The Syndicate

Robin Hanson (@robinhanson)is associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University with a doctorate in social science from CalTech, master’s degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has spent nine years as a research programmer, at Lockheed and NASA, has 3500 citations, 60 publications, 700 media mentions, and he blogs at OvercomingBias.

Robin is also the author of The Elephant in the Brain – Hidden Motives in Everyday Life and co-authored The Age of Em – Work, Love and Life when Robots Own the World.

Hanson is credited with originating the concept of the Policy Analysis Market, a DARPA project to implement a market for betting on future developments in the Middle East. Hanson also created and supports a proposed system of government called futarchy, where policies would be determined by prediction markets.

Hanson is a man willing to challenge conventional wisdom/norms and has lately drawn criticism for his unconventional economics positions on sex, gender dynamics and problems with today’s society.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

• The reasons our culture values and norms are quickly changing
• Why physics forced Robins to become an atheist
• How Robin sees artificial intelligence progressing
• The power of prediction markets and why we haven’t seen more uptick
• Why brain emulation may be the most likely future scenario
• The reason Robin prefers to be more like a historian than a futurist
• Why we’ll never answer the hard problem of consciousness
• Why economics is a great way to forecast the future
• The problem with academia and education
• Why Robin isn’t worried about breakout AI
• Why Robin is sceptical of blockchains
• The reason Robin signed up for cryonics
• What folks should know about AI boom and bust cycles

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