Robin Hanson's Non-Academic Publications With Abstracts

Economic growth is determined by the supply and demand of investment capital; technology determines the demand for capital, while human nature determines the supply. The supply curve has two distinct parts, giving the world economy two distinct modes. In the familiar slow growth mode, rates of return are limited by human discount rates. In the fast growth mode, investment is limited by the world's wealth. Historical trends suggest that we may transition to the fast mode in roughly another century and a half.

Can some new technology switch us to the fast mode more quickly than this? Perhaps, but such a technology must greatly raise the rate of return for theworld's expected worst investment project. It must thus be very broadly applicable, improving almost all forms of capital and investment.  Furthermore, investment externalities must remain within certain limits.

Including: `Tug-O-War board' for who cooks, Bidding for the right to watch TV, `EquaTalk for fairly dividing talking time, Rebates to meeting attendees, Voluntary penalties for divorce, A stock market for CEO resignations, How to assign offices so everyone's happy, Charity angels, Small-scale legal systems, Label products rather than ban them, Negative liability - suing for help given, Rationality agents, Buying life insurance from one's HMO, Long-term grain futures as an eco-forum, Betting on the future of science, Voluntary no-fault accident law, Everyone able to add words to electronic dictionaries, Make finding web criticism easy, Invitation-only e-conferences, Paying to jump the queue at stores, Alternative institutions discussion group, Childe leaves a `still playing' card on a toy, A pin that broadcasts your Internet details, Pledge associations to end footbinding and infibulation.

A short (500 word) introduction to the idea of betting markets on science questions to improve intellectual debate.

Idea Futures began as a glimmer in the eye of Robin Hanson, but it took Sean Morgan, Mark James, and a diverse group of "techies" (scientists, engineers, programmers, etc.) in Calgary to make it the reality it has become.

What if we someday learn how to model small brain units, and so can "upload" ourselves into new computer brains? What if this happens before we learn how to make human-level artificial intelligences? The result could be a sharp transition to an upload-dominated world, with many dramatic consequences. In particular, fast and cheap replication may once again make Darwinian evolution of human values a powerful force in human history. With evolved values, most uploads would value life even when life is hard or short, uploads would reproduce quickly, and wages would fall. But total wealth should rise, so we could all do better by accepting uploads, or at worse taxing them, rather than trying to delay or segregate them.

I consider uploads with tiny bodies shaped like ours with a brain cavity filled with not much more computer power than it takes to keep up the faster body movements of their smaller bodies. Such uploads might be a few millimeters high, think several hundred times faster than us, and continue to interact directly with physical reality.

This is part of an email debate/discussion with Eric Drexler and others, wherein I express my doubts that a Nanotech transition would be as sudden as Drexler fears, and my fears of trying solve politics by creating nano-robots to rule us all.

Wormholes would change the face of interstellar war.

A review of Penrose's book The Emporer's New Mind, which says that the book is a good physics tutorial, sandwiched between sloppy arguments for a very unlikely theory that quantum gravity is central to human consciousness. Almost no one who understands this stuff believes Penrose.