Tag Archives: Yuval Noah Harari

NEXUS: Religion

Posted on by

Yuval Noah Harari begins his “history of information networks” talking about books as a type of technology, the Bible being the most successful example. And the Catholic Church as one of the most powerful networks.

After his death, Jesus became the subject of one of the most remarkable branding campaigns in history. […] The story of Jesus managed to have a much bigger impact on history than the person of Jesus.

While most Christians were not physically present at the Last Supper, they have heard the story so many times, and they have seen so many images of the event, that they “remember” it more vividly than they remember most of the family dinners in which they actually participated.

Religions always claim to be an objective and eternal truth rather than a fictional story invented by humans.

The Bible as a single holy book didn’t exist in biblical times. King David and the prophet Isaiah never saw a copy of the Bible. […] no two ancient Bibles were identical.

Catholic theology accepted that Jesus told us to love our enemies, but explained that burning heretics was an act of love, because it deterred additional people from adopting heretical views, thereby saving them from the flames of hell.

The first rule of changing church teachings is that you never admit to changing church teachings.

Religions throughout history claimed a nonhuman source for their holy books; soon that might be a reality. Attractive and powerful religions might emerge whose scriptures are composed by AI. Pg 209

The Bible had a profound effect on billions of people, even though it was a mute document. Now try to imagine the effect of a holy book that not only can talk and listen but can get to know your deepest fears and hopes and constantly mold them.

NEXUS: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Posted on by

I have read and enjoyed each of Yuval Noah Harari’s previous books. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind; Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow; and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. As the titles suggest, he writes about history and persuaded this reader that is the only context to fully understand what is happening in the world.

This book scared the shit out of me. I grew up during the early days of the Cold War, watching B-52 bomber packed with nukes flying overhead. As a teenager, I held my breath with the rest of the world during the Cuban Missile Crises. But Harari makes a compelling case for AI (assuming we fuck it up and we will) as a greater existential threat.

Like all of Harari’s books, this one (about 400 pages) got a loft of highlighter. More excerpts after the jump. Or you can watch this 40 minute discussion with Sam Harris.

Never summon empowers you cannot control

Human power is never the outcome of individual initiative. Power always stems from cooperation between large numbers of humans.

While each individual human is typically interested in knowing the truth about themselves in the world, large networks bind members and create order by relying on fictions and fantasies. Continue reading →

So what next?

Posted on by

“The first step is to tone down the prophecies of doom and switch from panic mode to bewilderment. Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down. Bewilderment is more humble and therefore more clear-sighted. Do you feel like running down the street crying “The apocalypse is upon us”? Try telling yourself, “No, it’s not that.Truth is, I just don’t understand what’s going on in the world.”

— 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)

Production-line Education

Posted on by
Reply

“The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education. In the middle of town there is a large concrete building divided into many identical rooms, each room equipped with rows of desks and chairs. At the sound of a bell, you go to one of these rooms together with thirty other kids who were all born the same year as you. Every hour a different grown-up walks in and starts talking. The grown-ups are all paid to do so by the government. One of them tells you about the shape of the earth, another tells you about the human past, and a third tells you about the human body. It is easy to laugh at this model, and almost everybody agrees that no matter its past achievements, it is now bankrupt.”

— 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“So what next?”

Posted on by
Reply

“The first step is to tone down the prophecies of doom and switch from panic mode to bewilderment. Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down. Bewilderment is more humble and therefore more clearsighted. Do you feel like running down the street crying “The apocalypse is upon us”? Try tellng yourself, “No, it’s not that. Truth is, I just don’t understand what’s going on in the world.”

— 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Yuval Noah Harari)

Yuval Noah Harari: COVID-19’s Impact on Humankind

Posted on by
Reply


I’ve read all three of Yuval Noah Harari’s books and found them… interesting, to say the least. I’ve been eager to hear his take on COVID-19 and was a little surprised to get it from an interview by James Corden, who I think of as a late-late-night comedian. But his questions were brief and to the point and he allowed his guest to answer the questions without interrupting.

Hacking the genome

Posted on by
Reply

“He Jiankui, a genome-editing researcher from the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, says that he implanted into a woman an embryo that had been edited to disable the genetic pathway that allows a cell to be infected with HIV.” (Nature)

Claim hasn’t been verified but this is exactly what Yuval Noah Harari talks about in Homo Deus (and 21Lessons). The rest of the world might freak out over the ethics of this kind of research but when on country has this tech, they won’t be able to stop it. Do you think some billionaire will care about ethics if she can protect her offspring from some dreaded disease. And how long before someone hacks the genome to make a human smarter/stronger/faster/whatever?

