21 Lessons For the 21st Century Flashcards
Human has 2 abilities: physical & cognitive.
Industrial revolution replaced the jobs which require human physicals; the coming AI age may replace the jobs which require human cognitions.
“Useless” class
AI and automation will replace human jobs, at the same time create new jobs.
But the new jobs will require high level of expertise and will be volatile (ie evolving very fast), therefore, not all human can reskill and catch up.
In long run, this will create a “useless” class
Many people might share the date not of 19th century wagon drivers - who switched to drive taxis - but of 19th century horses, who were increasingly pushed out of job market altogether.
An analogy of the “useless” class
Is “Universal Basic Income” or “Universal Basic Service” a solution to the job replacement by AI?
Problems:
1) “universal” mostly mean “national”, but on a global basis, the jobs replaced are normally in economic backward countries while beneficiaries are rich countries. So nation-wide implementation will NOT solve the problem;
2) standards for “Basic” are different from people to people; and even fulfilling “basic” doesn’t mean “equal”, people would still feel dissatisfied due to comparison.
Human happiness depends less on objective condition and more on own expectation.
Yuval Noah Harari
Liberalism
- political: democratic election;
- economics: free market;
- personal: human rights
Democratic Election is not about rationality, instead it is about feeling
If election should be rational, only the people who has expertise and can comprehend the topic relevant information should vote, but in most of cases, people vote according not to rational understanding but to feelings.
Feeling is in fact biological calculation
Therefore it can be imitated and manipulated by algorithms. This is how social media is influencing election results
Data-cow
An analogy: cow produces milk but no other value; in future, we human only produce data.
1) in ancient time, land was the most important assets, politics was a struggle to control land;
2) in the modern era, machines and factories became more important, politics struggles focused on controlling these vital means of production;
3) in the 21st century, data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset, politics will be a struggle to control the flow of data.
Yuval Noah Harari
Why do people build nations?
People went to the trouble of constructing large collectives such as nation states because
1) they confront led challenges that could not be dealt with by any single tribe, and
2) they encounter opportunities that could not be exploited without large scale cooperation.
Nationalism has two parts to it:
1) Easy Part: Xenophobia is our DNA
2) Hard Part: Nations create a mammoth apparatus of institutions
We now have a global ecology, global economy and a global science, but we are still stuck with only national politics
This mismatch prevents the political system from effectively countering our global problems:
- nuclear war
- climate change
- disruptive technologies (AI, biotech)
Terrorism - main purpose is to cause fear rather than material attack to opponents
In conventional warfare, fear is just a by product of material losses, and is usually proportional to the force inflicting the losses;
In terrorism, fear is the main story, there is an astounding disproportion between the actual strength of terrorists and the fear they manage to inspire
Terrorism is a very unattractive military strategy
Because it leaves all the important decisions in the hands of the enemy. Since all the options the enemy had prior to a terrorist attack are still at his disposal afterwards.
(Counter example: Pearl Harbor- Japs destroy the US fleet instead of attacking a civilian ship, so the US has at least one option less)
