Home - Randall S Bennington II

Researcher

Writer

Modeler

Economist

Randall S. Bennington

Randall Bennington is an economist and researcher who models how ideas move through populations—and what happens when new technologies collide with old beliefs.

With a graduate degree in economics from Cardiff and fifteen years analyzing cultural diffusion patterns, his work spans an unusual range: from Paleolithic ceramic innovation to contemporary AI adoption, from ancient creation myths to modern institutional breakdown. Before developing trust-network simulations and deep-time cultural analysis, he spent years inside New York's fashion and media world, contributing to Vogue, GQ, and The New Yorker. That immersion taught him how narratives actually function—not as decoration, but as coordination mechanisms that make collective action possible.

That insight drives his current book on how humans will coordinate belief in a world where silicon minds increasingly shape our reality. The frontier isn't technological capability. It's whether we can still trust anything we see.

Twitter/X Substack

What I Do

Trust, Society & AI

I write about how trust forms, erodes, and collapses—from Paleolithic kin groups to digital-era crowds. My current project examines how humans will adapt to a world where more of our information, stories, and meaning-structures are created by AI.

Simulation & Model-Building (EthosSim)

I build computational tools to model trust-networks, belief propagation, and betrayal cascades. EthosSim is my experimental lab for exploring how stories, incentives, and social roles shape group behavior—across families, cultures, corporations, and AI systems.

Myths, Stories & Narrative Pattern

I study the deep structures of stories: why cultures split between clay-creation vs. cosmic-egg, why Maui has charisma vs Radagast has charm, and why the moral geometry of 12 Angry Men is the opposite of The Thing. My focus is how myths encode trust, fear, authority, and cooperation—and how those patterns still govern modern life.

The Culture of Media and Advertising

Years in fashion and culture taught me how people signal identity, belonging, hierarchy, and aspiration. I still write about archetypes, aesthetics, and the social scripts we perform—whether that’s male social types or the weird semiotics of modern full-faith-in-numbers culture.