21LessonsForThe21stCentury

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

  • Fantastic! One of my favorite authors
  • In a world deluged by information, clarity is power.
  • Philosophy, religion and science all running out of time. People have debated the meaning of life for 1000s of years. We cannot continue this debate indefinitely. The looming ecological crises, the threat of WMDs, and the rise of technological revolution will not allow it. AI and biotech are giving humanity the power to reshape and re-engineer life. Very soon somebody will have to decide how to use this power based on some implicit or explicit story about the meaning of life. Religion AI WhoWeAre
  • Humans think in stories, not facts, numbers or equations. The simpler the better. WhoWeAre AI
  • In 1938 human offered 3 global stories to choose from: In 1968 just 2; in 1998 a single story, now we are down to 0 in 2018. History
  • Much harder to struggle against irrelevance than exploitation.
  • People who reject the liberal story dont offer any coherent alternative. Politics
  • Liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technical disruption. Politics
  • Economic growth will not save the ecosystem. Just the opposite, in fact, for economic growth is the cause of the ecological crises. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption for it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive tech.
  • Biochemistry: algorithms of the brain are far from perfect. They rely on heuristics, shortcuts and outdated circuits adapted from the African savanna rather than from the urban jungle. WhoWeAre
  • Replacing all human drivers by computers is expected to reduce deaths and injuries by 90%.
  • The US army needs 30 people to operate every "unmanned" drone over Syria. AI
  • Since alpha0 learned nothing from humans, many of its winning moves and strategies seems unconventional to the human eye. They are considered creative, if not downright genius. AI
  • alpha0 went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours without human help. AI
  • If people play an exceptionally creative move in human-only chess tournaments, the judges will often suspect that it can possible be a human move. In chess, creativity is already considered to be the hallmark of computers rather than humans!!! AI Paradox
  • Human kind had to develop completely new models - liberal democracy, communist dictatorship, and fascist regimes - and it took more than a century of terrible wars and revolutions to experiment with these models, separate the wheat from the chaff, and implement the best solutions. Child labor in Dickensian coal mines, the First World War, the Great Ukrainian Famine, constituted just a small part of the tuition fees that humankind had to pay for the Industrial Revolution. History
  • This time around, the failed models that might result in nuclear wars, genetically engineered monstrosities, and a complete breakdown of the biosphere. We have to do better than we did in confronting the Industrial Revolution. History NowIsDifferent
  • Referendums and elections are always about human feelings not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, where would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights - or perhaps any voting rights at all. Politics AI
  • Once somebody gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show. Politics AI NowIsDifferent
  • Feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feels are therefore not the opposite of rationality, they embody evolutionary rationality. Mental Models Rationality
  • We dont feel the millions of neurons in the brain computing probabilities of survival and reproduction, so we erroneously believe that our feelings are the result of some mysterious "free will". FreeWill Consciousness
  • For all practical purposes, it was reasonable to argue that I have free will, which nobody outside of me could see. I could enjoy the illusion that I controlled my secret inner arena, while outsiders could never really understand what was happening inside me and how I make decisions. FreeWill AI
  • We are now at the confluence of two immense revolutions. Biologists are deciphering the mysteries of the human body, and in particular of the brain and human feelings. At the same time computer scientists are giving us unprecedented data-processing power. When the biotech revolution merges with the infotech revolution, it will produce Big Data algorithms that can monitor and understand my feelings much better than I can. NowIsDifferent AI History
  • "Trolley problems" up till now these arguments have had embarrassingly little impact on actual behavior. Philosophy
  • Throughout history the limitations of actually enforcing laws provided a welcome check on the biases, mistakes and excesses of lawmakers. Politics
  • We have bred docile cows that produce enormous amounts of milk but are otherwise far inferior to their wild ancestors. They are less agile, less curious, less resourceful. We are now creating tame humans that produce enormous amounts of data and function as very efficient chips in a huge data-processing mechanism, but these data-cows hardly maximize the human potential. WhoWeAre Religion
  • Improvements in biotechnology might make it possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. NowIsDifferent
  • At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset - their personal data - in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. Its a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly old entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets. WhoWeAre
  • How do you regulate the ownership of data ? This may well be the most important political question of our era. Questions
  • Pundits often blame feelings of alienation on the decline of religious and national bonds, but losing touch with your body is probably much more important. Humans have lived for millions of years with out churches and without nation states. Politics WhoWeAre
  • We know of no upper limit to the size of a group with which people can identify. Most present day nations include more people than the entire world population 10k years ago.
