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A very enjoyable read, although I struggled some what on the last chapter about Dataism.
I think two things drove me being less impressed by this book than I would otherwise expect to be:
(1) I read it immediately after Sapiens, and a lot of its foundational premises cover the same ground as that book. It is never fun to re-read the same material
(2) A lot of Harari’s speculations have now become much more common sense. We live in the world of enhanced generative AI, and I personally have begun outsourcing a lot of my decisions to algorithms before they are even particularly personalised to me
I am still not convinced that the utility of algorithms will evolve into dataism (the valuing of algorithms / information over human experience). I am more sympathetic to techno-humanism (in terms of likelihood of occurring). In saying that, humans are capable of radical, unthinkable change, and I grew up in a humanist world. Of course I will think that
I enjoyed the expansion on our role in animals suffering, and the interrogation of the justifications of that, which reveal that the very same arguments could be used by a Homo deus to justify extreme exploitation of Homo sapiens (and indeed mirror the arguments that Homo sapiens have used for centuries to justify enslavement of other Homo sapiens)
The intelligence vs mind question remains open for me, especially with interpretations of quantum physics which emphasis the possibility of mind being the precursor / the dominant causal effect in the universe
Quotes:
In France, for example, 6 million people (about 10 per cent of the population) suffer from nutritional insecurity.
In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.
the Chekhov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third.
However, terrorism is a strategy of weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by causing significant material damage.
Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony, and given our past record and our current values, humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity.
Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly existence, and were consequently 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.
Notable examples are the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and the polymath and inventor Ray Kurzweil
Google Ventures is investing 36 per cent of its $2 billion portfolio in life sciences start-ups, including several ambitious life-extending projects.
The physicist Max Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time.
Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will get to live to ninety
it will not be enough to reach 150, let alone 500. For that, medicine will need to re-engineer the most fundamental structures and processes of the human body, and discover how to regenerate organs and tissues.
People want to live for ever, so they compose an ‘immortal’ symphony, they strive for ‘eternal glory’ in some war, or even sacrifice their lives so that their souls will ‘enjoy everlasting bliss in paradise’. A large part of our artistic creativity, our political commitment and our religious piety is fuelled by the fear of death.
When Otto von Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late nineteenth-century Germany, his chief aim was to ensure the loyalty of the citizens rather than to increase their well-being.
The right to the pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint on state power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human rights, so the state should do something about it.
American subjective well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they were in the 1950s.
In a famous experiment scientists connected electrodes to the brains of several rats, enabling the animals to create sensations of excitement simply by pressing a pedal. When the rats were given a choice between tasty food and pressing the pedal, they preferred the pedal
Perhaps the key to happiness is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the right doses of excitement and tranquillity; but most of us tend to jump all the way from stress to boredom and back, remaining as discontented with one as with the other.
If pupils suffer from attention disorders, stress and low grades, perhaps we ought to blame outdated teaching methods, overcrowded classrooms and an unnaturally fast tempo of life.
The principle is clear: biochemical manipulations that strengthen political stability, social order and economic growth are allowed and even encouraged (e.g. those that calm hyperactive kids in school, or drive anxious soldiers forward into battle). Manipulations that threaten stability and growth are banned.
In early 2015 several hundred workers in the Epicenter high-tech hub in Stockholm had microchips implanted into their hands. The chips are about the size of a grain of rice and store personalised security information that enables workers to open doors and operate photocopiers with a wave of their hand.
No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine almost always begins by saving people from falling below the norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to surpass the norm.
It is technically feasible with current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases by creating a ‘three-parent baby’. The baby’s nuclear DNA comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana’s nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.
It is technically feasible with current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases by creating a ‘three-parent baby’. The baby’s nuclear DNA comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana’s nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.48 However, on 3 February 2015 the British Parliament voted in favour of the so-called ‘three-parent embryo’ law, allowing this treatment – and related research – in the UK.
As people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their national consciousness and integrate them into the political system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists could still sleep soundly in their beds.
This is 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 outdated.
Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don’t normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.
The idea of nurturing a lawn at the entrance to private residences and public buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats in the late Middle Ages. In the early modern age this habit struck deep roots, and became the trademark of nobility. Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In exchange, they produce nothing of value.
For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion.
