• The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war (Location 8092)
  • Most people rarely think about it, but in the last few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague and war. (Location 8097)
  • In a healthy, prosperous and harmonious world, what will demand our attention and ingenuity? (Location 8110)
  • When severe drought hit ancient Egypt or medieval India, it was not uncommon that 5 or 10 per cent of the population perished. Provisions became scarce; transport was too slow and expensive to import sufficient food; and governments were far too weak to save the day. (Location 8121)
  • About 2.8 million French – 15 per cent of the population – starved to death between 1692 and 1694, (Location 8132)
  • Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030. (Location 8166)
  • Until the modern era, humans blamed diseases on bad air, malicious demons and angry gods, (Location 8184)
  • Epidemics continued to kill tens of millions of people well into the twentieth century. In January 1918 soldiers in the trenches of northern France began dying in the thousands from a particularly virulent strain of flu, nicknamed ‘the Spanish Flu’. (Location 8216)
  • In India it killed 5 per cent of the population (Location 8221)
  • New infectious diseases appear mainly as a result of chance mutations in pathogen genomes. These mutations allow the pathogens to jump from animals to humans, (Location 8269)
  • In 2015 doctors announced the discovery of a completely new type of antibiotic – teixobactin – to which bacteria have no resistance as yet. (Location 8278)
  • So while we cannot be certain that some new Ebola outbreak or an unknown flu strain won’t sweep across the globe and kill millions, we will not regard it as an inevitable natural calamity. Rather, we will see it as an inexcusable human failure and demand the heads of those responsible. (Location 8284)
  • The era when humankind stood helpless before natural epidemics is probably over. But we may come to miss it. (Location 8298)
  • In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. (Location 8309)
  • Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, and therefore forced the most powerful nations on earth to find alternative and peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. (Location 8313)
  • This New Peace is not just a hippie fantasy. Power-hungry governments and greedy corporations also count on it. (Location 8332)
  • There is no guarantee, of course, that the New Peace will hold indefinitely. (Location 8339)
  • Just as nuclear weapons made the New Peace possible in the first place, so future technological developments might set the stage for new kinds of war. (Location 8340)
  • However, we should not confuse ability with motivation. Though cyber warfare introduces new means of destruction, it doesn’t necessarily add new incentives to use them. (Location 8346)
  • terrorism is a strategy of weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by causing significant material damage. (Location 8358)
  • For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda. (Location 8362)
  • terrorism is a show. (Location 8364)
  • Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination (Location 8364)
  • it all depends on our reactions. If the Jungle Law comes back into force, it will not be the fault of terrorists. (Location 8373)
  • The message is not that famine, plague and war have completely disappeared from the face of the earth, and that we should stop worrying about them. Just the opposite. (Location 8377)
  • Acknowledging our past achievements sends a message of hope and responsibility, encouraging us to make even greater efforts in the future. (Location 8384)
  • if people continue to suffer from famine, plague and war, we cannot blame it on nature or on God. It is within our power to make things better and to reduce the incidence of suffering even further. (Location 8385)
  • What are the projects that will replace famine, plague and war at the top of the human agenda in the twenty-first century? (Location 8390)
  • One central project will be to protect humankind and the planet as a whole from the dangers inherent in our own power. (Location 8391)
  • this same growth destabilises the ecological equilibrium of the planet in myriad ways, which we have only begun to explore. (Location 8393)
  • When the moment comes to choose between economic growth and ecological stability, politicians, CEOs and voters almost always prefer growth. (Location 8396)
  • Success breeds ambition, (Location 8403)
  • In the twenty-first century humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality. (Location 8409)
  • We are constantly reminded that human life is the most sacred thing in the universe. Everybody says this: teachers in schools, politicians in parliaments, lawyers in courts and actors on theatre stages. (Location 8410)
  • Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly existence, and were consequently quite tolerant of death. (Location 8415)
  • humans don’t die because a figure in a black cloak taps them on the shoulder, or because God decreed it, or because mortality is an essential part of some great cosmic plan. Humans always die due to some technical glitch. (Location 8428)
  • defeat death (Location 8457)
    • Note: how does this affect the system though? Is the system setup to handle this? We are focused on solving the immediate technical problem, but what about how immortality affects the system that the world operates under.
  • Google Ventures is investing 36 per cent of its $2 billion portfolio in life sciences start-ups, including several ambitious life-extending projects. (Location 8462)
  • According to Kurzweil and de Grey, every ten years or so we will march into the clinic and receive a makeover treatment that will not only cure illnesses, but will also regenerate decaying tissues, and upgrade hands, eyes and brains. (Location 8474)
  • In truth they will actually be a-mortal, rather than immortal. Unlike God, future superhumans could still die in some war or accident, and nothing could bring them back from the netherworld. (Location 8478)
  • Which will probably make them the most anxious people in history. We mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. (Location 8481)
  • Perhaps, then, we had better start with more modest aims, such as doubling life expectancy? (Location 8484)
  • In the twentieth century we have almost doubled life expectancy from forty to seventy, so in the twenty-first century we should at least be able to double it again to 150. (Location 8485)
  • Though falling far short of immortality, this would still revolutionise human society. For starters, family structure, marriages and child–parent relationships would be transformed. (Location 8486)
  • At the same time, people will not retire at sixty-five and will not make way for the new generation with its novel ideas and aspirations. (Location 8496)
  • The physicist Max Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time. He meant that only when one generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out old ones. (Location 8497)
  • My own view is that the hopes of eternal youth in the twenty-first century are premature, and whoever takes them too seriously is in for a bitter disappointment. It is not easy to live knowing that you are going to die, but it is even harder to believe in immortality and be proven wrong. (Location 8506)
  • In truth, so far modern medicine hasn’t extended our natural life span by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save us from premature death, (Location 8514)
  • Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will get to live to ninety – but it will not be enough to reach 150, let alone 500. (Location 8516)
  • the needs of the capitalist economy, a relentless war against death seems to be inevitable. (Location 8526)
  • Most scientists and bankers don’t care what they are working on, provided it gives them an opportunity to make new discoveries and greater profits. (Location 8529)
  • People want to live for ever, so they compose an ‘immortal’ symphony, they strive for ‘eternal glory’ in some war, or even sacrifice their lives (Location 8536)
  • Eternal glory, nationalist remembrance ceremonies and dreams of paradise are very poor substitutes for what humans like Allen really want – not to die. (Location 8541)
  • If and when science makes significant progress in the war against death, the real battle will shift from the laboratories to the parliaments, courthouses and streets. (Location 8545)
  • Once the scientific efforts are crowned with success, they will trigger bitter political conflicts. All the wars and conflicts of history might turn out to be but a pale prelude for the real struggle ahead of us: the struggle for eternal youth. (Location 8546)
  • The second big project on the human agenda will probably be to find the key to happiness. (Location 8549)
  • At the end of the eighteenth century the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham declared that the supreme good is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, and concluded that the sole worthy aim of the state, the market and the scientific community is to increase global happiness. Politicians should make peace, business people should foster prosperity and scholars should study nature, not for the greater glory of king, country or God – but so that you and I could enjoy a happier life. (Location 8557)
