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Rationally Speaking Podcast

Rationally Speaking is the bi-weekly podcast of New York City Skeptics. Join host Julia Galef and guests as they explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense, likely from unlikely, and science from pseudoscience. Any topic is fair game as long as we can bring reason to bear upon it, with both a skeptical eye and a good dose of humor!
We agree with the Marquis de Condorcet, who said that in an open society we ought to devote ourselves to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them."Rationally Speaking was co-created with Massimo Pigliucci, is produced by Benny Pollak, and is recorded in the heart of New York City's Greenwich Village.

Rationally Speaking #226 - Rob Wiblin on "An updated view of the best ways to help humanity"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 650 views
  • about 5 years ago
  • 53:27

If you want to do as much good as possible with your career, what problems should you work on, and what jobs should you consider? This episode features Rob Wiblin, director of research for effective altruist organization 80,000 Hours, and the host of the 80,000 Hours podcast. Julia and Rob discuss how the career advice 80,000 Hours gives has changed over the years, and the biggest misconceptions about their views. Their conversation covers topics like: - Should everyone try to get a job in finance and donate their income? - The case for working to reduce global catastrophic risks - Why reducing risk is a better way to help the future than increasing economic growth - What percentage of the world should ideally follow 80,000 Hours advice?

Rationally Speaking #225 - Neerav Kingsland on "The case for charter schools"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 620 views
  • about 5 years ago
  • 47:36

This episode features Neerav Kingsland, who helped rebuild New Orleans' public school system after Hurricane Katrina, converting it into the country's first nearly-100% charter school system. Neerav and Julia discuss: why Neerav believes the evidence shows charter schools work better than regular public schools, his responses to the main arguments against charters, and what we know about how parents choose schools for their children.

Rationally Speaking #224 - Rick Nevin on "The long-term effects of lead on crime"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 600 views
  • about 5 years ago
  • 01:00:10

This episode features Rick Nevin, an economist who is known for his research suggesting that lead is one of the main causes of crime. Rick and Julia discuss: how do we know the correlation between lead and crime is a sign of a causal relationship? Has the lead-crime theory made any successful predictions? And is it possible that getting rid of lead could reduce the crime rate down to zero?

Rationally Speaking #223 - Chris Fraser on "The Mohists, ancient China's philosopher warriors"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 590 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 43:55

Not enough people know about the Mohists, a strikingly modern group of Chinese philosophers active in 479-221 BCE. This episode features Chris Fraser, expert on Mohism and professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Chris and Julia discuss how the Mohists put their philosophy into practice and got Chinese leaders to hold off on starting wars; how their philosophy was similar to and different from modern consequentialism; why their movement died out, and what modern groups like Effective Altruists can learn from their story.

Rationally Speaking #222 - Spencer Greenberg and Seth Cottrell on "Ask a Mathematician, Ask a Physicist"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 620 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 57:36

This episode features the hosts of "Ask a Mathematician, Ask a Physicist," a blog that grew out of a Burning Man booth in which a good-natured mathematician (Spencer Greenberg) and physicist (Seth Cottrell) answer people's questions about life, the universe, and everything. Spencer and Seth discuss the weirdest and most controversial questions they've answered, why math is fundamentally arbitrary, Seth's preferred alternative to the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, how a weird group of parapsychologists changed the field of physics, and whether you could do a Double Slit Experiment with a Cat Cannon.

Rationally Speaking #221 - Rob Reich on "Is philanthropy bad for democracy?"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 580 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 47:12

This episode features political scientist Rob Reich, author of "Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy, and How it Can Do Better". Rob and Julia debate his criticisms of philanthropy: Does it deserve to be tax-deductible? Is it a violation of the autonomy of recipients to attach strings to their charitable gifts? And do philanthropists have too much power in society?

Rationally Speaking #220 - Peter Eckersley on "Tough choices on privacy and artificial intelligence"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 650 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 01:02:53

This episode features Peter Eckersley, an expert in law and computer science, who has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Partnership on AI. Peter and Julia first delve into some of the most fundamental questions about privacy: What are the risks of losing privacy? Do we have more to fear from governments or industry? Which companies do a good job of protecting their users' privacy? Are there tradeoffs between supporting privacy and supporting competitive markets? Next, they discuss Peter's work measuring recent progress in AI, and debate to what extent recent progress is cause for optimism.

Rationally Speaking #219 - Jason Collins on "A skeptical take on behavioral economics"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 630 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 55:50

In this episode, economist Jason Collins discusses some of the problems with behavioral economics: Why governments have started to rely too much on the field, and why that's bad; why it's suspicious that there are over 100 cognitive biases; when "nudges" are problematic; and more.

Rationally Speaking #218 - Chris Auld on "Good and bad critiques of economics"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 680 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 48:16

In this episode, economist Chris Auld describes some common criticisms of his field and why they're wrong. Julia and Chris also discuss whether there are any good critiques of the field, and whether economists think that people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs are behaving rationally.

Rationally Speaking #217 - Aviv Ovadya on "The problem of false, biased, and artificial news"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 670 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 38:44

Aviv Ovadya, an expert on misinformation, talks with Julia about the multiple phenomena that get lumped together as "fake news." For example, articles that are straightforwardly false, misleading, or artificially created (think "Deepfakes," videos that make a politician appear to say something he didn't say). Which of those problems are more dangerous for our civilization? Are any of them tractable? And what might a solution look like?

