The most influential philosopher and futurologist of our time – Professor Yuval Noah Harari of the University of Jerusalem – recently made another forecast for the near future – 2024. He claims that the most important aspects that will influence the development of mankind in the coming year will be the development of artificial intelligence and localized military conflicts. In his opinion, artificial intelligence will go from a communication tool to a real digital oracle predicting the future during the next year.
As for military conflicts, they will become a legal norm and will once again change the map of the world to which mankind is accustomed. Both statements are quite controversial, but in today’s world Harari is commonly believed. The futurologist follows the current agenda and talks about what is interesting to everyone, shares his observations on what is happening in the world and where it can lead mankind.
But who is this Yuval Noah Harari – the new Nostradamus, or just another trendy author? By today his works have been translated into more than 40 languages and their total circulation reaches 28 million copies. Their author became an advisor to Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and was repeatedly invited to speak at the Bilderberg Club. However, is he really worth believing? What is Professor Harari’s discovery?
Not long ago, his writings were explored using artificial intelligence technologies. In AI programs were formulated predicted by futurologist the possibilities of influencing the course of development of the history of Mankind. The analysis of the received answers according to the given research program turned out to a certain extent – unexpected.
The AI programmes have articulated the possibilities predicted by futurologist Harari to influence the course of Humanity’s history. The analysis of the responses received on a given research programme was to a certain extent – unexpected.
The research programme did not formulate answers to the proposed questions independently. In the study of Harari’s three essays, the programme identified about 400 quotations, which were reduced by 2.5 times and structured at one of the stages of analysis (the 4th stage).
At the final stage, the AI (software) concluded on the semantic analysis of the resulting text:
-The author of three essays, related to each other in meaning with a total volume, less than 1 thousand 300 pages of text has hidden the main content of the meanings in the text of the books, which are available to a limited number of initiated people;
– The hidden meaning of the text, a summary of which we publish, is the Manifesto Homo Deus, which contains the methods and forms of achieving the voiced tasks formulated after Nietzsche’s proclaimed “death of God”.
Manifesto Homo Deus
Biologically speaking, humans are not “created” – they evolve through evolution, and evolution in no way makes them “equal”. The idea of equality is inextricably linked to the idea of creation. Americans have followed the Christian concept of creation, in which each person is understood as a divinely created soul and before God all souls are equal. Evolution is driven not by similarities but by differences. Each person’s genetic code is different, each child grows up in a different environment. As a result, dissimilar skills and qualities develop, giving correspondingly unequal chances for survival. So in the language of biology “created equal” translates as “developed differently”. Moreover: not only are humans not “created” from the point of view of biology, but there is no “Creator” to endow them with anything. There is only a blind, non-purpose-directed process of evolution – it leads to the birth of individuals. Instead of “the Creator endowed them” we would have to say simply “born”.
1.COGNITIVE REVOLUTION
The cognitive revolution refers to the emergence of new ways of thinking and communicating between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago. What it is we don’t know exactly. Random genetic mutations changed the internal “tuning” of the human brain, and sapiens gained the ability to think and communicate using verbal language.
More often than not, the main advantage of human language is its flexibility. By combining a small number of sounds and gestures in various combinations, we can compose an inexhaustible number of sentences with a wide variety of meanings. This means that we can perceive, store and transmit an incredible amount of information about the world around us.
The unique language of humans evolved as a means of communicating information about the world around us, but insists that the most important information was not about lions and bisons, but about humans themselves. Language was born out of a love of gossip. Homo sapiens is a social animal. We survive and reproduce through constant interaction. It is not enough for people to know where lions and bisons run, it is much more important for them to find out who in the tribe hates whom, who sleeps with whom, who is reliable and who cannot be relied on.
Legends, myths, gods, and religions emerged as a result of the cognitive revolution. Many animals, including various species of humans, used to be able to warn: “Beware! Lion!” Because of cognitive revolution, Homo sapiens learned to say something like, “The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.” The ability to discuss fiction is the most amazing feature of the language of sapiens. This language may therefore be called the language of fiction. The very fact that only Homo sapiens is able to talk about the non-existence of reality and is willing to believe six unbelievable things before breakfast is undeniable.
As a result of the cognitive revolution, sapiens began to unite into larger and more stable groups. The ability to gossip played a significant role in this. But gossip also has its limitations. Sociological studies have shown that the limit of the “natural” size of the group, which unites gossip – about 150 individuals. People cannot get close to more than 150 members of their own species and enjoy gossiping about them. Even today, the critical threshold for human organisational activity is limited to around this magic number.
The ability to create an imagined reality out of words allows multiple strangers to work together. Even more: since largescale co-operation is based on myth, the mode of co-operation can be changed by changing the myth itself, i.e. by telling a different story. In certain circumstances, myths change very quickly.
