Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Advances in human knowledge and technology are rapidly changing our society. What we value and what we believe are all in transition. That’s nothing new, of course. Our concept of the universe and of our place in it has changed throughout time—from trembling in awe at the power of thunder gods to challenging the heavens in rocket ships. In the near future, however, we may not only change how we see ourselves; we may change what we are.

This, I think, is the point Yuval Noah Harari, a lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is trying to make in this book (which, by the way, is beautifully produced, with thick, glossy pages and color pictures). By speeding through history, he attempts to show that people have often shifted their beliefs, priorities, and goals, which he attributes to changes in ‘religion,’ a term that I think he uses far too generically. (He did the same in his previous book, Sapiens). For Harari, ‘religion’ refers to not only theistic religions, but to things that I would call ideology, philosophy, paradigm, or theory. Nazism, fascism, communism, capitalism, humanism…pretty much any overarching idea that provides a template for human understanding is a religion. I think his historical analysis suffers by conflating them. There are important differences, not least of which is how susceptible they are to revision in the minds of their subscribers. Some of these can change far more easily and quickly than can others. It is not until page 182 that he provides his definition: “Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values.” Personally, I think he should have used a different word.

He also applies seemingly broad definitions for words such as ‘worship’, ‘spiritual’, ‘dogma’, and ‘divinity’. Whether he uses religious terminology to annoy traditional theists or simply for the shock value, I’m not sure, but it may be a bit of both. What his ultimate (and laudable) goal seems to be is to get readers to question their assumptions.

He eventually describes a new, rising ‘religion’ that he calls Dataism. This one manifests itself as a ‘worship’ of data. We create it, share it, and depend upon it. Under this ‘religion’, the value of data supersedes previous values of privacy and free will. Well, perhaps.

As an analysis of history or as a futurist prediction of things to come, I found this book just so-so. But then I tend to read a fair amount in both subjects, so there wasn’t much new here for me. Harari does close with three questions, though, that I think are worth pondering:

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

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My Review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1252063767

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Millennium

Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years by Ian Mortimer

The last thousand years of human history is a story of advances and declines, challenges, failures, and successes. There is no consistent plot, no preordained or inevitable conclusion, but there is always change. In this book, Medieval scholar Ian Mortimer summarizes those changes, devoting a chapter to each of the last ten centuries, highlighting the major changes, and identifying the one person who was, in his opinion, the greatest agent of change. I can’t say I necessarily agree with all of his choices, but he’s the historian. I’m just a guy who writes science fiction stories. His opinion is undoubtedly far better informed than my own, however I find his conclusion about where humanity is headed in the future a bit pessimistic. My objections involve likely advances in technology, and a disagreement that standard of living is measurable in terms of income and consumption. Like him, I expect humanity to muddle through, but I don’t agree that human societies will become “more hierarchical and less liberal.” (Pg. 329) I’ll refrain from writing a lengthy exposition because it’s not really relevant for a book review and because I have other things to do today.

Colonies In Space

There is a bittersweet quality to this book. It’s nonfiction, so it has no engaging characters, no suspenseful plot, but it does tell a story. It’s more of a snapshot, really, of a hopeful era in which humanity seemed on the verge of venturing out into space, building colonies, and expanding its reach throughout the galaxy. It seemed inevitable, a near certainty, almost right around the temporal corner. The first step would happen soon. Large colonies would be built in space. Initially, these would produce and maintain solar power stations, which would beam their energy back to Earth via microwave transmission. This would make the space colonies economically self-sustaining, possibly even highly profitable.

Published in 1978 (copyright 1977), the author’s predictions about what would happen over the next forty years are often incorrect. He did not foresee, for example, the stunning advances that have been achieved in solar voltaic cells, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, or the possibility of cultured meat (his colonies would raise chickens and goats). He was extrapolating from the proven technology of the time, and all of these areas were still quite speculative.

He was also extrapolating from current culture and politics, prior to Reaganomics or the collapse of the Soviet Union. I found the following rather poignant:

Barring a catastrophic epidemic of human stupidity, the decades ahead are likely to see the foundations solidly laid for a world without large-scale poverty or hopelessness, a world of opportunity, rising living standards and widely shared middle-class levels of affluence. Such a world will endure into the indefinite future. (pages 250-251 of the 1st edition Warner mass market paperback)

Obviously, the world he envisioned didn’t come about. One can argue whether this is good or bad, but the political motivation and the governmental financial capacity to fund large-scale space development no longer exists. We didn’t build space colonies. Perhaps, some day, we will. If humanity is to survive into the distant future, I believe we must.

