Robin Hanson: Details Matter… And For That You Need Social Science

Robin Hanson is not just a well known economist with seminal work in prediction markets. He is also a physicist, philosopher and AI researcher. Besides being a polyglot he is also an extremely likable fellow and both of those make him very hard to argue against. Add up the fact that it’s been over a decade since my study of economics and you will get a better idea as to why I struggled to keep up with him during our conversation. Well, regardless of my poor performance, I have to say that I enjoyed talking to Hanson very much. So I plan to bring him back for a follow up interview where we can spend more time talking exclusively about his upcoming book on the economics of brain emulations. During this Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Robin we discuss a variety of topics such as: his wide spectrum of interests such as physics, phylosophy, economics and artificial intelligence; the general lack of academic engagement with issues related to the singularity; why cheap energy will not be a panacea to our problems or even a major boost to our economy; the singularity and his definition thereof; the two major ways to Artificial Intelligence; the economics of brain emulations (what he calls Ems)…