This is the legacy of the cognitive revolution: because of the language of imagination, even people with common genes who lived in the same environmental conditions began to create fundamentally different imagined realities, that is, different values and norms.
Among ancient hunter-gatherers animistic ideas (from Latin anima – “soul, spirit”) were widespread, i.e. their world was full of living beings (spirits) capable of communicating with each other. In the eyes of the animist, any place and any animal, plant and natural phenomenon is endowed with consciousness and feeling.
And the good of man is not at all a priority for other entities. And these deities are not omnipotent, they do not rule the world by their will, the universe does not revolve around people or any other group of beings. There are thousands of different religions, beliefs and cults lumped together under the common name of “animism” – it is not one particular religion. What all have in common is a single idea of man’s place in it. When we call ancient hunters and gatherers “animists,” we are making about as general a hypothesis as calling pre-industrial peasants “theists.” Theism (from Greek theos – “god”) builds hierarchical relationships between humans and a small group of higher beings – the gods. The world order is based on this relationship. The claim that agrarian societies were generally theistic is quite true.
As a result of the cognitive revolution, sapiens acquired technology, the ability to live in a collective, and perhaps the ability to predict – and then went beyond Afro-Eurasia and conquered the whole world.
For 25 million years, humans subsisted by gathering plants and hunting animals that lived and reproduced without human input. Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and neanderthals picked figs and hunted wild goats and sheep without trying to regulate their lives.
Everything changed about 10,000 years ago, when sapiens seriously, without sparing time and effort, began to take care of a few species of plants and animals. People began sowing seeds, watering plants, pulling weeds, moving sheep from pasture to pasture. They realised that this work would provide them with grain, fruit and meat in far greater quantities than gathering and hunting. The cognitive revolution is the moment when history diverges from biology.
2.THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION
The spread of land cultivation happened slowly, over centuries and millennia, not so much that a group of Homo sapiens who had been gathering mushrooms and nuts, hunting rabbits and deers, suddenly settled down, built a village and started ploughing the land, planting wheat and fetching water from the nearest river for irrigation. The change was gradual, and each stage brought almost imperceptible changes to daily life.
Huge food supplies were needed to feed those who built the buildings and then gathered in them. Perhaps the Greatest Deception in history suggests that hunter-gatherers switched from using wild wheat as fodder to intensive cultivation, not because they decided to stockpile grain, but because otherwise it would have been impossible to build a temple and sustain its activities. Religion is what compelled these groups of people to make the sacrifices that the wheat sought from them. The sequence used to be that people would become sedentary, build a village, and when abundance came, they would build a temple in the centre of the village and then a large settlement would grow around it.
To turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into docile draught cattle, it was necessary to destroy their natural instincts and the social structure of the herd, suppress sexuality and aggression, and restrict their freedom of movement. For this purpose, peasants developed various methods: they locked the animals in a stable or in a cage, harnessed them with belts and reins, trained them with a whip and a stick, and mutilated them. Domestication almost always involves castrating the males to make them less aggressive.
Food supplies and new technologies for travelling people and moving goods encouraged more and more people to settle together – first in sprawling villages, then in cities, and then in megacities. A previously unheard of opportunity arose: to create kingdoms and trade routes connecting many villages and cities.
All these networks of co-operation – the cities of ancient
Mesopotamia, the Chinese and Roman empires – were based on an “imagined order”. They existed on the basis of social norms, that is, not because of instinct or personal
acquaintance of all the participants, but because of belief in the same myths.
The Industrial Revolution endowed the market with powers never before known, provided the state with new means of communication and transport, and an army of officials, teachers, police and social workers. As the market and the state began to test their new capabilities, they encountered an obstacle in the form of the traditional family and community, which were not very happy about outside interference. State laws and market interests had a hard time penetrating the daily life of a close-knit village or a solid family.
The modern family still fulfils the human need for intimacy – so far the state and the market have not been able to do so. But even here, the prerogatives of the family are being encroached upon from all sides. The market is increasingly influencing people’s romantic and sexual life. Traditionally, matchmaking was the responsibility of relatives, but now romantic and sexual preferences are shaped by the market.
In most societies, parental authority was unquestioned, sacred. Respect for parents and unconditional obedience were considered the first virtue, and parents were allowed to do almost anything: kill newborns, sell children into slavery, marry off their daughters to men twice their age. Today, parental authority is negligible. General opinion, professional psychologists, legislators – all tend to exempt children from the obligation to obey their parents, but even at the age of 50 you can blame them for your own failures and misdemeanours.
