The tide and the waves of social change
How social conceptions about justice change over time
EconomicsPsychology
Optimally Irrational.
Lionel Page on behavioral economics, game theory, and human psychology.
Recent essays
30 of 30The 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
Artificial General Intelligence will likely require a general goal, but which one?
AGI, LLMs and the challenge of alignment
Power balance and ideology
Why the cultural hegemony of the left erodes its epistemic standing
The delusion of political violence
Our fantasies about violence are an evolutionary mismatch
The truth about sport
Why we really care about it
Friendship politics
Everything you have always wanted to know on friendship
Why science is politically disruptive
With a few examples
Epstein files: how arguments really make people change political side
The not totally ineffective nature of political arguments
What are the chances you’re right about everything?
The somewhat (but not entirely) arbitrary nature of political ideological bundles
Why has the right become more popular among low-income voters?
Explaining the growing defection of the working class from the left
Why has the left gentrified?
In my previous post I described the phenomenon of gentrification of the left and placed in a decades-long process of demographic and ideological evolution of the left in Western countries.
The gentrification of the left
And the popularisation of the right in Western countries