How to Think Clearly in an Age of Distraction | Sam Harris
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What is the opening introduction and background of the guest?
Mindfulness is, you know, to talk about you know, the style of meditation I tend to r to recommend, is just an ability to step back and notice thoughts as thoughts, as appearances in in the mind. Perhaps only for you know brief moments in the beginning. to break the connection between the the anxious thought and the physiology of anxiety. The science
and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Gaupin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Sam Harris. Sam has a PhD in neuroscience, an extensive background in philosophy, and has spent over 20 years as a public intellect. In today's show, we talk a lot about critical thinking, logic, and reason. We also get into Sam's current position on artificial intelligence and how that is impacting us in the short term. As well as in the long term. We also spend a lot of time talking about mindfulness and other tools and practices that you can use to have more control over both your emotions and logic.
I know I personally picked up many things from our conversation that are going to help me in my thinking processes to be more decisive, to be more clear, to be more articulate, and to overall feel like I'm communicating more effectively as both someone speaking. Speaking to the world as well as someone who wants to listen and be more effective at those tools. So, with that in mind, please enjoy today's conversation with Dr. Sam Harris. Doctor Sam Harris, it's great to have you in here.
Great to meet you. Yeah, thank you.
I'm really interested in taking this conversation in a particular direction that I haven't seen you get the opportunity to spend as much time in recently. Uh and that is thinking. And I know you cover a ton of topics, but given the fact that you've got terminal degrees in neuroscience, uh at least a graduate degree in philosophy or undergraduate degree. Undergraduate degree in philosophy. And you've spent at the same time much of your career helping people directly via your app or your teachings on meditation and whatnot. So you have this triangle of academic knowledge and kind of this intersection between the brain and the mind, as well as putting this into practice. How do we actually help people?
And it's my opinion that right now the world needs some help in thinking.
How do Sam Harris and Andy define the difference between being smart and being intelligent?
Mm-hmm. And I think you're the perfect person to ask these qua set of questions with. So I wanna actually start with what I hope is a simple question and you can lay some groundwork and then we can dive in as far as possible. Sure. What's the difference between being smart and being intelligent?
Well, I I think we tend to use those more or less interchangeably. I mean, uh you know, intelligence is really j just a capacity to solve problems and you know meet various goals uh and you know general intelligence manages to do that across a uh a kind of uh functionally unlimited uh range of environments, uh where learning in one space doesn't degrade your your learning in another. So the uh obviously now we're we're talking a lot about uh the the search for uh j artificial general intelligence. Which uh many of us are worried about. There's the l the the possibility, even even uh uh certainty that if we build it we will have built something that is more powerful than we are ultimately because it can it can solve uh, you know, uh th the same sorts of goals faster and uh can solve problems that we can't uh solve on our own.
So, you know, i i if the thing is not aligned with our interests in the end, uh many of us uh get very worried about that picture. or that r you know, relationship really. Um analogous to meeting you know, uh uh aliens from outer space that come and and d demonstrate by their mere arrival that they're smarter than we are. I think smartness might um in in uh the way we use it commonly might imply at least a dose of common sense or wisdom, right? So that there are many very intelligent people who are just who are obviously not wise.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the opening introduction and background of the guest?
0:00–2:19
2
How do Sam Harris and Andy define the difference between being smart and being intelligent?
2:19–9:06
3
What is mindfulness and how does it help break the link between thought and anxiety?
9:06–19:50
4
How can listeners practice a simple 30‑second attention exercise to experience mindfulness?
19:50–1:16:03
5
How can we turn criticism into a tool for rapid learning?
1:16:03–2:12:37
6
When should we trust a process over an authority figure?
2:12:37–2:19:19
7
Does advances in AI change the relevance of the hard problem of consciousness?
2:19:19–2:28:04
Speakers
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