What AI progress teaches us about human psychology
How the challenges of designing AI cast a new light on the human mind
EconomicsPsychology
Optimally Irrational.
Lionel Page on behavioral economics, game theory, and human psychology.
Recent essays
30 of 41AI and democracy: friend or foe?
How the AI revolution might impact political institutions
Will AI stop us getting ripped off?
How AI will revolutionise consumer markets
Will AI mark the end of low quality arguments?
How AI will likely transform our discussions
Are universities on the brink of an Uber-like revolution?
A scenario for how AI could challenge universities’ dominance in higher education
Power to the laypeople!
How AI will reduce experts’ intellectual market power
How AI will revolutionise peer-reviewed research
Frontier models will change the way scientific papers are checked, selected and written
Why has sociology become so politicised?
On the underlying reasons behind the ideological drift of the field
Should robots be considered as slaves?
On whether AI agents should be granted moral status
AI self-awareness is not the real risk
The danger is not consciousness, but self-drive.
So, what is morality?
Clear answers to some of moral philosophy’s deepest questions
The tide and the waves of social change
How social conceptions about justice change over time
The shocking truth about fairness
The deep origin of fairness norms is bargaining power
What is a just society?
Part 2: equality or maximum happiness?
What is a "just" society?
Part 1: simple answers to big questions
How we decide what is fair in everyday life
Equality or overall satisfaction?
What is fairness?
The invisible rules that pervade our social interactions
The fascinating insights of Robert Trivers
From cooperation to conflict: the evolutionary grammar of social interactions
The game theory of cooperation
Explained simply
Cooperation is the scaffolding principle of life
From cells to humans, cooperation is a key principle of evolution
Dekanting moral philosophy
Unconditional moral duties do not follow from pure rationality
What if the US seizes Greenland?
Looking into what would be a massive political and geopolitical blunder
Is morality relative?
And if so to what extent
A defence of morality as respect for a social contract
The absence of objective moral truths does not mean that "anything is permitted"
Morality works without absolute moral truths
Replacing theories of the Good and the Right with a theory of the Seemly
There are no moral laws out there
A criticism of moral realism
No, religion isn't required for morality
Our moral sense precedes religious doctrines
Morality without skyhooks
Shedding light on what morality is and how it works
Does the arc of history bend towards democracy?
Why the world became more democratic, and whether it will continue
What are we really doing on social media?
The motives and strategies that shape our online presence