Don’t Think of an Elephant

The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff

The difference between conservatives and progressives? It’s all about morality, specifically family morality or how people subjectively define a ‘good’ family. That’s what George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist from University of California at Berkeley, claims in this book. Conservatives are operating within a framework constructed around a ‘strict father morality’ that stresses authority and obedience. Progressives, on the other hand, operate within a ‘nurturant parent’ framework that is founded on cooperation and understanding. These two different moral frameworks lead to fundamental disagreements between people about what is good, what is right, and what should be done in a wide variety of situations.

He may have a point. Let me share a personal anecdote. A few years ago, a nephew and his wife and kids were visiting. They are lovely people, but both parents are politically conservative (which I am not). Their kids were in the backyard and happened to start walking on a narrow, tile covered strip that runs between my concrete patio and some landscaping. It’s a drainage system, a buried plastic pipe surrounded by rocks and covered by thin tiles. It is designed to shed water away from the patio and works quite well, but it’s not substantial enough to use for a walkway. I began to say something like, “You shouldn’t walk on that because—” I had intended to explain what it was and why the kids should use the concrete path instead, when their dad shouted at them, ordering them off. They complied instantly. “That’s how you do it,” he told me. I said nothing. They were his kids, after all, but I felt that what he had done was fundamentally wrong. His kids obeyed but they didn’t understand. I didn’t want blind obedience. I felt it important, essential really, for the kids to know why they shouldn’t walk there. In my mind, blind obedience to authority is wrong. To my nephew, a child’s blind obedience to his father is good.

But, back to the book…. Lakoff claims that these two different understandings of family values, ‘strict father’ versus ‘nurturant parents,’ helps explain the deep political divide between conservatives and progressives. It’s not quite as simple as my short review makes it sound. If it was, all conservatives would agree on just about everything, as would all progressives. They obviously don’t. To explain this, Lakoff identifies several variants within each of these two broad groups, but each, at their core, shares the applicable view of family.

He devotes much of this short book to ‘framing,’ which is about how people frame their beliefs and arguments about specific topics. Since this book is primarily about political issues, he uses those as examples. His advice is that it is important when discussing your views to present them within the context of your own framework. A conservative, for example, may see the great divide between rich and poor as perfectly legitimate because the rich deserve to be rich. Progressives might see the same issue as an unjust denial of equal rights and equal opportunity, and should speak to it in those terms.

The End of Progress

The End of Progress: How Modern Economics Has Failed Us by Graeme Maxton

This isn’t a post-apocalyptic thriller. It’s not a horror story. It’s far scarier. Published in 2011, the author warns of events to come…the rise of religious extremism and right-wing nationalism, the increasing disparity between the rich and everyone else, the exploitation of people and the depletion of natural resources, unmanageable debt and economic collapse…. The cause, he claims (on page 209) is that “Modern economics has twisted the ideas of classical economics. Economics was a subject that originally stemmed from moral philosophy. Its theories were based on concepts of equality, fairness and value, not undeserved profit and selfishness.”

The author suggests that we in Western society, the beneficiaries of the Enlightenment, have forgotten, or are simply ignoring, the aspect of social responsibility inherent in Adam Smith’s theories about the ‘free market’. The enlightened self-interest necessary to guide Smith’s invisible hand is now operating in a very unenlightened manner. We’re still all on board with the self-interest part, though. We’ve come to equate ‘progress’ with ‘profit’, as if money is the only proper way to measure the value of things. We’ve allowed speculators, financiers, and profit-seeking corporations to shape public policy with little or no regard for anything beyond their next quarterly earnings, and we’ve crippled governments from being able to provide a counterbalance to their selfish interests. After all, functional, responsible governments might insist that banks and businesses consider the effects of what they are doing on people other than their shareholders, and that might cut into their short-term profits. We can’t have that!

The author’s observations and predictions are disturbingly accurate, in my opinion, although he tends toward alarmism. He briefly mentions nations such as Germany, which has not allowed the quest for profit to run as badly out of control as the US and UK. But rather than seeing this as a hopeful sign, he suggests that the problems we’ve created are so great that all nations are endangered, regardless of their national policies. He also discounts the efforts of entrepreneurs. He acknowledges that they exist, but he questions their motives. He may be right in this, but when I see people like Elon Musk using his wealth to advance space exploration (Space X); develop new, more efficient transportation (hyperloop and Tesla electric cars); and develop improved solar technology (Solar City roof shingles, etc.), I think that all might not be lost. Yes, governments have weakened. They don’t regulate or tax to the extent they perhaps should. They invest too little in education, scientific research, national infrastructure, and other things of long-term benefit. And there is no doubt that the financial sector is skimming billions of dollars from the economy and providing nothing of true value in return. And many corporations, so concerned with keeping their stock prices and dividends high, are cutting back on R&D and labor. But I have to believe, or at least I want to believe, that there will always be someone, a nation or an individual, who has the right combination of wisdom, assets, and drive, to keep the dream of the Enlightenment alive. In order for humanity to continue to progress, we need that.