  • Nationalism has two parts to it, one easy, the other very difficult. The easy part is to prefer people like-us over foreigners. The hard part of nationalism is to sometimes prefer strangers over friends and relatives. Tax evasion and nepotism come naturally to us, but nationalism says they are a "corruption". The ability to feel loyal to this nebulous mass is a miracle of modern history. Politics
  • Democracy cannot really function without nationalism. Politics
  • Total annihilation has a way of sharpening peoples minds, and thanks in no small measure to this existential threat, a global community gradually developed over and above the various nations, because only such a community could restrain the nuclear demon. Politics [BROKEN LINK: Nukes]
  • Humankind today faces three common challenges that make a mockery of all national borders, and that can only be solved through global cooperation: the nuclear challenge, the ecological challenge, and the technological challenge. [BROKEN LINK: Nukes]
  • The nuclear challenge: In 2016, fewer people died from human violence than from obesity, car accidents or suicide. This may well have been the greatest political and moral achievement of our times. NowIsDifferent
  • The ecological challenge: Humans have been around for 100s of thousands of years and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells. However agriculture, culture, cities, and complex societies have existed for no more than 10k years. During this period, earths climate has been relatively stable. Any deviation from the current standard will present human societies with enormous challenges than have never encountered before. Since there is no national answer to the problem of global warming, some nationalist politicians prefer to believe that the problem does not exist. Politics
  • The technological challenge: There again is no national answer. After 4 billion years of organic life evolving by natural selection, science is ushering in the era of inorganic life shaped by intelligent design. We still share most of our bodily structures, physical abilities, and mental faculties with Neanderthals and chimpanzees. Politics
  • We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science - but we are still stuck with only national politics. This mismatch prevents our political system from effectively countering our main problems. Politics
  • There is no contradiction between globalism and patriotism. Patriotism isn't about hating foreigners. Patriotism is about taking care of your compatriots. And in the 21st century, in order to take good care of your compatriots you must cooperate with foreigners. So good nationalist should be good globalists. Politics
  • Questions for political leaders: What actions will you take to … lessen the risks of nuclear war? … lessen the risks of climate change? .. regulate disruptive technologies such as AI and bio-engineering ? How do you see the world of 2040 ? What is your worst-case scenario, and what is your vision for the best-case scenario. Politics Questions
  • The victory of science over religion has been so complete that our very idea of religion has changed. We no longer associate religion with farming or medicine. This is also why the entire world has increasingly become a single civilization. When things really work, everybody adopts them. When you compare the economic policies of the Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, Hindu India, and Christian America, you just dont see that much of a difference. Religion
  • Marx argued, "religion is just a veneer". But people often identify with the decor, and peoples identities are a crucial historical force. Human power depends on mass cooperation, and mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass identities - and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not on scientific facts or even economic realities. Religion
  • The Kamikaze relied on combating state-of-the-art technology with state-of-the-art religious indoctrination. Religion
  • We are trapped between a rock and a hard place, Humankind now constitutes a single civilization, and problems such as nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption can only be solved on a global level. On the other hand, nationalism and religion still divide our human civilization into different and often hostile camps. NowIsDifferent Politics
  • Immigration: Some cultures might be better than others.
  • Re Terrorism: a small coin in an empty jar makes a lot of noise. The very success of modern states in preventing political violence makes them particularly vulnerable to terrorism.
  • Human stupidity is one of the most important forces is history. One potential remedy for human stupidity is a does of humility. History
  • Monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history; from an ethical perspective, the birth of bigotry. Did not improve the moral standard of humans, but did make many people far more intolerant than before. Religion
  • Does God exist ? That depends on which god you have in mind: the cosmic mystery or the worldly lawgiver? Religion
  • After giving the name "God" to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorce. Religion
  • To the best of our knowledge all of the sacred texts were written by imaginative Homo Sapiens. They are just stories invented by our ancestors in order to legitimize social norms and political structures. Religion
  • I personally never cease to wonder about the mystery of existence. But I have never understood what it has to do with the niggling laws of Judaism, Christianity, or Hinduism. These laws were certainly very helpful in establishing and maintaining the social order for thousands of years. But in that, they are not fundamentally different from the laws of secular states and institutions. Religion
  • Morality doesn't mean "following divine commands". It means reducing suffering. If you really understand how an action causes unnecessary suffering to yourself or others you will naturally abstain from it. Religion
  • Every violent act in the world begins with a violent desire in somebody's mind, which disturbs that persons peace and happiness before it disturbs the peace and happiness of anybody else. If you were completely free of anger you would feel far better than if you murdered and obnoxious enemy. For some people a strong belief in a compassionate god that commands us to turn the other cheek may help in curbing anger. That's been and enormous contribution of religious belief to the peace and harmony of the world. Buddhism Religion
  • While human rights movements have developed a very impressive arsenal of arguments and defenses against religious biases and human tyrants, the arsenal hardly protects us against consumerist excesses and technological utopias. Religion
  • Secular science has at least one big advantage over most traditional religions – namely that it is not afraid of its own shadow. Science
  • Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather we think in groups. WhoWeAre
  • Great power inevitably distorts the truth. Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is.
