Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 2

Part 2: Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World

In this part, we study the history of Sapiens's meaning making, and in particular, the history of humanism. Still nothing new from Sapiens.

Chap 4: The Storytellers

The ancient gods were quite similar to modern companies. 

In ancient Uruk, Lagash and Shurupak the gods functioned as legal entities that could own fields and slaves, give and receive loans, pay salaries and build dams and canals. Since the gods never died, and since they had no children to fight over their inheritance, they gathered more and more property and power. An increasing number of Sumerians found themselves employed by the gods, taking loans from the gods, tilling the gods’ lands and owing taxes and tithes to the gods.

Then, writing and money were invented, allowing efficient bureaucracy, helping these god-companies to grow into Sumerian empires, headed by priest kings. The priest kings were to gods like the CEOs to the companies. The company is powerful, but without a body or mouth, and needs to be represented by CEOs and such.


In Ancient Egypt, they just merged the CEO and the company: the pharaoh is both a god and a human. The god owns Egypt, so the king owns it.

Also, Elvis Presley is totally a god-king.

If the Sumerian gods remind us of present-day company brands, so the living-god pharaoh can be compared to modern personal brands such as Elvis Presley, Madonna or Justin Bieber. Just like pharaoh, Elvis was a story, a myth, a brand – and the brand was far more important than the biological body... Consequently when the biological Elvis died, for the brand it was business as usual. Even today fans still buy the King’s posters and albums, radio stations go on paying royalties, and more than half a million pilgrims flock each year to Graceland, the King’s necropolis in Memphis, Tennessee.

Papers are serious business

Writing thus facilitated the appearance of powerful fictional entities that organised millions of people and reshaped the reality of rivers, swamps and crocodiles. Simultaneously, writing also made it easier for humans to believe in the existence of such fictional entities, because it habituated people to experiencing reality through the mediation of abstract symbols.

That is, writing
1. Helped people make really big and complicated stories, like the European Union, or Christianity.
2. Made the fictions seem physical and real, because now they are infused in papers and inks.

As examples of the absurd power of writing, Harari recounts how Sousa Mendes saved Jews by signing visas, and Chinese bureaucrats starved people by faking numbers in the Great Leap Forward.

Saving lives has never been so boring!

The education system is overtaken by bureaucracy. In the past, people didn't get grades, they either pass or didn't pass. But then the industrial age brought mass education, and the bureaucrats in charge of education managed the education like products with standardized tests, and suddenly scores became all that schools are for.

This is a cautionary tale of how fictions make reality change for it, instead of the other way around. A more realistic fiction doesn't always win, because
1. It might not be the best for cooperation. A nicer lie might make people more cooperative.
2. A less realistic fiction might have already "monopolized the market" and could make its own reality.

... fictions also determine the goals of our cooperation... Consequently the system may seem to be working well, but only if we adopt the system’s own criteria... A school principal would say: ‘Our system works. During the last five years, exam results have risen by 7.3%.’ Yet is that the best way to judge a school?

Teaching to the test is a clear case of the memeplex creating its own mind-environment for itself, much like how a group of humans could terraform for themselves.

Harari recommended a quick test for what is a "real entity" instead of a fictional entity: Can it suffer? Companies and countries and gods don't suffer even if they "die", so they are fictional. Humans do, so they are real.

But what Harari is really arguing about is a way to judge what is "morally valuable", and not at all about what's real and what's fictional:

Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; how come we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in their service?

Suppose an algorithm commands us to war. The algorithm can't suffer, and yet I really doubt it's fictional, since the algorithm is not just a mathematical entity, but programmed into a physical machine that wields real power (perhaps with literal robotic guns to coerce humans). Harari would probably still denounce this, since an algorithm can't suffer, and thus its needs are second-rate compared to human needs.

It's not that surprising considering Harari is quite negative utilitarian.

Chap 5: The Odd Couple

Science and Religion are not always enemies.

Science is defined only as finding facts with various methods called "scientific".

Religion is defined as:

some system of moral laws that wasn’t invented by humans, but which humans must nevertheless obey. As far as we know, all human societies believe in this. Every society tells its members that they must obey some superhuman moral law, and that breaking this law will result in catastrophe.

Science relies on religion to set priorities and applications. Whatever is more valued according to some religion gets chosen.

Religions make factual statements

Religion cannot be separated from science. It relies on some science to get their worldly power. Power makes religious fictions appear real and permanent. Even not considering power, religions always make some factual statement about the world, so that they can give value judgments about the world. For example, consider a popular argument in Christianity against abortion:

1. Ethical judgement: ‘human life is sacred’.
2. Factual statement: ‘human life begins at the moment of conception’.
3. Practical guideline: ‘you should never allow abortion, even a single day after conception’.

