Robin Hanson

Atheist, Blogger, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, Inventor, Parent, Scientist, Writer/Editor

See http://hanson.gmu.edu/bio.html

We are all mistaken far more often than most of us realize about the main motives for our actions. Our real motives tend to be more selfish and image-focused than the motives we wish we had. Knowing more about typical motives can dramatically change how we view familiar social institutions such as education, medicine, politics, and religion. More at http://elephantinthebrain.com Human-level artificial intelligence in the form of brain emulations, or “ems,” may be feasible within roughly a century. They might change everything, including: mind speeds, body sizes, security, management, job training, career paths, wages, identity, retirement, life cycles, reproduction, mating, conversation, wealth inequality, city sizes, growth rates, politics, governance, law, and war. More at http://ageofem.com

Our main social problem is a meta problem: we do not sufficiently aggregate all the info to which we each have access into a robust visible numerical frequently-updated consensus to which non-experts can reliably defer. Prediction markets CAN solve this problem, and this has been demonstrated in theory, in the lab, and in the field. Decision markets are especially promising as ways to directly advice concrete decisions. More at: http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html

Artificial Intelligence, Brain Emulations, Economics, Formal Political Theory, Hidden Motives, Information Aggregation, Physics, Prediction Markets, Signaling, Social Implications of Future Technologies