  • Schools were founded to produce skilful and obedient citizens who would serve the nation loyally. At eighteen, youths needed to be not only patriotic but also literate, so that they could read the brigadier’s order of the day and draw up tomorrow’s battle plans. (Location 8565)
  • The aim wasn’t to make people happy, but to make the nation stronger. (Location 8573)
  • It’s important to note, however, that the American Declaration of Independence guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to happiness itself. Crucially, Thomas Jefferson did not make the state responsible for its citizens’ happiness. (Location 8580)
  • The right to the pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint on state power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human rights, so the state should do something about it. (Location 8588)
  • nowadays thinkers, politicians and even economists are calling to supplement or even replace GDP with GDH – gross domestic happiness. After all, what do people want? They don’t want to produce. They want to be happy. (Location 8593)
  • When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good, he warned his disciples that it is hard work to be happy. (Location 8600)
  • Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. (Location 8601)
  • Epicurus recommended, for example, to eat and drink in moderation, and to curb one’s sexual appetites. (Location 8602)
  • In Peru, Guatemala, the Philippines and Albania – developing countries suffering from poverty and political instability – about one person in 100,000 commits suicide each year. In rich and peaceful countries such as Switzerland, France, Japan and New Zealand, twenty-five people per 100,000 take their own lives annually. (Location 8607)
  • attaining positive happiness may be far more difficult than abolishing downright suffering. (Location 8621)
  • It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful. How do you bring joy to a bored, overpaid and overweight engineer? (Location 8622)
  • On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. (Location 8636)
  • We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. (Location 8637)
  • as conditions improve, expectations balloon. (Location 8638)
  • Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. (Location 8638)
  • happiness and suffering are nothing but different balances of bodily sensations. (Location 8648)
  • Some may say that this is not so bad, because it isn’t the goal that makes us happy – it’s the journey. (Location 8684)
  • Humans too may prefer the excitement of the race to resting on the laurels of success. (Location 8694)
  • Yet what makes the race so attractive is the exhilarating sensations that go along with it. (Location 8695)
  • the exciting sensations of the race are as transient as the blissful sensations of victory. (Location 8698)
  • Perhaps the key to happiness is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the right doses of excitement and tranquillity; (Location 8702)
  • increasing numbers of schoolchildren take stimulants such as Ritalin. (Location 8709)
  • Maybe we should modify the schools rather than the kids? (Location 8715)
  • The biochemical pursuit of happiness is also the number one cause of crime in the world. (Location 8726)
  • In 2009 half of the inmates in US federal prisons got there because of drugs; 38 per cent of Italian prisoners were convicted of drug-related offences; 55 per cent of inmates in the UK reported that they committed their crimes in connection with either consuming or trading drugs. A 2001 report found that 62 per cent of Australian convicts were under the influence of drugs when committing the crime for which they were incarcerated. (Location 8726)
  • People drink alcohol to forget, they smoke pot to feel peaceful, they take cocaine and methamphetamines to be sharp and confident, whereas Ecstasy provides ecstatic sensations and LSD sends you to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. (Location 8729)
  • This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, (Location 8732)
  • Some 2,300 years ago Epicurus warned his disciples that immoderate pursuit of pleasure is likely to make them miserable rather than happy. (Location 8746)
  • A couple of centuries earlier Buddha had made an even more radical claim, teaching that the pursuit of pleasant sensations is in fact the very root of suffering. (Location 8747)
  • the mere memory of past pleasures will not satisfy me, I have to start all over again. (Location 8752)
  • To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it. (Location 8754)
  • ephemeral and meaningless vibrations (Location 8761)
  • once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which people like you and me cannot comprehend. (Location 8826)
  • our present-day minds cannot grasp what might happen next. (Location 8832)
  • Certain traditional abilities that were considered divine for many millennia have today become so commonplace that we hardly think about them. (Location 8844)
  • In ancient agricultural societies, many religions displayed surprisingly little interest in metaphysical questions and the afterlife. (Location 8852)
  • In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human. (Location 8875)
  • when they hear of upgraded superhumans, they say: ‘I hope I will be dead before that happens.’ (Location 8879)
  • in an upgraded world you will feel like a Neanderthal (Location 8883)
  • our world of meaning might collapse within decades. (Location 8885)
  • Scientific research and technological developments are moving at a far faster rate than most of us can grasp. (Location 8887)
  • Since no one understands the system any more, no one can stop it. (Location 8910)
  • if we somehow succeed in hitting the brakes, our economy will collapse, along with our society. As explained in a later chapter, the modern economy needs constant and indefinite growth in order to survive. (Location 8911)
  • Given our past record and our current values, we are likely to reach out for bliss, divinity and immortality – even if it kills us. (Location 8991)
  • History is often shaped by exaggerated hopes. (Location 8992)
  • prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. (Location 8996)
  • If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. (Location 8997)
  • Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. (Location 9022)
  • Centuries ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics and economics changed at a leisurely pace too. Today our knowledge is increasing at breakneck speed, and theoretically we should understand the world better and better. But the very opposite is happening. Our new-found knowledge leads to faster economic, social and political changes; in an attempt to understand what is happening, we accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. (Location 9024)
  • Movements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. (Location 9053)
  • They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it. (Location 9058)
  • The neat turf at the entrance to chateaux was accordingly a status symbol nobody could fake. (Location 9068)
  • Humans thereby came to identify lawns with political power, social status and economic wealth. (Location 9098)
  • People all over the globe associate lawns with power, money and prestige. (Location 9109)
  • we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none. (Location 9119)
  • All the predictions that pepper this book are no more than an attempt to discuss present-day dilemmas, and an invitation to change the future. (Location 9120)
  • Yet I would now like to place something else on the table: a gun. A gun that appears in Act I, to fire in Act III. The following chapters discuss how humanism – the worship of humankind – has conquered the world. (Location 9128)
  • the rise of humanism also contains the seeds of its downfall. (Location 9130)
  • While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism’s inherent flaws. (Location 9130)
  • The same technologies that can upgrade humans into gods might also make humans irrelevant. (Location 9135)
  • how humanism became the dominant world religion and why attempting to fulfil the humanist dream is likely to cause its disintegration. (Location 9143)
  • No investigation of our divine future can ignore our own animal past, or our relations with other animals – because the relationship between humans and animals is the best model we have for future relations between superhumans and humans. (Location 9148)
  • start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. (Location 9151)
  • People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes. (Location 9169)
  • Homo sapiens Conquers the World What is the difference between humans and all other animals? How did our species conquer the world? Is Homo sapiens a superior life form, or just the local bully? (Location 9176)
  • With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. (Location 9181)
  • We don’t like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods. (Location 9182)