Science don't deal with part 1, but can deal with part 2 and thus affect part 3. Current science on human development shows that there's no hard boundary anywhere where a creature begins life, thus disapproving part 2.

Another example: a Christian argument against homosexuality.

1. Ethical judgement: Humans ought to obey God’s commands.
2. Factual statement: The bible is written by God 
3. Factual statement: The bible said humans should avoid homosexual activities .
4. Practical guideline: People should avoid homosexual activities.

Science can deal with part 2:

... 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...

There's also an amusing aside about the original Judaism:

biblical Judaism was not a scripture-based religion at all. Rather, it was a typical Iron Age cult... it had elaborate temple rituals, most of which involved sacrificing animals to a jealous sky god so that he would bless his people with seasonal rains and military victories.

Conclusion from science:

The Leviticus injunctions against homosexuality reflect nothing grander than the biases of a few priests and scholars in ancient Jerusalem.

Aside: syntax and semantics

This is similar to the idea of "semantics" and "syntax" in mathematical logic/formal language/computer science. A formula, or a moral judgment, can be well-formed, but for it to "mean" anything for this world, it has to be translated into worldly things. For the formula "1+1 = 2" to mean anything, "1", "2", "+" "=" must all be translated into a world, to mean anything (in jargon, this is an "interpretation" of a "first-order logic formula" into a "model").

For example, the world could be a world of indistinguishable little blocks, and "1" would translate to "■" (the blocks are indistinguishable, so it doesn't matter which one we take), "2" would translate to "■■". "+" would translate to "put the blocks together". "=" would translate to "same number of blocks". In this way, "1+1= 2" is interpreted in this world of blocks.

Just like first-order logic is used to mathtalk about factual things, modal logics are used to mathtalk about some nonfactual things like "should" "can" "might have been" etc. Religions, syntactically, are full of modal logic formulas, and for them to have irl uses, they must also have a package of semantics to interpret all these formulas irl.

When science deals with factual parts of religion, they are checking if the semantics is sound, not the syntax (that's for theologians and philosophers). More often than not, the semantics are found to be wrong irl.

Sprituality

Sprituality is defined as a journey to find answers to big questions without using previously figured out answers. So it's not religion or programmed academic studies, which are about following a previously defined path. Preconceived religions are "deals", "Do this and believe that and we guarantee you answers, happiness, and heaven."

Etymology of "spiritual" from dualism:

According to dualism, the good god created pure and everlasting souls that lived in a wonderful world of spirit. The bad god created another world, made of matter... Dualism instructs people to break these material shackles and undertake a journey back to the spiritual world... Due to this dualist legacy, every journey on which we doubt the conventions and deals of the mundane world and walk towards an unknown destination is called ‘a spiritual journey’.

For religions, spirituality is a dangerous threat. Religions typically strive to rein in the spiritual quests of their followers, and many religious systems were challenged not by laypeople preoccupied with food, sex and power, but rather by spiritual truth-seekers who wanted more than platitudes. Thus the Protestant revolt... Luther wanted answers to the existential questions of life, and refused to settle for the rites, rituals and deals offered by the Church.

But just as there can't be many geniuses, else society would collapse under their incessant questioning and revolutionizing,

the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who foam against stultified religious structures end up forging new structures in their place.

Science and humanism

... modern history as the process of formulating a deal between science and one particular religion – namely, humanism. Modern society believes in humanist dogmas, and uses science not in order to question these dogmas, but rather in order to implement them... the covenant linking science and humanism may well crumble, and give way to a very different kind of deal, between science and some new post-humanist religion.

Chap 6: The Modern Covanent

Modernity: humans gave up meaning for power/freedom.

Up until modern times, most cultures believed that humans play a part in some great cosmic plan. The plan was devised by the omnipotent gods, or by the eternal laws of nature, and humankind could not change it... This... gave humans psychological protection against disasters.

 

Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning.

 

modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid of meaning. 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. 

Capitalism gave power

Evolutionary pressures have accustomed humans to see the world as a static pie... accordingly, traditional religions sought ways to solve humanity’s problems with the help of current resources, either by redistributing the existing pie, or by promising us a pie in the sky. Modernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that... problems such as famine, plague and war can only be solved through growth.

 Every mainstream politician uses that, no matter what their professed "ideology":

"Development is the only hard truth" (发展才是硬道理) -- Deng Xiaoping

In Singapore, they... pegged ministerial salaries to the national GDP... as if that is what their job is all about. 

