Yuval Noah Harari - Homo Deus | Share the Wealth Series

The "Share the Wealth" series by Madis Birk is published on every Tuesday. This summary of the series is on Yuval Noah Harari's book "Homo Deus".

?The backstory of reading "Homo Deus"

There are not many writers who would speak at the World Economic Forum between the speeches of Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. Here is a summary of a book by a writer who did just that – Yuval Noah Harari.

To me, this has been a special book, hands down. I believe it's a book that will not leave anyone untouched. The ideas in it are provocative. Whilst at the same time supported by data and staggeringly surprising examples from real life. Every claim in the book is backed up with an astonishing number of sources and facts. To be frank, I can't really even imagine the amount of work put into making this book. 

It was very profound to read this book while travelling for 3 weeks in the South Island of New Zealand. There really could have not been a better time to read this book. The ideas in this book are loaded. Having some time to let them sink in was essential to develop my own opinion on the matters raised in "Homo Deus". Let's get into it, shall we?

Intro - "The New Human Agenda" 

• "For the first time history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little, more people die from old age than from infectious diseases and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals COMBINED." 
• The trend is clear: "In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030. In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million."
• Some context to how fortunate we are thanks to modern medicine: "About 2.8 million French – 15% of the population starved between 1692 and 1694, while the Sun King, Louis XIV, was dallying with his mistresses in Versailles. The following year, 1695, famine struck Estonia, killing a fifth of the population."
• The everyday reality of previous generations: "People consequently lived their lives in ancient Athens or medieval Florence knowing that they might fall ill and die next week, or that an epidemic might suddenly erupt and destroy their entire family in one swoop."
• Two things about the past: 1.) It's not fun. You won't want to go back there. 2.) It's not coming back. You're not going back. 

What are the dangers to humans? 

• Humans are no longer significantly endangered by epidemics: "During the second half of the twentieth century this 'Law of the Jungle' has finally been broken, if not rescinded."
• "By now we are accustomed to living in a world full of undropped bombs and unlaunched missiles, and have become experts in breaking both the 'Law of the Jungle' and the Chekhov Law."
• What dangers inherent in human nature itself?: "Biotechnology enables us to defeat bacteria and viruses, but is simultaneously turns humans themselves into an unprecedented threat. The same tools that enable doctors to quickly identify and cure new illnesses may also enable armies and terrorists to engineer even more terrible diseases and doomsday pathogens."
• The next time you freak out about terrorist news, remember this: "In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world 620.000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120.000 people and crime killed another 500.000). In contrast, 800.000 committed suicide and 1.5 million died of diabetes. SUGAR is now more dangerous than gunpowder."
• "Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries. For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda." 
• A fantastic metaphor by Yuval to sum up the fear about the terrorist in our society: "Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the china shop."

Looking to the future

• For the sake of context: "Galileo Galilei died at 77, Isaac Newton at 84 and Michelangelo lived to the ripe age of 88, without any help from antibiotics, vaccinations or organ transplants."
• The modern perception of joy: "It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful. How do you bring joy to a bored, overpaid and overweight engineer? …"
• The relationship between perception & expectations: "Our expectations don't become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as the conditions improve, expectations balloon."
• Where are we heading: "Both scientific research and economic activity are geared towards decreasing unpleasant sensations. Each year producing better painkillers, new ice-cream flavours, more comfortable mattresses and more addictive games for our smartphones, so that we will not suffer a single boring moment while waiting for the bus."

The Gods of Planet Earth 

• "The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of the three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings."
• "Most of these three paths will be developed through medicine. Since there is no clear line that separates healing humans from upgrading humans."
• Yuval on the application of knowledge: "Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But the 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."
• Back to the importance of perception: "Each and 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."

Set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies.

1. Rule #1: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Rule #2: Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Rule #3: Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

• A fantastic example of taking reality for granted: "Why do we lawn the grass?... 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, besides status." 
• Putting things into perspective with grass: "Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after maize and wheat, and the lawn industry (plants, manure, mowers, sprinklers, gardeners) account for billions of dollars every year."
• The key take-home message on why you should learn history: "Not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternatives destinies. Of course, this is not total freedom – we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none." 
• Food for thought: "You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat less intelligent animal cousins." 
• Yuval on the potential fall of humanism: "The Egyptians also though the Pharoahs will never fall, but … went the other way. Humanism has dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. The Pharaohs ruled Egypt for 3,000 years and the popes dominated Europe for a millennium."

