meditated before, what surprised me most was not just the actual
sensations, but realizing that such extraordinary states had been locked
away in my mind this whole time. Their existence demonstrates that
attention, when summoned to its ful…remain invisible to the perceiver, because noticing them would present a challenge to how they see themselves.
Hanson and Simler emphasize that this behavior is universal, and having such base desires doesn’t make you a bad person. They ev…This task was an antimemetic albatross – seen and forgotten once a week – that I shuffled dutifully across my calendar. I knew it was important to write a contingency plan in case the worst happened. Though the scenario was unlikely, the co…
Robin Hanson
economist · 6 mentions across 2 readings
In this course
Robin Hanson is an economist and futurist known for work on prediction markets, signaling theory, and simulation hypothesis—concepts that anchor speculative thinking about systems, incentives, and reality itself. The course readings draw on Hanson's (with Simler) analysis of hidden motives and self-deception to ground discussions of how minds obscure their own operations from themselves, while also invoking his simulation argument to explore what it means to reason about worlds we cannot directly verify. His work bridges rational-choice economics with philosophical questions about consciousness and epistemic limits, making him useful for theorizing how intelligence (human or artificial) navigates incomplete information and concealed desires.
Mentioned in 2 readings
Supposing we live in a simulation, what are the implications for us humans? The foregoing remarks notwithstanding, the implications are not all that radical. Our best guide to how our posthuman creators have chosen to set up our world is th…If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealth…[^14]: See e.g. Drexler (1985) op cit., and R. A. Freitas Jr., “Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations.” Zyvex preprint April (2000), http://www.foresight.org/NanoRev/Ecophagy.html.
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