Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 3

Part 3: Homo Sapiens lose control

Chap 8: The Time Bomb in the Laboratory

Liberal humanism assumes every human has a free, unified self. It's threatened by scientific discoveries that suggest that such a self doesn't exist.

Split brain humans seem to have two selves. The experiencing self and the narrating self has different ideas as to what's good in life. For example in childbirth, the experiencing self suffers horribly, but the narrating self feels like it's a great plot event. 

The self that gets into the books and into the stories is the narrating self; the experiencing self doesn't make stories. If someone says "I did this", it's the narrating self speaking. The idea of a single free self is a myth made by the narrating self, and is full of errors just like all its other stories.

We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn’t matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and that it is rewritten again and again, so that today’s story flatly contradicts yesterday’s; the important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond the grave).

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.

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.