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Description
Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we're going. War is obsolete. You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict. Famine is disappearing. You are at more risk of obesity than starvation. Death is just a technic Read more
Publisher : RANDOM HOUSE UK
Publication date : March 23, 2017
Language : English
Print length : 528 pages
ISBN-10 : 1784703931
ISBN-13 : 36
Item Weight : 1.01 pounds
Dimensions : 5.08 x 1.46 x 7.8 inches
Part of series : A Brief History Series
Customer Reviews: 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 37,385 ratings
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Top Amazon Reviews
Most of this is not about “tomorrow” but about yesterday and today. Most of the material that pertains most directly to the future begins with Chapter 8 which is two-thirds of the way into the book. But no matter. This is another brilliant book by the very learned and articulate Professor Harari. It should be emphasized that Harari is by profession a historian. It is remarkable that he can also be not only a futurist but a pre-historian as well as evidenced by his previous book, “Sapiens.” This quote from page 15 may serve as a point of departure: “Previously the main sources of wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and oil fields. Today the main source of wealth is knowledge.” (p. 15) In the latter part of the book Harari defines this knowledge more precisely as algorithms. We and all the plants in the ground and all fish in the sea are biological algorithms. There is no “self,” no free will, no individuals (he says we are “dividuals”) no God in the sky, and by the way, humans as presently constituted are toast. The interesting thing about all this from my point of view is that I agree almost completely. I came to pretty much the same conclusions in my book, “The World Is Not as We Think It Is” several years ago. What I want to do in this review is present a number of quotes from the book and make brief comments on them, or just let them speak for themselves. In this manner I think the reader can see how beautifully Harari writes and how deep and original a thinker he is. “Islamic fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by themselves. Instead they enraged the USA by the 9/11 attacks, and the USA destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them. Now they flourish in the wreckage.” (p. 19) Notice “fundamentalists” instead of “terrorists.” This is correct because ISIS, et al., have been financed by Muslim fundamentalists in places like Saudi Arabia. “You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins.” (p. 67) Harari speaks of a “web of meaning” and posits, “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.” (p. 147) One of the themes begun in “Sapiens” and continued here is the idea that say 20,000 years ago humans were not only better off than they were in say 1850, but smarter than they are today. (See e.g., page 176 and also page 326 where Harari writes that it would be “immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer” because of the great many skills that would have to be learned.) In “The World Is Not as We Think It Is” I express it like this: wild animals are smarter than domesticated animals; humans have domesticated themselves. For Harari Nazism, Communism, “liberalism” humanism, etc. are religions. I put “liberalism” in quotes because Harari uses the term in a historical sense not as the opposite of conservatism in the contemporary parlance. “For religions, spirituality is a dangerous threat.” (p. 186) I would add that religions are primarily social and political organizations. “If I invest $100 million searching for oil in Alaska and I find it, then I now have more oil, but my grandchildren will have less of it. In contrast, if I invest $100 million researching solar energy, and I find a new and more efficient way of harnessing it, then both I and my grandchildren will have more energy.” (p. 213) “The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance.” (p. 213) On global warming: “Even if bad comes to worse and science cannot hold off the deluge, engineers could still build a hi-tech Noah’s Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of others to drown….” (p. 217) “More than a century after Nietzsche pronounced Him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead—it’s just taking a while to get rid of the body.” (p. 270) “…desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons.” (p. 289) Harari notes that a cyber-attack might shut down the US power grid, cause industrial accidents, etc., but also “wipe out financial records so that trillions of dollars simply vanish without a trace and nobody knows who owns what.” (p. 312) Now THAT ought to scare the bejesus out of certain members of the one percent! On the nature of unconscious cyber beings, Harari asserts that for armies and corporations “intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional.” (p. 314) This seems obvious but I would like to point out that what “consciousness” is is unclear and poorly defined. While acknowledging that we’re not there yet, Harari thinks it’s possible that future fMRI machines could function as “almost infallible truth machines.” Add this to all the knowledge that Facebook and Google have on each of us and you might get a brainstorm: totalitarianism for humans as presently constituted is inevitable. One of conundrums of the not too distance future is what are we going to do with all the people who do not have jobs, the unemployable, what Harari believes may be called the “useless class”? Answer found elsewhere: a guaranteed minimum income (GMI). Yes, with cheap robotic labor and AI, welfare is an important meme of the future. Harari speculates on pages 331 and 332 that artificial intelligence might “exterminate human kind.” Why? For fear humans will pull the plug. Harari mentions “the motivation of a system smarter than” humans. My problem with this is that machines, unless it is programmed in, have no motivations. However it could be argued that they must be programmed in such a way as to maintain themselves. In other words they do have a motivation. Recently I discussed this with a friend and we came to the conclusion that yes the machines will protect themselves and keep on keeping on, but they would not reproduce themselves because new machines would be taking resources from themselves. Harari believes that we have “narrating selves” that spew out stories about why we do what we do, narratives that direct our behavior. He believes that with the mighty algorithms to come—think Google, Microsoft and Facebook being a thousand times more invasive and controlling so that they know more about us than we know about