Robin Hanson


Robin Dale Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known for his work on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point, and has conducted research on signalling.

Background

Hanson received a B.S. in physics from the University of California, Irvine in 1981, an M.S. in physics and an M.A. in Conceptual Foundations of Science from the University of Chicago in 1984, and a Ph.D. in social science from Caltech in 1997 for his thesis titled Four puzzles in information and politics: Product bans, informed voters, social insurance, and persistent disagreement. Before getting his Ph.D he researched artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics and hypertext publishing at Lockheed, NASA, and elsewhere. In addition, he started the first internal corporate prediction market at Xanadu in 1990.
He is married to Peggy Jackson, a hospice social worker, and has two children. He is the son of a Southern Baptist preacher. Hanson has elected to have his brain cryonically preserved in the event of medical death.

Views

's book Discover Your Inner Economist includes a fairly detailed discussion of Hanson's views:
Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the Noise, writes:
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 has expressed great disappointment in DARPA's cancellation of its related FutureMAP project, and he attributes this to the controversy surrounding the related Total Information Awareness program. He also created and supports a proposed system of government called futarchy, where policies would be determined by prediction markets.
A 2003 article in Fortune examined Hanson's work, noting, among other things, that he is a proponent of cryonics and that his ideas have found some acceptance among extropians on the Internet. He has since written extensively on the topic. Hanson also created the term Great Filter referring to whatever prevents "dead matter" from becoming expanding and observable intelligent civilization. He was motivated to seek his doctorate so that his theories would gain a wider audience.
Hanson has written a book, The Age of Em, concerning his views on brain emulation and its eventual impact on society.
His most recent book, The Elephant in the Brain, was released in January 2018. Coauthored by Kevin Simler, the book looks at uncovering mental blind spots in society and for individuals.

Controversies

"If you’ve ever heard of George Mason University economist Robin Hanson, there’s a good chance it was because he wrote something creepy," a Slate columnist wrote in 2018. Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith cited a blog post by Hanson comparing rape favorably to cuckoldry and musing about theoretical "gentle silent rape" in an article Smith wrote about bias against women in economics, lamenting that there was no retraction and no outcry from fellow economists.