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This article sets out to describe and solve two puzzles that emerge in segregated labour markets (e.g. the USA or Sweden). First, in many hiring contexts people profess to adhere to egalitarian norms, and specifically to a qualification norm according to which job qualification should be the basis of employment. Still there is evidence of frequent norm violations (discrimination). Surprisingly, the norm persists and people do not frequently protest against such norm violations. The second puzzle is that people are suspicious of the hiring of minorities, perceiving such hirings as evidence that a 'political correctness' norm has replaced the qualification norm. The article proposes that both puzzles can be solved within a game-theoretical model of social norm-following, where implicit bias is introduced into an 'employment game'. Within this model, implicit bias plays a double role. First, it interferes with employers' hiring decisions regarding ethnic majority and minority members, respectively. This is the standard way of understanding the effects of implicit bias. Second, implicit bias interferes with bystander evaluations of hired candidates' qualifications. This is a hitherto overlooked effect of implicit bias. The article concludes that once we understand the double role of implicit bias, the two puzzles are resolved.

This essay defends a rational reconstruction of a genealogical debunking argument that begins with the premise that's just what the economic elite want you to believe and ends in the conclusion you should lower your confidence in your belief. The argument is genealogical because it includes a causal explanation of your beliefs; it is debunking because it claims that the contingencies uncovered by the genealogy undermine your beliefs. The essay begins by defending a plausible causal explanation of your belief in terms of the wants of the elite. Then a number of recent objections to genealogical debunking arguments are considered. It is argued that the genealogy offered in the first part constitutes evidence that a testimony-based belief is not safe and therefore does not constitute knowledge if the economic elite wants you to believe it.

It has been argued that rational choice theory is unable to explain the occurrence of social revolutions. This paper argues that if social revolutions are modeled in an evolutionary setting it is possible to predict when revolutions occur. It is shown that revolutions are expected to occur when regimes lose their determination to punish revolutionary activity early and severely. In the process of constructing the model some results about public good provision are generalized., 1

The role of groups has often been invoked as an explanation of how successful revolutions can be the outcome of rational action. This paper attempts to show that the focus on groups fails to incorporate an important aspect of oppression, namely the oppressive regime itself. If rational choice theory is to be taken seriously and if it is assumed that the potential revolutionaries are rational, then similar assumptions should be made about the despot. If this is done, then it is far from obvious that groups help to solve the free-rider problem. Rather it is shown that in this case the revolutionaries become subject to a higher order free-rider problem., authorCount :1