Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016) by Yuval Noah Harari, follows on from his 2016 book ‘Sapiens’. While Sapiens examines the history of our species, Homo Deus projects on the future. Harari explores what new technologies the world faces and how they may shape our health, well-being and belief systems. It is the latter which matters most.

Homo Deus begins by discussing the three universal challenges of the past – war, famine and disease. Modern technology has curtailed them all. I admit this seemed ironic in the era of Covid and Russo-Ukrainian War. However, the facts remain the same in 2016 as of 2022. Suicide kills more than war, obesity more than starvation. Modern medicine has curtailed the past’s most vicious diseases. We will see what comes of grain shortages and monkeypox.

Homo Deus has 7 chapters:

1. The New Human Agenda – eternal happiness, perfect health and immortality.
2. The Anthropocene – evolution of human society.
3. The Human Spark – modern science and the nature of consciousness.
4. The Storytellers – rehashes many of the ideas laid out in Sapiens, in particular our ‘intersubjective’ reality.
5. The Odd Couple – the difference between science and religion.
6. The Modern Covenant – how modernity trades meaning for power.
7. The Humanist Revolution – our modern belief system.
8. The Time Bomb in the Laboratory – how new scientific discoveries will challenge our humanist worldview.
9. The Great Decoupling – the power of the AI algorithms.
10. The Ocean of Consciousness – techno-humanism, what it is and how it might evolve
11. The Data Religion – how data drives the universe.

To discuss the future, Homo Deus delves into the past and present to explain where we might go next. It highlights profound ethical considerations; discussing philosophy, science and evolution in the spheres of biological engineering and AI.

The book’s second half is particularly chilling. AI algorithms are outpacing human beings. Not only can they play chess, solve equations or drive better than us, but computers can surpass people in realms we deem quintessentially human, such as art and music. When machines do everything better than humans, what value do we have? The question should concern us more than our ability to reverse ageing, travel in space or edit our genes. Most chillingly, it is inevitable.

Harari’s narration comes across as cold and detatched, as if he were an objective algorithm detailing the history of intelligent beings, and not a Homo Sapiens himself. He maintains the accessible style of Sapiens when tackling sophisticated concepts – which is most of the book. The style is accessible, but the tone is scientific. By reading between the lines, however, one sees Harari is only describing our state of affairs; what the reader makes of it is up to them.

Homo Deus is an intriguing book for anyone interested in the future of our species. Harari is an historian, however, not a life scientist, and we have more data on the past than future. For these reasons, Homo Deus does not hold up to Sapiens, nor should it be the authority on the implications of AI and the changing pace of the planet. It still remains a good read.

See Also:

• Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
• Humanism

Humanism

This post is a summary of Chapter 7 of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus.

Humanism is the dominant religion of the modern age. It underpins how we see the world, the stories we tell and our perceptions of goodness, beauty and truth. Rather than exalting a higher power, humanism places homo sapiens at the centre of the universe. By drawing their own purpose and sense of self, human beings can create meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. This world-view predominates in Western and secular societies today, even among the nominally religious.

In the past, humans believed in a world order governed by deities and spirits. Every man, woman and child had a role to play and laws to follow, but their destiny was not theirs to decide. While lacking in agency and power, humans believed life was worthwhile so long as they played their part. In traditional religious societies, laws and political power came not from people but from above. Reality was objective and priests and kings were its arbiters. The old view claims humans are unique but inherantly flawed therefore requiring guidance in their every action.

The Scientific Revolution uprooted the old belief systems. Discoveries in biology and physics revealed the world was random, and in effect purposeless. While most of the world was nominally religious, by the 1800s, many – in Europe particular – no longer let faith guide their lives as it had before, thus Nietzsche’s proclamation that ‘God is dead’.

Philosophers like Rosseau, Voltaire and Kant believed that human will gives meaning to an otherwise meaningless world. What you choose to do in life should not be God’s decision, or your parent’s, but yours. Our inner world is rich and alive – demons and angels exist not outside us, but within. People should be free to do as they please and love whom they please, so long as they do not harm others. Murder is a crime, not because holy texts say so, but because it infringes on another’s right to live. Art is what people agree it is. Legitimate power comes from the masses, not from above.

The 19th century saw three strains of humanism develop:

• Liberal humanism: individual rights are paramount. History is a gradual progression of scientific knowledge and individual freedoms. Every human is unique. Voters know best. The customer is always right. Beauty is the in the eye of the beholder.
• Socialist humanism: collective rights are paramount. History is a story of different groups oppressing others for their own gain. Humans are products of their environment. Politics, economics and art should serve the greater human good.
• Evolutionary humanism: rights are irrelevant in the march of history. Humans are unique, but not all are equal. Politics, economics and war are engines of natural selection and human destiny is survival of the fittest. Art and beauty are objective.

The 20th century saw humanist ‘wars of religion’ fought worldwide. Socialism came close in the 1970s, but ultimately liberal humanism prevailed, and dominates the modern world.

