CLEARER THINKING

with Spencer Greenberg
the podcast about ideas that matter

Episode 270: What listeners think Spencer's wrong about: steel-manning critiques

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July 11, 2025

What defines a cult? Is there such a thing as a good cult? Do Clearer Thinking's tools actually help people? Why does Clearer Thinking share its tools for free for everyone to use? How legitimate is the research Clearer Thinking does to create its tools? Is that research too reliant on self-report? Do Clearer Thinking's tools focus too much on the average person and fail to account for significant variance among people? Should AI companies be required to create and release text watermarking tools? Should smart, knowledgeable people speak out more? Would the average person think (without priming or knowledge of the discourse around it) that Elon Musk's gesture at the inauguration was a Nazi salute? Does Spencer sometimes coin new terms where useful terms already exist? Does Spencer think that everyone should adopt valuism, his life philosophy? Is magic real? What critiques have stuck with Spencer over the years and shaped his work?

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