HomoDeus

• Fantastic (as expected)
• What is on humanities agenda today: For thousands of years the answer to this question remained unchanged. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list. Many thinkers and prophets concluded that famine, plague and war must be an integral part of Gods cosmic plan or of our imperfect nature. Yet at the dawn of the 3rd millennium, humanity wakes up to an amazing realization. Most people rarely think about it, but in the last few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague and war. NowIsDifferent WhoWeAre
• For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating to little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. NowIsDifferent
• Humankind in the 21st century needs to ask itself an unprecedented question: what are we going to do with ourselves ? In a healthy, prosperous and harmonious world, what will demand our attention and ingenuity? NowIsDifferent Questions
• Mass famines still strike some areas from time to time, but they are exceptional, and they are almost always caused by human politics rather than natural catastrophes. There are no longer natural famines in the world; there are only political famines. Politics NowIsDifferent
• Just think what would have happen if AIDS would have erupted in 1581 rather than 1981… Nobody would have figured out what caused the epidemic, how it moved person to person, or or how it could be controlled. AIDS might have killed a much larger proportion of the human race, equaling or perhaps surpassing the Black Death. History
• There are good reasons to think that in the arms race between doctors and germs, doctors run faster. Science
• It is likely that major epidemics will continue to endanger humankind in the future only if humankind itself creates them, in the serves of some ruthless ideology. The era when humankind stood helpless before natural epidemics is probably over: But we may come to miss it (BC the man-made versions are much worse). Science
• In ancient agricultural societies human violence caused about 15% of all deaths, during the twentieth century violence caused only 5% of deaths, and in the early twenty-first century it is responsible for about 1%. NowIsDifferent
• Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. NowIsDifferent
• Previous generations thought about peace as the temporary absence of war. Today we think about peace as the implausibility of war. NowIsDifferent
• Despite all the talk of pollution, global warming and climate change, most countries have yet to make any serious economic or political sacrifices to improve the situation. When the moment comes to choose between economic growth and ecological stability, politicians, CEOs and voters almost prefer growth. Politics
• The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more. Buddhism
• Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony, and given our past record and current values, humanity's next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity. WhoWeAre Politics History Longevity
• In the 21C humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality. NowIsDifferent Longevity
• 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. Religion
• Humans always die due to some technical glitch. Longevity
• "There are three main modes of approaching death: You can accept it, deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it" Peter Theil. Longevity
• Its not easy to live knowing that you are going to die, but it is even harder to believe in immortality and be proven wrong. Longevity Religion
• In truth, so far modern medicine hasn't extended our natural lifespan by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save us from premature death. Science Longevity
• Epicurus explained that worshiping gods is a waste of time, that there is no existence after death, and that happiness is the sole purpose of life. Most people in ancient times rejected Epicurean-ism, but today it has become the default view.

Epicurean

• When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good, he warned his disciples that it is hard work to be happy. Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. Indeed, the blind pursuit of money, fame and pleasure will only make us miserable. Epicurus recommended, for example, to eat and drink in moderation and to curb ones sexual appetites. In the long run, a deep friendship will make us more content that a frenzied orgy. Happiness Epicurean Buddhism

• The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We dont become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied with reality matches our expectations. Happiness Buddhism

