, after finishing his latest book, How Minds Change, he wrote, produced, and recorded a six-hour audio documentary exploring the history of the idea and the word: genius. Learn more about him at davidmcraney.com, or follow him on Twitter at @davidmcraney.

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Does AI pose a near-term existential risk? Why might existential risks from AI manifest sooner rather than later? Can't we just turn off any AI that gets out of control? Exactly how much do we understand about what's going on inside neural networks? What is AutoGPT? How feasible is it to build an AI system that's exactly as intelligent as a human but no smarter? What is the "CoEm" AI safety proposal? What steps can the average person take to help mitigate risks from AI?

Connor Leahy is CEO and co-founder of Conjecture, an AI alignment company focused on making AI systems boundable and corrigible. Connor founded and led EleutherAI, the largest online community dedicated to LLMs, which acted as a gateway for people interested in ML to upskill and learn about alignment. With capabilities increasing at breakneck speed, and our ability to control AI systems lagging far behind, Connor moved on from the volunteer, open-source Eleuther model to a full-time, closed-source model working to solve alignment via Conjecture.

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Many people who work on AI safety advocate for slowing the rate of development; but might there be any advantages in speeding up AI development? Which fields are likely to be impacted the most (or the least) by AI? As AIs begin to displace workers, how can workers make themselves more valuable? How likely is it that AI assistants will become better at defending against users who are actively trying to circumvent assistants' guardrails? What effects would the open-sourcing of AI code, models, or training data likely have? How do actual or potential AI intelligence levels affect AI safety calculus? Are there any good solutions to the problem that only ethically-minded people are likely to apply caution and restraint in AI development? What will a world with human-level AGI look like?

An accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Reid Hoffman has played an integral role in building many of today's leading consumer technology businesses including as the co-founder of LinkedIn. He is the host of the podcasts Masters of Scale and Possible. He is the co-author of five best-selling books: The Startup of You, The Alliance, Blitzscaling, Masters of Scale, and Impromptu.

Note from Reid: Possible [the podcast] is back this summer with a three-part miniseries called "AI and The Personal," which launches on June 21. Featured guests use AI, hardware, software, and their own creativity to better people's daily lives. Subscribe here to get the series: https://link.chtbl.com/thepossiblepodcast

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How have animal rights and the animal rights movement changed in the last few decades? How has the scale of animal product consumption grown relative to human population growth? On what principles ought animal ethics to be grounded? What features of human psychology enable humans to empathize with and dislike animal suffering and yet also eat animal products regularly? How does the agribusiness industry convince people to make choices that go against their own values? What are some simple changes people can make to their diets if they're not ready yet to go completely vegetarian or vegan but still want to be less responsible for animal suffering? What attitudes should vegetarians and vegans hold towards meat-eaters? When, if ever, is it possible to have done "enough", morally speaking? What are the things that matter intrinsically to humans and other sentient beings? What is the most complex organism that is apparently not conscious? Will we ever have the technology to scan someone's brain and measure how much pleasure or suffering they're experiencing? How uncertain should we be about moral uncertainty? What should we eat if it's eventually discovered that plants can suffer?

Peter Singer is a philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His work focuses on the ethics of human treatment of animals; he is often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement; and his writings have significantly influenced the development of the Effective Altruism movement. In 1971, Peter co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now called Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization; and in 2013, he founded The Life You Can Save, an organization named after his 2009 book, which aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty and how we can best do this. In 2021, he received the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture for his "widely influential and intellectually rigorous work in reinvigorating utilitarianism as part of academic philosophy and as a force for change in the world". He has written, co-authored, edited, or co-edited more than 50 books, including Animal Liberation, The Life You Can Save, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek); and his writings have been translated into more than 25 languages. Find out more about him at his website, petersinger.info, or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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What are large language models (LLMs) actually doing when they churn out text? Are they sentient? Is scale the only difference among the various GPT models? Google has seemingly been the clear frontrunner in the AI space for many years; so how did they fail to win the race to LLMs? And why are other competing companies having such a hard time catching their LLM tech up to OpenAI's? What are the implications of open-sourcing LLM code, models, and corpora? How concerned should we be about bad actors using open source LLM tools? What are some possible strategies for combating the coming onslaught of AI-generated spam and misinformation? What are the main categories of risks associated with AIs? What is "deep" peace? What is "the meaning crisis"?

Jim Rutt is the host of the Jim Rutt Show podcast, past president and co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, executive producer of the film "An Initiation to Game~B", and the creator of Network Wars, the popular mobile game. Previously he has been chairman of the Santa Fe Institute, CEO of Network Solutions, CTO of Thomson-Reuters, and chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation, among various business and not-for-profit roles. He is working on a book about Game B and having a great time exploring the profits and perils of the Large Language Models.

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When is a certain speech act an opinion versus a call to action? Does that distinction matter for censorship purposes? Why does it seem that human behavior tends towards censorship rather than towards freedom of expression? Is feeling emotionally or politically harmed a valid reason for censoring certain speech acts? Will it always be the case that, given enough time, truth will win out over ignorance, bullshit, misinformation, and lies? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for creating a society in which truth wins at the end of the day? Why are citizens so often attracted to populist and/or fascist ideologies and political parties? What value does religion provide to a society?

Iona Italia is the editor-in-chief of Areo Magazine and the host of its Two for Tea podcast. Iona is the author of two books: Anxious Employment (a study of eighteenth-century essayists) and Our Tango World (sociological and philosophical musings on dance and life). She holds a PhD in English Literature from Cambridge University and publishes weekly creative non-fiction pieces on her Substack, The Second Swim. Her background includes a decade in academe and a 12-year career as a tango dancer and teacher. Iona lives in London with four old friends. She loves dancing, running, choral singing, chess, dogs, and sci-fi.

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What is pro-natalism? How fast are birth rates falling around the world? How long will it take for us to really feel the effects of population collapse? What are the primary drivers of population collapse? How does the current difficulty of raising children compare to other periods in history? What roles do various religions and philosophies play in population dynamics? What are some non-coercive ways to encourage population growth? What constitutes an intergenerationally durable culture?

Simone and Malcolm Collins are a husband-wife team driving the pronatalist movement, which seeks to bring attention to the risks of a hard landing on demographic collapse. In addition to running the Pronatalist Foundation, the Collins Institute, and a collection of private equity companies, they enjoy writing, having so far published five bestselling books (The Pragmatist's Guide series). To hear more from them, check out their podcast (on Substack, YouTube, or whenever you listen to podcasts), follow them on Twitter at @SimoneHCollins, or check out their books:

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