Part 1 - Homo Sapiens Conquers the World

• Where did the expression of 'letting off the steam' come from? - "In all fields of activity, we often complain about the pressure building up inside us, and we fear that unless we 'let off some steam' we might explode. In the 21 century, it sounds childish to compare the human psyche to a steam engine. In the industrial revolution times though, it didn’t. At current, we're more and more using computers as a model for understanding the mind." 
• Both humans and animals are conscious: "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." 
• "Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of co-operating flexibly in large numbers." 

The Human Spark

• "Sapiens don't behave according to cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions." 

There are multiple levels of reality:

1. People find it difficult to understand the idea of 'imagined orders' because they assume that there are only two types of realities: objective realities and subjective realities. 
2. However, there is a third level of reality, the intersubjective level. Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on beliefs and feelings on individual humans. 

Party 2 - Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World

The Storytellers

• Looking at the human spark from the marketing angle: 'Brands are not a modern invention. Just like Elvis Presley, pharaoh too was a brand rather than a living organism." 
• Yuval on imaginary entities. The intersubjective reality in action: "It may sound strange to credit imaginary entities with building or controlling things. But nowadays we habitually say that the United State built the first nuclear bomb, that China built the Three Gorges Dam or that Google is building an autonomous car. Why not say, then, that pharaoh built a reservoir and Sobek dug a canal?"
• We have perhaps taken the belief in intersubjective reality too religiously: "When official reports collided with objective reality, it was often the reality that had to give way. Anyone who has ever dealt with the tax authorities, the education system or any other complex bureaucracy knows that the truth hardly matters. What's written on your form is far more important (and that is very sad...)."
• "History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we also chose to silence others."
• How do you know if an entity is real? - "Very simple – just ask yourself, 'Can it suffer?'. When people burn down the temple of Zeus, Zeus doesn't suffer. When the euro loses its value, the euro doesn't suffer. When a bank goes bankrupt, the bank doesn't suffer." 
• Our perception changes everything: "Stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fictions, we lose touch with reality."
• Yuval on the future: "Thanks to computers and bioengineering, the difference between fiction and reality will blur, as people reshape reality to match their fictions."

The Odd Couple 

• "Every society tells its members that they must obey some superhuman moral law and that breaking this law will result in catastrophe. Religions differ of course in the details of their stories, their concrete commandments and the rewards and punishments they promise."
• Why we need religion or ideology: "No matter what you personally think about the Three Gorges Dam, it is clear that building it was an ethical rather than a purely scientific issue. No physics experiment, no economic model and no mathematical equation can determine whether generating thousands of megawatts and making billions of yuan is more valuable than saving an ancient pagoda or Chinese river dolphin. Consequently, China cannot function on the basis of scientific theories alone. It requires some religion or ideology too."
• How the Bible is a masterpiece of storytelling: "To cut a long story short, most peer-reviewed scientific studies agree that the Bible is a collection of numerous different texts composed by different people in different times and that these texts were not assembled into a single holy book until long after biblical times."
• The biggest take-home message of this chapter - science needs guidance: "Although science has much more to contribute to ethical debates than we commonly think, there is a line it cannot cross, at least yet. Without the guiding hand of some religion, it is impossible to maintain large-scale social orders."
• The witch hunt: "Religion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in power. It aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, fight wars and produce food."

The Modern Covenant 

• The big irony about modern society: "The modern culture is the most powerful in history and it is ceaselessly researching, inventing, discovering and growing. At the same time, it is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture."

The premise of scientific achievements has been credit:

1. In the modern age thanks to peoples growing trust in the future and the resulting miracle of credit. Credit is the economic manifestation of trust. Today, if I want to develop a new drug but I don’t have enough money, I can get a loan from the bank or turn to private investors and venture capital funds. 
2. For thousands of years, people had little faith in future growth not because they were stupid, but because it contradicts our gut feelings, our evolutionary heritage and the way the world works. Most natural systems exist in equilibrium and most survival struggles are zero-sum game in which one can prosper only at the expense of another. 

