What gives meaning to our life? And if one day, whatever gives us meaning were to disappear, what would we do then?
I’m still thinking about those compelling questions after finishing homo deus, yuval noah harari’s provocative new book.
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melinda and i loved harari’s earlier book, sapiens, which tries to explain how our species came to dominate the earth. sparked conversations at our table for weeks after we both read it. so when homo deus came out earlier this year, i grabbed a copy and made sure to take it with me on our most recent vacation.
I’m glad I did. harari’s new book is as challenging and readable as sapiens. instead of looking back, as sapiens does, he looks to the future. I don’t agree with everything the author has to say, but he has written a thoughtful look at what may be in store for humanity.
homo deus argues that the principles that have organized society will undergo a great change in the 21st century, with important consequences for life as we know it. Until now, the things that have shaped society, by which we measure ourselves, have been a combination of religious rules about how to live a good life, and more earthly goals like getting rid of disease, famine, and war. we have organized ourselves to satisfy basic human needs: to be happy, healthy and in control of the environment around us. Taking these goals to their logical conclusion, Harari says that humans strive for “happiness, immortality, and godhood.”
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What would the world be like if we actually achieved those things? this is not entirely idle speculation. war and violence are at historic lows and continue to decline. Advances in science and technology will help people live much longer and will go a long way toward ending disease and hunger.
here is harari’s most provocative idea: as good as it sounds, achieving the dream of bliss, immortality, and godhood could be bad news for the human race. he envisions a potential future where a small number of elites improve themselves through biotechnology and genetic engineering, leaving the masses behind and creating the godlike species of the book’s title; where artificial intelligence “knows us better than ourselves”; and where these divine elites and super-intelligent robots consider the rest of humanity superfluous.
harari does a great job of showing how we could get to this bleak future. but I am more optimistic than he is that this future is not predetermined.
He argues that humanity’s progress toward bliss, immortality, and godhood is bound to be uneven: some people will get ahead, while many more will fall behind. I agree that as innovation speeds up, it does not automatically benefit everyone. the private market in particular caters to the needs of the wealthy and, if left to its own devices, often overlooks the needs of the poor. but we can work to close that gap and reduce the time it takes for innovation to spread. for example, vaccines developed in the rich world used to take decades to reach the poor. now, thanks to the efforts of pharmaceutical companies, foundations, and governments, there are cases where that time lag is less than a year. we should try to reduce the gap even more, but the main point is clear: inequality is not inevitable.
also, in my opinion, the robot takeover scenario is not the most interesting to think about. it is true that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, we must ensure that it serves humanity and not the other way around. but this is an engineering problem, what might be called the control problem. and there is not much to say about it, since the technology in question does not yet exist.
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I’m more interested in what might be called the problem of purpose. Suppose we keep control. what if we solved big problems like hunger and disease, and the world remained more peaceful? what purpose would humans have then? What challenges would we be inspired to solve?
In this version of the future, our biggest concern isn’t an attack by rogue robots, it’s a lack of purpose.
I think of this question in terms of my own life. my family gives my life a purpose: to be a good husband, father and friend. Like all parents, I want my children to lead happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives. but what if that life was guaranteed to every child on earth? how would that change the role of parents?
harari does the best job I’ve seen of explaining the purpose problem. and deserves credit for hazarding an answer. he suggests that finding a new purpose requires that we develop a new religion, using the word in a much broader sense than most people do, something like “organizing principles that direct our lives.”
Unfortunately, I was not satisfied with your answer to the purpose question. (To be fair, I haven’t been satisfied with the answers I’ve seen from other smart thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, and neither have my own answers.) In the book’s final section, Harari discusses a religion he calls Dataism, in which the highest moral good is to increase the flow of information. dataism “has nothing against human experiences,” he writes. “He just doesn’t think they have intrinsic value.” the problem is that dataism doesn’t really help organize people’s lives, because it doesn’t take into account the fact that people will always have social needs. even in a world without wars, famine, or disease, we would still value helping, interacting, and caring for each other.
but don’t let an unsatisfying conclusion dissuade you from reading homo deus. is a deeply engaging book with lots of thought-provoking ideas and not much jargon. it makes you think about the future, which is another way of saying it makes you think about the present. I recommended it to Melinda and she is reading it as I write this review. I can’t wait to talk to her about it over dinner.
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