{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"80,000 Hours Podcast","title":"#39 - Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":8250,"description":"Will Trump be re-elected? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner?\n\nSpencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems.\n\nLet’s work through one here: how likely is it that you’ll enjoy listening to this episode?\n\nThe first step is to figure out your ‘prior probability’; what’s your estimate of how likely you are to enjoy the interview before getting any further evidence?\n\nOther than applying common sense, one way to figure this out is called reference class forecasting: looking at similar cases and seeing how often something is true, on average.\n\nSpencer is our first ever return guest. So one reference class might be, how many Spencer Greenberg episodes of the 80,000 Hours Podcast have you enjoyed so far? Being this specific limits bias in your answer, but with a sample size of at most 1 - you’d probably want to add more data points to reduce variability.\n\nZooming out, how many episodes of the 80,000 Hours Podcast have you enjoyed? Let’s say you’ve listened to 10, and enjoyed 8 of them. If so 8 out of 10 might be your prior probability.\n\nBut maybe the two you didn’t enjoy had something in common. If you’ve liked similar episodes in the past, you’d update in favour of expecting to enjoy it, and if you’ve disliked similar episodes in the past, you’d update negatively.\n\nYou can zoom out further; what fraction of long-form interview podcasts have you ever enjoyed?\n\nThen you’d look to update whenever new information became available. Do the topics seem interesting? Did Spencer make a great point in the first 5 minutes? Was this description unbearably self-referential?\n\nSpeaking of the Question of Evidence: in a world where Spencer was not worth listening to, how likely is it that we’d invite him back for a second episode?\n\nLinks to learn more, summary and full transcript.\n\nWe’ll run through several diverse examples, and how to actually work out the changing probabilities as...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/VO1STE7hN95RRg9QdLo4soV2VhhbR9PF5ZZlRhDYcwE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQxNDAyLzE2ODM1/NDQ1NDAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}