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Sam Harris speaks with Russ Roberts about decision-making and the nature of moral progress. They discuss the shortcomings of economics as a science, the power of books, the difference between "wild" and "tame" problems, Darwin’s embarrassing thoughts about the value of marriage, the utility of decision of analysis, incommensurate goods, free riding, counterfactuals, how the decisions we make change us, the difficulty of predicting future experience, changing moral norms, Effective Altruism, free speech, whether we are making moral progress, social media, truth vs comfort, problems with consequentialism, rule-based consequentialism, free will, meditation, and other topics.
Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.
If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
#349 — Generosity, Cynicism, and the Future of Doing Good
#348 — The Politics of Antisemitism
#347 — Finding Sanity in 2024
#346 — The Best Kept Secret In History?
#345 — Resilience
#344 — The War in Gaza
#343 — What Is "Islamophobia"?
#342 — Animal Minds & Moral Truths
#341 — Gaza & Global Order
#340 — The Bright Line Between Good and Evil
#339 — The Infernal Logic of Jihad
#338 — The Sin of Moral Equivalence
#337 — The Future of Psychedelic Medicine
#336 — The Roots of Identity Politics
#335 — A Postmortem on My Response to Covid
#334 — The Low-Trust Society
#333 — Sanity Check on Climate Change
#332 — Can We Contain Artificial Intelligence?
#331 — A Golden Age for Assholes
#330 — The Doomsday Machine
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