Spencer Greenberg

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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

But that's operating like amidst all of these drives.

It doesn't override all these drives.

And that actually can create a lot of internal conflict when the drives and that sort of more rational part are not, you know, gelling that well.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it is a very powerful idea that we're such limited beings and that no matter how hard we work to be unlimited beings, we're never going to get there.

All of these things are just ideals that we strive for and won't come close.

For example, I really care about trying to be rational and I kind of regularly see how far I am from that goal.

And you could let that kind of undercut your motivation being like, oh man, I'm so far from that.

you can turn that around and you can say, hey, I can keep becoming a better version of myself and move incrementally towards this more ideal form, and that can be exciting.

So I don't think it has to be demotivating.

It can be motivating, actually, being limited, but seeing how you can...

progress and improve.

But I would also say that failing to accept your limitations can actually be disastrous towards the goals that you care about.

So the more accurately you can see yourself, what you are, what your limitations are, the better you can be at all the things that you care about, right?

Denying them is actually a strategy that's going to undercut you.

I'll use a parallel because I think it's helpful.

News consumption broadly.

Many people find news of the world stressful because the news tends to focus on bad things, and also there's bad things happening in the world.

And so they read an article on X, and they're like, ah, things are falling apart.

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