Capitalism is like an idle game: reinvest growth for growth, make the number get bigger. This is not like the past. In the past, rich people mostly spent their money on fun, cool castles, or stashed, not invested. Harari mentions that the old economy is like chess, and capitalism is like RTS and Settlers of Cartan. He missed a great opportunity of mentioning idle games, which are the mathematical essence of capitalism.

Capitalism is dangerous and hard

Loans and credits and debts depend on hope of future growth. So far, science has delivered growth, but if it fails to deliver in time, we may get a total collapse of global economy. Also the environment is in great trouble and the solutions also depend on science. If science fails, we will get ecological collapse. Production depends on consumption in capitalism (not enough storage space, it seems).

In the premodern world, people were akin to lowly clerks in a socialist bureaucracy. They punched their card, and then waited for somebody else to do something. In the modern world, we humans run the business. So we are under constant pressure day and night. On the collective level, the race manifests itself in ceaseless upheavals. Whereas previously social and political systems endured for centuries, today every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place. As the Communist Manifesto brilliantly put it, the modern world positively requires uncertainty and disturbance.

 Wait, what's that? It's from chap 1 of the Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society... Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.

 Yup, creative disruption.

Capitalism has depended on humanism.

Chap 7: The Humanist Revolution

Humanist Ethics

God was the source of meaning and authority. Humanism replaces God with humans. 

"I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad"

Theoretically, the modern therapist occupies the same place as the medieval priest... Yet in practice, a huge chasm separates them... no matter what the woman may have done and said, the therapist is most likely to ask in a caring voice, ‘Well, how do you feel about what happened?’ Whereas medieval priests had a hotline to God, and could distinguish for us between good and evil, modern therapists merely help us get in touch with our own inner feelings.

Humanism is so prevalent among the masses,

... even religious zealots adopt this humanistic discourse when they want to influence public opinion. For example, every year for the past decade the Israeli LGBT community holds a gay parade... religious Jews, Muslims and Christians suddenly find a common cause – they all fume in accord against the gay parade. What’s really interesting, though, is the argument they use... ‘seeing a gay parade passing through the holy city of Jerusalem hurts our feelings. Just as gay people want us to respect their feelings, they should respect ours.’

Humanist politics, Art, Economy, Education, Ethics

Humanism supports democracy,

We believe that the voter knows best, and that the free choices of individual humans are the ultimate political authority. Yet how does the voter know what to choose? Theoretically at least, the voter is supposed to consult his or her innermost feelings, and follow their lead... In the Middle Ages this would have been considered the height of foolishness. The fleeting feelings of ignorant commoners were hardly a sound basis for important political decisions.

The height of foolishness

By the way, I've always thought that it justifies anti-democracy in Equestria. Celestia and Luna are far above usual ponies in their political abilities.

The real reason of Sombra's banishment.

In medieval times, artisans made stuffs according to guild. Now the costumers are always right, and economy is all about satisfying costumers' needs.

In the past, the gods decides what's beautiful and what's not, and true artists are inspired by their muses. Now beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Humanist education is all about thinking for yourself. Personally, it seems particularly true in humanities and theoretical sciences, not so in technology. Blind acceptance of course material is usually enough to be an engineer.

Humanist ethics is based on personal feelings. In particular, from personal experiences and sensitivity. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’.

Humanism made the cosmos empty and meaningless, the microcosm rich and meaningful.

As the source of meaning and authority was relocated from the sky to human feelings, the nature of the entire cosmos changed. The exterior universe – hitherto teeming with gods, muses, fairies and ghouls – became empty space. The interior world – hitherto an insignificant enclave of crude passions – became deep and rich beyond measure. Angels and demons were transformed from real entities roaming the forests and deserts of the world into inner forces within our own psyche. Heaven and hell too ceased to be real places somewhere above the clouds and below the volcanoes, and were instead interpreted as internal mental states.

This actually explains a lot of all the talk about how "one's own mind is one's worst enemy" and all the psychological drama in anime and horror games and... literature...!

Humanist Literature

Graeco-Roman epics and medieval chivalric romances were catalogues of heroic deeds, not feelings. One chapter told how the brave knight fought a monstrous ogre, and killed him. Another chapter recounted how the knight rescued a beautiful princess from a fire-spitting dragon, and killed him. A third chapter narrated how a wicked sorcerer kidnapped the princess, but the knight pursued the sorcerer, and killed him. No wonder that the hero was invariably a knight, rather than a carpenter or a peasant, for peasants performed no heroic deeds.

