page_title: Robin Hanson
section_title: Views
hierarchical_section_title: Robin Hanson / Views
caption_attribution_description: English: Video caption: "Most ancient societies used simple A-sues-B-for-cash legal systems to deal with most harms. But in the last few centuries, states added “crime law”, wherein the state investigates, sues, and imprisons “criminals.” These centrally-run one-size-fits-all bureaucratic systems don’t innovate well nor adapt well to individual conditions. And even though most of your “constitutional rights” are regarding such systems, they still seem badly broken. In the ancient world, a stranger who came to town was trusted more if a local “vouched” for them. We still use vouching today in bonded contractors, in organized crime, and in requiring most everyone to get an insurer who pays on their behalf if they cause a car accident. I propose requiring everyone to get an insurer to vouch for them regarding any crimes they might commit. If you are found guilty of a crime, your “voucher” pays the state a fine, and then pays to punish you according to your contract with them. This fine in part pays the private bounty-hunter who convinced the court of your guilt. Competing bounty-hunters obey law because they can’t maintain a blue-wall-of-silence. To lower your voucher premiums, you might agree to (1) prison, torture, or exile, if caught, (2) prior limits on your freedom like curfews, ankle bracelets, and their reading your emails, and (3) co-liability wherein you and your buddies are all punished if any one of you is found guilty. In this system, the state still decides what behaviors are crimes and if any one accusation is true, and it sets fine and bounty levels regarding how hard to discourage and detect each kind of crime. But each person chooses their own “constitutional rights”, and vouchers acquire incentives and opportunity to innovate and adapt, by searching in a large space of ways to discourage crime."
context_page_description: Robin Dale Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known for his work on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute's Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point, and has conducted research on signalling.
context_section_description: Tyler Cowen's book Discover Your Inner Economist includes a fairly detailed discussion of Hanson's views:
  Robin has strange ideas ... My other friend and colleague Bryan Caplan put it best: "When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'Eh, maybe.' Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'No way! Impossible!' Then I think about it for years."
  Nate Silver, in his book The Signal and the Noise (2012), writes:
  He is clearly not a man afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom.  Instead, Hanson writes a blog called Overcoming Bias, in which he presses readers to consider which cultural taboos, ideological beliefs, or misaligned incentives might constrain them from making optimal decisions. Hanson ... is an advocate of prediction markets – systems where you can place bets on a particular economic or policy outcome, like whether Israel will go to war with Iran, or how much global temperatures will rise because of climate change. His argument for these is pretty simple: They ensure that we have a financial stake in being accurate when we make forecasts, rather than just trying to look good to our peers."
  Hanson is credited with originating the concept of the Policy Analysis Market (PAM), a DARPA project to implement a market for betting on future developments in the Middle East. Hanson has expressed great disappointment in DARPA's cancellation of its related FutureMAP project, and he attributes this to the controversy surrounding the related Total Information Awareness program. He also created and supports a proposed system of government called futarchy, where policies would be determined by prediction markets.
  A 2003 article in Fortune examined Hanson's work, noting, among other things, that he is a proponent of cryonics and that his ideas have found some acceptance among extropians on the Internet. He has since written extensively on the topic. Hanson also created the term Great Filter referring to whatever prevents "dead matter" from becoming expanding and observable intelligent civilization. He was motivated to seek his doctorate so that his theories would gain a wider audience. 
  Hanson has written a book, The Age of Em, concerning his views on brain emulation and its eventual impact on society.
  His most recent book, The Elephant in the Brain, was released in January 2018. Coauthored by Kevin Simler, the book looks at uncovering mental blind spots in society and for individuals.
caption: Robin Hanson discussing alternative economic-legal systems at the 2019 Institute of Cryptoanarchy Conference
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