Rationally Speaking #215 - Anders Sandberg on "Thinking about the long-term future of humanity"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 600 views
  • over 5 years ago
  • 43:00

This episode features Anders Sandberg, a researcher at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, explaining several reasons why it's valuable to think about humanity's long-term future. Julia and Anders discuss the common objection that we can't predict or steer the future, and explore whether people really care if humanity dies out.

Rationally Speaking #210 - Stuart Ritchie on "Conceptual objections to IQ testing"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 650 views
  • almost 6 years ago
  • 57:14

This episode features Stuart Ritchie, intelligence researcher and author of the book "Intelligence: All That Matters." Stuart responds to some of the most common conceptual objections to the science of IQ testing. Can we even define intelligence? Aren't there lots of different kinds of intelligence? How do we know the tests are measuring intelligence at all instead of something like motivation or familiarity with the style of testing? Does it undermine the meaningfulness of IQ as a metric that people can improve over time, with practice, or over generations?

Rationally Speaking #209 - Christopher Chabris on "Collective intelligence & the ethics of A/B tests"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 590 views
  • almost 6 years ago
  • 51:54

This episode features cognitive psychologist Christopher Chabris discussing his research on "collective intelligence" -- why do some teams perform better than others at a wide variety of tasks? Julia discusses potential objections to the findings and how gender-related publication bias should affect our interpretation of them. In the second half of the episode, Julia and Chris discuss why people get so upset at companies like Facebook and OKCupid for doing experiments on their users, and whether that's fair.

Rationally Speaking #205 - Michael Webb on "Are ideas getting harder to find?"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 670 views
  • almost 6 years ago
  • 48:38

This episode features economist Michael Webb, who recently co-authored a paper titled "Are ideas getting harder to find?" It demonstrates that the number of researchers it takes to produce a technological innovation has gone up dramatically over time. Michael and Julia discuss various possible explanations for why this is happening, along with several challenges to his paper.

Rationally Speaking #204 - Simine Vazire on "Reforming psychology, and self-awareness"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 620 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 53:00

Simine Vazire is a professor of psychology, the author of the blog, "Sometimes I'm Wrong," and a major advocate for improving the field of psychology. She and Julia discuss several potential objections to Simine's goal, how to handle criticism, and Simine's psychology research on the question: How self-aware are people about the way they behave?

Rationally Speaking #203 - Stephen Webb on "Where is Everybody? Solutions to the Fermi Paradox."

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 630 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 40:46

In 1950, the great physicist Enrico Fermi posed a question that people have been puzzling over ever since: Where is everybody? The universe has been around for billions of years, so why haven't we seen any signs of alien civilizations? This episode features physicist Stephen Webb, who describes some of the potential solutions to the puzzle. Stephen and Julia also discuss questions such as: What evidence have we gotten so far that helps us answer the Fermi problem? How do we estimate how rare/difficult it is for human-level intelligence to evolve? And why does it matter what the answer to Fermi's question is?

Rationally Speaking #202 - Bryan Caplan on "The Case Against Education"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 610 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 47:59

In this episode, economist Bryan Caplan argues that the main reason getting a college degree is valuable is because of signaling (i.e., it proves that you have traits that employers value, like conscientiousness and conformity), and not because college teaches you useful knowledge or skills. Julia proposes several potential challenges to Bryan's argument, and they discuss why it matters how much of education's value is signaling.

Rationally Speaking #201 - Ben Buchanan on "The Cybersecurity Dilemma"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 610 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 44:40

The security dilemma is a classic problem in geopolitics: Often when one nation takes measures to protect itself from attack (like adding to their stockpile of missiles), other nations see that and worry it means the first nation is preparing to attack them, which leads to a dangerous feedback loop of escalation. In this episode, Ben Buchanan (postdoctoral fellow at Harvard studying cybersecurity and statecraft) explores how this dilemma plays out in the realm of cybersecurity: Why is the dilemma harder to resolve than it used to be with traditional warfare? And is there anything that might help?

Rationally Speaking #200 - Timothy Lee on "How much should tech companies moderate speech?"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 620 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 44:21

This episode features tech and policy journalist Timothy Lee, discussing a question that's increasingly in the spotlight: How much should tech companies be actively moderating their users' speech? For example, should Facebook be trying to fight fake news? Should Twitter ban bullying? Should Reddit ban subreddits that they consider hate speech? Timothy and Julia look at the question not just from the legal perspective, but also from the moral and strategic perspectives as well.

Rationally Speaking #199 - Jessica Flanigan on "Why people should have the right to self-medicate"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

  • 590 views
  • about 6 years ago
  • 42:46

This episode features Jessica Flanigan, professor of normative and applied ethics, making the case that patients should have the right to take pharmaceutical drugs without needing to get a prescription from a doctor. Jessica and Julia discuss a series of related questions, such as: Should there be exceptions made for drugs that have negative repercussions on society as a whole? And what is the morally relevant difference between a doctor imposing treatment on someone without consent, and the government withholding treatment from someone without consent?