Homo Deus

 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow 

By Dr. Yuval Noah Harari 

Preview 

In Homo Deus, Dr. Harari forces the reader to think about the future that is fast approaching. Even though the book is about the future of mankind, it also highlights how the current scientific and technological advancements are going to progress and makes us question if that really is how we foresee our future. Through his text, Harari warns us more than anything else. He asks the philosophical question of how we wish to live and if that is where we are headed. Homo Deus shows the roads that might lead to the future rather than painting a picture of the future that awaits us.  

The Author and his style 

The author of the book is Dr. Yuval Noah Harari. He is a historian and a professor working for the Department of History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He specializes in world history and macro-historical processes. His other famous book is Sapiens, which was published in 2011, originally in Hebrew and became a bestseller shortly after in Israel. In 2014, it was published in English, and since then it has been translated into over 30 languages. Dr. Harari’s writing style is simple with a critical undertone to it. Having studied human history, his text comes across as a story from which one takes away a lot of factual information. The flow of his writing, despite being academic in nature, doesn’t appear to be so at all and makes it an enjoyable read. 

What to expect? 

Dr. Harari, through his texts in this book, offers a creative and unique insight into the workings of the world. The book can broadly be divided into two parts. The first part talks about the development of the humanist philosophy and the second part talks about how humanity might as well be headed towards a not so pretty future.  

The beginning of the book describes two human agendas. First is the efforts being made to increase human life expectancy, and the other to increase the happiness. The ultimate goal being turning the boring old Homo sapiens into their modern, elegant versions, the Homo Deus by redesigning, rather, re-engineering our bodies and mind, avoiding getting old and maybe avoiding death altogether and attaining divinity. The text presents various examples pointing out how technology first emerged as a means to help people in need of assistance, and then went on to be used by anyone and everyone (even though they might do just as well without them). 

 The examples presented are of prosthetics, performance enhancing drugs such as Viagra, plastic surgery, bionics, etc.  

What you will learn after reading this book:  

• For the first time in recorded history, China is famine free now. 

• According to the 2014 consensus, a greater number of people were overweight (2.1 billion) than malnourished (850 million) 

• The AI dependency might end up making us so dependent on it that we’d let it make our decisions for us. 

• Dataism may be the religion of the future 

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Do unto them as you would have done unto you: Better treatment of animals 

One of the points that is emphasized upon in the book is the argument presented for better treatment of animals. Right now, we have self-titled ourselves as the rulers and champions who sit at the top of the ladder, but with new technological advancements especially in the field of computers, machines just might end up replacing us.  

It is not farfetched to think that we will be at the mercy of these so called "beings". They just might treat us with the same indifference that we treat animals, so the question arises about the ethical treatment of animals. Some experiments have been done which have concluded that animals, in fact, have emotional and intellectual complexities, which makes one question their stance of a being lesser mortals in our dictionaries.  

Every day there is one new piece out there highlighting how deplorable conditions the animals are subjected to; whether it is the loss of their habitat or cramping them up in spaces that are extremely small and what not! Imagine the Homo sapiens in place of these animals and imagine them being treated the same way at the hands of a superior being and being at their mercy. Doesn’t look like a pretty picture, does it?  

The technology that rules our lives 

Picture a present-day human being. They are, almost, partially cyborgs. Phones plugged into the ears, fitbits keeping track of their health. A diabetic with an insulin pump walking around with their artificial pancreas plugged into their thighs, the sensor for the pump plugged into the stomach. Sure, it is not exactly very sophisticated, and we have a long way to go before everything becomes either wireless or integrated to our systems, but compared to ten years earlier, we have brought about remarkable changes to our lives with the help of technology.  

At the same time think about what a large part of our lives is ruled by technology. There are self-driving cars, algorithms predicting what one would buy next and making almost precise recommendations, all the data is in the cloud, factories being run of machines and this is not even the complete picture. It makes one wonder if all this dependency is going to turn the Homo sapiens back to the Neanderthals.   

Dr. Harari does say that he is unaware of what the future would bring but using his book he wishes to edge us towards a more ethical and moral discussion that we should be having. We keep on moving forward and accepting all the changes that are thrown our way without realizing the implications and the cost that we are paying. It does not even surprise us to hear that a computer beat a Chess master at the game, or more recently that an advanced AI system beat a nine Dan professional Go player (Go is even more abstract and complex than Chess). 

Can technology lead to a reinforcement of haves and have nots? 

Let’s forget these machines for now and talk about another aspect of technology; genetic engineering and CRISPR. Bio-engineering has allowed us to achieve a lot. It helped create artificial insulin, helped couples who couldn’t conceive through in-vitro fertilization techniques, it was even successful in targeting a genetic mutation and rectifying it. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? It truly is. The CRISPR technology that is being worked on is further going to improve things.  

Currently, this technology is being used to figure out how to manipulate a mosquito’s genotype, so they can no more transmit the carriers of diseases that they spread. It all sounds lovely, but in the long term, the picture gets darker. The merger of the machine and the human brain might give rise to a superior class of humans.  

