2022-09-26
Author: Yuval Noah Harari Fiction?: Non-Fiction Format: Paperback Genres: Sci-Fi, Technology
Chapter 1: The New Human Agenda
China is now free from famine
90% of American natives died as a result of diseases brought by the Europeans
Previously, pandemics were impossible due to the small human populations, only epidemics existed.
“Between action and reaction, there is space. In that space lies freedom.” don’t let empty terrorist threats provoke you.
Humanity’s ambition is non-satiable.
The journey is what makes us happy, not the goal. Flirting and foreplay are more exciting than having an orgasm.
Eternal bliss would stop reproduction altogether.
Immoderate pursuit of pleasure is likely to make you miserable rather than happy.
Biologically speaking, happiness is pleasure.
Humans are organic algorithms.
Buy an EEG device someday.
Our wildest dreams are a product of organic chemistry.
Upgrading humans to gods is a matter scale, not omnipotence.
The Old Testament does not promise haven, instead it promises crop and wine.
Rig the evolutionary lottery: fertilize multiple eggs and choose the most genetically favorable one.
3 parent babies are now possible thanks to in vitro tech. The 3rd parent contibutes Mitochondrial DNA.
You cannot resist tech to healing. Upgrading’s proposition is irresistible.
The more we know, the less we can predict. Everybody exploits the knowledge, outdating it. Eg. Karl Marx predicting fall of capitalism ensured its survival.
Knowledge that cannot be acted upon is useless. Knowledge that does chage behavoir is quickly rendered obsolete.
The pasted is studied not to perpetuate it, but rather to be liberated from it.
“The relationship between humans and animals may beth ebest model we have for future relations between humans and superhumans.” What about white masters and colored slaves?
Chapter 2: The Anthropocene
Eve means female snake.
Snakes are not our enemies but our ancestors. - the Eve Myth
The Bible was a by-product of the agricultural revolutions, where new animal-human relations emerged.
Today more than 90% of all large mammals are domesticated.
Domesticated species pay for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering
Creatured in the modern day have inherited traits from their encestors that are redundant now. Humans - love for sugar, cattle, poultry - emotional needs.
Emotions are biochemical algorithms, which are common to all mammals.
Habits are algorithms on autopilot
Sensations and emotions are desires
Sexual attraction is an algorithm that ensures successful offspring.
All mammals share the mother-infant bond. It is vital for offspring’s survival.
Mamma is Latin for breast.
Cater to your children’s emotional needs.
The meat and dairy industries break the most fundamental mammal bond, the mother-infant bond.
Farmers justified exploitation of domesticated animals by inventing new theist religions.
The agricultural deal: God will supply rain, crop and wine in return for sacrifices. This silenced all non human entities, crushing Animism.
Chapter 3: The Human Spark
Evolution is incapable of producing everlasting entities such as souls.
The mind is a flow of subjective expriences, such as love anger and pain.
The better we understand neurobiology, the more difficult it become to explain concious feelings.
Experience of pain is a tangible reality
Probablistically, we are living in a simulation.
BY humanising animals we undermine their unique abilities, and intelligence.
Species-wide intelligence = flexibility/compromise + large-scale cooperation
Bonobos use sex to cement social bonds. We could learn something from them.
Humans are irrational economic agents.
Inter-subjective realities enable large scale cooperation generating supreme species
Turbans and beards are a way of saying, ‘you can trust me, I believe the same story as you.’
Religion is inter-subjective, a self-perpetuating loop.
A lack of imagination disables animals to stand up to the human bourgeoisie
What differ North Korea and south Korea are their different fictions.
Part 2: Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World
Chapter 4: The Storytellers
Triple-layered reality: objective, subjective, inter-subjective
Gods were inter-subjective entities that gained power, wealth and properties, just like corporations.
Writing and money enable mass taxation.
The essence of bureaucracy is each person being a small cog in a huge gearbox - specialization
Inaccurate descriptions produce rebellions, so holy scriptures have gotten more precise over time. Until, the religion gets too powerful and begin to bend reality to its descriptions.
School shifted from true understanding to marks.