  • Mass extinctions occur once every many millions of years. Yes, a big asteroid will probably hit our planet sometime in the next 100 million years, but it is very unlikely to happen next Tuesday. Instead of fearing asteroids, we should fear ourselves. (Location 9208)
  • Now humankind is poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to extend life from the organic realm into the inorganic. (Location 9217)
  • Today more than 90 per cent of all large animals are domesticated. (Location 9300)
  • It is certainly true that all instincts, drives and emotions evolved in order to meet the evolutionary pressures of survival and reproduction. However, if and when these pressures suddenly disappear, the instincts, drives and emotions they had shaped do not disappear with them. (Location 9321)
  • Even if they are no longer instrumental for survival and reproduction, these instincts, drives and emotions continue to mould the subjective experiences (Location 9323)
  • Tragically, the Agricultural Revolution gave humans the power to ensure the survival and reproduction of domesticated animals while ignoring their subjective needs. (Location 9361)
  • emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals. (Location 9374)
  • Humans are algorithms (Location 9403)
  • The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts. (Location 9406)
  • This boils down to a mathematical problem of calculating probabilities: (Location 9409)
  • 99 per cent of our decisions – including the most important life choices concerning spouses, careers and habitats – are made by the highly refined algorithms we call sensations, emotions and desires. (Location 9439)
  • the sense of wonder that overwhelms a human gazing up at the infinitude of a starry sky. (Location 9445)
  • Not long ago psychologists doubted the importance of the emotional bond between parents and children even among humans. (Location 9460)
  • In the first half of the twentieth century, and despite the influence of Freudian theories, the dominant behaviourist school argued that relations between parents and children were shaped by material feedback; that children needed mainly food, shelter and medical care; and that children bonded with their parents simply because the latter provide these material needs. (Location 9461)
  • farmers throughout history took care of the material needs of piglets, calves and kids, but tended to ignore their emotional needs. (Location 9486)
  • both the meat and dairy industries are based on breaking the most fundamental emotional bond in the mammal kingdom. (Location 9487)
  • People today imagine the ancient temple in Jerusalem as a kind of big synagogue where priests clad in snow-white robes welcomed devout pilgrims, melodious choirs sang psalms and incense perfumed the air. In reality, it looked more like a cross between a slaughterhouse and a barbecue joint. (Location 9500)
  • swarms of black flies buzzed just about everywhere (see, for example, Numbers 28, Deuteronomy 12, and 1 Samuel 2). (Location 9506)
  • In the new theist drama Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved. (Location 9518)
  • Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, have demonstrated even greater empathy to animals. They emphasise the connection between humans and the rest of the ecosystem, and their foremost ethical commandment has been to avoid killing any living being. (Location 9564)
  • Nevertheless, all agricultural religions – Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism included – found ways to justify human superiority and the exploitation of animals (if not for meat, then for milk and muscle power). (Location 9569)
  • The Agricultural Revolution was thus both an economic and a religious revolution. (Location 9584)
  • New kinds of economic relations emerged together with new kinds of religious beliefs that justified the brutal exploitation of animals. (Location 9585)
  • The degradation of animals from sentient beings deserving of respect into mere property rarely stopped with cows and chickens. Most agricultural societies began treating various classes of people as if they too were property. (Location 9594)
  • rulers did not dream of asking peasants for their opinions about running the kingdom. (Location 9597)
  • when ethnic groups or religious communities clashed, they frequently dehumanized each other. (Location 9598)
  • The farm thus became the prototype of new societies, (Location 9599)
  • During the Agricultural Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too. The world was now a one-man show. (Location 9603)
  • Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions, the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods. (Location 9628)
  • Whereas theism justified traditional agriculture in the name of God, humanism has justified modern industrial farming in the name of Man. (Location 9633)
  • If an ambitious peasant had tried to confine thousands of animals in a crowded coop, a deadly epidemic would probably have resulted, wiping out all the animals as well as many of the villagers. (Location 9640)
  • In recent years, as people began to rethink human–animal relations, such practices have come under increasing criticism. We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one. (Location 9645)
  • American lives are more valued. (Location 9663)
  • Killing an American citizen creates a far greater international outcry than killing an Afghan citizen. (Location 9664)
  • What is this unique human spark? (Location 9670)
  • The traditional monotheist answer is that only Sapiens have eternal souls. (Location 9671)
  • There is zero scientific evidence that in contrast to pigs, Sapiens have souls. (Location 9682)
  • According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per cent believe that God created humans in their current form sometime during the last 10,000 years, just as the Bible says. (Location 9688)
  • Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species. (Location 9691)
  • That’s why the theory of evolution cannot accept the idea of souls, at least if by ‘soul’ we mean something indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal. Such an entity cannot possibly result from a step-by-step evolution. Natural selection could produce a human eye, because the eye has parts. But the soul has no parts. (Location 9729)
  • biology cannot explain the birth of a baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have even a shred of a soul. (Location 9738)
  • Every subjective experience has two fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire. (Location 9755)
  • only unconscious algorithms rather than subjective experiences? (Location 9767)
  • To be frank, science knows surprisingly little about mind and consciousness. Current orthodoxy holds that consciousness is created by electrochemical reactions in the brain, and that mental experiences fulfil some essential data-processing function. (Location 9781)
  • why do humans have subjective experiences of hunger and fear? (Location 9826)
  • Ironically, the better we map this process, the harder it becomes to explain conscious feelings. (Location 9834)
  • If the entire system works by electric signals passing from here to there, why the hell do we also need to feel fear? (Location 9835)
  • If a chain of electrochemical reactions leads all the way from the nerve cells in the eye to the movements of leg muscles, why add subjective experiences to this chain? What do they do? (Location 9836)
  • What are all these memories, imaginations and thoughts? Where do they exist? According to current biological theories, our memories, imaginations and thoughts don’t exist in some higher immaterial field. Rather, they too are avalanches of electric signals fired by billions of neurons. (Location 9847)
  • if every electron moves because another electron moved earlier – why do we need to experience fear? We have no clue. (Location 9854)
  • what happens in the mind that doesn’t happen in the brain? (Location 9855)
  • it takes place, say, where two previously unconnected neurons suddenly start firing signals to one another. (Location 9863)
  • A new synapse is formed between the Bill Clinton neuron and the Homer Simpson neuron. (Location 9864)
  • Present-day dogma holds that organisms are algorithms, and that algorithms can be represented in mathematical formulas. (Location 9866)
  • But is there any algorithm in the huge realm of mathematics that contains a subjective experience? (Location 9872)
  • Maybe the mind should join the soul, God and ether in the dustbin of science? (Location 9904)
  • few ethical dilemmas can be solved by referring strictly to brain activities. (Location 9915)
  • some scientists concede that consciousness is real and may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfils no biological function whatsoever. (Location 9920)
  • Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes. Jet engines roar loudly, but the noise doesn’t propel the aeroplane forward. Humans don’t need carbon dioxide, but each and every breath fills the air with more of the stuff. (Location 9921)
  • consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn’t do anything. It is just there. (Location 9923)
  • If this is true, it implies that all the pain and pleasure experienced by billions of creatures for millions of years is just mental pollution. (Location 9924)