Crucially, the heroes did not undergo any significant process of inner change. Achilles, Arthur, Roland and Lancelot were fearless warriors with a chivalric world view before they set out on their adventures, and they remained fearless warriors with the same world view at the end. All the ogres they killed and all the princesses they rescued confirmed their courage and perseverance, but ultimately taught them little.

Note that this myth template is directly against the myth template of hero's journey, wherein the hero does get changed. I don't know how to reconcile them. Maybe one of the templates doesn't actually fit most of the classical myths, or maybe they aren't actually in conflict? Perhaps the hero's journey is a humanist reinterpretation of the premodern hero sagas.

The only myth I have read with some seriousness is Norse sagas, and I actually can see Harari's point. The Norse heros and gods, they did great deeds, but character growth is practically zero in those stories. The same can be said for Beowulf. Beowulf experienced a lot, but his character remained the same. Gilgamesh, however, did demonstrate a lot of character growth.

So maybe the correct evaluation is this: character growth used to be optional in literature, but after humanism took over the world of literature, became essential.

As a side note: I always thought the focus on character growth is why stories about Celestia aren't that popular. Celestia doesn't grow much at all: she's already thousands of years old, with little left to learn.

It's time to consult the chart of conflicts.

Take a good look because we might use it again.

"Classical" is the world before humanism, which is monotheistic with some polytheism and animism mixed in. In this world, the outside world is full of agency.

• Fighting against God is not the style of monotheism, but is in the style of polytheism (think of Prometeus). 
• Fighting against nature is a reflection of how ponies used to be not in the power over nature. 
• Fighting against other individuals shows a society without large-scale cohesion, and local communities dominate the lives of most ponies.

"Modern" is the world of humanism.

• Ponies have turned inwards. God, as well as external meaning in general, is no more, and they suffer from the meaninglessness. 
• A mare fights against herself because all the angels and devils are now found inside her own feelings. 
• Society grew into gigantic systems that are no longer comprehensible for most ponies, and instead of feeling like a part of it, ponies feel like the society is a thing that is independent of them, and they are often encouraged to try gaining advantage over the system.

"Postmodern" is the world of transhumanism.

• Ponies finally took notice of the limits of themselves. The perceived reality is shown to be constructed in the brain, with limits placed by their own limits. So, for example, ponies can never see in infrared, hear in ultrasonic, view history like the immortal Celestia, or feel the true sense of extreme ambition like a fully-grown dragon. Their hearts are physically too small for that much ambition.
• Ponies realized that technology seems to have a will of its own. Technology brings new problems, encouraging ponies to develop more technology to solve the problems, and in this way technology develops not fully under control. With more and faster technology change, ponies really don't understand how it works anymore and the will of technology seems to grow stronger, prompting ponies to fight back.
• Once given the power to change themselves, ponies become authors of their own reality. Artificial alicorns become possible and it's a question of who writes the rules. What a pony considers meaningful depends on how the pony is made, and by changing the pony, meaning is changed. Ponies struggle with the writers of meaning.

Back from literature.

Humanist literature about war

Throughout most of history, when people wished to know whether a particular war was just, they asked God, they asked scriptures, and they asked kings, noblemen and priests. Few cared about the opinions and experiences of a common soldier or an ordinary civilian.

 

Look, for example, at the painting above of the Battle of Breitenfeld, which took place on 17 September 1631. The painter, Jean-Jacques Walter, glorifies King Gustav Adolph of Sweden, who led his army that day to a decisive victory. Gustav Adolph towers over the battlefield as if he were some god of war.

 Even when painters focused on the battle itself, rather than on the commander, they still looked at it from above, and were far more concerned with collective manoeuvres than with personal feelings. Take, for example, Pieter Sneighers’s painting of the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620.

For thousands of years, when people looked at war, they saw gods, emperors, generals and great heroes.

But over the last two centuries, the kings and generals have been increasingly pushed to the side, and the limelight shifted onto the common soldier and his experiences. War novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front and war films such as Platoon begin with a young and naïve recruit, who knows little about himself and the world, but carries a heavy burden of hopes and illusions. He believes that war is glorious, our cause is just and the general is a genius.

(Pure Imagination)

A few weeks of real war – of mud, and blood, and the smell of death – shatter his illusions one after another.  

If he survives, the naïve recruit will leave war as a much wiser man, who no longer believes the clichés and ideals peddled by teachers, film-makers and eloquent politicians.

 

Paradoxically, this narrative has become so influential that today it is told over and over again even by teachers, film-makers and eloquent politicians. ‘War is not what you see in the movies!’ warn Hollywood blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down.

