Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias - Interview at Oxford

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• published: 28 Jun 2013
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Interview with Robin Hanson: http://overcomingbias.com Do you find it hard to summarize yourself in a few words? Me too. But I love the above quote. I have a passion, a sacred quest, to understand everything, and to save the world. I am addicted to "viewquakes", insights which dramatically change my world view. I loved science fiction as a child, and have studied physics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, economics, and political science — all fields full of such insights. Unfortunately, this also tempted me to leave subjects after mastering their major insights. I also have a rather critical style. I beat hard on new ideas, seek out critics, and then pledge my allegiance only to those still left standing. In conversation, I prefer to identify a claim at issue, and then focus on analyzing it, rather than the usual quick tours past hundreds of issues. I have always asked questions, even when I was very young. I have little patience with those whose thinking is sloppy, small, or devoid of abstraction. And I'm not a joiner; I rebel against groups with "our beliefs", especially when members must keep criticisms private, so as not to give ammunition to "them." I love to argue one on one, and common beliefs are not important for friendship — instead I value honesty and passion. In '77 I began college (UCI) in engineering, but switched to physics to really understand the equations. Two years in, when physics repeated the same concepts with more math, I studied physics on my own, skipping the homework but acing the exams. To dig deeper, I did philosophy of science grad school (U Chicago), switched back to physics, and was then seduced to Silicon Valley. By day I did artificial intelligence (Lockheed, NASA), and by night I studied on my own (Stanford) and hung with Xanadu's libertarian web pioneers and futurists. I had a hobby of institution design; my best idea was idea futures, now known as prediction markets. Feeling stuck without contacts and credentials, I went for a Ph.D. in social science (Caltech). The physicist in me respected only econ experiments at first, but I was soon persuaded econ theory was full of insight, and did a theory thesis, and a bit of futurism on the side. I landed a health policy postdoc, where I was shocked to learn of medicine's impotency. I finally landed a tenure-track job (GMU), and also found the wide-ranging intellectual conversations I'd lacked since Xanadu. My Policy Analysis Market project hit the press shit fan in '03, burying me in media attention for a while, and helping to kickstart the prediction market industry, which continues to grow and for which I continue to consult. The press flap also tipped me over the tenure edge in '05; my colleagues liked my being denounced by Senators. :) Tenure allowed me to maintain my diverse research agenda, and to start blogging at Overcoming Bias in November '06, about the same time I became a research associate at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Recently I've become chief scientist at Consensus Point.