  • when humans tried to explain life, they assumed it must work according to analogous principles. (Location 9930)
  • In the twenty-first century it sounds childish to compare the human psyche to a steam engine. Today we know of a far more sophisticated technology – the computer – so we explain the human psyche as if it were a computer processing data rather than a steam engine regulating pressure. (Location 9940)
  • this new analogy may turn out to be just as naïve. (Location 9942)
  • If the patient’s brain displays the telltale signatures of consciousness, he is probably conscious, even though he cannot move or speak. Indeed, doctors have recently managed to communicate with such patients using fMRI imaging. They ask the patients yes/no questions, telling them to imagine themselves playing tennis if the answer is yes, and to visualise the location of their home if the answer is no. (Location 9954)
  • there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone other than oneself has a mind. (Location 9964)
  • since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero. (Location 9972)
  • The Turing Test is simply a replication of a mundane test every gay man had to undergo in 1950s Britain: can you pass for a straight man? (Location 9983)
  • Turing knew from personal experience that it didn’t matter who you really were – it mattered only what others thought about you. (Location 9984)
  • When humans try to determine whether an entity is conscious, what we usually look for is not mathematical aptitude or good memory, but rather the ability to create emotional relationships with us. (Location 9989)
  • the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. (Location 10010)
  • in May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legally recognise animals as sentient beings, (Location 10014)
  • Psychiatric drugs are aimed to induce changes not just in human behaviour, but above all in human feeling. (Location 10040)
  • neither intelligence nor toolmaking by themselves can account for the Sapiens conquest of the world. (Location 10147)
  • Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of co-operating flexibly in large numbers. (Location 10163)
  • If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example, guillotine the queen and establish a republic. (Location 10166)
  • Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively. (Location 10177)
  • If you want to launch a revolution, don’t ask yourself, ‘How many people support my ideas?’ Instead, ask yourself, ‘How many of my supporters are capable of effective collaboration?’ (Location 10183)
  • Why are humans alone able to construct such large and sophisticated social systems? (Location 10269)
  • Research indicates that Sapiens just can’t have intimate relations (whether hostile or amorous) with more than 150 individuals. (Location 10281)
  • Whatever enables humans to organise mass-cooperation networks, it isn’t intimate relations. (Location 10283)
  • Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions. (Location 10299)
  • People are egalitarian by nature, and unequal societies can never function well due to resentment and dissatisfaction. (Location 10317)
  • large numbers of people behave in a fundamentally different way than do small numbers. (Location 10334)
  • All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders. (Location 10343)
  • easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organise mass-cooperation networks. (Location 10347)
  • Sapiens often use visual marks such as a turban, a beard or a business suit to signal ‘you can trust me, I believe in the same story as you’. (Location 10348)
  • People find it difficult to understand the idea of ‘imagined orders’ because they assume that there are only two types of realities: objective realities and subjective realities. In objective reality, things exist independently of our beliefs and feelings. Gravity, for example, (Location 10351)
  • Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans. (Location 10363)
  • money is an intersubjective reality. (Location 10383)
  • Yet we don’t want to accept that our God, our nation or our values are mere fictions, because these are the things that give meaning to our lives. (Location 10384)
  • We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, (Location 10385)
  • Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. (Location 10387)
  • People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. (Location 10391)
  • People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, (Location 10451)
  • Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. (Location 10455)
  • Just as in present-day San Francisco John is employed by Google while Mary works for Microsoft, so in ancient Uruk one person was employed by the great god Enki while his neighbour worked for the goddess Inanna. (Location 10528)
  • the Sumerian gods remind us of present-day company brands, so the living-god pharaoh can be compared to modern personal brands such as Elvis Presley, Madonna or Justin Bieber. (Location 10558)
  • In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. (Location 10580)
  • Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust. (Location 10651)
  • over time, our documents are bound to become ever more precise.’ (Location 10689)
  • As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. (Location 10690)
  • the borders of many African countries disregard river lines, mountain ranges and trade routes, split historical and economic zones unnecessarily, and ignore local ethnic and religious identities. (Location 10692)
  • They were drawn by European bureaucrats who never set foot in Africa. (Location 10696)
  • reality kowtowing to written records. (Location 10710)
  • Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough schools soon began focusing on achieving high marks. (Location 10726)
  • you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. (Location 10738)
  • The system has sufficient authority to influence (Location 10754)
  • self-absorption characterises all humans in childhood. Children of all religions and cultures think they are the centre of the world, (Location 10778)
  • A school principal would say: ‘Our system works. During the last five years, exam results have risen by 7.3 per cent.’ Yet is that the best way to judge a school? (Location 10807)
  • It is far from clear that peasants in ancient Egypt enjoyed more love or better social relations than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, and in terms of nutrition, health and child mortality it seems that life was actually worse. (Location 10811)
  • Even if he makes it home alive, he will be completely worn out and ruined. (Location 10818)
  • when we come to evaluate human cooperation networks, it all depends on the yardsticks and viewpoint we adopt. (Location 10835)
  • Are we judging pharaonic Egypt in terms of production, nutrition or perhaps social harmony? (Location 10836)
  • Human cooperative networks usually judge themselves by yardsticks of their own invention and, not surprisingly, they often give themselves high marks. (Location 10839)
  • When examining the history of any human network, it is therefore advisable to stop from time to time and look at things from the perspective of some real entity. How do you know if an entity is real? Very simple – just ask yourself, ‘Can it suffer?’ (Location 10843)
  • Fiction isn’t bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. (Location 10851)
  • We can’t play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. (Location 10852)
  • Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in their service? (Location 10855)
  • In the twenty-first century we will create more powerful fictions and more totalitarian religions than in any previous era. (Location 10857)
  • Being able to distinguish fiction from reality and religion from science will therefore become more difficult but more vital than ever before. (Location 10859)
  • scientific theories are not just a way to bind people together. (Location 10874)
  • Modern science certainly changed the rules of the game, yet it did not simply replace myths with facts. (Location 10883)
  • Instead of destroying the intersubjective reality, science will enable it to control the objective and subjective realities (Location 10884)
  • ‘religion’, (Location 10935)
  • it means only that they believe in some system of moral laws that wasn’t invented by humans, but that humans must nevertheless obey. (Location 10937)
  • Followers of every religion are convinced that theirs alone is true. (Location 10951)
  • religion is a tool for preserving social order (Location 10953)
  • religions seek to cement the worldly order whereas spirituality seeks to escape it. (Location 10980)
  • In Zen Buddhism it is said that ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.’ Which means that if while walking on the spiritual path you encounter the rigid ideas and fixed laws of institutionalised Buddhism, you must free yourself from them too. (Location 10982)
  • Religions typically strive to rein in the spiritual quests of their followers, (Location 10984)