The revolutions of the last two centuries have been so rapid and radical that they have changed the most fundamental aspects of the social order. The traditional order was solid and rigid. “Order” implied stability and continuity. Rapid social change was almost unknown then, usually changes were slow, almost imperceptible. Social structures seemed eternal and unchanging. Permanent revolution Families and communities sometimes tried to change their role in this general pattern, but it never occurred to anyone to change the pattern itself, its fundamental structure. People accepted the status quo: “It’s always been this way, it always will be this way.” Over the past two centuries, the pace of social change has accelerated to such an extent that the social order has come to be perceived as something malleable and mobile. We now live in an era of constant change.
Thousands of years after the agrarian revolution, networks of human co-operation could not have grown much in breadth. There were no large states, no extensive trade links and no universal religions. The obstacle was removed five thousand years ago when the Sumerians invented writing and money. Writing and money made it possible to collect taxes from hundreds of thousands of people, organise complex bureaucracies and form large kingdoms.
By combining a king-priest with a god, they created a deity in the flesh, the Pharaoh. Egyptians considered Pharaoh not just a god’s vicar, but a real god.
Before the invention of writing, myth-making was constrained by the limited capacity of the human brain. There was no point in inventing overly complex stories that no one would remember. The ability to compose long and complex stories opened up writing to humans, fostering powerful fictions that united millions of people and changed the environment.
At the same time, writing helped people to believe in the reality of such fantasies because it taught them to perceive reality through abstract symbols.
As the power of bureaucrats grows stronger, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of bringing their legends closer to reality, they begin to fit reality to their legends. As a result, external reality coincides with their bureaucratic fantasies. The power of written accounts reached its peak with the advent of sacred books. The priests and scribes of ancient civilisations became accustomed to seeing documents as guides to reality. At first, texts told them about the reality of taxes, fields, and granaries. However, as bureaucracy increased, the authority of the texts grew. Priests were engaged not only in enumerating God’s possessions, but also in recounting God’s deeds, secrets, and covenants. The resulting books claimed to portray the world in its entirety, and many generations of scientists have traditionally turned to the Bible, the Koran, or the Vedas for answers to all questions.
Theoretically, if a holy book misinterprets reality, its adherents will sooner or later realise this, and the authority of the text will be undermined.
The system holds mainly on its ability to impose its fantastical beliefs on an obedient reality.
Scripture works in the same way. Members of the religious establishment claim that the holy books have the answers to all our questions. At the same time, they pressure courts, governments, and businesses to act in accordance with the prescriptions contained in these books.
The Biblical understanding of history is fundamentally flawed, yet it has spread around the world and many millions of people believe it. The Bible peddles a stripped down monotheistic conception of history, claiming that the world is ruled by a single all-powerful deity who thinks tirelessly about me and my actions. Any good fortune I have is surely a reward for my good deeds. Any disaster is surely a punishment for my transgressions.
Fictions are the foundation and pillars of any human society. Over the course of history, myths about gods, nations, and corporations have gained such power that they have prevailed over objective reality.
The identification of religion with belief in supernatural forces implies that you are able to comprehend all known natural phenomena without religion. By understanding the natural world as a whole, you can then decide for yourself whether or not you need any more “supernatural” religious dogma. However, religions almost unanimously say that without them the truth about the world will not be revealed to you.
Religion is created by humans, not gods, and is defined by its social function, not by the existence of gods. Religion is any overarching myth that endows human laws, norms and values over human legitimacy. It sanctifies human social structures by claiming that they are reflections over human laws. Religion subordinates us mortals to a system of moral codes, supposedly not invented by us, which we cannot change. An observant Jew will say it is a system of moral laws that come from God and are communicated to us through the Bible. A Hindu will say that the laws are given to us in the Vedas, and their creators are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Other religions, from Buddhism and Taoism to communism, liberalism and nazism, claim that the so-called supra-human laws are natural laws and no gods had anything to do with their creation.
Religion provides a complete description of the world and offers a clearly defined contract with predetermined goals. “There is a God. He told us to do this and that. If you show obedience, you will go to the Kingdom of Heaven. If you disobey Him, you will burn in hell.”
Religions have a stubborn tendency to turn factual statements into ethical judgements, creating serious confusion and fog where the debate would be simple enough. For example, the factual statement “God wrote the Bible” is very often transformed into an ethical directive “you must believe that God wrote the Bible.”
Religion prioritises order above all else. Its task is to form and maintain social structure. Science prioritises power above all else. It studies and researches in order to have the power to cure diseases, win wars, and produce plenty of food. As individuals, scientists and priests may place great value on truth, but as social institutions science and religion prefer order and power to truth.