  • The problem is that it has become extremely complicated to grasp what we are actually doing. Most of the injustices in the contemporary world results from large-scale structural biases rather than from individual prejudices, and our hunter-gather brains did not evolve to detect structural biases. In trying to comprehend and judge the moral dilemmas of this scale people often resort to one of four methods: Downsize the issue / Focus on a touching human story that ostensibly stands for the whole conflict / weave conspiracy theories (These three methods try to deny the true complexity of the world) / The 4th and ultimate method is to create dogma, put our trust is some allegedly all-knowing theory, institution, or chief, and follow it wherever it leads us. Politics
  • Even if you start with a rejection of all religious dogma and with a firm commitment to scientific truth, sooner or later the complexity of reality becomes so vexing that you might be driven to fashion a doctrine that shouldn't be questioned. Politics
  • When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that's fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that's a religion. For better or worse, fiction is one of the most effective tools in humanities tool kit. Religion Politics
  • The Roman Senate claimed to have the power to turn people into gods. Used To Believe
  • If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe and absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth. Politics
  • Truth and power can travel together only so far. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things – for example, about the sources of your own power – that will anger allies, dishearten followers, or undermine social harmony. Politics Science
  • As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it. WhoWeAre Politics
  • One of the great fictions of all is to deny the complexity of the world and think in absolute terms: pristine purity versus satanic evil Politics Religion
  • We cannot investigate everything ourselves. But precisely because of that, we need to at least carefully investigate our favorite sources of information. If you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product. Science Politics
  • In the 21st century, science fiction might be the most important genre of all.
  • In truth, everything you will ever experience in life is within your own body and your own mind. [BROKEN LINK: 56F11I1-8IK9-1MM1-6M56-M42M638435IK]
  • Huxley's genius consists in showing that you can control people far more securely through love and pleasure than through fear and violence. WhoWeAre
  • Our old stories are crumbling, and no new story has so far emerged to replace them. NowIsDifferent
  • The last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. ShouldTeachKids
  • For thousands of years philosophers and prophets have urged people to know themselves. This advice was never more urgent than in the 21st century, now we have serious competition. We are living in the era of hacking humans. NowIsDifferent AI
  • To give meaning to my life a story needs to satisfy just two conditions: First, it must give me some role to play. Second, it must extend beyond my horizons. Religion Politics
  • "This is the body!" in Latin "Hoc est corpus!" got garbled into "Hocus pocus!" Religion
  • If by "free will" you mean the freedom to do what you desire, then yes, humans have free will. But if by "free will" you mean the freedom to choose what to desire, then no, humans have no free will. FreeWill
  • As long as you strongly identify with whatever thoughts and desires pop up in your mind, you dont need to make much effort to know yourself. You think you already know exactly who you are. But once you realize "Hey these thoughts aren't me. They are just biochemical vibrations!" then you also realize you have no idea who – or what – you are. FreeWill WhoWeAre [BROKEN LINK: 56F11I1-8IK9-1MM1-6M56-M42M638435IK] Buddhism
  • The Buddha taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying. Suffering emerges because people fail to appreciate this. Buddhism
  • According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people dont need to create any meaning. They just need to realize that there is no meaning, and therefore be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena. Buddhism
  • The big question facing humans isn't "What is the meaning of life?" but rather "how do we stop suffering?" Buddhism Religion Questions
  • The academic world provided me with powerful tools with which to deconstruct all the myths humans ever created, but it did not offer satisfying answers to the big questions of life. On the contrary, it encouraged me to focus on narrower and narrower questions. Questions
  • What is there that endures from birth to death ? The more closely you observe yourself, the more obvious it becomes that nothing endures even from one moment to the next. Questions Buddhism
  • Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Buddhism WhoWeAre
  • Meditation is any direct observation of ones own mind. Buddhism

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