Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, with a Ph.D. in social science from Caltech and master’s degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago. Before his doctorate he spent nine years as a research programmer at Lockheed and NASA.

He has pioneered prediction markets since 1988, architecting the first internal corporate markets, the web-based Foresight Exchange, DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, and IARPA’s DAGGRE and SCICAST forecasting programs. He invented the logarithmic market scoring rule behind modern prediction markets, proposed futarchy — governance by prediction markets — and the Great Filter hypothesis for the silence of the cosmos. After a Berkeley postdoc he joined George Mason in 1999, publishing across economics, physics, AI, and philosophy.

His books The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain made him one of the most-cited contrarian thinkers alive. In the October 9 antidebate he takes on whether it makes sense to talk of chances for things like God’s existence, moral truths, or the best Beatles album.