  Stoicism

• On the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness are determined by our biochemistry, rather than our economic, social or political situation. Happiness Buddhism
• A thousand things may make us angry, but anger is never an abstraction. It is always felt as a sensation of heat and tension in the body, which is what makes anger so infuriating. Buddhism
• People have be quarreling about education methods for thousands of years. Yet, hitherto everybody still agreed on one thing: in order to improve education, we need to change the schools. Today, for the first time in history, at least some people think it would be more efficient to change the pupils' biochemistry. NowIsDifferent ShouldTeachKids
• The state hopes to manipulate the biochemical pursuit of happiness, separating "bad" manipulations from "good" ones. The principle is clear: biochemical manipulations that strengthen political stability, social order and economic growth are allowed and even encouraged. Manipulations that threaten stability and growth are bad. Happiness
• Epicurus warned his disciples that immoderate pursuit of pleasure is likely to make them miserable rather than happy. Buddha had made an even more radical claim, teaching that the pursuit of pleasant sensations is in fact the very root of suffering. Such sensations are just ephemeral and meaningless vibrations. Even when we experience them we dont react to them with contentment: rather, we just crave more. No matter how many blissful or exciting sensations I experience, they will never satisfy me. Epicurean Happiness Buddhism
• If I identify happiness with fleeting pleasant sensations, and crave to experience more and more of them, I have no choice but to pursue them constantly. When I finally get them, they quickly disappear, and because the mere memory of past pleasures will not satisfy me, I have to start all over again. Even if I continue this pursuit for decades, it will never bring me any lasting achievement; on the contrary, the more I crave these pleasant sensations, the more stressed and dissatisfied I become. To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it. Happiness Buddhism
• The Buddhist view of happiness has a lot in common with the biochemical view. The Buddha's suggestion was to reduce our craving for pleasant sensations, and not allow them to control our lives. According to the Buddha, we can train our minds to observe how all sensations constantly arise and pass away. When the mind learns to see our sensations for what they are – ephemeral and meaningless vibrations – we loose interest in pursing them. WhoWeAre Buddhism Happiness
• Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons where enough to transform Homo Erectus – who could produce nothing more than flint knives – into Homo sapiens, who produce spaceships and computers. WhoWeAre
• We may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with any branches): attaining divinity. Religion NowIsDifferent
• Throughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the ability to design and create living beings to transform their own bodies; to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of course to escape death and live indefinitely. Humans are in the business of acquiring all these abilities, and then some. The average person now moves and communicates across distances much more easily than the Greek, Hindu, or African gods of old. WhoWeAre Religion
• It is far from clear that we should be aiming at immortality, bliss and divinity. Adopting these particular projects might be a big mistake. But history is full of big mistakes. Given our past record and current values, we are likely to reach out for bliss, divinity and immortality – even if it kills us. WhoWeAre Religion NowIsDifferent

• Some complex systems are oblivious to our predictions. The process of human development, in contrast, reacts to them. The better our forecasts, the more reactions they engender. Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data and increase our computing power, event become wilder and more unexpected. The more we know the less we can predict.

  [BROKEN LINK: 2F3G4H5I-6J7K-8L9M-0N1O-2P3Q4R5S6T7U] Complexity Chaos

• The paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behavior is useless. But knowledge that changes behavior quickly loses relevance. Centuries ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics and economics changed at a leisurely pace too. (In 1016 it was relatively easy to predict ow Europe would look in 1050, In contrast we have no idea how Europe will look in 2050).

Paradox History NowIsDifferent

• If history doesn't follow any stable rules, why study it ? Historians are asked to examine the actions of our ancestors so that we can repeat their wise decisions and avoid their mistakes. But it almost never works like that because the present is just too different from the past. Science is not just about predicting the future. Scholars in all fields often seek to broaden our horizons. The study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we dont normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.

History

• Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realize how our very thoughts and dreams took shape – and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options. History
• The idea of nurturing a lawn at the entrance to private residences and public buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats in the late Middle Ages. In the early modern age this habit struck deep roots, and became the trademark of nobility. Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, in exchange they produced nothing. Poor peasants could not afford wasting precious land or time on lawns. The neat turf at the entrance to a chateaux was accordingly a status symbol nobody could fake.