Ancient Jews supposedly kept the biblical text intact, scientists notice that biblical Judaism was not based on Scripture at all. It was a typical Iron Age cult, similar to many of its near eastern neighbours. It had no synagogues, yeshivas, rabbis, or even a Bible. Instead, there were elaborate temple rituals, most of which involved sacrificing animals to a jealous sky god to make his people happy with seasonal rains and military victories. The religious elite were hereditary priests who owed everything to birth rather than intellectual achievement. Mostly ignorant, the priests were preoccupied with ceremonies and rituals and had no time to spend on any scriptures. During the Second Temple period, a competing religious elite began to gradually emerge. Thanks in particular to Persian and Greek influences, Jewish literati – scribes and interpreters of texts – became increasingly important.
These literati eventually became known as rabbis, and the texts they compiled were called the Bible. The authority of the rabbis rested on their personal wisdom, not on birthright. A clash between this new literate elite and the ancient priestly families was inevitable. Fortunately for the rabbis, in 70 CE, in suppressing the Great Jewish Revolt, the Romans burned Jerusalem and its temple. The destruction of the temple dealt a devastating blow to the priestly families, destroying their religious authority, their economic sustenance, and their very raison d’être. Thus traditional Judaism – the Judaism of temples, priests and warrior-gods – ceased to exist. In its place a new Judaism arose – the Judaism of texts, rabbis and scribes. These scribes were masters of interpretation. And they used their gift not only to explain how the Almighty God allowed the destruction of His temple, but also to fill the huge gap between the ancient Judaism that appears in the biblical stories and the completely different Judaism of their own composition, which reflects only the prejudices of the priests and scribes of ancient Jerusalem.
Religion is incapable of giving life instructions without relying on at least some factual statements, there is a whole arsenal of scientific methods to establish who composed the Bible and when, that the Bible is a collection of many texts written by different authors centuries after the events they recount, and that a very long time elapsed from the creation of these texts to their consolidation into the Holy Book.
3. IMAGINARY ORDER – INTERSUBJECTIVITY
Getting people to genuinely believe in an imaginary order – christianity, democracy or capitalism. First things first – you must never admit that the order is imaginary. Stand your ground: the order on which society is maintained is an objective reality.
А. Imaginary order is rooted in the real world. Although imaginary order exists only in the human mind, it is firmly rooted in the material world.
B. The imagined order shapes our desires. And our desires become the most secure stronghold of the imaginary order. Most people are not ready to admit that the order that governs their lives is merely a figment of the imagination – because the imaginary order guides and shapes their strongest desires.
C. The imagined order is subjective, but it encompasses a multitude of interacting subjects. Even if by superhuman effort I can free myself from the dictates of the imaginary order, I am only one individual. To change the imaginary order, I would have to persuade millions of strangers to support me in this endeavour. Imaginary order is not a product of my imagination alone; it is intersubjective, that is, it exists in the communicating imagination of thousands and millions of people.
Since sapiens’ social order belongs to the realm of imagination, people cannot preserve the information without which the human collective cannot exist by simply copying their DNA and passing on genes to their offspring. It takes Memory Overload 151 conscious effort to retain all those laws, customs, procedures, manners and everything else that makes up the instruction manual for the functioning of human society – otherwise the social fabric will instantly disintegrate.
The structures on which these collectives were held together were themselves neither neutral nor fair. There was a division of people into artificial groups, subordinated hierarchically. At the top level, power and privilege; at the lower levels, discrimination and oppression.
The imagined order maintained a hierarchy of wealth, which some believed was established by God and others believed reflected the immutable laws of nature. Nature, it was argued, rewards wealth for merit and punishes laziness. All of these divisions – free and slave, white and black, rich and poor – are rooted in the human imagination.
Since the roles, rights, and responsibilities of men and women are determined primarily by myths rather than biology, the content of the concepts of “man” and “woman” changes from culture to culture. To avoid confusion, scientists try to distinguish between the biological category of “sex” and the cultural category of “gender.” We all belong to the male or female sex based on objective and unchanging attributes over historical time. Gender also comes in masculine and feminine
(and in some cultures there are others). Gender is intersubjective and constantly changing.
Again and again, people have ordered their society by dividing the population into imaginary categories: nobility, commoners, slaves; white and black; patricians and plebeians; Brahmins and Shudras; rich and poor. These categories governed the relationships between millions of people: it was argued that some people were superior in political, legal or social status and others inferior. Hierarchies have an important social function: people who do not know each other at all immediately understand how to treat each other.
All societies are held together by an imaginary hierarchy, but for the most part everyone has their own hierarchies. Hindu society divides people by caste, the Ottoman Empire by religion, 19th century America by race.
