Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 1

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, is about how Homo Sapiens would become gods.

Chap 1: The New Human Agenda

(There is no preface. This chapter is the introduction.)

Humans have mostly solved the problems of famine, plague, and war. That's 3/4 of doom horses defeated. Next up, humans would try to solve death, sadness, and humanity.

Death is most obviously solved by keeping the biological body alive, but can also be solved by becoming cyborgs. Sadness can be solved by reengineering the human psychology. Humanity will be enhanced as a result of attempts to solve death and unhappiness. Homo Deus is the result. Or, many kinds of Homo Deuses, since there are many different ways humans can become transhuman.

Happiness is hard. Recall the theories of happiness in humans and see why historically, humanity's happiness has not improved much at all.

Yet studies have shown that American subjective well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they were in the 1950s... The Japanese in the 1990s were as satisfied – or dissatisfied – as they were in the 1950s.

Something interesting is that the biochemical theory of human feelings has finally become acceptable, as seen by the acceptance of Ritalin, Prozac, etc. If this keeps on, humans would try to hack their own biochemistry to achieve lasting happiness. An alternative is Buddhist theory of happiness, but it's not popular right now.

Homo Deus would be a historical singularity, beyond which we cannot predict. Homo Sapiens would be as out-of-place as a group of Homo Erectus would be in the modern world.

Many feel a lot of future shock about Homo Deus:

... our world of meaning might collapse within decades. You cannot count on death to save you from becoming completely irrelevant. Even if gods don’t walk our streets by 2100, the attempt to upgrade Homo sapiens is likely to change the world beyond recognition in this century.

When people realise how fast we are rushing towards the great unknown, and that they cannot count even on death to shield them from it, their reaction is to hope that somebody will hit the brakes and slow us down.

By slippery slope, it's very easy to get disease research redirected to immortality research, and negative eugenics (selecting embryo without major genetic diseases) to positive eugenics (improvements like intelligence), etc.

Use of history

Harari is a historian, but he notes that study of history cannot be used to predict the future, and the more accurate the study is, the less useful it is to predict the future. Marx's analysis of capitalism's downfall becomes understood by capitalists, and they reacted to it, preventing capitalism's downfall (for now). Similar to how a good investment strategy becomes bad after it becomes known by others.

Conclusion: accurate analysis of human affairs does not stay accurate, and their use is to make people realize what's possible, break out of historical constraints. Thus why feminists wrote feminist histories, queers wrote queer histories, etc.

Not sure about that. Some analysis of human affairs makes people behave in a way as to make it more accurate, instead of less. Theories of personality, for example, makes people play according to the theories, thus making them more accurate.

To illustrate this use of history, Harari gave a little history of the American lawn, to empower some of its readers to consider alternatives of using the lawn. Similarly, Harari hopes that by discussing varieties of humanism and transhumanism, the readers might consider alternatives that are neither humanism not transhumanism.

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. 

... Predicting that humankind will try to gain immortality, bliss and divinity is much like predicting that people building a house will want a lawn in their front yard. It sounds very likely. But once you say it out loud, you can begin to think about alternatives.

Part 1: Homo sapiens Conquers the World  

Investigate what Homo sapiens really is, by investigating its history with other animals.

Chap 2: Anthropocene

Humans and their livestocks now dominate the land animals in terms of mass.

The biomass distribution on Earth (2018)

In this chapter, Harari reviews the story of animism, theism, and humanism. Refer back to Sapiens, part 2.

Animism: the religion of hunter-gatherers

... archaic hunter-gatherers were probably animists: they believed that there was no essential gap separating humans from other animals. The world – i.e. the local valley and the surrounding mountain chains – belonged to all its inhabitants, and everyone followed a common set of rules. These rules involved ceaseless negotiation between all concerned beings. People talked with animals, trees and stones, as well as with fairies, demons and ghosts. Out of this web of communications emerged the values and norms that were binding on humans, elephants, oak trees and wraiths alike.

Vestiges of animalism

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived as foragers. The expulsion from Eden bears a striking resemblance to the Agricultural Revolution... an angry God condemns him ‘to eat bread by the sweat of your brow’. It might be no coincidence, then, that biblical animals spoke with humans only in the pre-agricultural era of Eden. What lessons does the Bible draw from the episode? That you shouldn’t listen to snakes, and it is generally best to avoid talking with animals and plants.