Proof Of Work

Crypto

• Predicting that humankind will try to gain immortality, bliss and divinity is much like predicting that people building a house will want a lawn in their front yard. It sounds very likely. But once you say it out loud you begin to think about alternatives.
• For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusions. Religion
• The rise of humanism also contains the seeds of its downfall. While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logically conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism's inherent flaws. If you start with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the ideal is close to realization. Religion
• Computers powerful enough to understand and overcome the mechanisms of aging and death will probably also be powerful enough to replace humans in any and all tasks. Longevity AI
• At present it may seem that immortality, bliss and divinity occupy the top slots on our agenda. But once we come nearer to achieving these goals the resulting upheavals are likely to deflect us towards entirely different destinations. The future described above is merely the future of the past – ie a future based on the ideas and hopes that dominated the world for the last 300 years. The real future – ie a future born of the new ideas and hopes of the 21C – might be completely different. Politics
• Homo Sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal. And it is doubly important to remember our origins at a time when we seek to turn ourselves into gods. The relationship between humans and animals is the best model we have for the future relations between super-humans and humans. WhoWeAre NowIsDifferent Religion
• Humanism has dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. The pharaohs ruled Egypt for 3000 years, and the popes dominated Europe for a millennium. History
• With regards to other animals humans have long since become gods. Religion WhoWeAre
• Humankind is poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to extend life form the organic realm into the inorganic. NowIsDifferent
• "Algorithm" is arguably the single most important concept in our world. Humans are algorithms that produce copies of themselves. The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions, and thoughts. WhoWeAre Buddhism
• Not long ago psychologists doubted the importance of the emotional bond between parents and children even among humans. Childcare experts warned that children who were hugged and kissed by their parents would grow up to be needy, egotistical and insecure adults. Used To Believe
• We normally think that theist religions sanctify the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans too. Hitherto Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved. The gods meanwhile where given two related roles to play. Firstly, they explained what is so special about sapiens and why humans should dominate and exploit all other organisms. Secondly, the gods had to mediate between humans and the ecosystem. Religion
• The agriculture revolution was both an economic and religious revolution. Politics History Religion
• During the agriculture 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. Humankind stood alone on an empty stage, talking to itself, negotiating with no one and acquiring enormous powers without any obligations. History Religion Science NowIsDifferent
• The stream of consciousness is the concrete reality we directly witness every moment. It is the surest thing in the world. You cannot doubt its existence. Consciousness Buddhism
• Every subjective experience has two fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire. Buddhism Consciousness
• Scientists dont know how a collection of electrical brain signals creates subjective experiences. Even more crucially, they dont know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a phenomenon. Ironically the better we map the brain, the harder it becomes to explain conscious feelings, the more redundant the mind seems. IF the entire system works by passing electrical signals from here to there, why the hell do we also need to feel fear ? Consciousness Paradox
• If we cannot explain the mind and if we dont know what function it fulfills, why not just discard it? Questions Consciousness
• Everything a human does – including reporting on allegedly conscious states – might in theory be the work of non-conscious algorithms. Consciousness
• 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 mass millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Paradox WhoWeAre Consciousness
• The Russian revolution finally erupted now when 180 million peasants rose against the Tsar, but rather when a handful of communist placed themselves at the right place at the right time. History
• A nation of 100 million people functions in a fundamentally different way to a band of a hundred individuals. WhoWeAre
• Sapiens dont behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We refuse unfair offers b/c people who meekly accepted unfair offers didn't survive the Stone Age.
• Most human kingdoms and empires where extremely unequal, yet many of them where surprisingly stable and efficient. History
• People constantly reinforce each others beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes. Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unraveling of these webs, and to realize that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants. History
• During the last 70000 years the intersubjective realities that Sapiens invented became ever more powerful, so that today they dominate the world. Will the chimpanzees, the elephants, the Amazon rain forests and the Artic glaciers survive the twenty-first century? This depends on the wishes and decisions of intersubjective entities such as the European Union and the World Bank; entities that exist only in our shared imagination. History WhoWeAre
• Historians seek to understand the development of inter-subjective entities like gods and nations, whereas biologists hardly recognize the existence of such things. To think historically means to ascribe real power to the contents of our imaginary stories. History
• North Korea and South Korea are so different from one another not because of the people or the climate. Its because the North is dominated by very different fictions. History
• During the 21C the border between history and biology is likely to blur not because we will discover biological explanations for historical events, but rather because ideological fictions will rewrite DNA stands; political and economic interests will redesign the climate; and the geography of mountains and rivers will give way to cyberspace. As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubjective reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the 21C fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection. History NowIsDifferent
• About 5000 years ago the Sumerians invented both money and writing. These Siamese twins - born to the same parents at the same time and in the sample place – broke the data processing limitations of the human brain. Writing has enabled humans to organize entire societies in an algorithmic fashion. AI History
• Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust. History
• Many of the difficulties faced by present-day Africans countries stem from the fact that their borders make little sense. When the written fantasies of European bureaucracies encountered the African reality, reality was forced to surrender. History
• If you stick only to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction in with it, few people will follow you. If you used a time machine to send modern scientists to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Science Politics
• Like a child thinking that his parents are fighting because of him, the monotheist is convinced that the Persians are fighting the Babylonians because of him. Religion
• Even though Herodotus and Thucydides understood reality much better that the authors of the bible, when the two world views collided, the Bible won by a knockout. No matter how mistaken the biblical worldview was, it provided a better basis for large-scale human cooperation. (Its ironic to have to swear to tell the truth on a book brimming with so many fictions, myths, and errors.) Politics Religion
• History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence the others. History
• Human cooperative networks usually judge themselves by yardsticks of their own invention, and not surprisingly, they often give themselves high marks. When examining 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?" History WhoWeAre
• Fiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states, or corporations, no complex human society can function. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. WhoWeAre History
• In the 21C, we will create more powerful fictions and more totalitarian religions than in any previous era. NowIsDifferent
• It is often said that god helps those who help themselves. This is a roundabout way of saying that god doesn't exist, but if our belief in Him inspires us to do something ourselves – it helps. In contrast scientific theories are not just a way to bind people together. Antibiotics, unlike God, help even those who dont help themselves. They cure infections weather you believe in them or not. Religion Science
• Instead of destroying the intersubjective reality, science will enable it to control the objective and subjective realities more completely than before. Science History
• Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values. It legitimizes human social structures by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws. Religion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change. As far as we know, all human societies believe in this. Every society tells its members that they must obey some superhuman moral law, and that breaking this law will result in catastrophe. Religion
• Just as the gap between religion and science is narrower than we commonly think, so the gap between religion and spirituality is much wider. Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey. Religion
• In theory, both science and religion are interested above all in truth, and bb/c each upholds a different truth, they are doomed to clash. In fact neither science nor religion cares that much about truth, hence they can easily compromise, co-exit and cooperate. Religion is interested above all in order. In aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in power (questionable…). Science Religion
• Modern history can be thought of as the process of formulating a deal between science and one particular religion - namely, humanism. Modern society believes in humanists dogmas, and uses science not in order to question these dogmas, but rather in order to implement them. History Science Religion
• Modernity is a surprisingly simple deal: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. If modernity has a motto it is "shit happens". We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. No paradise awaits us after our death – but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it forever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties. History WhoWeAre NowIsDifferent
• The modern deal offers us an enormous temptation, coupled with a colossal threat. Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach, but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness. NowIsDifferent
• Much of the credit for overcoming famine and plague belongs to the ardent capitalist faith in growth. Capitalism even deserves some kudos for reducing human violence and increasing tolerance and cooperation. History Politics
• The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realized how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress. Science
• 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. History Religion
• The central religious revolution of modernity was not losing faith in God; rather, it was gaining faith in humanity. Religion
• (Exodus 20:4) God commanded us to not make any images of either humans or animals. Religion
• The highest aim of human life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. The aim of life's existence is "a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom".

