Which of Will MacAskill’s many recent podcast episodes would you recommend to other engaged EAs?

By Aaron Bergman @ 2022-08-15T11:44 (+11)

Note that I’m happy for the answer to be “none” or “all of them.”

Just thinking that some are likely to be geared more towards a general audience with less of a background - thanks!

OllieBase @ 2022-08-15T11:47 (+9)

His conversation with Tyler Cowen skips talking points which are more familiar to EAs, I'm finding that interesting
I thought his conversation with Ezra was interesting too - Ezra both has good criticisms but also managed to frame Will's argument's really succinctly (e.g. I loved the title of the podcast "Three sentences that could change the world" or something)

Kaleem @ 2022-08-15T12:47 (+3)

Sure, the title of the Ezra ep was cool. But I actually didn't think it was that good of an ep - I felt like when Ezra asked 'tough' questions, Will didn't really engage with them in a direct enough way, and as a result a lot of my non-EA friends have told me that they felt Will didn't have good responses to the questions. I don't think it was that useful an ep to listen to as an EA - its mostly stuff in the book and things you'd likely have heard from Will or others in the community before.

aogara @ 2022-08-15T12:42 (+2)

Yeah I've only listened to the Tyler Cowen one but I thought it was great. Tyler kept objecting to utilitarianism using various thought experiments and arguments, and Will had some pretty interesting responses.

Miranda_Zhang @ 2022-08-16T19:56 (+3)

I liked this one with 80k.

peterhartree @ 2022-08-15T18:46 (+2)

I'm going to post a Twitter thread about this tomorrow, with some selected extracts. The best three I've heard are:

Ezra Klein
Dwarkesh Patel
Tyler Cowen

I posted all three to The Valmy.

peterhartree @ 2022-08-16T21:38 (+1)

Here's the thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/peterhartree/status/1559568673920016384

Charlie Dougherty @ 2022-08-15T13:26 (+2)

I most enjoyed Tyler Cowen, but I thought that The Lunar Society was also worth a listen. The podcast also has a transcript on its website incase you prefer reading.

Aaron Bergman @ 2022-08-17T01:20 (+1)

80k great as always! Though I wish, of all episodes, this one was longer

jskatt @ 2022-08-16T17:32 (+1)

I liked the Tim Ferriss episode (scroll down for a long list of relevant links). There's a YouTube video version that segments the episode with chapter headings, allowing you to skip any parts that don't interest you.