Today’s world runs on the principles of democracy, human rights, individualism and a free market. Swathes of people may cling to older religions and worldviews, but liberal humanism dominates the world’s institutions. The greatest innovations of the past century, including modern medicine, computer science and feminism, stem from the liberal humanist tradition.

Sources: Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus

See Also:

• Yuval Noah Harari
  • Sapiens
• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?
• Evolutionary Humanism
  • Fascism
    • Falangism
    • Turanism

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

‘Seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.’

The final paragraph of the final chapter offers a fitting summary to Israeli professor Yuval Noah Harari’s magnum opus. ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ (2014) traces the human story, from our humble beginnings to our exceptional rise, by identifying a series of key biological, social and technological developments that shaped the world we know today. Harari explains why and how homo sapiens are, illustrating the big picture with pertinent and oft amusing historical anecdotes. In the spirit of Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’, it provides a scientific perspective on world history.

Sapiens has four parts:

• One: The Cognitive Revolution –sentience and self-awareness, language, hunter-gatherers and our role in the Pleistocene Extinction.
• Two: The Agricultural Revolution – farming, hierarchies and the stories which underpin them, writing, prejudice and injustice.
• Three: The Unification of Humankind – global civilization, money and commerce, empire, religion and ideology.
• Four: The Scientific Revolution – the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, capitalism, happiness the state of the modern world and our possible future

Harari’s premise is the impact of ‘shared fictions’: societies’ beliefs and values, the way we view the world, the ideologies we share and the stories and myths which uphold them. A corporation, a nation, a higher power or even money itself, is not real in the tangible sense, yet through shared belief in the system, it holds sway over our daily lives, unifies peoples and upholds social structures. In Harari’s view consumerism and liberal humanism – the dominant ideologies of today –  are just as much ‘religions’ as Buddhism or Islam, for they shape how we view and interact with the world and our fellow man.

Released in 2011 in Hebrew and 2014 in English, Sapiens was immensely successful. It sold over a million copies and catapulted Harari from an insignificant history professor to one of the world’s leading intellectuals. Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jared Diamond and Mark Zuckerberg are fans. While Sapiens deals with our human past, his newer books Homo Deus (2016) and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018) deal with the future and present, respectively. I have not yet read them.

Despite his heavy-hitting concepts, Harari writes in an eloquent and accessible manner. His prose is thoughtful, punchy and descriptive, his content insightful and often provocative. This book will change how you view the world.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so many ‘aha’ moments in so short a time. It might be the best nonfiction I’ve ever read.

Yuval Noah Harari is a professor of world history at Hebrew University. He lives with his husband on a cooperative farm near Jerusalem and is an ardent vegan. He meditates for two hours every day.

See Also:

• Why Did Europe Take Over the World?
• The 1769 Transit of Venus
• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?

Why Did Europe Take Over the World?

In 1750, China, India and the Middle East led the world in technology, power and sophistication, as they had for most of history.  In 1775 India and China controlled 66% of the world’s economy. Less than a century later the British ruled India and China accounted for only 5%. By 1900 all the Americas spoke European languages, and Britain, a formerly insignificant island, ruled a quarter of the world. How was that possible?

The crucible of ‘western civilization’, my classics professor once told me, was not the Greek victories over Persia but the Roman conquest of Gaul. Civilization arose in Egypt and Mesopotamia, spread to Greece, and from there Italy. When the Romans conquered the Mediterranean, their contribution was a thin layer over millennia of development. Western Europe, however, was not so civilized – so Roman laws, language, architecture and government provided cultural bedrock. At the cost of thousands of Gallic lives, Caesar’s conquest brought Western Europe into civilization’s fold.

Western Europe adopted the Roman model wholesale with limited contribution from the invading Germanic tribes. From then on Western Europe largely bore one legal and cultural heritage with a single script, all preserved by the Catholic Church and rediscovered in the Renaissance. Islam may have accomplished such unity in the Middle East but, like China and Eastern Europe, the region was beset by invasions from Central Asia. Arab civilization arguably never recovered from the Mongols’ sack of Baghdad.

Jared Diamond attributes Europe’s rise to guns, germs and steel. That is, being in the right place at the right time. Europe had the environment and the resources for state-building and, through ancient trade routes, was connected to other civilizations, their ideas, resources and diseases. More isolated parts of the world lacking the crops, animals or geographic conditions, did not develop so. The Roman script and a common religion helped spread ideas while, unlike imperial China, fragmented political boundaries fostered competition and innovation.

Yuval Harari credits ‘values, myths, judicial apparatus and sociopolitical structures that took centuries to form and mature’ – crucially capitalism and western science. While the ideologies of the Ottomans, Ming China and Mughal India promoted continuity and stability, those of England, France and Spain favoured ambition and greed.

Before 1492, the world’s civilizations were sure they knew the world.  Christianity, Islam, Confucianism or Buddhism provided answers to all the world’s mysteries with little room for the unknown. The Medieval worldview was strict and stagnant. Then, Colombus discovered the New World. A generation later, Amerigo Vespucci suggested the discovery was not Asia, as Colombus believed, but a new continent altogether.

