Robin Hanson

“Increasingly, grandparents, teachers, even coaches are stepping back, not out of apathy but fear of saying the wrong thing, crossing a line or being shamed for parenting ‘incorrectly.’” washingtonpost.com/parenting/2025…

We're live now with @stephengadubato and @robinhanson discussing cultural drift, sincerity, performance, and online discourse! Tune in here: x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Ever feel like online debates are more about performing for an audience than finding the truth? TONIGHT, join economist @robinhanson and host @stephengadubato to explore the line between sincere belief and social ritual in our digital lives. Join the conversation:…

Imagine that when people took out long term loans (eg for cars or houses), every year they had to sign again saying that they will repay the loan. Would this cut loan repayment rates?

"An adult mouse brain, conservatively estimated to be 1 cm^3, imaged at 15 nm isotropic resolution, as tentatively demonstrated above, would result in a dataset of 2.96 × 10^17 voxels. A single PEEM with a CW UV laser, imaging non-stop at 2 Gigahertz pixel rate, would take…

Should married people be required to either re-pledge their wedding vows once a year on their wedding anniversary, or to request a divorce?

Should all adult humans be required to either pledge allegiance to humanity once a year, or to leave the company of other humans?

"The most popular heart medications top out at a few billion dollars in spending. Medicaid is a product that spends nearly $1 trillion per year. Yet most scholars responded to Oregon's null results by doubling down on their support of Medicaid." mfcannon.substack.com/p/randomized-c…

"all intelligent, human-like beings are doomed to drop toast butter-side down"

Should every adult in a nation be required to either pledge allegiance to it once a year, or leave it?

"the opacity of market processes provides fertile grounds for potentially destabilizing envy. This, I assert, is the real problem of envy. … damages participants' perception of control over their situation" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

"Higher psychological well-being was associated with lower all-cause mortality (OR = 0.798, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.773, 0.823], I² = 88.03%), and mortality from causes like suicide (OR = 0.505, 95% CI [0.337, 0.756], I² = 0.0%), cancer (OR = 0.924, 95% CI [0.858, 0.995],…

Supply and demand suggests the employers willing to pay the most are in fact where these workers can produce the most social value. Do we have good reason to doubt that here? slate.com/life/2025/07/h…

"All-male teams are significantly outperformed by both mixed and all-female teams. These differences remain even when comprehensively controlling for the individual task aptitude of each of the group members" d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:…

"Tracking 2,400 students from two major universities … Men and women have similar work aspirations, apply at similar times and rates, & receive comparable numbers of job offers, but women are more likely to reject them." nber.org/papers/w34051?…

"new disclosures of employee misconduct in the investment advisory industry drop by between 17% and 22% following mergers. Both targets and acquirers have better pre-merger misconduct records than the industry’s average firm and, within the subsample of merging firms, there is…

"U.S. Civil War … captains were not assigned based on prior unit performance or observable pre-war characteristics. High-quality leaders earned more after the war, but not before … better captains significantly reduced desertions in combat. … better leaders had higher…

"Vatican II, in 1962-1965, triggered a decline in worldwide Catholic attendance relative to that in other denominations. … religious-service attendance responds positively to wars and depressions." nber.org/papers/w34060?…