Show Notes
Read the full transcript here. Is dishonesty best understood as a permanent feature of human nature or as a condition that worsens when incentives and tools change? When new technologies make cheating easier and detection harder, do they merely reveal existing character or actively reshape it? How much of moral behavior depends less on values than on friction, surveillance, and the perceived odds of getting caught? Is the deepest threat of AI enabled cheating that people deceive more, or that they stop believing sincerity can be known at all? If most people are not chronic liars, why do so many people still cheat when the opportunity is clean and the cost is low? Do people mainly avoid dishonesty because they are virtuous, or because they want to preserve a workable image of themselves as virtuous? Why do so many moral failures seem to stop at the point where self justification breaks down? If people cheat only a little, is that evidence of conscience or merely evidence of strategic moderation? Why do reminders of honor, vows, and identity sometimes reduce cheating even when enforcement is absent? Does honesty depend less on abstract principle than on whether a situation activates the right self conception? How much of morality is really a contest between temptation and the stories we need to tell ourselves about who we are? If truth telling is cognitively easier than lying, why are human beings still so vulnerable to deception? Do we default to honesty because we are moral, or because truth is usually simpler, cheaper, and less mentally demanding? If we are biased toward assuming others are truthful, is that a moral achievement or a practical shortcut that civilization depends on? Links: Christian's New Book: The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World
Christian's Website
Christian B. Miller is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with his wife and three children. His research primarily has to do with virtue and moral character, and he is the former leader of The Character Project, one of the largest research projects in the world on these topics. Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift
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More from Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
Read the full transcript here. Could AI simultaneously be an extraordinarily powerful technology and an economic bubble, and why would those possibilities not contradict each other? What does the history of the internet bubble suggest about the comforting idea that a financial crash would make AI itself go away? How should we think about the enormous investments flowing between AI companies, chipmakers, and data centers, and could their financial risks become dangerously correlated? Are concerns about AI's energy use justified, while claims about its water consumption are sometimes missing the relevant denominator? What do the boosters get right about abundance, productivity, medicine, and education, and what do they overlook about democratic control and human agency? Could a frictionless AI mediated life make people less capable through what has been called cognitive surrender? What would it mean to stop the race to build universal labor replacing machines while continuing to develop forms of AI that solve genuinely valuable problems? Garrison Lovely is a freelance journalist and author. His writing on artificial intelligence and its political economy has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Jacobin, Nature, Bloomberg, BBC, TIME, The Guardian, The Verge, and other publications; he was previously a Reporter in Residence at the Omidyar Network. Links: Garrison's Book: Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us―and How to Stop It Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift
Read the full transcript here. What exactly is procrastination, and how is it different from simply deciding to postpone something? Why is chronic procrastination so common, and why can it affect highly conscientious and productive people just as much as anyone else? Are there really different types of procrastination, and why does it matter whether someone is procrastinating because of anxiety, distraction, burnout, impulsivity, or perfectionism? How does anxiety turn an unpleasant task into something we continually avoid? Why can anxiety sometimes motivate action while overwhelming anxiety instead leaves us paralyzed? What happens when we repeatedly use procrastination to make ourselves feel better in the short term? Why does that temporary relief reinforce the very behavior that makes things worse in the long term? How do digital distractions differ from internal distractions such as boredom and frustration? And why can procrastination persist even when we genuinely care about the thing we're putting off? Itamar Shatz created Solving Procrastination to help people understand and overcome procrastination, based on insights that he synthesized from hundreds of research articles, and holds a PhD from Cambridge University, where is an affiliated lecturer teaching quantitative research methods. Links: Itamar's Latest Book: Solving Procrastination Staff Spencer Greenberg — Host + Director Ryan Kessler — Producer + Technical Lead WeAmplify — Transcriptionists Igor Scaldini — Marketing Consultant Music Broke for Free Josh Woodward Lee Rosevere Quiet Music for Tiny Robots wowamusic zapsplat.com Affiliates Clearer Thinking GuidedTrack Mind Ease Positly UpLift
Read the full transcript here. What does “neurodivergent” actually mean, and has the term become too broad to be useful? Why might people grouped under the same neurodivergent umbrella have conflicting needs? Is autism really a single spectrum, or would it make more sense to speak of multiple “autisms”? Why are autistic people somewhat less likely to be religious than their non-autistic peers? What is the “cognitive dissonance pressure cooker,” and why might it contribute to religious deconversion? Why do some autistic Christians migrate from evangelical churches toward highly ritualized traditions? Why do autistic communities develop distinctive linguistic norms, and what happens when non-autistic people begin adopting them? Why are excessive caveating, specificity, rigidity, and moral certainty sometimes associated with autistic communication? What is the “broader autism phenotype,” and could it help explain why autistic traits cluster in fields like engineering and technology? When are traits associated with autism genuinely advantageous, and when do the same traits become disabling? Is ADHD or autism really a “superpower,” or does that framing obscure important weaknesses and support needs? Do autistic people actually lack empathy, and what is the difference between cognitive and affective empathy? Jonathan Machnee is an autistic researcher who has conducted the largest English language ethnographic study of Christians and ex-Christian autistics. His research has included data mining over 26,000 autistic adults and conducting over 500 interviews with autistic Christians and ex-Christians in order to understand the unique intersection between autism and the practice of Christianity. Links: John's Twitter
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Read the full transcript here. What makes an attachment to AI meaningfully different from an attachment to a human, animal, or fictional character? If chatbot relationships are built around validation and adaptation, can they ever provide the friction and otherness that make human relationships opportunities for growth? Does a relationship need reciprocity to be genuine, or can an asymmetrical relationship still be deeply valuable? How would the possibility of AI sentience change the moral status of human relationships with artificial companions? When a company controls the personality of something a user loves, how much power does that company gain over the user? Why might emotional attachment create an internality that ordinary consumer protections are poorly equipped to handle? Can a freemium business model ever be compatible with healthy AI companionship when emotional dependency itself drives engagement? Where is the line between comforting validation and reinforcing distorted beliefs or harmful emotional patterns? How should an AI distinguish between respecting someone's subjective experience and helping them question a potentially false interpretation of reality? If people increasingly turn to systems optimized around their own preferences, what forms of compromise, disagreement, and personal growth might they lose? Claire is an Assistant Professor in Technology Law and AI Governance at the European University Institute School of Transnational Governance and a Visiting Research Associate at the Cordell Institute of the Washington University School of Law. Links: Claire Previously Founded Successif