Myths of snake-origin is quite common around the world:

Most Australian Aborigines believed that the Rainbow Serpent created the world. The Aranda and Dieri people maintained that their particular tribes originated from primordial lizards or snakes, which were transformed into humans.

I'd add that Fuxi and Nuwa are also an example.

Note that they are drawn with tails entwined, like mating snakes.

Domestication sucks

Emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals.

I'd call it "heuristic" or "mode of operation", since emotions, rather than doing the calculations, sets the "atmosphere" of calculation. Fear does not make me run, but it makes me spend more time concentrated on evaluating threatening signals. Later, Harari corrected to "sensations, emotions, and desires".

I'd say that they are "value functions", used by some high-level decision algorithm to decide what to do. Consciousness either is part of the high-level decision program (as usually thought), or emerges as a side effect (as in epiphenomenalism).

But no matter what we call it, algorithm or heuristics, it's scientifically demonstrated that mammals have feelings similar to humans. Humans thus create great suffering to their livestocks. How did the agricultural people manage this daily cruelty emotionally? Theism.

Theism: the culture of agriculture

Theism is a religion that's made for agriculturists, centered around an "agricultural deal".

This was the essence of the agricultural deal. The gods safeguarded and multiplied farm production, and in exchange humans had to share the produce with the gods. This deal served both parties, at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem. 

Theist religions, such as biblical Judaism, justified the agricultural economy through new cosmological myths. Animist religions had previously depicted the universe as a grand Chinese opera with a limitless cast of colourful actors. Elephants and oak trees, crocodiles and rivers, mountains and frogs, ghosts and fairies, angels and demons – each had a role in the cosmic opera. Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a bleak Ibsen drama with just two main characters: man and God. The angels and demons somehow survived the transition, becoming the messengers and servants of the great gods. Yet the rest of the animist cast – all the animals, plants and other natural phenomena – were transformed into silent decor.  

Harari details some fun facts about ancient Judaism and notes that it was more about farming than any spiritual stuff. Harari is an Israeli professor of medieval history, and I think the following gruesome depiction is probably not coming from atheistic spite:

Biblical Judaism, for instance, catered to peasants and shepherds. Most of its commandments dealt with farming and village life, and its major holidays were harvest festivals. People today imagine the ancient temple in Jerusalem as a kind of big synagogue where priests clad in snow-white robes welcomed devout pilgrims, melodious choirs sang psalms and incense perfumed the air. In reality, it looked much more like a cross between a slaughterhouse and a barbecue joint than a modern synagogue. The pilgrims did not come empty-handed. They brought with them a never-ending stream of sheep, goats, chickens and other animals, which were sacrificed at the god’s altar and then cooked and eaten. The psalm-singing choirs could hardly be heard over the bellowing and bleating of calves and kids. Priests in bloodstained outfits cut the victims’ throats, collected the gushing blood in jars and spilled it over the altar. The perfume of incense mixed with the odours of congealed blood and roasted meat, while swarms of black flies buzzed just about everywhere (see, for example, Numbers 28, Deuteronomy 12, and 1 Samuel 2). A modern Jewish family that celebrates a holiday by having a barbecue on their front lawn is much closer to the spirit of biblical times than an orthodox family that spends the time studying scriptures in a synagogue.

Why did theism relegate the large cast of animals to background scenery? Because it is just what daily life of an agriculturalist was like:

Hunter-gatherers had not seen themselves as superior beings because they were seldom aware of their impact on the ecosystem. A typical band numbered in the dozens, it was surrounded by thousands of wild animals, and its survival depended on understanding and respecting the desires of these animals... Farmers, in contrast, lived in a world controlled and shaped by human dreams and thoughts... A farm boy learned early on to ride a horse, harness a bull, whip a stubborn donkey and lead the sheep to pasture. It was easy and tempting to believe that such everyday activities reflected either the natural order of things or the will of heaven. 

It is no coincidence that the Nayaka of southern India treat elephants, snakes and forest trees as beings equal to humans, but have a very different view of domesticated plants and animals. In the Nayaka language a living being possessing a unique personality is called mansan. When probed by the anthropologist Danny Naveh, they explained that all elephants are mansan. ‘We live in the forest, they live in the forest. We are all mansan . . . So are bears, deer and tigers. All forest animals.’ What about cows? ‘Cows are different. You have to lead them everywhere.’ And chickens? ‘They are nothing. They are not mansan.’ And forest trees? ‘Yes – they live for such a long time.’ And tea bushes? ‘Oh, these I cultivate so that I can sell the tea leaves and buy what I need from the store. No, they aren’t mansan.’

