Hackable humans and digital dictators: Q&A with Yuval Noah Harari

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/hackable-humans-digital-dictators-qa-yuval-noah-harari-180824095306982.html

74 30 8 years ago

zawerf• 8 years ago

There is a much more convincing talk on the dangers of bioengineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

News article if you can't watch: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/31/bioweapons-c...

tl;dr “The reason you haven’t heard much about bioweapons is that they’ve been held back by a pretty severe limitation, which is the potential for blowback." Unlocking the ability to target specific genes will overcome this since the same tech that allows targeting only cancer cell will allow targeting specific groups or individuals.

What, for example, if groups spread their agenda in a very direct way, by literally rewriting DNA to make it impossible to live a life against their credo? Suppose militant vegans wanted to end meat eating: there’s a gene for that. Or imagine if radical misogynists wanted to force the veiling of all women: there’s a gene for sunlight intolerance, and the genetic functions of gender are already well-known.
Or, he suggested, attacks could be done on an individual level: targeting public figures by stealing their genetic code, or targeting their whole family by sequencing the genes of someone who’s closely related. And the attacks could be subtler than what’s expected: Sotos cited genes for intractable diarrhea, massive weight gain, total baldness and “an intense fishy body odour”.

vages8• 8 years ago

I have read Harari's “Sapiens”, but I did not want to go on with the sequel. The main reason was his way of always seeing clouds on the horizon and predicting doomsday, probably because fear sells more books.

I believe the metaphorical clouds he is talking about here will probably drift by. This is because I believe that the main reason why most people don't act like tyrants, is not that they don't have the opportunity (because most people have the opportunity to be someone's tormentor); it is that it is in their economic interest to cooperate with others, benefiting their own survival.

Conjuring up dystopian visions of the future is no challenge; I'm sure most readers could come up with ten just to argue with this comment. But society's been getting better in every aspect of living almost every decade since the enlightenment. While this is not a law of nature, it is reasonable to assume that this will continue for a little while.

briga• 8 years ago

Society has been getting better, but at what cost? Human's have radically disrupted ever biosphere on Earth throughout the past 10,000 years and are almost certainly the prime driver of a current mass extinction of life on Earth. Our global society depends on healthy ecosystems, so where does it leave us when those ecosystems collapse? Every day human life might be getting better, but for how long? Can we sustain modern Western lifestyles for thousands of years? The Romans lived through hundreds of years in relative affluence where their civilization seemed unbreakable. Look at where that empire is today. 70 million years ago dinosaurs were the undisputed rulers of the planet, but where are the dinosaurs now? What's to say that ours is the civilization that lasts forever when all historical evidence is to the contrary?

The sequel Homo Deus isn't as good, and it felt like something that was written in a rush after Harari managed to break into the best-seller list.

vages8• 8 years ago

The point of surviving is not to last forever; it is to last longer. Feeling slightly depressed that your civilization may undergo changes during the next hundred years or that your species may not be able to last until the end of time is a privilege of living in an abundant, technologically advanced society. To paraphrase Stein's law and one of its corollaries: Something that can't go on forever, won't, but it can go on for longer than you think.

The reason why everyone points to Western Rome as an example of fleeting success (forgetting that its eastern part survived for an additional millennium), is that it was the last empire to go out with a real boom. As a counter-example, you could point to the British empire, whose heritage is still alive and well: We are discussing using its language and it is still a part of the G7. The same goes for the Roman language, which is still one of the world's most spoken, just under another name (Spanish). And you probably have dinosaur descendants living in your city, in the form of birds. Things survive, and so will we.