  • Protestant revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church was ignited not by hedonistic atheists but rather by a devout and ascetic monk, Martin Luther. (Location 10986)
  • selling of indulgences. (Location 11003)
  • Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who fume against stultified religious structures often end up forging new structures in their place. (Location 11006)
  • Scientists study how the world functions, but there is no scientific method for determining how humans ought to behave. (Location 11019)
  • When religions advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise their beautiful values. But God often hides in the fine print of factual statements. (Location 11049)
  • we find that religious stories almost always include three parts: (Location 11055)
  • 1.Ethical judgements, (Location 11056)
  • 2.Factual statements, (Location 11058)
  • 3.A conflation of the ethical judgements with the factual statements, resulting in practical guidelines (Location 11059)
  • Science has no ability to refute or corroborate the ethical judgements religions make. But scientists do have a lot to say about religious factual statements. (Location 11062)
  • in medieval Europe had great respect for ancient imperial decrees, and believed that the older the document, the more authority it carried. (Location 11071)
  • the Bible is a collection of numerous different texts composed by different human authors centuries after the events they purport to describe, (Location 11125)
  • these texts were not assembled into a single holy book until long after biblical times. (Location 11126)
  • biblical Judaism was not a scripture-based religion at all. (Location 11131)
  • Due partly to Persian and Greek influences, Jewish scholars who wrote and interpreted texts gained increasing prominence. These scholars eventually came to be known as rabbis, (Location 11136)
  • it is not always easy to separate ethical judgements from factual statements. (Location 11150)
  • Merely believing in this factual statement becomes a virtue, whereas doubting it becomes a dreadful sin. (Location 11152)
  • therefore all ethical debates are factual arguments concerning the most efficient way to maximise happiness. (Location 11162)
  • we have no scientific definition or measurement of happiness. (Location 11168)
  • units of happiness (Location 11172)
  • so, early modern Europe is the last place you would have expected a scientific revolution. (Location 11182)
  • In London they killed Catholics, in Paris they killed Protestants, the Jews had long been driven out, and nobody in his right mind would dream of letting any Muslims in. And yet, the Scientific Revolution began in London and Paris rather than in Cairo and Istanbul. (Location 11190)
  • Religion is interested above all in order. (Location 11196)
  • Science is interested above all in power. (Location 11196)
  • The uncompromising quest for truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the confines of either religious or scientific establishments. (Location 11198)
  • Modernity is a deal. (Location 11208)
  • The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. (Location 11213)
  • The cosmic plan gave meaning to human life, but also restricted human power. (Location 11215)
  • Humans were much like actors on a stage. (Location 11216)
  • Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. (Location 11227)
  • Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. (Location 11227)
  • To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. (Location 11228)
  • Things just happen, (Location 11232)
  • The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. (Location 11232)
  • Wars are not a necessary evil (Location 11236)
  • At the same time, it is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture. (Location 11244)
  • Funds were scarce because there was little credit in those days; there was little credit because people had no belief in growth; and people didn’t believe in growth because the economy was stagnant. Stagnation thereby perpetuated itself. (Location 11259)
  • science stood still. (Location 11270)
  • The cycle was eventually broken in the modern age thanks to people’s growing trust in the future, and the resulting miracle of credit. (Location 11271)
  • For thousands of years people had little faith in future growth not because they were stupid, but because it contradicts our gut feelings, our evolutionary heritage and the way the world works. (Location 11281)
  • not all survival struggles are zero-sum games. (Location 11289)
  • growth is vital for three principal reasons. (Location 11309)
  • Modernity has turned ‘more stuff’ into a panacea (Location 11317)
  • the belief in economic growth a religion, because it now purports to solve many, if not most, of our ethical dilemmas. Since economic growth is allegedly the source of all good things, (Location 11345)
  • economic growth demands that we loosen family bonds, (Location 11361)
  • capitalism did make an important contribution to global harmony by encouraging people to stop viewing the economy as a zero-sum game, (Location 11370)
  • capitalism deduces its number one commandment: thou shalt invest thy profits in increasing growth. (Location 11373)
  • invest the barest minimum in non-productive essentials, while maximising your productive assets. (Location 11398)
  • In order to ensure perpetual growth, we must somehow discover an inexhaustible store of resources. (Location 11403)
  • the human economy can grow because humans can discover new materials and sources of energy. (Location 11409)
  • Knowledge, in contrast, is a growing resource (Location 11413)
  • For thousands of years the scientific road to growth was blocked because people believed that holy scriptures and ancient traditions already contained all the important knowledge the world had to offer. (Location 11416)
  • discovery of ignorance. (Location 11421)
  • ever-expanding supermarkets. (Location 11427)
  • We therefore have a good chance of overcoming the problem of resource scarcity. (Location 11428)
  • The real nemesis of the modern economy is ecological collapse. (Location 11429)
  • it suggests we should run even faster. (Location 11436)
  • the United States – refused to ratify it, and has made no attempt to significantly reduce its emissions, for fear of impeding its economic growth. (Location 11467)
  • Agreement. Too many politicians and voters believe that as long as the economy grows, scientists and engineers could always save us from doomsday. (Location 11481)
  • engineers could still build a hi-tech Noah’s Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of others to drown. The belief in this hi-tech Ark is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of the entire ecosystem. (Location 11486)
  • And what about the poor? Why aren’t they protesting? If and when the deluge comes, they will bear the full cost of it. However, they will also be the first to bear the cost of economic stagnation. In a capitalist world the lives of the poor improve only when the economy grows. (Location 11490)
  • Protecting the environment is a very nice idea, but those who cannot pay their rent are worried about their overdraft far more than about melting ice caps. (Location 11492)
  • Despite all our achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do and produce even more. (Location 11498)
  • today every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place. (Location 11504)
  • modernity upholds growth as a supreme value (Location 11509)
  • On the individual level, we are inspired to constantly increase our incomes and our standards of living. Even if you are quite satisfied with your current conditions, you should strive for more. (Location 11510)
  • Yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities. (Location 11512)
  • Modernity accordingly inspired people to want more, (Location 11518)
  • capitalism should not blind us to its advantages and attainments. (Location 11526)
  • find meaning without predicating it upon some great cosmic plan, this is not considered a breach of contract. (Location 11546)
  • it is impossible to sustain order without meaning. (Location 11548)
  • find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. (Location 11548)
  • Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. (Location 11552)
  • what prevents social collapse? (Location 11556)
  • experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. (Location 11561)
  • create meaning for a meaningless world. (Location 11563)
  • any meaning that depends on human opinion is necessarily fragile and ephemeral. (Location 11573)
  • Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. (Location 11623)
  • Today humanists believe that the only source for artistic creation and aesthetic value is human feelings. (Location 11685)
  • ‘What exactly is art? (Location 11696)
  • In a free market the customer is always right. (Location 11711)
  • Nobody has the authority to tell customers that they are wrong, (Location 11713)
  • Customers need to decide what is most important to them – price, or something else.’ (Location 11722)
  • modern humanist education believes in teaching students to think for themselves. (Location 11753)
  • authority lies within ourselves, (Location 11755)
