🧩 Philosophy Sep 7, 2026 · Robin Hanson

What Hidden Motives Imply

Overcoming Bias
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What Hidden Motives Imply
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My book with the excellent co-author Kevin Simler, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, was published almost nine years ago, and has sold >60K copies so far. Our main thesis was that we humans are quite often wrong about our motives re many big common practices and institutions.Reviewers classified our book as psychology, and said that our thesis had long been well-known and accepted in psychology. We thought our contribution was to show how those who study most areas o

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