Law & Society Blog

In Hobbes’ state of nature, self-interested robots descend into mutual warfare, because they cannot resolve their resource conflicts by non-violent means. If every robot is programmed to maximize its own welfare, if all goods are rivalrous, and if there is no powerful central authority to change the cost/benefit calculus, then a state of mutual warfare […]

Cory Doctorow is teaching a course on copyright, DRM, and IP policy at USC. His syllabus contains a wealth of well-chosen links, which make for a great introduction to the subject. The lectures are available for download here (podcast subscription link).Technorati Tags: IP policy, DRM, doctorow

One of my favorite descriptions of human nature is from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Here it is:
Let’s set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments […]

The morality of the market is one of the most significant issues not only in ethics but also, at least since Durkheim and Weber, in sociology. As is often the case, the more pervasive a practice, the harder it is to describe and analyze. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy, in their forthcoming paper Moral Views […]

Like most people interested in social science, I am a social misfit. That is, I have various and sundry habits that upset a certain type of person: I slurp my soup, swear publically, really don’t like ironing my pants, and sometimes I even wear a horrible moustache. These are all forgivable sins, I hope. But […]