The future described in this chapter is merely the future of the past – i.e. a future based on the ideas and hopes that dominated the world for the last 300 years. The real future – i.e. a future born of the new ideas and hopes of the twenty-first century – might be completely different.
In the Anthropocene, the planet became for the first time a single ecological unit.
Professor Stanley Curtis of the Pennsylvania State University trained two pigs – named Hamlet and Omelette – to control a special joystick with their snouts, and found that the pigs soon rivalled primates in learning and playing simple computer games.
For emotions are not a uniquely human quality – they are common to all mammals (as well as to all birds and probably to some reptiles and even fish).
An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. An algorithm isn’t a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation.
The word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma, meaning breast.
In the first half of the twentieth century, and despite the influence of Freudian theories, the dominant behaviourist school argued that relations between parents and children were shaped by material feedback; that children needed mainly food, shelter and medical care; and that children bonded with their parents simply because the latter provide these material needs. Children who demanded warmth, hugs and kisses were thought to be ‘spoiled’. Childcare experts warned that children who were hugged and kissed by their parents would grow up to be needy, egotistical and insecure adults.21 John Watson, a leading childcare authority in the 1920s, sternly advised parents, ‘Never hug and kiss [your children], never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.’
Only in the 1950s and 1960s did a growing consensus of experts abandon these strict behaviourist theories and acknowledge the central importance of emotional needs.
Biblical Judaism, for instance, catered to peasants and shepherds. Most of its commandments dealt with farming and village life, and its major holidays were harvest festivals.
The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic recounts that when the gods sent a great deluge to destroy the world, almost all humans and animals perished. Only then did the rash gods realise that nobody remained to make any offerings to them. They became crazed with hunger and distress. Luckily, one human family survived, thanks to the foresight of the god Enki, who instructed his devotee Utnapishtim to take shelter in a large wooden ark along with his relatives and a menagerie of animals. When the deluge subsided and this Mesopotamian Noah emerged from his ark, the first thing he did was sacrifice some animals to the gods.
the ancient Indian principle of ahimsa (non-violence) extends to every sentient being. Jain monks are particularly careful in this regard. They always cover their mouths with a white cloth, lest they inhale an insect, and whenever they walk they carry a broom to gently sweep any ant or beetle from their path.
According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention;
Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species.
The literal meaning of the word ‘individual’ is ‘something that cannot be divided’.
Every subjective experience has two fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire.
Scientists don’t know how a collection of electric brain signals creates subjective experiences. Even more crucially, they don’t know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a phenomenon. It is the greatest lacuna in our understanding of life.
what happens in the mind that doesn’t happen in the brain? If nothing happens in the mind except what happens in our massive network of neurons – then why do we need the mind? If something does indeed happen in the mind over and above what happens in the neural network – where the hell does it happen?
Finally, some scientists concede that consciousness is real and may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfils no biological function whatsoever. Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes.
This is all very well for humans, but what about computers? Since silicon-based computers have very different structures to carbon-based human neural networks, the human signatures of consciousness may not be relevant to them.
We seem to be trapped in a vicious circle. Starting with the assumption that we can believe humans when they report that they are conscious, we can identify the signatures of human consciousness, and then use these signatures to ‘prove’ that humans are indeed conscious. But if an artificial intelligence self-reports that it is conscious, should we just believe it?
since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero.
The best test that scholars have so far come up with is called the Turing Test, but it examines only social conventions.
Initial tests on monkeys and mice indicate that at least monkey and mice brains indeed display the signatures of consciousness.
On 7 July 2012 leading experts in neurobiology and the cognitive sciences gathered at the University of Cambridge, and signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which says that ‘Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.’
in May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legally recognise animals as sentient beings, when the New Zealand parliament passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Act. The Act stipulates that it is now obligatory to recognise animals as sentient, and hence attend properly to their welfare in contexts such as animal husbandry.
Various experiments indicate that at least some animals – including birds such as parrots and scrub jays – do remember individual incidents and consciously plan for future eventualities.
Victory almost invariably went to those who cooperated better
Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively.
Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
The Romanian Revolution was hijacked by the self-proclaimed National Salvation Front, which was in fact a smokescreen for the moderate wing of the Communist Party.
when Mubarak stepped down the demonstrators could not fill the vacuum. Egypt had only two institutions sufficiently organised to rule the country: the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hence the revolution was hijacked first by the Brotherhood, and eventually by the army.
