Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari Flashcards
The New Human Agenda
We now know what needs to be done to prevent famine, plague and war. They are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the control of a helpless humanity. They have become manageable challenges.
In the early 21st century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack.
What will replace famine, plague and war at the top of the human agenda? What are we going to do with ourselves?
History does not tolerate a vacuum. Humans are rarely satisfied with what they already have. The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.
We have 3 new objectives:
1/ Overcome old age and even death itself
2/ Aim to make people positively happy
3/ Upgrade humans into gods
Overcoming Death
Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthy existence. and were quite tolerant of death.
Because Christianity, Islam and Hinduism insisted that the meaning of our existence depended on our fate in the afterlife, they viewed death as a vital and positive part of the world. Humans died because God decreed it.
Modern science and modern culture have an entirely different take on life and death. It is a technical problem that we can and should solve.
We don’t need to wait for the Second Coming to overcome death. A couple of geeks in a lab coat can do it.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say that humans have ‘the right to life until the age of ninety’. It says that every human has a right to life, period. That right isn’t limited by an expiry date.
The war against death is likely to be the flagship project of the coming century, taking into account our belief about the sanctity of human life, the dynamics of the scientific establishment and the needs of the capitalist economy.
A large part of artistic creativity, our political commitment and our religious piety is fuelled by the fear of death.
Woody Allen, ‘I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.’
The Right to Happiness
When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good, he warned his followers that it is hard work to be happy. Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. Indeed, the blind pursuit of money, fame and pleasure will only make us miserable. He recommended to eat and drink in moderation and to curb one’s sexual appetites. In the long run a deep friendship will make us more content than a frenzied orgy.
The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by 2 stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve expectations balloon.
On the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness are determined by our biochemistry. According to the life sciences, happiness and suffering are nothing but different balances of bodily sensations. We never react to events in the outside world, but only to sensations in our bodies.
The bad news is that pleasant sensations quickly subside and sooner or later turn into unpleasant ones.
This is all the fault of evolution. For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness. The biochemical system rewards actions conducive to survival and reproduction with pleasant sensations. But these are only an ephemeral sales gimmick. Nice tastes and blissful orgasms don’t last very long, and if we want to feel them again we have to go out looking for more food and mates.
Lucrative jobs, big houses and good-looking partners seldom satisfy us for long.
When an animal is looking for something that increases its chances of survival and reproduction (e.g. food, partners or social status), the brain produces sensations of alertness and excitement, which drive the animal to make even greater efforts because they are so very agreeable.
If science is right and our happiness is determined by our biochemical system, then the only way to ensure lasting contentment is by rigging this system. We need to manipulate our biochemistry.
50 years ago psychiatric drugs carried a severe stigma. Today, that stigma has been broken.
When the mind learns to see our sensations for what they are - ephemeral and meaningless vibrations - we lose interest in pursuing them.
Homo sapiens was not adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure. If this is what we want, however, it will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds.
The Gods of Planet Earth
The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths:
1/ Biological engineering - we are far from realising the full potential of organic bodies. Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neutrons were enough to transform Homo erectus - who could produce nothing more than flint knives - into Homo sapiens, who produces spaceships and computers. Bioengineering is not going to wait patiently for natural selection to work its magic.
2/ Cyborg engineering will merge the organic body with non-organic devices such as bionic hands or nano-robots that will navigate our bloodstream, diagnose problems and repair damage. Such a cyborg could enjoy abilities far beyond those of any organic body.
3/ Inorganic entities - once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which people like you and me cannot comprehend.
Homo sapiens is not going to be exterminated by a robot revolt. Rather, homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process.
Our world of meaning might collapse within decades. You cannot count on death to save you from becoming completely irrelevant. The attempt to upgrade humans is likely to change the world beyond recognition in this century.
An economy built on everlasting growth needs endless projects – just like the quests for immortality, bliss and divinity.
No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Think about the evolution of plastic surgery: from treating facial injuries in the First World War to beautifying the wealthy. Healing is the initial justification for every upgrade.
The Paradox of historical knowledge: knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes out-dated.
Every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. We have felt that grip from the moment we are born. We seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.
Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It gives us more options. Our present situation is neither natural nor eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the world we know today.
This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies.
