# #47 - Michael Smith | Hostile Telepaths: Why Your Brain Deceives Itself to Survive Social Reality

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-metagame-5326696/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths-why-your-brain-deceives-itself-to-survive-social-reality
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-metagame-5326696/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths-why-your-brain-deceives-itself-to-survive-social-reality.md
Podcast: [The Metagame](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-metagame-5326696)
Published: 2026-04-14T16:32:04+00:00
Episode link: https://themetagame.substack.com/p/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/194135117/bf7abb9c086a5c7cb2091b96727ba95d.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-metagame-5326696/episodes/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths-why-your-brain-deceives-itself-to-survive-social-reality
Duration seconds: 6454

## Resource

Michael “Valentine” Smith is a co-founder of CFAR (the Center for Applied Rationality) and the author of influential LessWrong essays including The Hostile Telepaths Problem , Kenshō , and The Intelligent Social Web . He’s also been described as “one of the most powerful wizards in the Bay Area.” In this conversation, he explains why your brain creates fog and self-deception to survive social situations, what it actually takes to find clarity, and why "working on yourself" might be the wrong frame entirely. We also do a live coaching demo debugging my own procrastination. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-metagame-5326696/episodes/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths-why-your-brain-deceives-itself-to-survive-social-reality/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-metagame-5326696/47-michael-smith-hostile-telepaths-why-your-brain-deceives-itself-to-survive-social-reality.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.