Research indicates that Sapiens just can’t have intimate relations (whether hostile or amorous) with more than 150 individuals.
Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic.
Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.
this ability to create intersubjective entities also separates the humanities from the life sciences. Historians seek to understand the development of intersubjective entities like gods and nations, whereas biologists hardly recognise the existence of such things.
In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy.
pharaohs Senusret III and his son Amenemhat III, who ruled Egypt from 1878 BC to 1814 BC, dug a huge canal linking the Nile to the swamps of the Fayum Valley. An intricate system of dams, reservoirs and subsidiary canals diverted some of the Nile waters to Fayum, creating an immense artificial lake holding 50 billion cubic metres of water.
(1) I read it immediately after Sapiens, and a lot of its foundational premises cover the same ground as that book. It is never fun to re-read the same material
(2) A lot of Harari’s speculations have now become much more common sense. We live in the world of enhanced generative AI, and I personally have begun outsourcing a lot of my decisions to algorithms before they are even particularly personalised to me
I am still not convinced that the utility of algorithms will evolve into dataism (the valuing of algorithms / information over human experience). I am more sympathetic to techno-humanism (in terms of likelihood of occurring). In saying that, humans are capable of radical, unthinkable change, and I grew up in a humanist world. Of course I will think that
I enjoyed the expansion on our role in animals suffering, and the interrogation of the justifications of that, which reveal that the very same arguments could be used by a Homo deus to justify extreme exploitation of Homo sapiens (and indeed mirror the arguments that Homo sapiens have used for centuries to justify enslavement of other Homo sapiens)
The intelligence vs mind question remains open for me, especially with interpretations of quantum physics which emphasis the possibility of mind being the precursor / the dominant causal effect in the universe
Quotes:
In France, for example, 6 million people (about 10 per cent of the population) suffer from nutritional insecurity.
In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.
the Chekhov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third.
However, terrorism is a strategy of weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by causing significant material damage.
Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony, and given our past record and our current values, humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity.
Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly existence, and were consequently 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.
Notable examples are the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and the polymath and inventor Ray Kurzweil
Google Ventures is investing 36 per cent of its $2 billion portfolio in life sciences start-ups, including several ambitious life-extending projects.
The physicist Max Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time.
Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will get to live to ninety
it will not be enough to reach 150, let alone 500. For that, medicine will need to re-engineer the most fundamental structures and processes of the human body, and discover how to regenerate organs and tissues.
People want to live for ever, so they compose an ‘immortal’ symphony, they strive for ‘eternal glory’ in some war, or even sacrifice their lives so that their souls will ‘enjoy everlasting bliss in paradise’. A large part of our artistic creativity, our political commitment and our religious piety is fuelled by the fear of death.
When Otto von Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late nineteenth-century Germany, his chief aim was to ensure the loyalty of the citizens rather than to increase their well-being.
The right to the pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint on state power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human rights, so the state should do something about it.
American subjective well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they were in the 1950s.
In a famous experiment scientists connected electrodes to the brains of several rats, enabling the animals to create sensations of excitement simply by pressing a pedal. When the rats were given a choice between tasty food and pressing the pedal, they preferred the pedal
Perhaps the key to happiness is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the right doses of excitement and tranquillity; but most of us tend to jump all the way from stress to boredom and back, remaining as discontented with one as with the other.
If pupils suffer from attention disorders, stress and low grades, perhaps we ought to blame outdated teaching methods, overcrowded classrooms and an unnaturally fast tempo of life.
The principle is clear: biochemical manipulations that strengthen political stability, social order and economic growth are allowed and even encouraged (e.g. those that calm hyperactive kids in school, or drive anxious soldiers forward into battle). Manipulations that threaten stability and growth are banned.
In early 2015 several hundred workers in the Epicenter high-tech hub in Stockholm had microchips implanted into their hands. The chips are about the size of a grain of rice and store personalised security information that enables workers to open doors and operate photocopiers with a wave of their hand.
No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine almost always begins by saving people from falling below the norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to surpass the norm.
It is technically feasible with current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases by creating a ‘three-parent baby’. The baby’s nuclear DNA comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana’s nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.
It is technically feasible with current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases by creating a ‘three-parent baby’. The baby’s nuclear DNA comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana’s nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.48 However, on 3 February 2015 the British Parliament voted in favour of the so-called ‘three-parent embryo’ law, allowing this treatment – and related research – in the UK.