Meaning of Life

• "War is not what you see in movies!" warn Hollywood blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Black-hawk Down. Paradox
• Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated series of experiences. The other are socialist humanism, which encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements, and evolutionary humanism, whose most famous advocates were the Nazis. Politics Religion
• You cannot resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict by having 8 million Israeli citizens and the 350 million citizens of Arab League nations vote on it. 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. Politics
• According to evolutionary humanists, everyone arguing that all human experiences are equally valuable is either an imbecile or a coward. Politics
• As humanism conquered the world, these internal schisms widened, and eventually they flared up into the deadliest religious war in history. Form 1914-1989 a murderous war of religion raged between the three humanist sects. History
• Liberal democracy was saved only by nuclear weapons. History Politics
• More the a century after Nitchze pronounced him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead – its just taking a while to get rid of the body. Religion
• Pope Pius lead a series of reforms in Catholic dogma and established the novel principle of papal infallibility, according to which the Pope can never err in matter of faith (this seemingly medieval idea became binding Catholic dogma only in 1870, 11 years after the publication of On the origin of Species. Religion
• The main product of the 21C will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between those who know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be far bigger than the gab between Dickens Britain and Mahdi's Sudan. In the 21C, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction. NowIsDifferent
• Liberals value individual liberty so much because they believe that humans have free will. Politics FreeWill
• The contradiction between free will and contemporary science is the elephant in the laboratory, whom many prefer not to see as they peer into their microscopes and fMRI scanners. FreeWill
• Over the last century, as scientist opened up the Sapiens black box, they discovered there neither soul, no free will, nor "self" – but only genes. FreeWill Buddhism
• To the best of our scientific understanding, determinism and randomness have divided the entire cake between them, leaving not even a crumb for "freedom". Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we humans have invented. The last nail in freedoms coffin is provided by the theory of evolution. Just as evolution cannot be squared with eternal souls, neither can it swallow the idea of free will. For if humans are free, how could natural selection have shaped them? FreeWill
• Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies that we can manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation. FreeWill
• Science undermines not only the liberal belief in free will, but also the belief in individualism. For liberalism to make sense, I must have one - and only one - true self. Humans are individuals they are "dividuals". FreeWill Politics
• At the beginning of the 3rd millennium liberalism is threatened not by the philosophical idea that "there are no free individuals", but rather by concrete technologies. Politics FreeWill
• In the 21C three practical developments might make the belief that every human is a uniquely valuable individual obsolete:
  1. Humans will lose their economic and military usefulness, hence the economic and political system will stop attaching value to them.
  2. The system will continue to find value in humans collectively, but not in unique individuals
  3. The system will still find value in some unique individuals, but thesse will constitute a new elite of upgraaded superhumans rather than the mass of the population.

