21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Noah Harari

 I looked forward to reading this book as I had read and enjoyed the author's other book Homo Deus that I read back in 2015.  Once again he poses challenging and thought-provoking ideas, this time around looking toward the future of humankind.  I marked quite a few passages. While raising the flags of warning for the future, his personal prescription of meditation as a means of dealing with it felt flat with me.  Still, I recommend reading for its wide range of observations.

"Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse--irrelevance."

[Regarding Artificial Intelligence or AI] "AI is now beginning to outperform humans in more and more of these [physical and cognitive] skills, including in the understanding of human emotions.  We don't know of any third field of activity--beyond the physical and the cognitive--where humans will always retain a secure edge."

"This reliance on the heart [as a guide for action] might prove to be the Achilles' heel of liberal democracy.  For once somebody gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show."

"If we want to prevent the concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, the key is to regulate the ownership of data."

"The nationalist wave sweeping across the world cannot return the world to 1939 or 1914.  Technology has changed everything by creating a set of global existential threats that no nation can solve on its own.  A common enemy is the best catalyst for forging a common identity, and humankind now has at least three such enemies - nuclear war, climate change, and technological disruption."

"You cannot experience joy and harmony when you are boiling with anger or envy.  Long before you murder anyone, your anger has already killed your own peace of mind."

[The secular ethical code] which is in fact accepted by millions of Muslims, Christians, and Hindus as well as by atheists--enshrines the values of truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage, and responsibility.  It forms the foundation of modern scientific and democratic institutions."

"We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own."

[Aldous Huxley's] genius consists in showing that you can control people far more securely thorough love and pleasure than through fear and violence."

"Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching 'the four Cs'-- critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity."

"In front of the amazed eyes of the assembled peasants the priest held high a piece of bread and exclaimed 'Hoc est corpus!'-- ' This is the body!'-- In the minds of the illiterate peasants, who did not speak Latin, 'Hoc est corpus!' got garbled into 'Hocus-pocus!'. Thus was born the powerful spell that can transform a frog into a prince and a pumpkin into a carriage."

"If by 'free will' you mean the freedom to do what you desire, then yes, humans have free will.  But if by 'free will' you mean the freedom to chose what to desire, then no, humans have no free will."

"When you are confronted by some great story and you wish to know whether it is real or imaginary, one of the key questions to ask is whether the central hero of the story can suffer."

Published: August 2018   Read: June 2021  Genre: History, Politics

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Sub-title: A Brief History of Tomorrow

This was a heavy book, figuratively and literally!  Harari has a PhD in history and specializes in world history.  He wrote an earlier book on the history of mankind called Sapiens.  This book is a sort of sequel, describing the future of the human species.  He presents many provocative ideas based on the evolution of industry and technology in the modern age.  I was fascinated and fearful of some of his predictions.  Here are some quotes and snipets I wanted to keep:

Page 54 - "A baby was conceived using the mitochondrial DNA of a 3rd person so she has biologically three parents (this procedures was subsequently banned in the U.S.)"

Page 58 - "This is the paradox of historical knowledge.  Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.  But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses it relevance.  The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated."

Page 132 - "...the crucial factor in our [humans] conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another."

Page - 143 - "All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.  These are set of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be a real and inviolable as gravity [examples, God].  As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the sames stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organize mass-cooperation networks."

When he talks of "imagined orders" he's referring to a belief that is intersubjective - a belief that depends on communication among many humans, money being an example.  He posits that religious and nationalistic beliefs are also intersubjective and cease to exist if we cease to believe in them.

He goes on from this explanation of how the species acts based on commonly held beliefs to describe "The Modern Covenant" - an agreement we have made "to give up meaning in exchange for power".  Religion and nationalistic beliefs gave meaning to human life but restricted their power.  By letting go of a belief in a great cosmic plan life has no meaning.  "The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause.  If modernity has a motto, its 'shit happens'."  From this, he surmises, humans can do anything we want. "On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid meaning."

Page 304 - "If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable".

Page 350 - "Most scientific research about the human mind and the human experience has been conducted on people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.  The study of the human mind has so far assumed that Homo sapiens is Homer Simpson."

Page 366 - "Modern humanity is sick with FOMO - Fear of Missing Out and though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to really pay attention to whatever we choose."

He ends with three challenging questions:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What's more valuable intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

Published: 2015   Read: March 2018  Genre: History, Science