The three problems facing Homo sapiens in the twenty first century are: Climate change, Technological revolution (The rise of A.I and Bio-engineering) and existential risks like that of a nuclear war — this is a genuine concern especially when you have sufficiently perfect psychopaths as heads of states. In his fascinating new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the historian Yuval Noah Harari provides a credible framework for confronting these fears.
The book is epic. It is another masterpiece by Yuval Noah Harari, following his two blockbuster books Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
A few of his thought provoking views that I thought were worth mentioning:
On AI: “The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.”
On meaning of life: “The big question facing humans isn’t ‘what is the meaning of life?’ but rather, ‘how do we get out of suffering?’” — Planet Earth is a catastrophe to many it seems.
On AI creating a class of useless Homo sapiens: “Humans have two types of abilities — physical and cognitive. In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in raw physical abilities, while humans retained an immense edge over machines in cognition. Hence as manual jobs in agriculture and industry were automated, new service jobs emerged that required the kind of cognitive skills only humans possessed: learning, analyzing, communicating and above all understanding human emotions. However, AI is now beginning to outperform humans in more and more of these 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.”
On nationalism and by extension fascism: “Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption. If you hear any of these, sound the alarm. And if you happen to live in a country whose leader routinely says things like ‘Their sacrifice will redeem the purity of our eternal nation’ — know that you are in deep trouble. To save your sanity, always try to translate such hogwash into real terms: a soldier crying in agony, a woman beaten and brutalized, a child shaking in fear.” — I first heard this argument by Steven Pinker from his book Enlightenment now, the case for reason, science, humanism and progress. A soldier dying for his country defeats the very notion of humanism.
On Free will: “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 choose what to desire — then no, humans have no free will.” — I first heard this notion that we have no free will from Sam Harris. His argument has been that our thoughts are shaped by our genes, environment and our experiences, and whether we end up as Ted Bundy who spent his life torturing and raping young women and children or like Mother Teresa, it is by no free will of our own, but rather by sheer dumb luck. We didn’t choose our parents or our environment. Harris has always taken heat from for his views on free will. It was refreshing to see Harari explain Sam’s point succinctly.
On Religion: It is worth noting that in this book — unlike in his earlier works -Yuval brutally rips religion apart. Some parts read like excerpts written by either of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris or Dennett. He used the term “Stories” and “Fake news” repeatedly as a blanket word for all religious beliefs and mythologies. “For millennia, much of what passed for ‘news’ and ‘facts’ in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons and witches, with bold reporters giving live coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the Serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries an Untouchable — yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever. I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month — that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years — that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it ‘fake news’ in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath).”
I didn’t agree with everything in the book though. His prediction that “data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset” in the 21st century is suspect, and I’m deeply skeptical about it.
Recommended order of reading: Sapiens <>Homo Deus<>21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