FreeWill Politics NowIsDifferent

• Liberalism did not become the dominant idealology because its philosophical arguments were the most valid. It succeeded b/c there was abundant political, economic and military sense in ascribing value to every human being. (Agrument agianst Anarchism) Politics
• In the 20C liberals explained that we dont have to choose between ethics and economics. Protecting human rights and liberties waas both a more imperative and theh key to economic growth. In the 21C liberalism will have a much harder time selling itself. Politics
• There might be several alternative ways leaading to super-intelligence, only some of which pass through the straits of consciousness. AI Consciousness
• This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness ? As long as they went hand in hand, debating thier relative value was just an amusing pastime for philosophers. But in the 21C this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. For armies and corporations, the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional. AI Consciousness
• We should remind ourselves of the fate of horses during the Industrial Revolution. An ordinary farm horse can small, love, recognize faces, jump over fences and do a thousand other things far better than a Model T or a Lamborghini. But cars nevertheless replaced horses b/c they were superior in the handful of tasks that the system really needed. Taxi drivers are likely to go the way of the horses. AI
• The most important question in the 21C economics may will be what to do with all the superfluous people. AI Politics
• We might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. This may sound impossible, but before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already owned by non-human entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed 5000 years ago, much of Sumer was owned by imaginary gods. If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms ? Politics
• Traditionally life has been divided into two parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives. NowIsDifferent
• Throughout history the rich have enjoyed many social and political advantages, but no huge biological gap ever separated them from the poor. In the future, however, we may see real gaps in physical and cognitive abilities opening between an upgraded upper class and the rest of society. NowIsDifferent
• Medicine is undergoing a tremendous conceptual revolution. 20C medicine aimed to heal the sick. 21C medicine is increasingly aiming to upgrade the healthy. NowIsDifferent Longevity
• The religions are unlikely to emerge from the caves of Afghanistan or the madrasas of the middle east. Rather, they will emerge form research laboratories. Silicon Valley is where hi-tech gurus are brewing for us brave new religions that have little to do with God, and everything to do with technology. They promise all the old prizes – happiness, peace, prosperity and even eternal life – but here on earth with the help of technology, rather than after death with the help of celestial beings. These new techno-religions can be divided into two main types: techno-humanism and data religion. AI Religion NowIsDifferent
• Data religion argues that humans have completed their cosmic task and should now pass the torch on to entirely new kinds of entities. NowIsDifferent Religion
• Techno-humanism, which still sees humans as the apex of creation and clings to many traditional humanist values. Techno-humanism agrees that Homo-Sapiens as we know it has run its historical course and will no longer be relevant in the future, but concludes that we should therefore use technology in order to create Homo Deus - a much superior human model. Religion
• Maybe a few additional changes to our genome and another rewiring of our brain will suffice to launch a second cognitive revolution. NowIsDifferent WhoWeAre
• Modern western culture is unique in lacking a specialized class of people who seek to experience extraordinary mental states. Religion
• Hunter-gathers are able to smell from a distance the difference between various animal species, various humans and even various emotions. WhoWeAre

• Though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to pay attention to whatever we choose. Buddhism