Vespucci’s realisation taught Europeans a valuable lesson; admission of ignorance. For the first time, cartographers now printed maps with blank spaces – an open invitation for the intrepid. While the more advanced empires of India and China dismissed these discoveries and remained convinced they were the respective centres of the universe, states like Spain and Portugal embarked on an Age of Discovery. Hunger for knowledge, as much as land and wealth, drove the explorers of that age.

Capitalism was significant, for economies based on credit, not gold, can multiply wealth. Journeys across the world, colonies and railroads would not have been possible without investment banking, loans, interest and shares. Nor would the transatlantic slave trade.

A feedback loop resulted: science brings better technology, technology brings conquest, conquest brings wealth, wealth invests in science and so on. By extracting wealth from the rest of the world, European empires only increased their power. The more they developed, the more the technology gap, and their hubris, grew.

The factors involved in springing that feedback loop are too variant to attribute to simple determinism – geography, environment, economics,  accident and circumstance all played their part.

Sources: Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

See Also: 

• Empire
• What Makes an Animal Domesticatable?
• The 1769 Transit of Venus

Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?

Humanity has come a long way. Since agriculture revolutionised life 10,000 years ago we have traded our tents and caves for high rise apartments and megacities. We have subjected the elements to our will and multiplied to the billions. Yet despite all mankind’s accomplishments, our neurology remains very much hunter-gatherer and ill-suited to the modern world. Is civilization worth it? Were we better off in our natural state?

Our ancestors worked less. Today’s hunter-gatherers in the Arctic Circle and Kalahari Desert ‘work’ an average of forty hours a week. They only live in such hostile climates, however, because more numerous farmers forced them from choicer lands thousands of years ago.  Ancient hunter-gatherers living in bountiful forests or river valleys laboured far less.  The work our foraging ancestors did perform, whether a day’s hunt, exploring new lands or sharpening spearheads around the campfire, was more exciting and fulfilling than sitting all day at an office or factory.

Hunter-gatherers enjoyed nutritious diets. Instead of dairy and grain, products of the Agricultural Revolution, they lived off wild fruit, fish, and meat, free from excess calories, sugar or saturated fat.  They were fit too; in contrast to our sedentary lifestyles where we get by with minimal physical exertion and pass on our ‘unremarkable genes’, hunter-gatherers were constantly on the move and used all parts of their body. The average Stone Age human was as fit as an Olympic athlete. As foragers were not reliant on a single food source like wheat, rice or potatoes, famine was almost unheard of.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were disease-free. Epidemics proliferate when dense numbers of humans concentrate in one place.  Sure, isolated forager bands lack immunity to modern diseases but before the Agricultural Revolution, said diseases did not exist. Hunter-gatherers do not require sewerage because there are so few of them while a lack of inter-connectivity impedes the spread of epidemics. 

Life expectancy of today’s hunter-gatherers is 30-40 years, 60 if discounting infant mortality. Though far healthier than a medieval peasant, our ancestors still lacked modern medicine. Serious injury could be a death sentence.

Like modern hunter-gatherers, our ancestors lived in tight-knit groups of 40-50 people (bands). Some bands were monogamous, others practised free love and collective parenting. All shared intense bonds within their community, however. Contact with other groups was minimal, and bands could go years without meeting outsiders. In contrast, we meet thousands of people in a lifetime. Ancient foragers valued strong social bonds more than possessions or ‘success’. As hunter-gatherers owned only what they could carry, there was noticeably less hierarchy or inequality.

I have previously discussed on this blog that hunter-gatherers are generally more violent than settled, industrial societies. Ancient foragers could easily flee from violent neighbours to new and uninhabited lands, however, a luxury not afforded to their modern counterparts. Intra-band violence depends on social customs and the temperament of its members. Without states to govern them, foragers lacked codified laws to restrict human behaviour and protect the needy. The tradeoff? They were free.

According to Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in ignorant bliss. According to Thomas Hobbes, life in the state of nature was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ Our ancestors lived in a more violent and dangerous world than modern affluent societies, if not previous centuries, and few of their babies survived. Those that did, however, grew to be fitter, healthier and better-connected adults.

Conversely, we have far more possessions, knowledge and opportunities at our disposal. Life may be safer, easier and more comfortable than it has ever been but advertising and mass media constantly remind us how it could be better. What is happiness other than subjective well-being measured against expectations? Some scholars suggest nothing could surpass ‘the wild excitement and sheer joy experienced by a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt’. Ignorance is bliss. Given our psychological makeup has yet to catch up with the rapid change in life over the past 10,000 years, they could be right. ‘Happier’ and ‘better off’, however, are difficult concepts to define – it all depends on what you value.

Sources: Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Phys.org

See Also:

• How Violent are Hunter-Gatherers?
• Ainu
• Apache
• Fuegians
• Haida
• Inuit
• Plains Nations
• Ruc
• Sentinelese