Spencer Greenberg

speaker

1,056 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Spencer Greenberg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #249 – Spencer Greenberg on staying sane while trying to save the world · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

And there's a temptation, I think, if someone goes to a friend who doesn't buy into these ideas, or even goes to a therapist who's used to practicing that technique, where they'll be like, oh, consider the evidence.

And that's actually really unhelpful in this situation, because chances are, if you're listening to this podcast, you've already thought a lot about the evidence.

And if someone's like, well, consider the evidence for and against this problem that you think is a horrible problem being really bad, you're like, yeah, I've thought about it, and I've thought about the evidence, and I think it actually is really bad, right?

So that's like...

Yeah, so that's not the way to go in these kinds of situations.

But I think it's also important to ask the question, what is hypervigilance and what's the point of it?

And effectively, it's a state that's preparing you to take drastic action.

Like, oh, there's something dangerous that's coming.

You've got to go.

You've got to act.

Unfortunately, it's really not a healthy state to be in all the time.

It's not good for your body.

It's not good for your mind.

It can literally mess up things like digestion because it actually affects your digestion when you're in a hypervigilant state.

And I like to think about professional athletes here.

like do professional athletes, do they want to like be stressing their bodies all the time?

Like, is that the, you know, if you're training to be in the Olympics, right?

And all you care about is the goal is like win the Olympics, right?

Are you just like stressing your body to the absolute limit?

And the answer is absolutely no, because that is not the performance optimizing move.

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