80,000 Hours Podcast17 Okt 2017

#11 - Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm

Do most meat eaters think it’s wrong to hurt animals? Do Americans think climate change is likely to cause human extinction? What is the best, state-of-the-art therapy for depression? How can we make academics more intellectually honest, so we can actually trust their findings? How can we speed up social science research ten-fold? Do most startups improve the world, or make it worse?

If you’re interested in these question, this interview is for you.

Click for a full transcript, links discussed in the show, etc.

A scientist, entrepreneur, writer and mathematician, Spencer Greenberg is constantly working to create tools to speed up and improve research and critical thinking. These include:

* Rapid public opinion surveys to find out what most people actually think about animal consciousness, farm animal welfare, the impact of developing world charities and the likelihood of extinction by various different means;
* Tools to enable social science research to be run en masse very cheaply;
* ClearerThinking.org, a highly popular site for improving people’s judgement and decision-making;
* Ways to transform data analysis methods to ensure that papers only show true findings;
* Innovative research methods;
* Ways to decide which research projects are actually worth pursuing.

In this interview, Spencer discusses all of these and more. If you don’t feel like listening, that just shows that you have poor judgement and need to benefit from his wisdom even more!

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