Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Robin D. Hanson

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## Professor Robin D. Hanson

[Robin D.\\
Hanson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-hanson-5156b/), Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Health and Political Economics
at [George\\
Mason University](https://economics.gmu.edu/people/full_time_faculty) and Research Associate at the [Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford\\
University](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/).
He has
pioneered [prediction\\
markets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market), also known as information markets or idea futures, since 1988.
He was the first to write in detail about people creating and subsidizing
markets in order to gain better estimates on those topics.

It is hard to know and predict the future, but in his book, [_The Age of Em_](https://amzn.to/2MgptXL), Robin applies
decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, and he
uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by
ems. Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or
ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a
fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human. In his
book [_The Age of Em: Work, Love, and_\\
_Life When Robots Rule the Earth_](https://amzn.to/2MgptXL), Robin asks “Does humanity
have a future as uploaded minds?” He re-imagines humanity’s
role as our tech becomes smarter.

Robin was a principal architect and consultant of the first internal
corporate markets, at [Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#1990s) in
1992\. He was involved in the creation of the first web markets, the [Foresight Exchange](http://www.ideosphere.com/) since 1994, and
of DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, from 2001 to 2003, part of [DARPA’s\\
FutureMAP](http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/tia/futuremap-program.htm) project.

Robin has developed new technologies for conditional, combinatorial, and
intermediated trading, and has studied insider trading and manipulation. He
invented market scoring rules like [LMSR (Logarithmic Market\\
Scoring Rule)](https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/mktscore.pdf) used by prediction markets such as [Consensus Point](https://www.consensuspoint.com/) where he has
been [Chief\\
Scientist](https://www.consensuspoint.com/who-we-are/) since 2008.

In his book [_The Elephant in the_\\
_Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life_](https://amzn.to/2Xc4k3k), Robin talks about a theory
of human behavior where signaling has a big role. Overall, the book looks
at uncovering mental blind spots in society and for individuals. He
conducted research on [Information\\
Aggregation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)) and wrote extensively on his blog [_Overcoming_\\
_Bias_](https://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling), where he mostly talks about it in a way of everyday human
behavior and not necessarily only in Economics. This b

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