  • Today, in contrast, it is very easy not to believe in God, because I pay no price for my unbelief. (Location 11767)
  • Like every other source of authority, feelings have their shortcomings. (Location 11774)
  • Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, (Location 11825)
  • The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. (Location 11826)
  • heroism (Location 11859)
  • For thousands of years, when people looked at war, they saw gods, emperors, generals and great heroes. But over the last two centuries, the kings and generals have been increasingly pushed to the side, and the limelight has shifted onto the common soldier and his experiences. (Location 11911)
  • Artists such as Dix and Lea thus helped overturn the traditional hierarchy of war. (Location 11945)
  • War might be hell, but it was also the gateway to heaven. (Location 11946)
  • All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways. (Location 11954)
  • give as much freedom as possible to every individual to experience the world, (Location 11958)
  • Liberal ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. (Location 11963)
  • But there are many individuals in the world, and they often feel different things and have contradictory desires. If all authority and meaning flow from individual experiences, how do you settle contradictions between different such experiences? (Location 11972)
  • Democratic elections usually work only within populations that have some prior common bond, such as shared religious beliefs or national myths. They are a method to settle disagreements among people who already agree on the basics. (Location 11993)
  • Liberal nationalists (Location 12002)
  • Of course the alliance of liberalism with nationalism hardly solved all conundrums, while at the same time it created a host of new ones. How do you compare the value of communal experiences with that of individual experiences? (Location 12007)
  • Whereas liberalism turns my gaze inwards, emphasising my uniqueness and the uniqueness of my nation, socialism demands that I stop obsessing about me and my feelings and instead focus on what others are feeling and how my actions influence their experiences. (Location 12018)
  • According to socialism, (Location 12036)
  • Only by understanding the prevailing socio-economic system and taking into account the experiences of all other people can I truly understand what I feel, and only by common action can we change the system. (Location 12038)
  • The experience of an Einstein or a Beethoven is far more valuable than that of a drunken good-for-nothing, and it is ludicrous to treat them as if they have equal merit. (Location 12056)
  • liberalism merged with the milder versions of nationalism (Location 12108)
  • Hitler and the Nazis represent only one extreme version of evolutionary humanism. (Location 12111)
  • which music is best: Beethoven’s Fifth, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ or the pygmy initiation song? (Location 12169)
  • Under liberalism, went a famous quip, everyone is free to starve. (Location 12198)
  • liberalism separates them from their fellow class members and prevents them from uniting against the system that oppresses them. Liberalism thereby perpetuates inequality, condemning the masses to poverty and the elite to alienation. (Location 12199)
  • In 1975 the liberal camp suffered its most humiliating defeat of all: the Vietnam War ended with the North Vietnamese David overcoming the American Goliath. (Location 12235)
  • Liberal democracy was saved only by nuclear weapons. (Location 12247)
  • But in the mid-1970s it seemed that nuclear weapons notwithstanding, the future belonged to socialism. (Location 12251)
  • The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag. (Location 12257)
  • Back in the spring of 1914 humankind was speeding on the liberal highway when it took a wrong turn and entered a cul-de-sac. It then required eight decades and three horrendous global wars to find its way back to the highway. Of course, these decades were not a total waste; they did give us antibiotics, nuclear energy and computers, as well as feminism, de-colonialism and free sex. (Location 12270)
  • History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses. (Location 12318)
  • between the 1820s and 1880s Egypt (backed by Britain) conquered Sudan and tried to modernise the country and incorporate it into the new international trade network. This destabilised traditional Sudanese society, creating widespread resentment and fostering revolts. (Location 12328)
  • Marx and Lenin devoted more attention to understanding the technological and economic realities of their time than to scrutinising ancient texts and prophetic dreams. (Location 12353)
  • The socialists created a brave new religion for a brave new world. They promised salvation through technology and economics, thus establishing the first techno-religion in history, (Location 12365)
  • The main products of the twenty-first century will be bodies, brains and minds, (Location 12379)
  • it will be bigger than the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. (Location 12381)
  • Christianity was responsible for important economic and technological innovations. (Location 12394)
  • The Catholic Church established medieval Europe’s most sophisticated administrative system, and pioneered the use of archives, catalogues, timetables and other techniques of data processing. (Location 12395)
  • The Vatican was the closest thing twelfth-century Europe had to Silicon Valley. The Church established Europe’s first economic corporations (Location 12396)
  • reflects the traditional ideals of liberal humanism. (Location 12434)
  • In 2016 the world is dominated by the liberal package of individualism, human rights, democracy and the free market. (Location 12454)
  • The sacred word ‘freedom’ turns out to be, just like ‘soul’, a hollow term empty of any discernible meaning. Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we humans have invented. (Location 12487)
  • the idea of free will. For if humans are free, how could natural selection have shaped them? (Location 12490)
  • the question is whether they can choose their desires in the first place. (Location 12498)
  • I feel a particular wish welling up within me because this is the feeling created by the biochemical processes in my brain. These processes might be deterministic or random, but not free. (Location 12501)
  • Neural events in the brain indicating the person’s decision begin from a few hundred milliseconds to a few seconds before the person is aware of this choice. (Location 12511)
  • I don’t choose my desires. I only feel them, and act accordingly. (Location 12517)
  • In reality, there is only a stream of consciousness, and desires arise and pass away within this stream, (Location 12527)
  • If I am indeed the master of my thoughts and decisions, can I decide not to think about anything at all for the next sixty seconds?’ (Location 12531)
  • After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons or by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? (Location 12548)
  • Though the results are far from conclusive, and though the hype around transcranial stimulators currently runs far ahead of actual achievements, several studies have indicated that the method may indeed enhance the cognitive abilities (Location 12568)
  • over the last few decades the life sciences have reached the conclusion that this liberal story is pure mythology. (Location 12616)
  • The single authentic self is as real as the eternal soul, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. (Location 12617)
  • the seeming unity that I take for granted dissolves into a cacophony of conflicting voices, (Location 12618)
  • the two hemispheres were not in touch with one another, it sometimes happened that his right hand would reach out to open a door, and then his left hand would intervene and try to slam the door shut. (Location 12643)
  • The left brain, which controls speech, had no data about the snow scene, and therefore did not really know why the left hand pointed to the shovel. (Location 12651)
  • there is no single self making any of these decisions. Rather, they result from a tug of war between different and often conflicting inner entities. (Location 12668)
  • the experiencing self and the narrating self. (Location 12678)
  • the experiencing self remembers nothing. (Location 12683)
  • the ‘peak-end rule’ – it remembers only the peak moment and the end moment, and assesses the whole experience according to their average. (Location 12694)
  • The narrating self doesn’t aggregate experiences – it averages them. (Location 12709)
  • the experiencing self and the narrating self are not completely separate entities but are closely intertwined. (Location 12742)
  • When we say ‘I’, we mean the story in our head, not the onrushing stream of experiences we undergo. (Location 12751)
  • Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused. (Location 12770)
  • In politics this is known as the ‘Our Boys Didn’t Die in Vain’ syndrome. (Location 12771)
  • the fantasy gives meaning to the suffering. (Location 12798)
  • A poor peasant sacrificing a valuable bull to Jupiter will become convinced that Jupiter really exists, otherwise how can he excuse his stupidity? (Location 12802)