• A fascinating example of credit from the animal world: "A vampire that fails to find prey will come home and ask for some stolen blood from a more fortunate friend. Vampires remember very well to whom they loaned blood, so later date if the friend comes home empty-handed, he will approach his debtor, who will return the favour. However, unlike human bankers, vampires never charge interest. If vampire A loaned vampire B ten centilitres of blood, B will repay the same amount."
• On modern western values: "The credo of 'more stuff' accordingly urges individuals, firms and governments to discount anything that might hamper economic growth, such as preserving social equality, ensuring ecological harmony or honouring your parents."

How respect towards parents has disappeared

1. Take, for example, a software engineer making $250 per/hour working for some hi-tech start-up. One day elderly father has a stroke. He now needs help with shopping, cooking and even showering. She could move her father to her own house, leave home later in the morning, come bac earlier in the evening and take care of her father personally. Both her income and the start-ups productivity would suffer, but her father would enjoy the care of a respectful and loving daughter. Alternatively, the engineer could hire a Mexican career who, for $25 per/hour would live with the father and provide for all his needs. That would mean business as usual (BSU) and even the career and the Mexican economy would benefit. What should the engineer do? 
2. Is economic growth more important than family bonds? By daring to make such ethical judgments, free-market capitalism has crossed the border from the land of science to that of religion. 

The Humanist Revolution

• "In ethics, the humanist motto is 'if it feels good – do it.' In politics, humanism instructs us that 'the voter knows best.' In aesthetics, humanism says that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'." 
• Yuval's thoughts on liberalism: "Under liberalism, went a famous quip, everyone is free to starve. Even worse, by encouraging people to view themselves as isolated individuals, liberalism separates them from their other class member and prevents them from uniting against the system that oppresses them. Liberalism thereby perpetuates inequality, condemning the masses to poverty and the elite to alienation."
• "Religion and technology always dance in delicate a tango. They push one another, depend on one another and cannot stray too far away from one another. Technology depends on religion, because every invention has many potential applications and the engineers need some prophet to make the crucial choice and point towards the required destination."
• A very self-empowering thought/fact: "History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather by backwards-looking masses. Ten thousand years ago most people were hunter-gatherers and only a few pioneers in the Middle East were farmers. Yet the future belonged to the farmers. In 1850 more than 90% of humans were peasants and in the small villages along the Ganges, the Nile and the Yangtze nobody knew anything about steam engines, railroads or telegraph lines. Yet, the fate of these peasants had already been sealed in Manchester and Birmingham by the handful of engineers, politicians and financiers who spearheaded the Industrial Revolution." 
• Why tradition religions offer no real alternatives to liberalism: "Their scriptures don't have anything to say about genetic engineering or artificial intelligence and most priest's rabbits and muftis don't understand the latest breakthroughs in biology and computer science. For if you want to understand these breakthroughs, you don't have much choice – you need to spend time reading scientific articles and conducting lab experiments instead of memorizing and debating ancient texts."

Part 3: Homo Sapiens Loses Control

The Time Bomb in the Laboratory 

• There are two selves, the experiencing self and narrating self: "The experiencing self is our moment-to-moment consciousness. The narrative self is forever busy spinning yarns about the past and making plans for the future."
• A very key thing for every marketer (and for anyone else for that matter) to understand about themselves: "Every time the narrating self-evaluates our experiences, it discounts their duration and adopts the 'peak-end rule', it remembers only the peak moment and the end moment, and evaluates the whole experience according to their average." 
• "The narrating self doesn't aggregate experiences – it averages them."
• Another golden nugget for any marketer: "'Fantasy gives meaning to the suffering. Priest discovered this principle thousands of years ago. It underlines numerous religious ceremonies and commandments. If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as god and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable. The more painful the sacrifice, the more convinced people are of the existence of the imaginary recipient."
• "The narrating self would much prefer to go on suffering in the future, just so it won't have to admit that our past suffering was devoid of all meaning." 
• "In the end all the narratives, they are just stories."

