Robin Hanson (@robinhanson)is associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University with a doctorate in social science from CalTech, master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has spent nine years as a research programmer, at Lockheed and NASA, has 3500 citations, 60 publications, 700 media mentions, and he blogs at OvercomingBias. Robin is also the author of The Elephant in the Brain - Hidden Motives in Everyday Life and co-authored The Age of Em - Work, Love and Life when Robots Own the World. Hanson is credited with originating the concept of the Policy Analysis Market, a DARPA project to implement a market for betting on future developments in the Middle East. Hanson also created and supports a proposed system of government called futarchy, where policies would be determined by prediction markets. Hanson is a man willing to challenge conventional wisdom/norms and has lately drawn criticism for his unconventional economics positions on sex, gender dynamics and problems with today's society. [spreaker type=player resource="episode_id=18590679" width="100%" height="200px" theme="light" playlist="false" playlist-continuous="false" autoplay="false" live-autoplay="false" chapters-image="true" episode-image-position="right" hide-logo="false" hide-likes="false" hide-comments="false" hide-sharing="false" hide-download="true"] Subscribe on Apple Podcast | Google Podcast | Android | Overcast | Spotify | Youtube You can listen right here on iTunes In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

* The reasons our culture values and norms are quickly changing

* Why physics forced Robins to become an atheist

* How Robin sees artificial intelligence progressing

* The power of prediction markets and why we haven't seen more uptick

* Why brain emulation may be the most likely future scenario

* The reason Robin prefers to be more like a historian than a futurist

* Why we'll never answer the hard problem of consciousness

* Why economics is a great way to forecast the future

* The problem with academia and education

* Why Robin isn't worried about breakout AI

* Why Robin is sceptical of blockchains

* The reason Robin signed up for cryonics

* What folks should know about AI boom and bust cycles

Transcript Producing this podcast and transcribing the episode takes tons of time and resources. If you support FringeFM and the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. If you can’t afford to support us, we completely understand as well, but an iTunes review or share on Twitter can go a long way too!   So, brain emulation is the scenario where we report the software that's in the human brain now. So today if you have an old computer running software that you like and you want that same kind of software running on a new computer one approaches to stare at the software or try to guess how it works and then write software on the new computer that works how you think it works on the old computer. But another approach is to write an emulator on the new computer that just makes the new computer look like the old computer to this offer if you can write an emulator you can just move this offer over and it works.