The technologies that are allowing us to make changes to our biological systems would not come cheap; whether one wants a faulty gene removed, their hormones tweaked to say make them taller or even have their chromosomal aberrations corrected. This would allow the elite to upgrade themselves to biologically superior beings, with whom the general masses just wouldn't be able to compete.  

This would create a very real divide amongst the population with very real biological hierarchies. Who is to say maybe the less equipped might not be enslaved later. So again, the question remains, what kind of a future are we heading towards?  

The founding of modern religion: 

Religion would have been founded as Homo sapiens switched from their hunting and gathering lifestyle to the settled agricultural one. Humans were domesticating plants and animals and to feel superior and justify their dominion over them, they needed something.  

With the advent of the Agricultural Age, the economy flourished, and religion found its place in the society. Moreover, economy and religion later became the justification for the terrible suffering that humans were subjecting the animals to. 

 

Dr. Harari further offers some interesting insights when he talks about science being a new religion. He talks about how science and religion were doomed to clash since their versions of truth for the same situation would always vary. Maybe the older societies needed religion to sustain themselves, but today it does not. Humanism has replaced religion today (to a large extent) as a thought structure. Where one spoke of a soul earlier, it speaks of human rights today. In reality, neither truly exists beyond the realm of belief, but again it is belief that has sustained societies for so long. So, what would be the religion of our future society then? 

 

The modernity agenda and modern humanism

Modernity is a simple, contract-based deal. Power was more important to us, so to gain power, we gave up meaning. Humanism does not believe in the existence of heaven, but it holds power to create heaven on Earth. Humanism does not believe that the wraths of the Gods brought about the floods and plagues, for it holds the power to eradicate it. The modern society only cares about one thing, and that is growth. Growth enables progress, progress enables success.  

In the book, Dr. Harari talks about three different possible futures for humanism. In one, he says that liberalism may die out as technological advancements grow and eventually displace humans. Eventually, the economic and military importance will die out and Dataism will become the new religion. Dataism is the value of freedom of information and is spread across two disciplines: computer science and biology.  

Humanism’s fundamental principle is dependent upon feelings that are used to make essential decisions. These feelings may have evolved over millions of years. However, more often than not they are irrational and wrong. This is where algorithms trump us. Algorithms do not care about feelings when making decisions as they rely solely on the data that is present to them. So when Dataism takes over, the humanist principle of relying on one's feelings would be done away with and logic would reign. 

 Our life experiences may be analyzed, and advice given, and decisions taken accordingly for us. Given the current trend, it wouldn’t come as a surprise; we already have Google predicting what we would be searching for, Amazon giving us recommendations, advertisements being targeted at us individually. It should not surprise anyone when said that the era of information is going to engulf our society.  

If we were to look at everything, in a nutshell, we see that religion says, "listen to your God and savior." On the other hand, humanism says to listen to oneself, while science says listen to the data. But what if data disregards human rights completely? Where does one go from there then? 

Future religion 

When it comes to a machine run dystopian future, Hollywood has left no stone unturned in depicting that for us. Whether it was the movie Cyborg or even The Matrix, human beings eventually gave up and became slaves, serving at the hands of their digital masters.  

With the death of Humanism, we will be left with two options. One would be what is known as techno humanism, which will use technology as leverage for the sake of human relevance. The other option is, of course, Dataism which will prioritize algorithm above all.   

Out of the two, Dataism is the only realistic choice since human beings are nothing more than biological algorithms. The world of techno humanism can be done away with because if we are talking of a world dominated by artificial intelligence, we would have no relevance at all.  

Dataism places importance only on intelligence, not on consciousness. In fact, in the world ruled by algorithms, the concept of emotions and rights would be futile, and Dr. Harari believes that our treatment by our superior "masters" would be no different than how we treat our animals today.  

Data knows us; therefore, Data will own us. Think about Facebook. One of the studies actually says that Facebook knows us better than our significant other does, owing to all the data we have fed it, through interactions on the platform. That is how powerful Data is, and its power is ever growing. 

 

Wrapping it up 

As controversial as his writing might be, there is no denying that Dr. Harari’s style keeps the reader engrossed in the text. Even though the subject matter is not exactly a “fun” one, the text does not come across as too serious. Dr. Harari points out how we have almost solved the huge problems that troubled us in the past.  

Problems such as violence and wars, famines and plagues have almost been combated, and once we’re completely done with them, we will move on to new issues that are to be taken care of such as combating old age, attaining happiness and more. He writes about the future that is fast approaching in terms of the recent and ancient past of our species. He writes about how we separated ourselves from animals and reached the top of the ladder, so to say. Moreover, he goes on to talk about the technological advancements and how it has become an unstoppable force and how one day, not too far from now technology might make the Homo sapiens obsolete.  

Although Dr. Harari’s presumptions might sound like science fiction, he supports them with historical as well as current evidences along with insights that leave the reader wondering if the future, in fact, is bleak. One thing that stands out in the first half of the text is Dr. Harari’s stance on the human-animal relation. If the boundaries between consciousness and intelligence are blurring, then that makes us no different than animals i.e. our fate could rely on the “superior beings.”