As people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their national consciousness and integrate them into the political system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists could still sleep soundly in their beds.
This is 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 outdated.
Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don’t normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.
The idea of nurturing a lawn at the entrance to private residences and public buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats in the late Middle Ages. In the early modern age this habit struck deep roots, and became the trademark of nobility. Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In exchange, they produce nothing of value.
For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion.
The future described in this chapter is merely the future of the past – i.e. a future based on the ideas and hopes that dominated the world for the last 300 years. The real future – i.e. a future born of the new ideas and hopes of the twenty-first century – might be completely different.
In the Anthropocene, the planet became for the first time a single ecological unit.
Professor Stanley Curtis of the Pennsylvania State University trained two pigs – named Hamlet and Omelette – to control a special joystick with their snouts, and found that the pigs soon rivalled primates in learning and playing simple computer games.
For emotions are not a uniquely human quality – they are common to all mammals (as well as to all birds and probably to some reptiles and even fish).
An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. An algorithm isn’t a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation.
The word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma, meaning breast.
In the first half of the twentieth century, and despite the influence of Freudian theories, the dominant behaviourist school argued that relations between parents and children were shaped by material feedback; that children needed mainly food, shelter and medical care; and that children bonded with their parents simply because the latter provide these material needs. Children who demanded warmth, hugs and kisses were thought to be ‘spoiled’. Childcare experts warned that children who were hugged and kissed by their parents would grow up to be needy, egotistical and insecure adults.21 John Watson, a leading childcare authority in the 1920s, sternly advised parents, ‘Never hug and kiss [your children], never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.’
Only in the 1950s and 1960s did a growing consensus of experts abandon these strict behaviourist theories and acknowledge the central importance of emotional needs.
Biblical Judaism, for instance, catered to peasants and shepherds. Most of its commandments dealt with farming and village life, and its major holidays were harvest festivals.
The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic recounts that when the gods sent a great deluge to destroy the world, almost all humans and animals perished. Only then did the rash gods realise that nobody remained to make any offerings to them. They became crazed with hunger and distress. Luckily, one human family survived, thanks to the foresight of the god Enki, who instructed his devotee Utnapishtim to take shelter in a large wooden ark along with his relatives and a menagerie of animals. When the deluge subsided and this Mesopotamian Noah emerged from his ark, the first thing he did was sacrifice some animals to the gods.
the ancient Indian principle of ahimsa (non-violence) extends to every sentient being. Jain monks are particularly careful in this regard. They always cover their mouths with a white cloth, lest they inhale an insect, and whenever they walk they carry a broom to gently sweep any ant or beetle from their path.
According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention;
Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species.
The literal meaning of the word ‘individual’ is ‘something that cannot be divided’.
Every subjective experience has two fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire.
Scientists don’t know how a collection of electric brain signals creates subjective experiences. Even more crucially, they don’t know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a phenomenon. It is the greatest lacuna in our understanding of life.
what happens in the mind that doesn’t happen in the brain? If nothing happens in the mind except what happens in our massive network of neurons – then why do we need the mind? If something does indeed happen in the mind over and above what happens in the neural network – where the hell does it happen?
Finally, some scientists concede that consciousness is real and may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfils no biological function whatsoever. Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes.
This is all very well for humans, but what about computers? Since silicon-based computers have very different structures to carbon-based human neural networks, the human signatures of consciousness may not be relevant to them.
We seem to be trapped in a vicious circle. Starting with the assumption that we can believe humans when they report that they are conscious, we can identify the signatures of human consciousness, and then use these signatures to ‘prove’ that humans are indeed conscious. But if an artificial intelligence self-reports that it is conscious, should we just believe it?
since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero.
The best test that scholars have so far come up with is called the Turing Test, but it examines only social conventions.
Initial tests on monkeys and mice indicate that at least monkey and mice brains indeed display the signatures of consciousness.
On 7 July 2012 leading experts in neurobiology and the cognitive sciences gathered at the University of Cambridge, and signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which says that ‘Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.’
in May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legally recognise animals as sentient beings, when the New Zealand parliament passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Act. The Act stipulates that it is now obligatory to recognise animals as sentient, and hence attend properly to their welfare in contexts such as animal husbandry.
