Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg Spencer Greenberg

How is Chinese culture different from American culture? For what reasons do Chinese people get plastic surgery, and how do those reasons differ from those of their American counterparts? What is love addiction? Are 12-step programs the only way (or the best way) of overcoming addiction?

Ava King is an international singer, songwriter, and producer based out of LA. She was born and raised in France, spent a decade in China, then decided to move to LA to pursue her passion of music. As a songwriter, Ava co-wrote "I Just" for K-pop group Red Velvet’s second album that debuted at #1 on the Billboard World charts and #1 on the Korean Pop Charts. The album has since gone on to become 9X Platinum in Korea and has accumulated over 2.3 million plays on Spotify. Her songs have also been featured on The Ellen Show, Empire, and Crazy Rich Asians. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok; and you can email her at avakingbookings@gmail.com.

How do you design a product to handle user failure? How do you keep users motivated even when they fail? How do you successfully onboard new users? What are some different kinds of search behavior? How and when does gamifying a product increase user engagement and success? What psychological components do games attempt to engage with? How do we develop expert intuition in a domain?

Rob Haisfield is a behavioral product strategy and gameful design consultant. He applies behavioral science and game design principles to products to influence user behavior. This is based on the thesis that when people use tools in ways that allow them to more effectively accomplish their goals, they gain more value. He also works as a behavioral product strategist for Spark Wave and its various portfolio companies, recently focusing on the onboarding for GuidedTrack. You can learn more about him at robhaisfield.com, follow him on Twitter at @RobertHaisfield, or email him at rob@influenceinsights.io.

What is the Internal Family Systems model? What kinds of information do our emotions give us? How many agents live in our heads? And, if there's more than one, how well do those agents cooperate? What is operant conditioning? What is attachment theory? How does parenting differ from animal training? Is decision theory able to unify many different psychological theories?

Divia Eden has always been interested in understanding how minds work, and she currently spends most of her time unschooling her three kids. You can find out more about her at becomingeden.com or follow her on Twitter at @diviacaroline.

How can we become better leaders? How can we give better feedback to others? How can we be better listeners? How can we give good advice? How do startups (or even existing companies) build great products? What sorts of things do experts actually know? When is it useful to poll customers for feedback?

Julia Carvalho serves as an advisor to startups doing impactful things in the world. She thinks a lot about product strategy, teams, and prioritization. She likes emailing with strangers and can be found at juliawcarvalho@gmail.com.

How can people be more effective in their altruism? Is it better for people to give to good causes in urgent situations or on a regular basis? What causes people to donate to less effective charities even when presented with evidence that other charities might be more effective? We can make geographically distant events seem salient locally by (for example) showing them on TV, but how can we make possible future events seem more salient? How much more effective are the most effective charities than the average? How do altruists avoid being exploited (in a game theoretic sense)? What sorts of norms are common in the EA community?

Stefan Schubert is a researcher in philosophy and psychology at the University of Oxford, working on questions of relevance for effective altruism. In particular, he studies why most donations don't go to the most effective charities and what we can do to change it. He also studies what norms we should have if we want to do the most good, as well as the psychology of the long-term future. You can email him at stefanfredrikschubert@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at @StefanFSchubert, or learn more about him at stefanfschubert.com.

Further reading:


"The Psychology of (In)Effective Altruism"
"The many obstacles to effective giving"
"Donors vastly underestimate differences in charities' effectiveness"
"Supportive Scepticism"

What is the illusion of explanatory depth? Are there forms of debate or dialogue that actually help people to change their minds (instead of stacking the incentives such that people feel forced to harden and defend their views)? What is epistemic "debt"? Should people avoid having opinions on things where they haven't thought deeply and carefully about all of the relevant considerations? How does one choose which experts to trust? What is "growth mindset"? How can social science be used to do good in the world?

Daniel Greene is a postdoctoral researcher and fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where he works with Dr. Megan Palmer to research methods of engaging life scientists with the potential safety and security risks of their work. He has a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford and worked as a social psychologist and data scientist at the Project for Education Research that Scales. You can find more information about Daniel at danielgreene.net.