  David Foster Wallace

• From a historical perspective its clear that something momentous is happening. The number one humanist commandment – listen to yourself! – is no longer self-evident. Silencing annoying voices in my head seems like a wonderful idea, provided it enables me to finally hear my deep authentic self. But if there is no authentic self, how do I decide which voices to silence and which to amplify? Religion NowIsDifferent WhoWeAre
• Techno-humanism faces an impossible dilemma here. It considers the human will to be the most important thing in the universe, hence it pushes humankind to develop technologies that can control and redesign the self at will. After all its tempting to gain control over the most important thing in the world. Yet should we ever achieve such control, techno-humanism would not know what to do with it, because the sacred human would then become just another designer product. Religion
• A bolder techno-religion seeks to sever the humanist umbilical cord altogether. If foresees a world that does not revolve around the desires and experiences of any human beings. Religion
• Experts see the economy as a mechanism for gathering data about desire and abilities, and turning this data into decisions. Politics
• Data-processing considerations also explain why capitalists favor lower taxes. Heavy taxation mean 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 and overly centralized data processing system. In extreme cases, which taxes are exceedingly high, almost all capital ends up in the governments hands, and so the government alone calls the shots. In a free market, if one processor makes a wrong decision, others will be quick to capitalize on its mistake. However, when a single processor makes almost all the decisions, mistakes can be catastrophic. Politics
• In the 21C, democracy might decline and even disappear. As both the volume and speed of data increase, venerable institutions like elections, political parties, and parliaments might become obsolete – bot because they are unethical, but because they cant process data efficiently enough. Politics AI
• The critical choices between alternative web designs weren't taken through a democratic political process, even though they involved traditional political issues such as sovereignty, borders, privacy and security. Politics
• The NSA may be spying on our every word, but to judge by the repeated failures of American foreign policy, nobody in Washington knows what to do with all the data. AI Politics
• Precisely because technology is now moving so fast, and parliaments and dictators alike are overwhelmed by data they cannot process quickly enough, present-day politicians are thinking on a far smaller scale than their predecessors a century ago. Consequently, in the early 21C, politics is bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration. It manages the country, but no longer leads it. Government ensures that teachers are paid on time and sewage systems dont overflow, but it has no idea where the country will be in 20 years. To a certain extent, this is a very good thing. Given that some of the big political visions of the 20C led us to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and the Great Leap forward. 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. They there by give politicians the perfect excuse for inaction and ignorance, which are reinterpreted as profound wisdom. Politicians find it convenient to believe that the reason they dont understand the world is that they dont need to understand it. Politics AI
• Dataism: Humans are merely tools for creating the Internet-of-All things, which may eventually spread out from planet earth to pervade the whole galaxy and even the whole universe. This cosmic data-processing system would be like God. It will be everywhere and will control everything, and humans are destined to merge into it. Dataism is the first movement since 1789 that created a genuinely novel value; freedom of information. Religion AI
• 50 Million communal autonomous cars could replace 1 billion private cars, and we would also need fewer roads, bridges, tunnels and parking spaces. Provided, of course, that I renounce my privacy and allow the algorithms always to know where I am and where I want to go. AI Politics
• Traditional religions assured you that your every word and action was part of some great cosmic plan, and that God watched you every minute and cared about your thoughts and feelings. Data religions now says that your every word and action is part of the great data flow, that the algorithms are constantly watching you and that they care about everything you do and feel. Religion
• Throughout this book we have repeatedly asked what makes humans superior to other animals. Dataism has a new an simple answer. Humans can write poems and blogs about their experiences and post them online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes their bits count. WhoWeAre Religion
• By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our primary source of authority and meaning and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the 18C. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanist argued that "God is the product of the human imagination". Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: "Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is just the product of biochemical algorithms." In the 18C, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the 21C, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. Religion NowIsDifferent WhoWeAre
• The shift from a homo-centric to a data-centric view wont be merely a philosophical revolution. It will be a practical revolution. All truly important revolutions are practical. The humanists idea that "Humans invented God" was significant because it had far-reaching practical implications. Similarly, that Dataist idea that "organisms are algorithms" is significant due to its day-to-day practical consequences. Ideas change the world only when hey change our behavior NowIsDifferent Religion
• Our love, our fear and our passion aren't some nebulous spiritual phenomena good only for composing poetry. Rather, they encapsulate millions of years of practical wisdom. When you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are not infallible, of course, but they are better than most other sources of guidance. WhoWeAre
• Yet in the 21C feelings are no longer the best algorithms in the world. Consequently you should stop listening to your feelings and start listening to these external algorithms instead. Whats the point of having democratic elections when the algorithms know not only how each person is going to vote, but also the underlying neurological reasons why one person votes Democrat while another votes Republican? Politics AI
• Dataism will probably accelerate the humanist pursuit of heath, happiness and power. Yet once authority shifts from humans to algorithms, the humanist projects may become irrelevant. Religion Happiness
• 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. In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21C censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore. Politics NowIsDifferent

• If we think in terms of months, we had probably focus on immediate problems such as the turmoil in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe and the slowing of the Chinese economy. IF we think in terms of decades, then global warming, growing inequality and the disruption of the job market loom large. Yet if we take the really grand view of life, all other problems and developments are overshadowed by three interlinked processes

  1. Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing
  2. Intelligence is decoupling form consciousness
  3. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.

  –> These 3 processes raise 3 key questions:

  1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
  2. Whats more valuable – intelligence or consciousness ?
  3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

Politics History Questions