Various experiments indicate that at least some animals – including birds such as parrots and scrub jays – do remember individual incidents and consciously plan for future eventualities.
Victory almost invariably went to those who cooperated better
Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively.
Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
The Romanian Revolution was hijacked by the self-proclaimed National Salvation Front, which was in fact a smokescreen for the moderate wing of the Communist Party.
when Mubarak stepped down the demonstrators could not fill the vacuum. Egypt had only two institutions sufficiently organised to rule the country: the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hence the revolution was hijacked first by the Brotherhood, and eventually by the army.
Research indicates that Sapiens just can’t have intimate relations (whether hostile or amorous) with more than 150 individuals.
Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic.
Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.
this ability to create intersubjective entities also separates the humanities from the life sciences. Historians seek to understand the development of intersubjective entities like gods and nations, whereas biologists hardly recognise the existence of such things.
In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy.
pharaohs Senusret III and his son Amenemhat III, who ruled Egypt from 1878 BC to 1814 BC, dug a huge canal linking the Nile to the swamps of the Fayum Valley. An intricate system of dams, reservoirs and subsidiary canals diverted some of the Nile waters to Fayum, creating an immense artificial lake holding 50 billion cubic metres of water.
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Dopo un inizio che per chi ha già letto [b:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind|23692271|Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind|Yuval Noah Harari|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595674533l/23692271._SY75_.jpg|18962767] risulterà ripetitivo o comunque già noto (a seconda di quanto tempo sia passato da quella lettura e da quanto se ne ricordi), Harari passa a analizzare cosa secondo lui possa attendere l'uomo nel prossimo futuro.
Si comincia quindi da come siamo arrivati alla nostra versione attuale, partendo dai primi ominidi e arrivando all'homo sapiens, passando poi le varie rivoluzioni agricole, industriali, scientifiche, umanistiche... si comincia da qui per interrogarsi su questioni che non immaginavo sarebbero state toccate, in questo libro. Questioni quali cosa ci renda diversi e, nel caso, superiori agli animali. Questioni quali l'esistenza o meno dell'anima e del libero arbitrio.
Procedendo quasi per sillogismi, passando da un tema a un altro, alzando ogni volta la posta, la parte finale è per quanto apocalittica quasi inevitabile.
Mi è piaciuta moltissimo la parte sul libero arbitrio (e quindi sulle emozioni e le scelte, le meccaniche della mente umana e così via, fino agli algoritmi), mentre come in precedenza trovo un po' forzate ed eccessive certe sue idee sulle entità astratte create dall'uomo nel creare la società: nazioni, denaro, divinità, e ora pure società per azioni.
Chiaramente rispetto al libro precedente qui abbiamo meno certezze e più ipotesi di cosa potrebbe essere, visto che non si guarda al passato ma a un ipotetico futuro che richiama comunque molto la fantascienza... e per quanto possa sembrare plausibile e quasi inevitabile, sarà interessante vedere se farà la fine di tanti altri futuri plausibili e inevitabili (penso per esempio alle visioni pur simili, in un certo senso, di Dick, per non tirare in ballo tante opere di fantasie che vedevano futuri meravigliosi o cupissimi in anni lontani che abbiamo già raggiunto e superato trovandoli però fin troppo simili a quelli precedenti) o se si realizzerà davvero.
Si comincia quindi da come siamo arrivati alla nostra versione attuale, partendo dai primi ominidi e arrivando all'homo sapiens, passando poi le varie rivoluzioni agricole, industriali, scientifiche, umanistiche... si comincia da qui per interrogarsi su questioni che non immaginavo sarebbero state toccate, in questo libro. Questioni quali cosa ci renda diversi e, nel caso, superiori agli animali. Questioni quali l'esistenza o meno dell'anima e del libero arbitrio.
Procedendo quasi per sillogismi, passando da un tema a un altro, alzando ogni volta la posta, la parte finale è per quanto apocalittica quasi inevitabile.
Mi è piaciuta moltissimo la parte sul libero arbitrio (e quindi sulle emozioni e le scelte, le meccaniche della mente umana e così via, fino agli algoritmi), mentre come in precedenza trovo un po' forzate ed eccessive certe sue idee sulle entità astratte create dall'uomo nel creare la società: nazioni, denaro, divinità, e ora pure società per azioni.