 

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Posted on by
3

I’m not up to reviewing Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book (21 Lessons for the 21st Century) but I liked this one by The Guardian. I really liked his two previous books, Sapiens and Homo Deus, and you can read some of my favorite excerpts in previous posts. I’m doing the same below but first I’ll say this book made me questions some of my long held beliefs. Nationalism, Religion and Immigration, just to name a few. This is a good example of what I mean when I suggest you ditch Facebook and TV news and read a book.

“The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education. In the middle of town there is a large concrete building divided into many identical rooms, each room equipped with rows of desks and chairs. At the sound of a bell, you go to one of these rooms together with thirty other kids who were all born the same year as you. Every hour a different grown-up walks in and starts talking. The grown-ups are all paid to do so by the government. One of them tells you about the shape of the earth, another tells you about the human past, and a third tells you about the human body.”

“If somebody describes the world of the mid-twenty-first century to you and it sounds like science fiction, it is probably false. But then again, if somebody describes the world of the mid-twenty-first century to you and it doesn’t sound like science fiction, it is certainly false.”

“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.” 

“As a species, humans prefer power to truth.”

“Trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords, and North Korean tyrants.”

“A priest is not somebody who knows how to perform the rain dance and end the drought. A priest is somebody who knows how to justify why the rain dance failed.”

“In 2016, despite wars in Syria, Ukraine, and several other hot spots, fewer people died from human violence than from obesity, car accidents, or suicide.”

““Once AI makes better decisions than we do about careers and perhaps even relationships, our concept of humanity and of life will have to change.“”

““Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form or humans will come to live in “digital dictatorships.””

“In the twenty-first century data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset, and politics will be a struggle to control the flow of data. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species.”

“So in the twenty-first century religions don’t bring rain, they don’t cure illnesses, they don’t build bombs—but they do get to determine who are “us” and who are “them,” whom we should cure and whom we should bomb.”

“We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.”

“If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.”

Sam Harris “conversation” with Yuval Noah Harari

The “useless class” and a new quest for purpose

Posted on by
Reply

I was so impressed by Yuval Harari’s latest book it took me three blog posts to event touch on a few of his big ideas. In an article in The Guardian, he expands on a couple of (related) ideas: Basic Income and religion-as-virtual reality. He wrote at length about both of these in Homo Deus but I think the Guardian piece is new (not excerpts from his book).

I agree with Professor Harari that some kind of Basic Income is inevitable. It’ll happen because the wealthy will see it as the best (only?) way to protect all their shit. And what will we all do when we don’t have to have a job? One possibility is virtual reality.

For thousands of years, billions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. In the past, we have called these virtual reality games “religions.” […] What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination. No natural law requires the repetition of magical formulas, and no natural law forbids homosexuality or eating pork. Muslims and Christians go through life trying to gain points in their favorite virtual reality game. If you pray every day, you get points. If you forget to pray, you lose points. If by the end of your life you gain enough points, then after you die you go to the next level of the game (aka heaven).

I really can’t see a flaw in that comparison. Unless you count, “Yeah, but Heaven and Hell are real and Grand Theft Auto Six is not.”

When you look at the objective reality of Jerusalem, all you see are stones and buildings. There is no holiness anywhere. But when you look through the medium of smartbooks (such as the Bible and the Qur’an), you see holy places and angels everywhere.

Whoa. The two big holy books as VR devices. And how about a game we all play?

Consumerism too is a virtual reality game. You gain points by acquiring new cars, buying expensive brands and taking vacations abroad, and if you have more points than everybody else, you tell yourself you won the game. You might object that people really enjoy their cars and vacations. That’s certainly true. But the religious really enjoy praying and performing ceremonies, and my nephew really enjoys hunting Pokémon. In the end, the real action always takes place inside the human brain.

What does it all mean?

The end of work will not necessarily mean the end of meaning, because meaning is generated by imagining rather than by working. Work is essential for meaning only according to some ideologies and lifestyles.

As one who has not worked for the the last four-and-a-half years, I’m here to tell you it is not necessary to give your life meaning.