  • Our narrating self would much prefer to continue suffering in the future, just so it won’t have to admit that our past suffering was devoid of all meaning. (Location 12815)
  • all just stories. (Location 12829)
  • granting political rights to people increases their motivation (Location 12883)
  • the ability to hold a hammer or press a button is becoming less valuable than before, which endangers the critical alliance between liberalism and capitalism. (Location 12922)
  • In the twenty-first century liberalism will have a much harder time selling itself. As the masses lose their economic importance, will the moral argument alone be enough to protect human rights and liberties? (Location 12927)
  • Will elites and governments go on valuing every human being even when it pays no economic dividends? (Location 12928)
  • It remains unclear, however, why on earth I would need to know thermodynamics or geometry in a world containing such intelligent computer programs. (Location 12996)
  • However, just as armies no longer need millions of GIs, so future healthcare services will not need millions of GPs. (Location 13036)
  • The most important question in twenty-first-century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous people. (Location 13066)
  • as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, (Location 13075)
  • Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future. (Location 13076)
  • True, at present there are numerous things that organic algorithms do better than non-organic ones, and experts have repeatedly declared that something will ‘for ever’ remain beyond the reach of non-organic algorithms. But it turns out that ‘for ever’ often means no more than a decade or two. (Location 13091)
  • humans are professionalising. Ancient hunter-gatherers mastered a very wide variety of skills in order to survive, which is why it would be immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer. (Location 13132)
  • humans have been specialising. (Location 13136)
  • As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. (Location 13149)
  • the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives, and to reinvent themselves repeatedly. (Location 13216)
  • The second threat facing liberalism is that, while the system might still need humans in the future, it will not need individuals. (Location 13237)
  • Organisms are algorithms, (Location 13254)
  • humans are not individuals – they are ‘dividuals’. That is, humans are an assemblage of many different algorithms lacking a single inner voice or a single self. (Location 13254)
  • The algorithms constituting a human are not free. They are shaped by genes and environmental pressures, and take decisions either deterministically or randomly – but not freely. (Location 13256)
  • an external algorithm could theoretically know me much better than I can ever know myself. (Location 13259)
  • During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the belief in individualism nevertheless made good practical sense, because there were no external algorithms that could actually monitor me effectively. (Location 13263)
  • the belief in individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms. (Location 13270)
  • In hospitals we are no longer individuals. (Location 13276)
  • The Quantified Self movement argues that the self is nothing but mathematical patterns. These patterns are so complex that the human mind has no chance of understanding them. (Location 13295)
  • sacrifice privacy and autonomy for health. (Location 13352)
  • allowing Google to read our emails and follow our activities would make it possible for Google to alert us to brewing epidemics before they are noticed by traditional health services. (Location 13354)
  • US biotech companies are increasingly worried that strict privacy laws in the USA combined with Chinese disregard for individual privacy may hand China the genetic market on a plate. (Location 13387)
  • Unlike the narrating self that controls us today, Google will not make decisions on the basis of cooked-up stories, and will not be misled by cognitive short cuts and the peak-end rule. (Location 13394)
  • Humans will no longer be autonomous entities directed by the stories their narrating self invents. Instead, they will be integral parts of a huge global network. (Location 13414)
  • most people don’t really know themselves well. (Location 13441)
  • Amazingly, the algorithm needed a set of only ten Likes in order to outperform the predictions of work colleagues. It needed seventy Likes to outperform friends, 150 Likes to outperform family members and 300 Likes to outperform spouses. In other words, if you happen to have clicked 300 Likes on your Facebook account, the Facebook algorithm can predict your opinions and desires better than your husband or wife! (Location 13447)
  • On a more sinister note, the same study implies that in future US presidential elections Facebook could know not only the political opinions of tens of millions of Americans, but also who among them are the critical swing voters, and how these voters might be swung. (Location 13455)
  • How could Facebook obtain this priceless political data? We provide it for free. (Location 13458)
  • Once Cortanas evolve from oracles to agents, they might start speaking directly with one another on their masters’ behalf. (Location 13488)
  • As Cortanas gain authority, they may begin manipulating each other to further the interests of their masters, so that success in the job market or the marriage market may increasingly depend on the quality of your Cortana. (Location 13492)
  • Rich people owning the most up-to-date Cortana will have a decisive advantage over poor people with their older versions. (Location 13494)
    • Note: unless there are regulations.
  • The liberal solution for social inequality is to give equal value to different human experiences, instead of trying to create the same experiences for everyone. (Location 13560)
  • will this solution still work once rich and poor are separated not merely by wealth, but also by real biological gaps? (Location 13561)
  • Unlike in the twentieth century, when the elite had a stake in fixing the problems of the poor because they were militarily and economically vital, in the twenty-first century the most efficient (albeit ruthless) strategy might be to let go of the useless third-class carriages, and dash forward with the first class only. (Location 13608)
  • These new techno-religions can be divided into two main types: techno-humanism and data religion. (Location 13632)
  • Data religion argues that humans have completed their cosmic task and should now pass the torch on to entirely new kinds of entities. (Location 13632)
  • We are akin to the inhabitants of a small isolated island who have just invented the first boat, and are about to set sail without a map or even a destination. (Location 13656)
  • today we have a detailed albeit imperfect map of the sub-normative mental spectrum: the zone of human existence characterized by less-than-normal capacities to feel, think or communicate. Simultaneously, scientists have studied the mental states of people considered to be healthy and normative. However, most scientific research about the human mind and the human experience has been conducted on people from Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies, who do not constitute a representative sample of humanity. (Location 13665)
  • in papers published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – arguably the most important journal in the subfield of social psychology – 96 per cent of the sampled individuals were WEIRD, and 68 per cent were Americans. Moreover, 67 per cent of American subjects and 80 per cent of non-American subjects were psychology students! (Location 13673)
  • However, it may well be that Boston slum-dwellers and Kalahari hunter-gatherers experience mental states that we will never discover by forcing Harvard psychology students to answer long questionnaires or stick their heads into fMRI scanners. (Location 13687)
  • mental spectrum. (Location 13690)
  • One of the most important articles about the philosophy of mind is titled ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’3 In this 1974 paper, the philosopher Thomas Nagel points out that a Sapiens mind cannot fathom the subjective world of a bat. We can write all the algorithms we want about the bat body, bat echolocation systems and bat neurons, but that won’t tell us how it feels to be a bat. (Location 13719)
  • Sapiens don’t rule the world because they have deeper emotions or more complex musical experiences than other animals. So we may be inferior to whales, bats, tigers and pelicans at least in some emotional and experiential domains. (Location 13741)
  • Just as Columbus and Magellan sailed beyond the horizon to explore new islands and unknown continents, so we may one day embark for the antipodes of the mind. (Location 13746)
    • Note: wow. I hadn’t thought of that
  • medicine is increasingly focused on upgrading the healthy rather than healing the sick. (Location 13756)
  • Sapiens originally evolved as members of small intimate communities, and their mental faculties were not adapted to living as cogs within a giant machine. (Location 13767)