Chiaramente rispetto al libro precedente qui abbiamo meno certezze e più ipotesi di cosa potrebbe essere, visto che non si guarda al passato ma a un ipotetico futuro che richiama comunque molto la fantascienza... e per quanto possa sembrare plausibile e quasi inevitabile, sarà interessante vedere se farà la fine di tanti altri futuri plausibili e inevitabili (penso per esempio alle visioni pur simili, in un certo senso, di Dick, per non tirare in ballo tante opere di fantasie che vedevano futuri meravigliosi o cupissimi in anni lontani che abbiamo già raggiunto e superato trovandoli però fin troppo simili a quelli precedenti) o se si realizzerà davvero.
He's a bit of a tease. Book didn't go the direction it had built up for. Arguments are slightly vague, and evidence and theories only scrape the surface and don't provide anything substantial. Good for readers who haven't taken an interest in the consequences of liberalism before, as this does provide some kind of insight or summary of the direction humanity has taken.
Could've finished ending better, his summary of the point he's trying to get across is a mere page, and doesn't go in depth. A lot of repetition, again, only vaguely constructing arguments: they are not as strong as they could be, nor do they dig as deep into the topics or issues that they should have.
Could've finished ending better, his summary of the point he's trying to get across is a mere page, and doesn't go in depth. A lot of repetition, again, only vaguely constructing arguments: they are not as strong as they could be, nor do they dig as deep into the topics or issues that they should have.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Though still an interesting read, I much preferred his previous book Sapiens to Homo Deus. The number of times the author specified we've all but solved the problems of disease, famine and violence (on a large scale anyways) both made me laugh and annoyed me a bit. Anecdotes and stories were still engaging but I don't know I took much away from it. 3.5 Stars.
Where to next for humans? I pushed Sapiens onto the shelf, and picked up Homo Deus. Harari opens with this incredible fact, which becomes less incredible the more you read. As with One River, I have definitely felt this books impact more after finishing it rather than while immersed, and looking up the extracts I noted for this blog post, it sent thoughts spinning off in every direction.
Now that mankind is slowly reining in it’s timeless enemies of famine, plague and war, which are now mostly human inflicted rather than forgone conclusions, what will the species set it’s not inconsiderable intelligence and drive to next?
This is the central theme running through Homo Deus, and like Sapiens, Harari delivers it in his plain rolling prose, including contemporary references and thought/ire provoking arguments. I can’t help but feeling his clinical dismissal of god and religion are a taunt that he is begging to be picked up, although I am in full agreement with him.
The Pursuit of happiness is one area that Sapiens could look into. There are biological factors to why happiness is fleeting, could these be re-engineered, or done away with? One way is to constantly deliver the happiness hit (in one way the capitalist approach, keep buying to get that hit, is the hit becoming less or getting dull? By different! Buy Bigger! Keep Buying!). Harari juxtaposes this with Buddhism, and it’s objective to move us beyond all craving, so that our happiness is not dependent on our urges and desires.
What will determine these topics and areas. Although there are a number of elements from Sapiens that are repeated here, Homo Deus expands on them to look forward. The Humanist approach to life, and it’s desire to eliminate death and live forever, combined with the biological assumption that life is run by algorithms, even for biological creatures, not just invented technology. However this invented technology could become more and more intelligent, creating and running even more intelligent algorithms, and then what need for humans? If you’ve read my review for Sapiens, now would be a good time for Neo to appear. He’s not here though.
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? Would it be okay, for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and even kill them to further it’s own needs and desires? If it should never be allowed to do that, despite it’s superior intelligence and power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs.
My brother has tried to get me to watch endless programs about animals in the food chain, all of which I’ve had zero interest in. Reading Homo Deus however is the closest I have come to considering becoming a vegetarian. But that still seems wrong. Animals do kill other animals to eat, and there is not reason why humans should not also do this, particularly as humans also have the ability (and should use it) to not just eat the animal, but use every part of it for other uses. What humans should not be doing, is caging, modifying, selectively breeding other animals purely for the purpose of eating. The problem with that however, is that there would not be enough ‘wild’ animals to sustain the human population. Nature has it’s own solution to that problem, but humans are a step ahead of nature, and manipulate her to sustain it’s ever expanding population. Even this point is only part of the point Harari was making in the paragraph above, but it’s an example of the thoughts bouncing around your head while you read and long after you close the cover.
Suppose you were given a choice between the following two vacation packages:
Stone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms in the nearby woods.