ourselves. Understanding this we will have to realize that we are “integral parts of a huge global network” and not individuals. (See e.g., page 343) Harari even sees Google voting for us (since it will know our desires and needs better than we do). (p. 344) After the election of Trump in which some poor people voted to help billionaires get richer and themselves poorer, I think perhaps democracy as presently practiced may go the way of the dodo. An interesting idea taking this further is to imagine as Harari does that Google, Facebook, et al. in say the personification of Microsoft’s Cortana, become first oracles, then agents for us and finally sovereigns. God is dead. Long live God. Along the way we may find that the books you read “will read you while you reading them.” (p. 349) In other words what is coming are “techno-religions” which Harari sees as being of two types: “techno-humanism and data religion.” He writes that “the most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is…Silicon Valley.” (p. 356) The last chapter in the book, Chapter 11 is entitled “The Data Religion” in which the Dataists create the “Internet-of-All-Things.” Harari concludes, “Once this mission is accomplished, Homo sapiens will vanish.” (p. 386) --Dennis Littrell, author of “Hard Science and the Unknowable”
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2017 by Dennis Littrell
Prof. Harari wrote both “Sapiens – A brief history of humankind” and the present volume “Homo Deus – A brief history of tomorrow.” In fact, the first book contains not only history but also some projections about the future. The theme of the second book is on tomorrow, but it also contains some past history. The idea that one can tell the history of tomorrow, is, shall we say, uniquely “Hararian”. The author begins by stating that in modern times, humankind has greatly reduced the miseries caused by massive famines and plagues. We even manage to significantly break the “Law of the jungle”, which causes wars among nations. The question arises as to what the new agendas for humankind are. In the author’s opinion, humanity’s next targets are likely to be: immortality, happiness, and divinity. These conclusions are arrived at by examining relevant historical events and present-day developments, which also form the basis of some predictions about the future. The author points out that The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN after World War II, categorically states that the right to life is humanity’s most fundamental value. Note that it does not put a limit to the length of life. Since death clearly violates this right, death is a crime against humanity, and we ought to wage total war against it. This leads the author to the first new target, i.e. treating death as a scientific problem and attempting to put an end to it. The author points out death is essential to traditional religions, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. 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. Just try to imagine Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in a world without death – which is also a world without heaven, hell or reincarnation. Thus, the attempt to put an end of death essentially refutes the central tenet of these religions. While humankind is far from ending death, it is irrefutable that modern science and medicine have greatly lengthened the average lifespan of humans. This makes the goal of achieving happiness essential. Here the book contains many pages describing how biologists treat various human emotions and feelings, be it anger, pain or happiness, in terms of the interactions of neurons in various parts of the brain. For those who are not well versed in biology, these pages are not easy to follow and are somewhat boring. Similarly, the author devoted a great portion of the latter part of the book to describing and speculating the role algorithm and data play in understanding ourselves and in modern life. Indeed, his prediction is that the future of humankind is controlled by algorithms and dataism, a preposition some readers may find confusing. The author does not describe the roadmap to the second and third agenda – achieving happiness and striving towards divinity. Thus, the book begins with a bang but ends with a whimper. If you do get through the pages which you find difficult and even boring, you will be amply rewarded. You will learn how a clever horse does arithmetic; a YouTube video showing how a monkey reacts to feeling unfairly treated; a YouTube video showing the last speech by the Romanian dictator Ceausecu, Chekhov Law, and two Chinese historical figures, Sima Qian and Hong Xiuquan, who every Chinese student learned in school but who were seldom mentioned in history books in the West. You will also learn that, in 2013, Google launched a sub-company called Calico whose stated mission is “to solve death”. To top it all, you will find several brutally frank and brave statements throughout the text. Some examples are shown below: - “In Luther’s day, if you sinned, and feared eternal damnation in the afterlife, all you needed to do was open your purse and buy an indulgence. You want an entry visa to heaven? Pay ten gold coins. You want your dead Grandpa and Grandma to join you there? No problem, but it will cost you thirty coins.” - “Indeed, even today when US presidents take their oath of office, they put their hand on a bible. Similarly in many countries around the world, including the USA and the UK, witnesses in courts put their hand on a bible when swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s ironic that they swear to tell the truth on a book brimming with so many fictions, myths and errors.” - “Most capitalists would probably dislike the label of religion, but as religions go capitalism can at least hold its head high. Unlike other religions that promise us pie in the sky capitalism promises miracles here on earth… and sometimes even delivers. ……This mutual benefit approach has probably helped global harmony far more than centuries of Christian preaching about loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek.” - “Never in history did a government know so much about what’s going on in the world…yet few empires have botched things up as clumsily as the contemporary United States. It is like a poker player who knows what cards his opponents hold, yet somehow still manages to lose round after round.” Finally, I note that President Obama, Bill Gates, and the Christian Science Monitor all had lavish praises in their reviews of “Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind”. I was unable to find their reviews of “Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow”, despite an extensive search.
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 23, 2022 by Kai Lee