People have a hard time getting comfortable with the idea of an imaginary order because they believe that there are only two types of reality: objective and subjective.
In objective reality, phenomena exist independently of our beliefs and feelings.
Subjective reality, on the other hand, is determined by my personal beliefs and feelings.
Most people believe that reality is either objective or subjective, and there is no third.
There is a third level of reality, the intersubjective level. Intersubjective entities are created by the interaction of many people, not by the beliefs and feelings of individuals. Virtually all of the most important engines of history are intersubjective.
People easily accept the idea that money is an intersubjective reality. For the most part, they are also willing to accept that ancient gods, malignant empires, and alien cultural values are merely figments of the imagination.
This is how history unfolds. People weave a web of meanings and believe in them. But sooner or later this web is torn.
4. A human being is a BIOALGORITHM
Humans are algorithms that produce not cups of tea, replicas of themselves (like a vending machine that, with the appropriate set of keys, produces another vending machine). The algorithms that control the vending machines do so using mechanical actuators and electrical circuits. The algorithms that control humans do so with sensations, emotions, and thoughts. And exactly the same type of algorithms control pigs, baboons, otters and chickens.
Highly precise algorithms we call feelings, emotions, and desires are responsible for 99 percent of our decisions, including life decisions (relating to choosing a spouse, a profession, a place to live). Because these algorithms govern the lives of all mammals and birds (and perhaps some reptiles and even fish), when humans, baboons, and pigs experience fear, similar neurological processes occur in similar parts of their brains.
An algorithm is a series of sequential steps that can be used to perform calculations, solve problems, and make decisions. An algorithm is not a single calculation, but a method that guides a calculation.
Emotions are biochemical algorithms that are essential to the survival and reproduction of all mammals, emotions are not purely human, they are inherent in all mammals as well as all birds and probably some reptiles and even fish. All mammals have developed emotional capacities and needs.
Our thoughts and emotions are governed by biochemical mechanisms honed by millions of years of evolution. Like any state of mind, the subjective feeling of happiness is determined not by external parameters – salary, relationship system, political rights – but by a complex system of nerves, neurons, synapses and biologically active substances: serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.
Let’s tweak our biochemistry. If we invest billions in unravelling the biochemical code and finding appropriate drugs, we will make people much happier without any revolutions. Prozac, for example, without attacking the state system in any way, raises serotonin levels in the blood and brings the patient out of depression. The biological point of view is perfectly captured by New-age’s slogan: “Happiness comes from within”. Money, status, plastic surgery, luxury homes, power – none of these things will produce happiness. Lasting happiness only comes from within – that’s serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin.
To be happy is to experience pleasurable sensations, nothing more and nothing less than that. Since our biochemistry limits the scope and duration of such sensations, we need to work with their biochemical system to enable people to experience high levels of happiness for extended periods of time.
Consciousness is the product of electrochemical reactions in brain cells and that mental experiences perform an important data processing function.
When billions of electrical impulses run off in all directions from billions of neurons, subjective experiences arise. Although the sending and receiving of each electrical impulse is a simple biochemical phenomenon, something immeasurably more complex is born from the interaction of all these impulses: the stream of consciousness.
Subjective experiences are necessary to keep us alive, because if we were not driven by hunger or fear, we would not even think of catching rabbits or running away from lions. Why would a man run away at the sight of a lion? Out of fear, of course. Subjective experience determined human action.
Our bodily activities, including muscle contractions and hormonal secretions, occur 99 percent of the time without conscious sensation. Our memories, fantasies and thoughts do not reside in some higher immaterial realm. They too are streams of electrical impulses emitted by billions of neurons. So even immersed in memories, fantasies and thoughts, we still remain in the circle of electrochemical reactions that pass through billions of neurons to eventually activate the adrenal glands and leg muscles.
It is considered a truth of last instance that organisms are algorithms, and algorithms can be represented by mathematical formulas. You can be numbers and mathematical symbols.
The traditional monotheistic answer is that only Homo Sapiens has an immortal soul. While the body decomposes and rots, the soul, saved or damned, is eternally housed in heaven or hell, respectively. Since pigs and other animals have no soul, they do not participate in this cosmic drama. They live only a few years, then die and turn into nothingness. Therefore, what are insignificant pigs compared to the immortal human soul? This is not a kindergarten fairy tale, but an extremely persistent myth that continues to define the lives of billions of humans and animals in the early 21st century. Our legal, political, and economic system is based on the belief that humans have immortal souls and animals are merely mortal bodies. This explains why people are not forbidden to kill animals for food or even just for fun. However, our recent scientific discoveries strongly refute this monotheistic myth. True, one aspect of it laboratory experiments confirm: animals really do not have souls. No matter how pigs, rats and macaques have been studied, no signs of a soul have been found in them. Sadly, but the same laboratory experiments undermine the immeasurably more important postulate of the monotheistic myth, namely that people have a soul. Scientists have performed tens of thousands of the most incredible experiments on people, looked into every corner of their hearts and into every twist of their brains, but have not found a hint of a magic spark. There is not a single piece of scientific evidence in favour of Homo sapiens being endowed with a soul.