Modern proletarian package: On day on we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms.
Which package would you choose?
This paragraph, and the final one of the post, for me, are the most important in both of Harari’s books, and demonstrate exactly what a wonderful achievement these books are in realising what you think is actually just a perception. While we have undoubtedly achieved great things, overcome every obstacle to become the most advanced species on the planet, when you take a slightly different look at our progress, it seems less clear that we have actually advanced at all.
Harari points out at the end that although steps have been taken down some of the routes he has explained, they are only possibilities of what Sapiens may achieve in the future. Yet while reading about dataism in the book I listened to the Guardian Science Weekly podcast with Stephen Pinker which touched on certain points. This was the same time that the Cambridge Analytica story broke, and how it used harvested data from Facebook to influence people in the US election. It suddenly seems that the time of using algorithms to not only predict, but influence human behaviour has already arrived, whether the AI algorithms will be beneficial remains to be seen, better get that happiness hit in now.
(blog review here)
Now that mankind is slowly reining in it’s timeless enemies of famine, plague and war, which are now mostly human inflicted rather than forgone conclusions, what will the species set it’s not inconsiderable intelligence and drive to next?
This is the central theme running through Homo Deus, and like Sapiens, Harari delivers it in his plain rolling prose, including contemporary references and thought/ire provoking arguments. I can’t help but feeling his clinical dismissal of god and religion are a taunt that he is begging to be picked up, although I am in full agreement with him.
The Pursuit of happiness is one area that Sapiens could look into. There are biological factors to why happiness is fleeting, could these be re-engineered, or done away with? One way is to constantly deliver the happiness hit (in one way the capitalist approach, keep buying to get that hit, is the hit becoming less or getting dull? By different! Buy Bigger! Keep Buying!). Harari juxtaposes this with Buddhism, and it’s objective to move us beyond all craving, so that our happiness is not dependent on our urges and desires.
What will determine these topics and areas. Although there are a number of elements from Sapiens that are repeated here, Homo Deus expands on them to look forward. The Humanist approach to life, and it’s desire to eliminate death and live forever, combined with the biological assumption that life is run by algorithms, even for biological creatures, not just invented technology. However this invented technology could become more and more intelligent, creating and running even more intelligent algorithms, and then what need for humans? If you’ve read my review for Sapiens, now would be a good time for Neo to appear. He’s not here though.
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? Would it be okay, for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and even kill them to further it’s own needs and desires? If it should never be allowed to do that, despite it’s superior intelligence and power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs.
My brother has tried to get me to watch endless programs about animals in the food chain, all of which I’ve had zero interest in. Reading Homo Deus however is the closest I have come to considering becoming a vegetarian. But that still seems wrong. Animals do kill other animals to eat, and there is not reason why humans should not also do this, particularly as humans also have the ability (and should use it) to not just eat the animal, but use every part of it for other uses. What humans should not be doing, is caging, modifying, selectively breeding other animals purely for the purpose of eating. The problem with that however, is that there would not be enough ‘wild’ animals to sustain the human population. Nature has it’s own solution to that problem, but humans are a step ahead of nature, and manipulate her to sustain it’s ever expanding population. Even this point is only part of the point Harari was making in the paragraph above, but it’s an example of the thoughts bouncing around your head while you read and long after you close the cover.
Suppose you were given a choice between the following two vacation packages:
Stone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms in the nearby woods.
Modern proletarian package: On day on we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms.
Which package would you choose?
This paragraph, and the final one of the post, for me, are the most important in both of Harari’s books, and demonstrate exactly what a wonderful achievement these books are in realising what you think is actually just a perception. While we have undoubtedly achieved great things, overcome every obstacle to become the most advanced species on the planet, when you take a slightly different look at our progress, it seems less clear that we have actually advanced at all.
Harari points out at the end that although steps have been taken down some of the routes he has explained, they are only possibilities of what Sapiens may achieve in the future. Yet while reading about dataism in the book I listened to the Guardian Science Weekly podcast with Stephen Pinker which touched on certain points. This was the same time that the Cambridge Analytica story broke, and how it used harvested data from Facebook to influence people in the US election. It suddenly seems that the time of using algorithms to not only predict, but influence human behaviour has already arrived, whether the AI algorithms will be beneficial remains to be seen, better get that happiness hit in now.
(blog review here)