  • Modern humanity is sick with FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – and though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to really pay attention to whatever we choose.6 (Location 13786)
  • A really good friend would have patience, and not be so quick to find a solution. (Location 13805)
  • The system may push us in that direction, because it usually rewards us for the decisions we make rather than for our doubts. (Location 13810)
  • We may successfully upgrade our bodies and our brains, while losing our minds in the process. (Location 13813)
  • As any farmer knows, it’s usually the brightest goat in the herd that stirs up the most trouble, which is why the Agricultural Revolution involved downgrading animals’ mental abilities. (Location 13815)
  • The second cognitive revolution, dreamed up by techno-humanists, might do the same to us, producing human cogs who communicate and process data far more effectively than ever before, but who can barely pay attention, dream or doubt. (Location 13817)
  • Technological progress has a very different agenda. It doesn’t want to listen to our inner voices. It wants to control them. (Location 13831)
  • According to modern psychiatry, many ‘inner voices’ and ‘authentic wishes’ are nothing more than the product of biochemical imbalances and neurological diseases. (Location 13837)
  • Once we can design and redesign our will, we could no longer see it as the ultimate source of all meaning and authority. (Location 13854)
  • According to humanism, only human desires imbue the world with meaning. Yet if we could choose our desires, on what basis could we possibly make such choices? (Location 13856)
  • When our desires make us uncomfortable, technology promises to bail us out. (Location 13859)
  • We can never deal with such technologies as long as we believe that the human will and the human experience are the supreme source of authority and meaning. (Location 13869)
  • Dataists believe that humans can no longer cope with the immense flows of data, hence they cannot distil data into information, let alone into knowledge or wisdom. (Location 13892)
  • giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods for processing data. (Location 13898)
  • They are, in essence, competing data-processing systems. Capitalism uses distributed processing, whereas communism relies on centralised processing. (Location 13905)
  • the stock exchange is the fastest and most efficient data-processing system humankind has so far created. (Location 13916)
  • In order for the system to run smoothly, as much information as possible needs to flow as freely as possible. (Location 13920)
  • Heavy taxation means that a large part of all available capital accumulates in one place – the state coffers – and consequently more and more decisions have to be made by a single processor, namely the government. This creates an overly centralised data-processing system. (Location 13924)
  • in which all data is processed and all decisions are made by a single central processor, is called communism. In a communist economy people allegedly work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. In other words, the government takes 100 per cent of your profits, decides what you need and then supplies these needs. (Location 13930)
  • Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, (Location 13953)
  • The central committee of the Communist Party just could not deal with the rapidly changing world (Location 13955)
  • democracies and dictatorships are in essence competing mechanisms for gathering and analysing information. Dictatorships use centralised processing methods, whereas democracies prefer distributed processing. (Location 13973)
  • This implies that as data-processing conditions change again in the twenty-first century, democracy might decline and even disappear. (Location 13978)
  • because they can’t process data efficiently enough. (Location 13980)
  • Did you ever vote about the shape of cyberspace? (Location 13987)
  • The governmental tortoise cannot keep up with the technological hare. (Location 13992)
  • Present-day democratic structures just cannot collect and process the relevant data fast enough, (Location 13999)
    • Note: exactly. I honestly think it needs to be some sort of decentralization but there have to be incentives for agents in the system to want to maximize for themselves that betters the entire system.
  • In the USA voters imagine that ‘the establishment’ monopolizes all the power, so they support anti-establishment candidates (Location 14003)
  • The sad truth is that nobody knows where all the power has gone. (Location 14005)
  • Many neo-liberal economists and political scientists argue that it is best to leave all the important decisions in the hands of the free market. (Location 14025)
  • It is dangerous to trust our future to market forces, because these forces do what’s good for the market rather than what’s good for humankind or for the world. (Location 14031)
  • The hand of the market is blind as well as invisible, and left to its own devices it may fail to do anything at all about the threat of global warming or the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence. (Location 14032)
  • power vacuums seldom last long. If in the twenty-first century traditional political structures can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions, then new and more efficient structures will evolve to take their place. (Location 14041)
  • Increasing the number of processors. (Location 14049)
  • Increasing the variety of processors. (Location 14051)
  • Using several kinds of processors in a single system may therefore increase its dynamism and creativity. (Location 14052)
  • Increasing the number of connections between processors. (Location 14055)
  • Increasing the freedom of movement along existing connections. (Location 14059)
  • These four methods often contradict one another. The greater the number and variety of processors, the harder it is to freely connect them. (Location 14061)
  • Sapiens used their advantage in data processing to overrun the entire world. (Location 14067)
    • Note: Information Theory
  • invention of writing and money (Location 14073)
    • Note: Generalized a bit, these are mechanisms for “knowledge and wealth transfer”
  • close proximity, (Location 14075)
  • dense local networks (Location 14075)
  • incentives and opportunities (Location 14076)
  • forging a single network (Location 14083)
  • Humans are merely tools (Location 14103)
  • Its second commandment is to link everything to the system, (Location 14118)
  • Freedom of information, in contrast, is not given to humans. It is given to information. (Location 14132)
  • Why did the USA grow faster than the USSR? Because information flowed more freely in the USA. (Location 14152)
  • People just want to be part of the data flow, even if that means giving up their privacy, their autonomy and their individuality. (Location 14170)
  • as I process more data more efficiently (Location 14178)
  • Dataism is neither liberal nor humanist. It should be emphasised, however, that Dataism isn’t anti-humanist. It has nothing against human experiences. It just doesn’t think they are intrinsically valuable. (Location 14210)
  • for the last 70,000 years or so, human experiences have been the most efficient data-processing algorithms in the universe, hence there was good reason to sanctify them. (Location 14218)
  • We might try to upgrade the human data-processing system, (Location 14222)
  • Dataism adopts a strictly functional approach to humanity, appraising the value of human experiences according to their function in data-processing mechanisms. (Location 14225)
  • Ideas change the world only when they change our behaviour. (Location 14252)
  • feelings are complex algorithms honed by evolution (Location 14271)
  • maybe we’ll discover that organisms aren’t algorithms after all. (Location 14307)
  • Is there perhaps something in the universe that cannot be reduced to data? (Location 14314)
  • humans might be reduced from engineers to chips, then to data, and eventually we might dissolve within the torrent of data like a clump of earth within a gushing river. (Location 14330)
  • Dataism thereby threatens to do to Homo sapiens what Homo sapiens has done to all other animals. (Location 14331)
  • humans created a global network and evaluated everything according to its function within that network. (Location 14332)
  • technology is not deterministic. (Location 14339)
  • this book should be understood as possibilities rather than prophecies. (Location 14344)
  • Instead of narrowing our horizons by forecasting a single definitive scenario, the book aims to broaden our horizons and make us aware of a much wider spectrum of options. (Location 14348)
  • broadening our horizons can backfire by making us more confused and inactive than before. (Location 14351)
  • Humans are relinquishing authority to the free market, to crowd wisdom and to external algorithms partly because we cannot deal with the deluge of data. (Location 14353)
  • In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. (Location 14354)
  • In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore. (Location 14356)