 

Painters too have lost interest in generals on horses and in tactical manoeuvres. Instead, they strive to depict how the common soldier feels... look at the following two pictures, considered masterpieces of twentieth-century war art: The War (Der Krieg) by Otto Dix, and That 2,000 Yard Stare by Tom Lea.

Der Kreig by Otto Dix

That 2,000 Yard Stare by Tom Lea.

Sects of Humanism

Recall from Sapiens, about the 3 sects of humanism: liberal, socialist, evolutionary. Liberal values human individuals. Socialist values humans as a whole. Evolutionary values humans, but as a mutable biological species that should be evolved to a superior state.

Liberal humanism tends to democracy, as said before. Socialist humanism tends to collectivist planning and strong social institutions. Evolutionary humanism favors conflicts.

in contrast to liberal artists like Otto Dix, evolutionary humanism thinks that the human experience of war is valuable and even essential... War allows natural selection free rein at last. It exterminates the weak and rewards the fierce and the ambitious. War exposes the truth about life, and awakens the will for power, for glory and for conquest. Nietzsche summed it up by saying that war is ‘the school of life’ and that ‘what does not kill me makes me stronger’.

School of life: graduation ceremony

Hitler’s political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority accorded to the personal experience of common people in twentieth-century politics.... When Hitler appealed to the German voters and asked for their trust, he could muster only one argument in his favour: his experiences in the trenches had taught him... People followed him, and voted for him, because they identified with him, and because they too believed that the world is a jungle, and that what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.

What does not kill me makes me stronger.

That's about politics. About art, there are differences too. Consider 4 kinds of art:

1. Some classical symphony.
2. Some American pop song.
3. Some tribal song.
4. Howling of wolf in heat.

They are all emotionally exciting for the right audience. Can we rank them in terms of artistic level?

Perhaps some utilitarian art theory would say they are equally valuable. All humanists would say 4 is not art because it's not made by, or appreciated by, humans. Liberalism values all human experiences, and thus doesn't rank the first three. Socialism subjects all of them to some historical/social critique, and denies the idea of intrinsic artistic value -- art can only be valued based on how they change society towards the socialist paradise. Evolutionary humanism considers art to be ordered, just like species are ordered. Wolf howl is inferior to human arts, and primitive human arts are inferior to refined arts. Thus, 1 > 2 > 3 > 4.

From a mathematician's point of view, evolutionary humanism's theory of art is the best. A quantitative theory of art would probably depend on complexity/information theory. The best art is art that is both not too chaotic [white noise] and not too structured [pure tone].

Humanist wars in 20th century

In 20th century, the three sects of humanism fought a lot and liberalism almost died. Before 1914, liberalism seemed poised to take over the world. After WW2, socialism seemed poised to take over the world.

By 1970 the world contained 130 independent countries, but only thirty of these were liberal democracies, most of which were crammed into the north-western corner of Europe... Liberal democracy increasingly looked like an exclusive club for ageing white imperialists, who had little to offer the rest of the world, or even their own youth.

Nikita wasn't bluffing when she said

But eventually liberalism won, after socialist economy proved too inefficient compared to capitalism.

Religions in 21st century

Most social protests are not against liberalism. They assume human wants and needs are good and democracy is good and people's voices are good, and they protest governments' failures of not living up to liberal humanism ideals.

China does not pose a threat because of its lack of ideology. Personally, I think there is a religion in current China, and that's just "the Chinese dream", which in concrete terms means "become the best in the world in terms of military, economic, and scientific powers, so that people all over the world would admire Chinese people". In other words, nationalism, and nationalism, as noted, is very compatible with liberal humanism.

Traditional religions are outdated and has nothing to say about modern technologies. They are reactionary, either condemning new tech or condoning new tech using their old books.

They read page after page and story after story with the utmost attention, until they find what they need: some maxim, parable or ruling that if interpreted creatively enough means that God blesses gay marriages... The Bible is kept as a source of authority, even though it is no longer a true source of inspiration.

Socialism rose from its understanding of technology, 

Lenin was once asked to define communism in a single sentence. ‘Communism is power to worker councils,’ he said, ‘plus electrification of the whole country.’... ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ only works when produce can easily be collected and distributed across vast distances, and when activities can be monitored and coordinated over entire countries...

but failed later because it did not update based on the latest technologies.

... Liberals, in contrast, adapted far better to the information age... If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome.

The truly great religions must be attuned to technology, and only they could make great impact. New techno-religions will rise, like how socialism rose back then.

Liberal humanism might still be doomed though. See part 3!