Summary

Yuval Harari explores how humankind’s mastery over survival and the environment will lead to a new focus on the god-like pursuits of immortality / wellness and happiness / wellbeing. Happiness is the sum of excitement and tranquility. Since tranquility is solved, the aim of life is thus distilling the widest possible experience of life into wisdom. The great decoupling proves that AI sapience beats human sentience and, as a consequence, humans will lose their military and economic value, leading to a rise of the “useless class” where one’s only value is in the aggregate as dividuals. Humanism and human exceptionalism will necessarily be usurped by dataism, the all-encompassing dogma that organisms are algorithms, life is data processing, and the universe evolves to maximize data processing.

Key Takeaways

• Aim of life: “a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom.”
• 3 most critical processes:
  • Dataism: All-encompassing dogma that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing
    • Universe consists of data flows, value of phenomenon / entity measured by contribution to data processing
    • Society is always striving to become more connected, efficient, prosperous
    • Dataism mantra: experiences only matter if they can be shared / turned into data
  • The great decoupling: Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness
    • Humans will lose military + economic usefulness, thus economic + political system won’t attach much value to them
  • AI sapience beats human sentience: Non-conscious intelligent algorithms will know us better than we know ourselves
    • Further reduces our free will, which can already be biochemically dictated externally by electrodes
    • FB algorithm already better at understanding personality than friends + family in a 100-item questionnaire
    • Value in humans as a whole but not as individuals (big data)
• Humanism → Dataism, data freedom, centralization
  • Humanism: Human exceptionalism; humans give meaning to a meaningless universe
• Companies, nations, religion (fictional entities) drive cooperation thru shared values

“There is only one summit in life - to have taken the measuring feeling of everything human.”
- Wilhelm von Humboldt

Notes

1: Conquering the world

1: The new human agenda

• Famine, plague, war were 3 focuses of humanity until only recently, now “solved”
• New priorities include environment, immortality (human right), happiness
• Happiness = excitement + tranquility
• Paradox of knowledge: The more we know the less we can predict
• Book summarizes how conquest of humanity leads to downfall of itself

2: The Anthropocene

• Humans are most important agents of change in global ecology
• Looking at how we treat animals provides clues for how AGI might treat us
• If animals can reproduce in extreme captivity, are other “needs” really “needs”
• Animals as series of algorithms determined by genes
• Evolution has wired us to need social bonds
• Garden of Eden vs Newton’s Apple: value of curiosity in religious, scientific eras

3: The human spark

• How did the human soul evolve?
• 80B+ neurons fire together to form stream on consciousness / subjective experience
• Emergent property of consciousness still isn’t understood (eg. car → traffic jam)
• Mental pollution: consciousness fills no biological purpose, useless byproduct of some brain processes
• Simulation theory: only one real world
  • Can’t definitely prove consciousness in any being but yourself
• Self-consciousness: actions determined in part by past and effects on self’s future
• Cambridge declaration on consciousness: species conscious until proven otherwise
• Only humans can flexibly cooperate
• Intersubjective meaning: eg. Money
• Life based on intersubjective, not objective
• Beyond objective genetics etc., need to understand imagined realities that give meaning to the world

2: Giving meaning to the world

4: The storytellers

• Writing and documents provide permanence, organization, systemization
• Fictional entities (companies, nations, religion) drive cooperation thru values
• Fictions that drive society proliferate and are self-reinforcing (CRT)
• Monotheism emphasizes self (God’s eyes)

5: The odd couple

• Questioning aspects of religion
• Religion leads to intolerance

6: The modern covenant

• No script or cosmic significance
• Contraction and expansions in economy are self-reinforcing
• Growing GDP has become the driving force
• Resources + property limiting factor
• Poor stands to lose most in event of ecological meltdown, GDP stagnation

7: The humanist revolution

• Humanism: humans giving meaning to a meaningless universe (not vice versa)
• Free will of customer comes first
• Value and meaning can’t be determined purely by logic, science, and math
• Experience: subjective sensations, emotions, and thoughts (sensitivity)
• Knowledge = experience • sensitivity
• Aim of life: “a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom.”
• “There is only one summit in life - to have taken the measuring feeling of everything human.” - Wilhelm von Humboldt
• War: brings back natural selection, honest power-hungry selves, strengthens self
• Liberalism: every human experience should be valued equally (rich or poor)
• Liberalism (capitalism) beat communism
• Religion isn’t up to date with tech etc.

3: Losing control

8: The time bomb in the laboratory

• Free will isn’t what we think it is: choices a result of brain biochemistry
• Choices can be determined and influenced in advance using electrodes etc.
• What’s the difference between natural and manual brain stimulation? Same feeling
• Left and right brain operates differently
• Sunken cost fallacy: need to attribute a meaning / value to everything

9: The great decoupling

• The great decoupling: Decoupling of sentience (feeling) and sapience (reasoning)
  • AI sapience beats human sentience
• Humans will lose military + economic usefulness, thus economic + political system won’t attach much value to them
• Will find value in humans as a whole but not as individuals (big data)
• FB better at understanding personality than friends + family (100 item questionnaire)
  • 10 likes: outperform work colleagues
  • 70 likes: outperform friends
  • 150 likes: outperform family members
  • 300 likes: outperform spouses
• ↑ could use for political advantage
• Computers will understand us better than we do ourselves, further reducing free will
• Wealthy elites will gain biological advantage for first time

10: The ocean of consciousness

• Have only studied consciousness on an exceedingly small set of possible states
• Consciousness / free will will no longer be a factor

11: The data religion

• Dataism: Universe consists of data flows, value of phenomenon / entity is determined by its contribution to data processing
• Unites all fields: biology, economics, etc.
  • Eg. Economy: mechanism for gathering data about desires + abilities, turning into decisions
• Free market capitalism: parallel processing, communism: centralized processing
• Less efficient aspects of capitalism + government will be replaced
• Society is always striving to become more connected, efficient, prosperous
• New key is data freedom
• Dataism mantra: experiences only matter if they can be shared / turned into data
• Feelings have historically been the best algorithms, but now it’s computers + data
• 3 most critical processes:
  • Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing
  • Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness
  • Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves