Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus is Yuval Noah Harari's second book and while Sapiens was a look at the history of Homo sapiens, Homo Deus is a look ahead into the future.

It is a speculative book and the author admits that it is not prophecy but a look at the possible future of our species and our world.

This book is more provocative than his first book asserting some ideas that could be considered rather controversial.

As with my post on Sapiens I will not summarize the whole book.  Instead I would point out three ideas in the book that stood out for me.

The first one is Dr. Harari points out why the very religious have such a hatred for the Theory of Evolution.  As he indicates the very religious do not have any problems with other scientific theories such as Relativity.  However, they really get worked up by Evolution.

As he points out the very religious believe that God created the universe and he created humans.  When He created humans He infused them with the soul which gives us the ability to enjoy life after death.

The Theory of Evolution, on the other hand, states that we arrived on this planet as a result of a random set of changes to our DNA over the course of millions, even billions of years.  Since the Theory of Evolution indicates that we arrived at random, instead of by means of a higher power, that would mean the Theory precludes us from having a soul.

That is bad enough for the very religious but if you take the logic a little further then the Theory of Evolution could be used as evidence to deny the existance of God.  If God did not create humans and give them a soul then you can legitimately ask the question whether He exists at all and plausibly say 'No".  So, the Theory of Evolution strikes directly at the central tenent of all of the Abrahamic religions which would explain why those who cleave to those religions very closely would consider it a threat and would hate it as much as they do.

The second idea that stood out for me was he is yet one more author who sees automation as something that will fundementally change our socieites and our economies.  He calls automation algorithms and he states that algorithms will eventually create a class of people he called the "useless class".  These would be a large number of people who would not only be unemployed but they would be unemployable.  They would be people "devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society".  

This is not a new idea.  It has been around for awhile but when we take it with the third idea that stood out for me it gains a fair amount of signficance.

A third idea that he points out is the 20th Century was the era of the masses.  Governments needed masses of reasonably educated and healthy people to man all of the factories that produced all of the modern goods we consumed and to man the armies that were needed to fight the two great world struggles of the 20th Century.  As a result, governments and businesses spent a tremendous amount of money on public education and public health care and created other tools to keep the masses happy enough so that they would quietly work away at creating our current societies.

Dr. Harari then points out that the era of the masses is probably coming to a close.  With increased automation our societies and economies no longer need masses of people to man the factories.  Instead the only workers that are needed are those trained to develop and maintain the algorithms.  As well, militaries no longer needs masses of people achieve their objectives.  They only need a small number of "super soldiers" (special forces) and people to maintain and develop the algorithms that are increasingly being used to run the worlds military orgaizations.

The question then becomes, if the masses are not needed for the factories and the armies, would governments, the owners of the algorithms (who stand to make billions) and business continue to be willing provide funding for the masses to become reasonably educated and to stay reasonably healthy?

Dr. Harari does not state any concrete responses to that question.  However, you just need to look at the actions and policies of some of the more conservative politicians in the world and their allies in the business community to know that there are some who would abandon the "useless class".  However, there are other politicians and business people who would not.  The most interesting question that will need to be answered over the next couple of decades is which one of these two sides will prevail?

Those ideas are just three of many put forward by Dr. Harari in Homo Deus.  I would highly recommend this book to anybody who would be interested in seeing one of the possible futures of our world.

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