ICYMI: Julia Galef

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2019

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, we're digging into the archives to share another of our favorites with you! * At least in politics, this is an era of awful arguments. Arguments made in bad faith. Arguments in which no one, on either side, is willing to change their mind. Arguments where the points being made do not describe or influence the positions being held. Arguments that leave everyone dumber, angrier, sadder. Which is why I wanted to talk to Julia Galef this week. Julia is the host of the Rationally Speaking podcast, a co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, and the creator of the Update Project, which maps out arguments to make it easier for people to disagree clearly and productively. Her work focuses on how we think and argue, as well as the cognitive biases and traps that keep us from hearing what we're really saying, hearing what others are really saying, and preferring answers that make us feel good to answers that are true. I first met her at a Vox Conversation conference, where she ran a session helping people learn to change their minds, and it's struck me since then that more of us could probably use that training. In this episode, Julia and I talk about what she's learned about thinking more clearly and arguing better, as well as my concerns that the traditional paths toward a better discourse open up new traps of their own. (As you'll hear, I find it very easy to get lost in all the ways debate and cognition can go awry.) We talk about signaling, about motivated reasoning, about probabilistic debating, about which identities help us find truth, and about how to make online arguments less terrible. Enjoy! Recommended books: Language, Truth, and Logic by A.J. Ayer Seeing Like a State by James Scott The Robot's Rebellion by Keith Stanovich We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3X6WMNF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	First, sweet tarts dare to combine sweet and tart, but they didn't stop there.
0:06.0	Now they've combined soft and bouncy to bring you new sweet tarts, gummy fruity splits.
0:12.0	A uniquely delicious dual-sided gummy with one side that's sweet, and the other side that's tart.
0:19.0	But entirely smooth and squishy.
0:22.0	A powerfully perfect combo.
0:24.0	Sweet tarts dare to combine.
0:28.0	Sometimes running a business can feel like cycling uphill, with square wheels.
0:38.0	But zero online accounting software can help predict the future cash flow of your business.
0:43.0	So you can stay one step ahead.
0:45.0	Soon it'll feel more like free-wearing downhill.
0:48.0	Woohoo! On a tandem!
0:50.0	What, mate? With a messer on the back.
0:52.0	Oh, that's nice.
0:54.0	Search zero with an X because healthy business is beautiful business.
1:10.0	Hello and welcome to the Asher Client Show on the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:13.0	I am excited about this week's episode because it is very responsive to some kind of problems or the right word.
1:22.0	But some things I'm thinking about in my own life and my professional life.
1:25.0	Washington DC has never been the most lovely place to have disagreements.
1:29.0	A lot of the disagreements are not about what they say they are about.
1:32.0	But it's become a lot worse lately.
1:34.0	And I think the quality of discussion, the quality of debate, what's really happening when you think people are arguing about a policy and in fact they're arguing about something else entirely.
1:43.0	All that has become a lot more prevalent.
	...

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