The same technologies that can upgrade humans into gods might also make humans irrelevant. Computers powerful enough to understand and overcome the mechanisms of ageing and death will probably be powerful enough to replace humans in any and all tasks.
Homo sapiens does its best to forget this fact, but it is an animal. No investigation of our divine future can ignore our own animal past.
How did Homo sapiens come to believe in the humanist creed, according to which the universe revolves around humankind and humans are the source of all meaning and authority? If humanism is indeed in danger, what might take its place?
History has witnessed the rise and fall of many religions, empires and cultures. Such upheavals are not necessarily bad. Humanism has dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. Maybe the collapse of humanism will be beneficial.
Homo Sapiens Conquers the World
The Anthropocene
With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. Most of us automatically see animals as essentially different and inferior.
The Bible argues that humans are a unique creation, and any attempt to acknowledge the animal within us denies God’s power and authority.
It may be better to call the last 70,000 years the Anthropocene epoch: the epoch of humanity. For during these millennia we have become the single most important agent of change in the global ecology. Our single ape species has managed within 70,000 years to change the global ecosystem in radical and unprecedented ways.
Humanity is now poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to extend life from the organic realm into the organic.
The theory of evolution maintains that all instincts, drives and emotions have evolved in the sole interest of survival and reproduction.
Organisms are algorithms
Attributing emotions to pigs doesn’t humanise them. It ‘mammalises’ them. For emotions are not a uniquely human quality – they are common to all mammals.
‘Algorithm’ is unarguably the single most important concept in our world. If we want to understand our life and our future, we should make every effort to understand what an algorithm is, and how algorithms are connected with emotions.
An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. It is not a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation. An algorithm might be a cooking recipe.
Over the last few decades biologists have reached the firm conclusion that humans are algorithms. The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts. These algorithms undergo constant quality control by natural selection. For example, natural selection evolved passion and disgust as quick algorithms for evaluating reproduction odds.
99 per cent of our decisions are made by the highly refined algorithms we call sensations, emotions and desires.
The Agricultural deal
Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a drama with just two main characters: man and God. Angels and demons somehow survived the transition. We tend to forget the extent to which religions sanctify humans. In the new theist drama Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved.
Christianity maintained that humans hold sway over the rest of creation because the Creator charged them with that authority. God gave an eternal soul only to humans. Since the fate of the eternal soul is the point of the whole Christian cosmos, and since animals have no soul, they are mere extras.
All religions found ways to justify human superiority and the exploitation of animals (if not for meat, then for milk and muscle power). Humans thus committed themselves to an ‘agricultural deal’, according to which cosmic forces gave them command over other animals.
The rise of modern science and industry brought about the next revolution in human-animal relations. During the Agricultural Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too. The world was now a one-man show. Humankind stood alone on an empty stage, talking to itself, negotiating with no one and acquiring enormous powers without any obligations.
The founding idea of humanist religions such as liberalism, communism and Nazism is that Homo sapiens has some unique and sacred essence that is the source of all meaning and authority in the universe.
In recent years as people began to rethink human-animal relations, such practices have come under increasing criticism. We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one. If and when computer programs attain superhuman intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing these programs more than we value humans?
The Human Spark
Humans like to think they have a superior moral status to other animals. Is human life more precious than porcine life simply because the human collective is more powerful than the pig collective?
We want to believe that human lives really are superior in some fundamental way. What is this unique human spark?
The traditional monotheist answer is that only Sapiens have eternal souls. This is an extremely powerful myth that continues to shape the lives of billions of humans and animals in the early 21st century.
The life sciences doubt the existence of the soul not just due to lack of evidence, but rather because the very idea of the soul contradicts the most fundamental principles of evolution. This contradiction is responsible for the unbridled hatred that the theory of evolution inspires among devout monotheists.
Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? Darwin’s ideas seem at first less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both dead and alive at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent children from these scandalous ideas.
The theory of relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you understand that there is no soul.
Biology cannot explain the birth of a baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have even a shred of a soul. Is a single mutation, or several mutations, enough to give an animal an essence secure against all changes, including even death?
The existence of souls cannot be squared with the theory of evolution. Evolution means change, and is incapable of producing everlasting entities. From an evolutionary perspective, the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is the vehicle of mutation rather than the seat of eternity. This terrifies large numbers of people.