True Entity “Can it suffer?” If not, not true entity.
Chapter 5: The Odd Couple
“God helps those who help themselves” Meaning: God does not exist, the placebo only inspires people - it helps.
You don’t derive your values from your religion.
Religion is created by humans, not gods. “Religion is not measures by deities, but its social function. An all -encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values.”
“Science always needs religious assistance in order to create viable human institutions.” Myth is too powerful.
Ethical Judgement - Humans ought to obey God’s commands
Factual Judgement - About 3,000 years ago God commanded humans to avoid homosexual activites
Practical guidelines - amalgamation - People should avoid homosexual activities.
According to our best knowledge, the scriptures reflect only the biases of priests and rabbis.
Sam Harris - No ethical dispute - only factual disagreements between people of different religions.
Mordern history: humanism vs science
Chapter 6: The Modern Covenant
“humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power”
“We constrained by nothing except our own ignorance”
Scientific progress has a direct relationship with the economy
“Credit is the economic manifestation of trust.”
“As long as humankind multiplies, economic growth is needed merely to stay where we are.”
Wealth is not a zero sum game, status is.
One commandment of capitalism: “thou shalt invest thy profits in increasing growth”
Knowledge is a growing resource, the more you use, the more you have.
“Th egreatest scientific discovery was the discovery of our own ignorance.”
The Hedonic Treadmill: Yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities.
Humanism: The Modern Religion
Chapter 7: The Humanist revolution
“It is impossible to sustain order without meaning.”
“Humanism expects human to give meaning to the cosmos.”
The Bible: Knowledge =Scriptures x Logic; Scientific Revolution: Knowledge = Empirical Data x Mathematics; Humanism: Knowledge = Experiences x Sensitivity
“Every scientific yang contains within it a humanist yin”
Socialism —> Group identity. This is dangerous.
Socialist Politics: Party knows best. Socialist Economics: Trade union knows best.
Credit for defeating Nazism goes to Communism
God is dead - it is just taking a while to get rid of the body.
Part 3: Homo Sapiens Loses Control
Chapter 8: The Time Bomb In The Laboratory
Men don’t choose their desires, only feel them
Peak-End Rule. Small Peak. Easy End.
Most decisions are a result of a tug of war between different and often conflicting inner entities.
The Sunken Cost fallacy is a flaw of the experiencing self.
“Humans are master of cognitive dissonance.”
Chapter 9: The Great Decoupling
Organisms are algorithms - machines can gauge your emotions with the same accuracy as recognizing your tumors.
Art is organic algorithm recognizing mathematical patterns.
The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.
Humans are ‘dividuals’
Algorithms won’t enslave us, rather they will be so good, it will be madness not to follow their advice.
21st century medicine is aimed at upgrading the healthy.
Chapter 10: The Ocean Of Consciousness
Chapter 11: The Data Religion
“Pointing out that exactly the same mathematical laws apply to both biochemical and electronic algorithms. Dataism thereby collapse the barrier between animals and machines, and expects electronic algorithms to eventually decipher and outperform biochemical algorithms.”
Free-market capitalism and controlled communism aren’t competing ideologies, theyre competing data-processing systems.
Decentralized data processing system is the future. Distributed data processing is capitalism’s silver bullet.
Government manages the country, no longer leads it.
History: More Data processors, more variety of processors, more bandwidth between data processors, Free flowing data between processors.
“What is death, if not a state where information does not flow?”
Dataism: Human experiences are not intrinsically valuable. The neuromodulators are?
Glossary
envisaged:
imperceptibly:
superfluous:
eponymous:
veracity:
hallowed:
primatologist:
stultified:
obfuscating:
shroud:
pilfering:
Avarice:
assuaged:
schism:
obscurantist:
cul-de-sac:
bereft:
unassailable:
Books Mentioned
All Quiet on the Western Front
Platoon
Black Hawk Down
Mein Kampf
Meditations by Marcus Arelius
On the Origin Of Species
The History Of Sexuality
A Cyborg Manifesto
The Future Of Emploment
The Singularity is Near