Why We (Really) Do What We Do: A Conversation with Professor Robin Hanson

In this episode, Brian Beckcom speaks with Professor Robin Hanson
about the unconscious motives that drive human behavior and their
impact on our everyday lives. Brian and Professor Hanson talk
about how to confront our hidden motives, examine them, and see
clearly so that we can better understand ourselves and our fellow
human beings. 


Robin Hanson is the co-author of The Elephant in the Brain:
Hidden Motives in Everyday Life.” In his book, Robin explains how
our minds actually work. He explains how and why we deceive
ourselves and others. And he describes how our unconscious
motives impact more than just our private behavior; they
influence our institutions, art, medicine, schools, and
politics.  


Robin Hanson’s work is relevant today considering the bizarre
place we find ourselves in history. 


Brian and Professor Robin Hanson discuss:


How he transitioned from STEM fields into social
science 

Predetermined human behavior and the duplicity of free will

Why humans act based on hidden motives and why we fail to
detect them 

How our unconscious motives have shaped the political
landscape we see today

The essence of science and the differences between “experts”
and “elites”

How to effectively deal with disagreements on difficult
topics

Why so many spouses hate cryonics (the low-temperature
freezing and storage of a human corpse or severed head)

Why we haven’t seen aliens and when to expect them!

And other things



Robin D. Hanson is an economics professor at
George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of
Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in
social science from the California Institute of Technology, a
master’s degree in physics and philosophy from the University of
Chicago, and nine years of experience as a research programmer,
at Lockheed Martin and NASA. Professor Hanson has 4510 citations,
a citation h-index of 33, and over ninety academic publications
ranging from Algorithmica and Information Systems Frontiers to
Social Philosophy and Social Epistemology. Robin has diverse
research interests, with papers on spatial product competition,
product bans, evolutionary psychology, voter information
incentives, incentives to fake expertise, self-deception in
disagreement, wiretaps, image reconstruction, the origin of life,
the survival of humanity, and interstellar colonization. To learn
more about Professor Robin Hanson, please visit his bio at
https://www.overcomingbias.com/bio.