Worrying about imminent ecological collapse is as old as the industrial revolution. Thomas Malthus postulated that agricultural yields would not be able to keep up with population growth. But here we are, more than two hundred years later, better equipped than ever to tackle the challenges ahead of us. I am certain that we will make it out alive, as long as we keep up our good work.

rorykoehler5• 8 years ago

Though I'm hopeful enough about the future to start a family I do foresee possibly insurmountable challenges on the horizon specifically around climate change. Lack of resources will challenge societies' "getting better in every aspect of living almost every decade since the enlightenment" like never before. We are in for a serious kick up the ass in the next decade as climate change kicks up a few gears. I think we way under-estimate the ferociousness of the weather systems on the horizon and what it means to us. The only way we can beat this is by achieving free limitless renewable energy very soon.

vages8• 8 years ago

I recommend Steven Pinker's “Enlightenment Now” as an antidote to pessimistic views of the future with regards to climate change: We have to act, but the outlook is not as grim as many environmentalists paint it. We are acting, and we still have enough time and the ingenuity to reduce the causes and effects of global warming.

thomseddon• 8 years ago

Homo Deus (the sequel as mentioned) answers the question of why he has formed his particular view of the future.

In essence, yes economic incentive is the basis for much of today's human corporation, but with growing AI/robotics, the same economic incentive will make much current human input unnecessary.

Then, for example, would counties see so many humans as a big cost? How do they solve that if they no longer need them to work?

Scary stuff.

vages8• 8 years ago

You could have asked the same question in 1700: What will the state do with its inhabitants when they no longer work the fields or make wool? The answer is “something else”. The economy adapts, and unimaginable professions and social structures appear. I would be amazed if anyone in 1700 thought that programmer could be a profession.

And maybe we don't need as many as 6 billion people on earth, maybe one billion will do (the slow population growth in industrialized countries indicates that depopulation is possible). But the need for them won't disappear overnight; we are nowhere near artificial general intelligence, no matter what Ray Kurzweil tells you.

invalidusernam3• 8 years ago

I started reading Homo Deus yesterday, I'm only about 50 pages in but enjoying it so far. I haven't noticed much doom and gloom in it yet, in fact the first few sections are about the positives of the modern age (advances in medicine, eradication of famine, etc).

kashyapc3• 8 years ago

Without giving any spoilers, unfortunately, as the book (Homo Deus) progresses, there's more and more speculation.

He also wrote a third book, that will come out in a week, with a heavily click-bait title :-( 21 Lessons for the 21st Century—I just can't stomach the lacklustre title, and probably just stay away from it, as I'd assume it'll be a "thin wrapper" around his two other books.

Sapiens was the book I enjoyed 3 years ago, before it became popular. Reading that single book gives insight into his fresh and original perspectives.

qubax• 8 years ago

But society's been getting better in every aspect of living almost every decade since the enlightenment.

For us but certainly not for society in other parts of the world. And certainly it was not continuous uptrend.

The greatest man-made catastrophes in human history has happened since the enlightenment. Native genocides, holocaust, WW1/WW2, Taiping Rebellion, intentional famines in india killing tens of millions, etc. And we aren't even factoring climate change, environmental degradation and species extinction.

From an absolutist perspective, if you compare an african or asian today to an african and asian 400 years ago, of course they are doing "better". But if you compare the proportional difference between an asian/african-european 400 years ago and asian/african-european today, the asian or african of 400 years was doing better vis a vis the european of 400 years ago.

In an absolute sense, everyone is doing better. But comparatively, the poor south is doing far worse today than it was 400 years ago. The last 400 years has been a story of wealth and resource extraction from the rest to the west. So while we sit pretty absolutely and comparatively, the rest sit worse comparatively.

While this is not a law of nature, it is reasonable to assume that this will continue for a little while.

It's also reasonable to assume things will change. Not just from a political or economic sense. But from an ecological sense as well. Economically and politically speaking - all empires collapse. The western empire is getting older by the minute. And not to sound like a malthusian, but from an ecological point, the population increased from 500 million to over 7 billion in less than 200 years. That's rather amazing.

dprophecyguy• 8 years ago

Do any of you guys can think of something that we can do in order to get rid of the problems that's described in this talk. I am asking for solutions that may or may not work but just a guess. What about the problem with Bio-Engineering? What about hacking humans and predicting humans behavior? I want to hear what is your thoughts on the solutions to these problems?

Hackable humans and digital dictators: Q&A with Yuval Noah Harari

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