The theory of evolution is incompatible with the idea of a soul, at least understood as something invisible, indivisible and potentially immortal. Such wholeness cannot be the result of step-by-step evolution. Natural selection was able to create the human eye because the eye has parts. The soul has no parts. If the soul of The Intelligent Man grew step by step out of the soul of The Upright Man, what were those steps? Is there any part of the soul that The Intelligent Man has better developed than The Upright Man? But that’s the thing, there are no parts of the soul.
The existence of the soul is not consistent with the theory of evolution. Evolution is all about movement, it can’t produce anything immutable. From an evolutionary point of view, the closest analogue to a human being is our DNA, and it is a carrier of mutation, not a bastion of eternity.
5. THE FUTURE – The Gods of Planet Earth
Since humans are subject to the same physical forces, chemical reactions, and processes of natural selection as all living things, the events in which they take part – historical events – are ultimately governed by the laws of natural selection as well. Natural selection has provided Homo sapiens with considerably more freedom than all other organisms, but there are limits. The point is that, despite all their efforts and achievements, sapiens cannot escape the limits set by biology.
There are now three ways to supplant natural selection with intelligent design: a) bioengineering; b) creating cyborgs (cyborgs are living things that combine organic and inorganic parts); and c) creating inorganic life.
Bioengineering is a deliberate intervention at the biological level (e.g. gene implantation) to modify appearance, abilities, needs or desires in order to realise some pre-formulated idea.
Genetic engineering raises a whole range of ethical, political and ideological problems, and not only for “pious monotheists” who resent the fact that man is appropriating the role of God.
The apocalyptic phenomenon of biodictatorships is prophesied, where fearless soldiers and obedient labourers will be cloned.
The second way to change the laws of life is cyborg engineering. Cyborgs are creatures of organic and inorganic parts, such as humans with robot arms. In a sense, we are all cyborgs nowadays, because we supplement our natural organs and functions with various devices: glasses, pacemakers, bioprostheses and even mobile phones (which take over some of the functions of memory and data processing). Soon we will become real cyborgs – inorganic elements will become an integral part of our bodies, and our capabilities, desires, and very personality will change.
Fundamental notions of “I“ and gender identity will change, the mind will become collective. A cyborg will no longer be a human or even an organic being. It will be something completely new. A species completely unknown to us.
The third way to change the laws of nature is to create nonbiological beings. The most famous example is computer programmes and viruses with their independent evolution. Socalled genetic programming is one of the most fashionable trends in computer science.
With the help of new medicine, the claims of the upper classes can turn into an objective reality.
Scientists call the State of the Universe at the initial moment of the Big Bang a “singularity”: it is a point at which there were no laws of nature known to us. Time did not exist either, so it is meaningless to talk about what was “before” the Big Bang. We are approaching a new singularity, when everything that makes sense in our world – I, you, man, woman, love, hate – will lose it. On the other side of the singularity, nothing will make sense to us. The rapid development of technology will soon replace Homo sapiens with a completely different being, with different physical, cognitive and emotional characteristics.
Today’s scientific answer to this idle dream can be summarised in three simple statements:
1. Organisms are algorithms. Every animal, including Homo sapiens, is a collection of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution.
2. Algorithmic computation is independent of the materials from which the calculator is made. No matter what kind of calculator you use – wooden, iron or plastic – if you add two to two, you get four.
3. Consequently, there is no reason to believe that organic algorithms can do something that inorganic algorithms can never replicate or surpass.
As algorithms displace humans from the labour market, wealth and power will concentrate in the hands of a thin layer of elite, the owners of the all-powerful algorithms. Social and political inequality will reach an unprecedented level, when one algorithm replaces millions, all income and influence will go to the corporation that owns the algorithm and to a few billionaires who own the corporation.
In the 21st century, we may witness the emergence of a multimillion-dollar non-working class: people devoid of any economic, political, or even cultural value, contributing nothing to the prosperity, power, and glory of society. This “useless class” will not just be dysfunctional – it will be unworkable.
The technologies of the 21st century will allow external algorithms to “hack into the human essence” and know me better than I know myself. Once this happens, the belief in individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individuals to networked algorithms. People will no longer be autonomous units organising their lives according to their desires, but will become accustomed to seeing themselves as a set of biochemical mechanisms that are under the constant supervision and control of a network of algorithms.
Eventually there will come a point when we will not be able to disconnect from these omniscient networks even for a moment. Disconnection will mean death. If medics’ hopes are realised, humans will carry in their bodies a host of biometric devices, bionic organs and nanorobots designed to monitor our health and keep us safe from infections, diseases and damages.
Those who cannot be replaced or decoded will remain, but they will form a small, privileged elite of advanced humans. These superhumans will have unheard of abilities and unprecedented creativity, allowing them to still make many of the world’s most important decisions. They will provide essential services to the system, while the system will be unable to understand or manage them. However, the vast majority of humans will not be upgraded and will therefore become an inferior caste, subservient to both computer algorithms and the new superhumans. The division of humanity into biological castes will crush the foundations of liberal ideology.
As of 2017, the eight richest people on the planet owned a combined wealth equal to all the money and savings of the poorest half of the world’s population – that’s 3.6 billion people.
Firstly, medicine is undergoing a great conceptual revolution. In the last century, the goal of medicine was to cure the sick. In the twenty-first, medicine is increasingly being redesigned to improve the healthy.
The improvement of the healthy, by contrast, is an elitist project: it rejects the idea of a universal standard and seeks ways to endow a select few with qualities that elevate them above others. People dream of superior memory, extraordinary intelligence, and first-rate sexual qualities. If any one type of enhancement becomes so cheap that all others are pulled up to the top bar, then that bar will simply become the new bottom line from which the next generation of medicines and treatments will be pushed.
By 2070 the health care of the poor will probably have improved, but the gulf separating them from the rich will have widened dramatically, with workers giving way to algorithms, at least some of the elites may conclude that there is no point in raising or even just maintaining the standard level of health of the useless poor. It makes far more sense to focus on improving a handful of superhumans.
One concept that has been getting more attention lately is universal basic income (UBI). The concept of UBI suggests that the government tax billionaires and corporations that control algorithms and robots, and spend that money to pay everyone a benefit sufficient to meet basic needs. This would protect the poor from job loss and the destruction of economic ties, and protect the rich from populist attacks.
From a purely biological point of view, humans need 1500-2500 Kcal per day to survive. Anything above this norm can be considered a luxury.
The unemployed masses will be excluded from the management of economic assets, it is hard to imagine how they will be able to access luxuries. Which means the gulf between the rich (Tencent executives and Google shareholders) and the poor (those dependent on UBI) will become almost insurmountable.
By 2050, medical achievements will make it possible to slow down the aging process and significantly extend human life (these services will be available to all 10 billion inhabitants of the planet), only a handful of billionaires, with the help of biotechnology parents will be able to improve their children, whether it will relate to basic human needs – we will see the stratification of humanity into different biological castes, when rich superhumans will have abilities that far exceed the talents of poor Homo sapiens.
The liberal belief in feelings and free choice of individuals is neither natural nor ancient. For thousands of years people have believed that the source of authority is divine laws, not the human heart, and therefore one should bless the word of God rather than the freedom of the individual. In the last few centuries, the source of authority has shifted from the gods who dwell in heaven to flesh and blood men. Soon we may witness a transfer of power again – but from humans to algorithms. Just as divine power was legitimised by religious mythology and human power by the liberal concept, the coming technological revolution will establish the power of algorithms.
Our 21st century technologies will allow external algorithms to “hack into human nature” and know me better than I know myself. Once this happens, the belief in individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individuals to networked algorithms. People will no longer be autonomous units organising their lives according to their desires, but will become accustomed to seeing themselves as a set of biochemical mechanisms that are constantly monitored and controlled by a network of algorithms.
God is dead and only human experience endows the universe with meaning, is it so significant whether we consider human experiences equal or place one over the other? When humanism took over the world, this internal discord escalated and eventually escalated into the worst of the religious wars in history.
Nietzsche announced his demise, God seems to be coming back. In fact, it’s a mirage. God is dead – it just takes a while to get rid of the body.
New technologies are eliminating old gods and giving rise to new ones.
In the 21st century, we will create such powerful myths and totalitarian religions that mankind has never dreamed of. With the help of biotechnology and computer algorithms, these religions will not only control our every step, but also create our bodies, brains, thoughts and entire virtual worlds, each of which will have its own hell and paradise. Recognising and separating fiction from reality and religion from science will be much more difficult. But being able to do so is becoming more important than ever before.
In the pursuit of bliss and immortality, humans will actually, through refinement, turn themselves into gods. Not only because bliss and immortality is a state inherent in the celestials, but because it will be impossible to defeat old age and suffering without gaining divine power over their own biological substrate.
The upgrade of humans into gods can follow one of three paths: bioengineering, cyborg engineering, and engineering of inorganic beings. Bioengineering began with the realisation that we are far from unlocking the full potential of organic bodies.
Bioengineers are not going to wait patiently for natural selection to work a miracle again. They will take the body of old Sapiens and rewrite its genetic code themselves, rewire neural circuits, change the biochemical balance, and even grow entirely new organs. In this way they will create gods that may be as different from The Intelligent Man as we are different from The Upright Man. Cyborg engineering will take the next step by combining the organic body with inorganic mechanisms such as bionic hands, artificial eyes or millions of nanorobots that will snoop around our blood vessels, detecting problems and fixing them.
The third grand project of humanity in the 21st century will be the acquisition of the divine power of creation and destruction – the transformation of Homo sapiens into Homo deus. This third project undoubtedly includes and is inspired by the first two projects. We learn to reconstruct bodies and brains primarily to avoid old age, death and suffering.
Divinity is not a vague metaphysical property. Nor is it the same as omnipotence. When it comes to transforming humans into gods, imagine something like the gods from Olympus and the devas in Hinduism, not the all-powerful biblical Heavenly Father. Our descendants will have their own weaknesses, quirks and limits, like Zeus and Indra. But they will love, hate, create and destroy with far greater scope than we do. Almost all the gods known to history have been endowed not with omnipotence but with specific superpowers, such as the ability to invent and create living things; to change appearance; to command the elements; to read minds and communicate at a distance; to travel at tremendous speeds and, of course, to avoid death and live forever.
Divinity will become as commonplace as the cyberspace we take for granted. We can be quite sure that humanity will encroach on divinity – it has many reasons to desire such an upgrade and many opportunities to realise it.
Darwin – robbed us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, it is obvious to you: there is no soul.
Scientists have performed tens of thousands of the most incredible experiments on people, looked into every corner of their hearts and every twist of their brains, but have not found a hint of the magic spark. There is not a single piece of scientific evidence in favour of Homo sapiens being endowed with a soul.
In 1848, the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” proclaimed that “all class and stagnation disappear.” However, Marx and Engels were referring mainly to social and economic structures. By 2048, material and cognitive structures will also disappear, dissolving into thin air – or into a cloud of data bits.
A hundred or two hundred years from now, the fusion of biotechnology and artificial intelligence may result in physical and psychological traits that hominids do not have. Some believe that consciousness will be able to be separated from its organic basis and will be free to roam cyberspace, free from all biological and bodily constraints, we may witness a complete separation of intelligence from consciousness, and the development of artificial intelligence will lead to a situation where the world will be ruled by beings endowed with superintelligence but completely devoid of consciousness.
Our New Agenda is Fertilisation in virto: power over Creation.
Results
It remains to summarize all of the above. What constitutes Homo deus is a Latin phrase that translates to “divine man” or “godlike man.” As Harari states, Homo deus is an extension of Homo sapiens, or “intelligent man.” Homo sapiens is an organic species that includes all modern humans. Homo deus describes a possible future for humanity when technological and scientific advances will enable humans to become a kind of “gods.” According to Harari, Homo deus will differ from Homo sapiens not only in its ability to significantly extend its lifespan, but also in its ability to control its genes, develop and improve its intelligence, body and psyche through technological innovation.
However, there is another interpretation of the term Homo deus. Some believe that the emergence of this type of human being will be the result of combining biology and artificial intelligence, rather than simply the advancement of science and technology. The word “Deus” comes from the Latin language and means “God”. In the context of Homo deus – “man-god” – the concept of “Deus” points to the capabilities of modern man and his potential superiority over Homo sapiens. It implies that with the development of technology and science, humans will have the ability to achieve supernatural abilities and control their own destiny. This will lead to the evolution of human society and the overcoming of the limitations inherent in Homo sapiens. However, in recent decades, a new concept has emerged related to the evolution of Homo sapiens to Homo deus. Homo deus, which means “god-like man” in Latin, is a hypothetical evolutionary stage that we are striving for through the use of technology and progress.
The main ideas of the evolution of Homo sapiens to Homo deus are related to the expansion of our capabilities and the overcoming of physical and mental limitations. We already see many examples in our modern life where technology helps us improve our lives and expand our abilities. For example, with the development of medicine, we are becoming more and more able to overcome diseases and increase our life expectancy. Technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering offer us new opportunities for development and improvement. We aim to create artificial intelligence that can be delegated complex tasks and that will have insurmountable mental abilities.
However, the evolution of Homo sapiens to Homo deus will also bring many changes and challenges. For example, there is the question of how the social and ethical issues associated with the use of new technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will be resolved.