143 | Julia Galef on Openness, Bias, and Rationality

143 | Julia Galef on Openness, Bias, and Rationality

Mom, apple pie, and rationality — all things that are unquestionably good, right? But rationality, as much as we might value it, is easier to aspire to than to achieve. And there are more than a few hot takes on the market suggesting that we shouldn't even want to be rational — that it's inefficient or maladaptive. Julia Galef is here to both stand up for the value of being rational, and to explain how we can better achieve it. She distinguishes between the "soldier mindset," where we believe what we're told about the world and march toward a goal, and the "scout mindset," where we're open-minded about what's out there and always asking questions. She makes a compelling case that all things considered, it's better to be a scout.

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Julia Galef received a BA in statistics from Columbia University. She is currently a writer and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast. She was a co-founder and president of the Center for Applied Rationality. Her new book is The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't.


Jaksot(416)

70 | Katie Mack on How the Universe Will End

70 | Katie Mack on How the Universe Will End

Cosmologists are always talking excitedly about the Big Bang and all the cool stuff that happened in the 14 billion years between then and now. But what about the future? We don't know for sure, but w...

28 Loka 20191h 23min

69 | Cory Doctorow on Technology, Monopoly, and the Future of the Internet

69 | Cory Doctorow on Technology, Monopoly, and the Future of the Internet

Like so many technological innovations, the internet is something that burst on the scene and pervaded human life well before we had time to sit down and think through how something like that should w...

21 Loka 20191h 17min

68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

Artificial intelligence is better than humans at playing chess or go, but still has trouble holding a conversation or driving a car. A simple way to think about the discrepancy is through the lens of ...

14 Loka 20191h 22min

67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution

67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution

Our observable universe started out in a highly non-generic state, one of very low entropy, and disorderliness has been growing ever since. How, then, can we account for the appearance of complex syst...

7 Loka 20191h 12min

66 | Will Wilkinson on Partisan Polarization and the Urban/Rural Divide

66 | Will Wilkinson on Partisan Polarization and the Urban/Rural Divide

The idea of "red states" and "blue states" burst on the scene during the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections, and has a been a staple of political commentary ever since. But it's become increasingly clea...

30 Syys 20191h 52min

65 | Michael Mann on Why Our Climate Is Changing and How We Know

65 | Michael Mann on Why Our Climate Is Changing and How We Know

We had our fun last week, exploring how progress in renewable energy and electric vehicles may help us combat encroaching climate change. This week we're being a bit more hard-nosed, taking a look at ...

23 Syys 20191h 17min

64 | Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future

64 | Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future

The Earth is heating up, and it's our fault. But human beings are not always complete idiots (occasional contrary evidence notwithstanding), and sometimes we can even be downright clever. Dare we imag...

16 Syys 20191h 16min

63 | Solo -- Finding Gravity Within Quantum Mechanics

63 | Solo -- Finding Gravity Within Quantum Mechanics

I suspect most loyal Mindscape listeners have been exposed to the fact that I've written a new book, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. As I release this episode o...

9 Syys 20191h 50min

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