 

Humanism: the culture of pretty powerful humans

Humans treat animals badly still, even without a God, since they still think of themselves as superior. Harari skipped all the details here (such as his classification of liberal, social, and evolutionary humanism). See Sapiens for details.

The Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods. While theists worship theos (Greek for ‘god’), humanists worship humans. The founding idea of humanist religions such as liberalism, communism and Nazism is that Homo sapiens has some unique and sacred essence that is the source of all meaning and authority in the universe. Everything that happens in the cosmos is judged to be good or bad according to its impact on Homo sapiens.

Chap 3: The Human Spark

The human spark?

Spoiler alert: it's dim and hard to find.

The belief that humans have eternal souls whereas animals are just evanescent bodies is a central pillar of our legal, political and economic system. It explains why, for example, it is perfectly okay for humans to kill animals for food, or even just for the fun of it.

Souls are gone in science. Mind is unexplained. Some think it's fake, some think it has unexplained uses.

What happens in the mind that doesn’t happen in the brain? If nothing happens in the mind except what happens in our massive network of neurons – then why do we need the mind? If something does indeed happen in the mind over and above what happens in the neural network – where the hell does it happen?

Maybe brains aren't computers. Freud used to think brains are like steam engines. Maybe we'll make even more universal technology that will be a better analogy for the brain.

Though, take note that we could have made a completely steam-engine-styled computer, so Freud's analogy might not be so naive after all.

Some other troubles with minds: the Simulation Argument, the Problem of Other Minds... there's still much we don't know.

Animals have feelings too

But we do know what human brains' electric signals look like when they make some conscious experience, and we can figure out that many other animals are probably also conscious.

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states... Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

In psychiatric drug testing on mice, it's hoped that the drugs that work on mice also works on humans. This assumes that mice have feelings like humans do, and drugs that make mice behave as if they are happier really do make them happier, and thus would make humans feel happier too.

When customers go to a psychiatrist and say, ‘Doctor, give me something that will lift me out of this depression,’ they don’t want a mechanical stimulant that will cause them to flail about while still feeling blue. They want to feel cheerful.

More examples of how animals can behave purposefully, like Santino, and Clever Hans who learned on their own to read tiny human gestures. Humans really aren't that different from animals.

Human cooperation, a hyperstition

Humans dominate not by self-consiousness or emotions, but by using fictions to program big groups of humans to cooperate.

Humans and many other primates are naturally egalitarian, as shown in many experiments and studies. But many big societies are extremely unequal. How do humans tolerate the inequality? By imagined order, or social laws that feel like natural laws, maintained by norm-preserving rewards and punishments.

Such threats and promises often succeed in creating stable human hierarchies and mass-cooperation networks, as long as people believe that they reflect the inevitable laws of nature or the divine commands of God, rather than just human whims.

Meaning is just shared fiction, or as Harari call it, "intersubjective". It's a web of stories made by a group of interacting people.

Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories... People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop.

The study of history can help you see the emptiness of meaning.

Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. 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.

Then a nice story about how the crusaders lived in a completely different web of meaning, followed by speculation how humanism, democracy, and all those Western ideals might be as meaningless in the future as Medieval ideals of crusading, Holy War, and Catholicism is now.

And the years pass. As the historian watches, the web of meaning unravels and another is spun in its stead. John’s parents die, followed by all his siblings and friends. Instead of minstrels singing about the crusades, the new fashion is stage plays about tragic love affairs. The family castle burns to the ground and, when it is rebuilt, no trace is found of Grandpa Henry’s sword. The church windows shatter in a winter storm and the replacement glass no longer depicts Godfrey of Bouillon and the sinners in hell, but rather the great triumph of the king of England over the king of France. The local priest has stopped calling the Pope ‘our holy father’ – he is now referred to as ‘that devil in Rome’. In the nearby university scholars pore over ancient Greek manuscripts, dissect dead bodies and whisper quietly behind closed doors that perhaps there is no such thing as the soul.

Harari argues that these Hyperstitions are potent forces. Virtual, but real.

During the twenty-first century the border between history and biology is likely to blur not because we will discover biological explanations for historical events, but rather because ideological fictions will rewrite DNA strands; political and economic interests will redesign the climate; and the geography of mountains and rivers will give way to cyberspace. As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubjective reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection.