Homo Deus is a book written by Yuval Noah Harari - kind of a sequel to Sapiens. He makes some interesting claims about what will happen to people in the next century. He claims that humans will try to attain immortality, bliss and divinity, as these are the logical consequences of the new religion of humanism, but also that achieving these goals will destroy humanism. He makes what I think are a lot of strawman arguments about humanism in the process, as well as the "true self". He sees algorithms as the new unifying theory of science, explaining genetics, biology, economics, psychology, sociology etc, all with the same language and theories.

Some of his ideas:

Our historical foes of war, famine and pestilence have been defeated. In the 21st century, humans will try to attain immortality, bliss and divinity. These goals reflect the traditional ideals of liberal humanism - the sanctity of human life and the primacy of individual experience. Yet actually achieving any of them is likely to be the undoing of liberal humanism. What will replace it?

What will happen to the job market if humans become economically useless?

What will happen to democracy if we gain control over human thought and achieve bliss?

How will we think about life if the wealthy become amortal and death is merely a technical problem to be solved one step at a time?

p328 Attributing free will to humans is at the centre of liberalism, but it is not a value statement or ethical judgement. It is a statement of fact that can be challenged. p344 the narrating self and the experiencing self - the peak-end rule.

Organisms - from viruses to people, are algorithms. Algorithms are not affected by the material they are made of. Thus, a machine that can think better than a person is a fundamentally a technical problem. Our job market has been saved from robots in the past because humans took up more cognitively intensive tasks as machines replace us at manual tasks. This trend may not continue as machines replace us at cognitive tasks also.

Humanism split into 3 main branches:
liberalism (orthodox branch) - primacy of individual feelings
socialism - primacy of others' feelings, spawned communism
evolutionary humanism - there is an unambiguous hierarchy of human experiences, ie some are better than others - spawned Nazism, that is, Nazism is a branch of humanism

Wars from 1914 to 1989, including both world wars, were essentially 'religious wars' between these 3 sects of humanism (p 306). Liberal humanism won in the end, though at the time it did not seem likely, and it was forced to borrow heavily from the other two (universal education and healthcare). It won because of the ability of a society that embraces it to adapt to the new human reality. As a result of nearly losing in the 20th century, it is less conceited than it was a century ago. But the core package has changed very little. It sanctifies individual liberties, the customer, and the voter (p312). Today, there is no serious alternative.

nationalism - primacy of communal experiences in the form of separate national identities, fusion of humanism with tribalism

p317 Marx and Lenin shaped the world last century, but not any religious leaders (either conventional or new prophets), because of the careful thought they put into the new reality and the new problems that were emerging with it.

p320 Christianity was a creative force. Spread the notion that all people are equal before God, which changed human political structures, social hierarchies and gender relations. Jesus' focus on the meek and oppressed provided ammunition for revolutionaries. In the medieval period, Catholic church established Europe's most sophisticated administrative system and the first economic corporations (monasteries), which spearheaded the European economy and introduced advanced agricultural methods. They were the most important learning centres and helped found Europe's first universities.

Harari anthropomorphises broad human institutions, such as religion, science, and modernity, and ascribes them with personal agendas such as the pursuit of power or social order. He occasionally reminds me of Jasin, making these claims without sufficient context.

He equates humanism and modernity with the primacy of human feelings. He omits any consideration of freedom of speech, which is a modern, humanist rule which renders human feelings irrelevant - no-one has the right to not be offended.

He equates the modern era with the science discovering ignorance and economics discarding the zero sum game.

He talks a lot about intersubjective realities - a major focus of Sapiens. He leaves open the question of causation. Are changing intersubjective realities the cause of, or the inevitable response to, advances in science, technology, economics etc. Or is it a tangled chicken and egg interaction? The emergence of intersubjective reality during the intellectual revolution about 70000 years ago is credited as the ultimate cause of man's rise, but from there it is unclear whether it continued to cause change or merely allowed us to cope with change.

In seeking to destroy the 'true self' he misdefines it. Here, mindfulness (or perhaps the Hindu take on it) may help. There may be a cacophony of voices in your head giving you different messages, but there is only one observer of those voices. That is the true self. Harari explores this concept in Sapiens, but not in Homo Deus.

No signs yet that the "historical foes of war, famine and pestilence" have been defeated.

freediver wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 3:03pm:


If only it were all about me in isolation - but for those who want a real answer - not since I was a kid growing up, when it was most of the time - now I eat like a king and suffer heart troubles - I seriously feel that is the result of poor nutrition when 'we' (siblings and I) were growing up*:-

"How many people live in poverty in the world?

Recent estimates for global poverty are that 8.6% of the world, or 736 million people, live in extreme poverty on $1.90 or less a day, according to the World Bank.

In the United States, 12.3% of the population, or 39.7 million people, live in poverty — with an income of less than $33.26 per day — according to the 2017 census.

These numbers are calculated based on income and a person’s ability to meet basic needs. However, when looking beyond income to people experiencing deprivation in health, education, and living standards, 1.3 billion people in 104 developing countries are multidimensionally poor, according to a 2018 survey by the U.N. "

https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-poverty-facts#how-ma...

*An Indian doctor did a study to determine why people on a low calorie (poverty) diet developed heart troubles as much or more than fat people - he concluded that a thin person's body stores fat the same, but that early lack of solid nutrition meant that the body would tend to store more fat PLUS damage can be caused by poor nutrition while growing up - ergo - greyhounds growing up thin as rakes are probably MORE likely to suffer heart troubles later in life....

"Organisms - from viruses to people, are algorithms. Algorithms are not affected by the material they are made of"

I might have to do a double check with my slide rule on that one.

FD wrote: Harari anthropomorphises broad human institutions, such as religion, science, and modernity, and ascribes them with personal agendas such as the pursuit of power or social order. He occasionally reminds me of Jasin, making these claims without sufficient context.
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Now, now. I can't help it if I have the best strike rate of predictions on this Forum.

Jasin wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 7:07pm:


Aye, you are right twice a day.

Johnnie wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 7:08pm:


DNA is an exact algorithm. At least, when it works.

We could for example create a computer model of DNA, predict all the chemical reactions it would create, etc. If the computer had enough power, we could theoretically create an entirely simulated, yet also real, human.

freediver wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 10:33am:



To me, as a phrase in English, it sounds better as;

'no-one has   a   right, to not be offended'   [possessive]

freediver wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 7:17pm:

You could never call DNA an exact algorithm, that would mean there are are no variables.

The real question is not how many starved to death, but how many died from illnesses that a better nutritional lifestyle would have prevented or controlled.

Johnnie wrote on Sep 20^th, 2020 at 11:01pm:


There are plenty of fine reviews of the trio of books (which I suspect FD hasn't actually read). My favourite is the final one of the three, "21 Lessons for the 21st century."

AiA wrote on Sep 21^st, 2020 at 1:37am:

What would be your summary?

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Sep 21^st, 2020 at 10:29pm:

Cheer up Ye, its a whole new world now.

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Sep 21^st, 2020 at 10:56pm:

Its a brave new world and we need to adapt face masks and all or get left behind.

Johnnie wrote on Sep 21^st, 2020 at 10:12pm:


Forget George Orwell - Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" is our likely future in the next century, at least for the very wealthy. Everyone else will be irrelevant.