#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
80,000 Hours Podcast28 Maalis 2018

#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do

On February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the public they kept them abreast of the King’s treatment regimen. King Charles was made to swallow a toxic metal; had blistering agents applied to his scalp; had pigeon droppings attached to his feet; was prodded with a red-hot poker; given forty drops of ooze from “the skull of a man that was never buried”; and, finally, had crushed stones from the intestines of an East Indian goat forced down his throat. Sadly, despite these heroic efforts, he passed away the following week.

Why did the doctors go this far?

Prof, Robin Hanson, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University suspects that on top of any medical beliefs they also had a hidden motive: it needed to be clear, to the king and the public, that the physicians cared enormously about saving His Royal Majesty. Only by going ‘all out’ would they be protected against accusations of negligence should the King die.

Full transcript, summary, and links to articles discussed in the show.

If you believe Hanson, the same desire to be seen to care about our family and friends explains much of what’s perverse about our medical system today.

And not just medicine - Robin thinks we’re mostly kidding ourselves when we say our charities exist to help others, our schools exist to educate students and our politics are about choosing wise policies.

So important are hidden motives for navigating our social world that we have to deny them to ourselves, lest we accidentally reveal them to others.

Robin is a polymath economist, who has come up with surprising and novel insight in a range of fields including psychology, politics and futurology. In this extensive episode we discuss his latest book with Kevin Simler, *The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life*, but also:

* What was it like being part of a competitor group to the ‘World Wide Web’, and being beaten to the post?
* If people aren’t going to school to learn, what’s education all about?
* What split brain patients tell us about our ability to justify anything
* The hidden motivations that shape religions
* Why we choose the friends we do
* Why is our attitude to medicine mysterious?
* What would it look like if people were focused on doing as much good as possible?
* Are we better off donating now, when we’re older, or even wait until well after our deaths?
* How much of the behavior of ‘effective altruists’ can we assume is genuinely motivated by wanting to do as much good as possible?
* What does Robin mean when he refers to effective altruism as a youth movement? Is that a good or bad thing?
* And much more...

Jaksot(332)

#19 - Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war

#19 - Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war

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#18 - Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction

#18 - Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction

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#17 - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster

#17 - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster

Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no ...

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#16 - Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

#16 - Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

In the 40s and 50s neoliberalism was a fringe movement within economics. But by the 80s it had become a dominant school of thought in public policy, and achieved major policy changes across the Englis...

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#15 - Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise

#15 - Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise

Prof Philip Tetlock is a social science legend. Over forty years he has researched whose predictions we can trust, whose we can’t and why - and developed methods that allow all of us to be better at p...

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#14 - Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse

#14 - Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse

What if you knew that ducks were being killed with pitchforks? Rabbits dumped alive into containers? Or pigs being strangled with forklifts? Would you be willing to go undercover to expose the crime? ...

13 Marras 20171h 25min

#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

In both rich and poor countries, government policy is often based on no evidence at all and many programs don’t work. This has particularly harsh effects on the global poor - in some countries governm...

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#12 - Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.

#12 - Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.

“When you're in the middle of a crisis and you have to ask for money, you're already too late.” That’s Dr Beth Cameron, who leads Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative...

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