The final section of the book is devoted primarily to suggestions of what needs to be done to get us out of the jam we’ve gotten ourselves into. We need to stop consuming so much. We need to be more skeptical. We need to be more optimistic. We need to tax more. We need to develop a new economic model. We need to ask ourselves what life is truly about…. Maybe, but we won’t; at least not before things fall apart. After about two hundred pages convincingly relating how shortsighted and selfish interests have taken over the economy, he tells us it’s possible to turn it around. Who’s going to do that? The same shortsighted selfish people who got us here? They’re the ones in charge now! I wish we could suddenly get a lot wiser, but I’m doubtful. When anticipating collective human behavior, I’ve found it’s normally best not to assume too much. Individually, we can be rational, responsible, and insightful, but as a whole, we tend to behave like an impulsive six-year-old. We’ve dug ourselves a deep hole. For the last thirty-plus years we drank the Kool-Aid that said we could buy on credit, consume, and waste as if the bill would never come due, as if today was all that mattered because tomorrow would take care of itself. Well, we’re fast approaching tomorrow. It looks like it’s going to be pretty dark and cloudy.

 

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

I read this book directly after reading Mortimer’s previous Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England. That one covered the 14^th century. This one “represent(s) England as it existed between Elizabeth’s accession on November 17, 1558 and her death on March 24, 1603.” Two centuries separate the times they describe, and although there have been changes, the culture and the lives of most people seem remarkably (almost disturbingly) similar. It remains a period of superstition, oppression, injustice, poverty, violence, and disease. That’s in comparison to our point in space-time, of course. Two hundred years from now, people reading about our times may regard them much the same way. We may not draw and quarter criminals the way Elizabethans did, but many nations still execute them. Bearbaiting and cockfighting are no longer popular forms of entertainment, but our movies often portray fictionalized acts of violence that are no less brutal. Maybe we haven’t progressed as far as we might wish to believe.

But I digress. This book attempts to provide the reader with a feeling of what it might be like to visit Elizabethan England, and to the extent possible, I think it largely succeeds. Unlike the previous book, this one has no color plates or pictures or any kind. These would have been helpful, especially to illustrate the clothing of the well off, which sounds incredibly impractical, uncomfortable, and outrageously expensive. The primary function seems to be as displays of social status, but I suppose people still do that in our time with designer handbags and whatnot.

I’m tempted to go on about how histories like this demonstrate the foibles our species, and that we and our ancestors are much the same, subject to the same types of irrational beliefs and behaviors. But I won’t. I’m only writing a short book review, after all, and I have other things to do today. Still, I can recommend this book, not just for the history it provides about a specific time and place but also as a means for encouraging a higher perspective about the human species and its cultural evolution.

The Dream of Enlightenment

What has the Enlightenment ever done for us? This is an important question and the title of the last chapter of this book. My biased answer would include human rights, democratic government, personal freedom, and separation of church and state. I think it is no great exaggeration to say that the Enlightenment marks the beginning of a sea change in thought that rejected tyranny, acknowledged the rights of common people, and helped create the intellectual environment that made our modern world possible.

In this relatively short book (244 pages not counting notes), Gottlieb summarizes key points of the Enlightenment’s greatest thinkers: Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Leibniz, and David Hume, with due mention to others who supported or opposed them. It shows how these philosophical pioneers began to question convention, challenge authority, and propose alternatives. Some of their ideas may seem strange, backward, or even outrageous to us now, but they were constrained by the knowledge and beliefs of their time, as we all are. Unlike today, or at least not to the same extent, they also had to be cautious of the authority they were calling into question. The fact that we today can more freely express our thoughts without undue fear of reprisal is also, I think, a lasting gift of the Enlightenment.

Gottleib’s writing is clean, precise, and easily comprehensible. The philosophers he has chosen, and the points he selects from each of them, are appropriate to subject. I recommend this to anyone interested in cultural evolution and the progress of human thought.