The Great Decoupling

• The modern war will take place within seconds: "Within seconds, a sufficiently sophisticated cyber strike might shut down the US power grid, wreck US flight control centers, cause numerous industrial accidents in nuclear plants and chemical installations, disrupt the police, army and intelligence communication networks and wipe out financial records so that trillions of dollars simply vanish without trace and nobody knows who owns what."
• "As far as we know, computers in 2018 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their value, because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness."
• Which is more valuable intelligence or consciousness? - "It is sobering to realize that, at least for armies and corporation the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional. Armies and corporations cannot function without intelligent agents, but they don't need consciousness and subjective"
• A mind-blowing fact that I didn't know: "Now consider IBM's famous Watson – an artificial intelligence system that won the 'Jeopardy!' Television game show in 2011, beating human former champions." 
• "Humans have two basic types of abelites: physical abilities and cognitive abilities. As long as machines competed with us merely on physical abilities, you could always find cognitive tasks that humans do better. So, machines took over purely manual jobs, while humans focused on jobs requiring at least some cognitive skills. Yet, what will happen once algorithms outperform us in remembering, analyzing and recognize patterns?"
• In 2004 we started to talk about automated vehicles being an option sometime in far-far future. A mere ten years later, Google and Tesla not only imagine this, but are actually making it happen. 
• My favourite example of them all: "In May 2014 Deep Knowledge Ventures – Hong Kong venture-capital firm specializing in regenerative medicine – broke new ground by appointing an algorithm called VITAL to its board. VITAL makes investment recommendations by analyzing huge amounts of data of the financial situation, clinical trials and intellectual property of prospective companies."
• The future of algorithms: "As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might not only manage a business, but actually come to own them. At present, human law already recognizes intersubjective entities like corporations and nations as 'legal persons'. Though Toyota or Argentina has neither a body nor a mind, they are subject to international laws, they can own land and money, and they can sue and be sued in court. We might soon grant a similar status to algorithms. An algorithm could then own a venture-capital fund without having to obey the wishes of any human master."
• Comparison with history: "All of this may sound impossible, but before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already legally owned by non-human inter-subjective entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed 5,000 years ago much Sumer was owner by imaginary gods such as Enki and Inanna. If gods can possess the land and employ people, why not algorithms?"
• "In the 21st century, we might witness the creations of a new massive class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. They will consequently become an inferior caste, dominated by both computer algorithms and the new superhumans." 
• Facebook already knows more about you that you can ever imagine: "It needed 70 likes to outperform friends, 150 likes to outperform family members 300 likes to outperforms spouses. In other words, if you have clicked 300 likes on FB, the FB algorithm can predict your opinions and desires better than your husband or wife."
• Current business model (of Facebook, Google, etc): people are giving away data in return for access to services. Biometric data collection will follow the same methodology. 
• Just how much technology has changed all of our perceptions: "Before the emergence of the global village, the planet was a galaxy of isolated human cultures, which have fostered mental states that are now extinct. Different socio-economic realties and daily routines nurtured different states of consciousness." 
• A big 'battle' of the future - privacy VS health: "One of the biggest future data exchanges will happen in the sector of healthcare. People will most likely sacrifice their privacy for the sake of better healthcare, this will grave the way for biometric data. Assumption: health will win and people will give up their privacy."

The Ocean of Consciousness

• "Many cultures believed that what people see and do in their dreams is no less important than what they see and do while awake. Hence people actively developed their ability to dream, to remember dreams and even control their actions in the dream world, which is known as 'lucid dreaming'."
• "As any farmers knows, it's usually the brightest goat in the herd that stirs up the greatest trouble, which is why the Agricultural Revolution involved downgrading animal mental abilities. The second cognitive revolution dreamed up by techno-humanists might do the same to us." 

The Data Religion 

• "Precisely because technology is now moving so fast and parliaments and dictators alike are overwhelmed by data they cannot process quickly enough, present-day politicians are thinking on a far smaller scale than their predecessors a century ago. In the early 21st century politicians are consequently bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration."
• Yuval's opinion on conspiracy theories: "A few billionaires smoking cigars and drinking Scotch in some backroom cannot possibly understand everything happening on the globe, let alone control it. Ruthless billionaires and small interest groups flourish in today's chaotic world not because they read the map better than anyone else, but because they have very narrow aims." 
• "At present, of course, the algorithms are mostly written by humans hackers. Yet the really important algorithms – such as the Google search algorithm – are developed by huge teams. Each member understands just one part of the puzzle, and nobody really understands the algorithm as a whole. The seed algorithm may initially be developed by humans, but as it grows, it follows it's own path, going where no humans have gone before – and where no human can follow."

Author's questions to ask oneself:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms and is life really just a data processing?
2. What's more valuable – intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves? 

Thank you for reading.

Madis