Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Topics: Civilization, Anthropology, and Technology

All information is attributed to the author. Except in the case where we may have misunderstood a concept and summarized it incorrectly. These notes are only for reference, and we always suggest reading from the source.

Contents

The Technological Challenge – Part I

Disillusionment

Humans vote with their feet (immigration)

Work

Liberty

Equality

The Political Challenge – Part II

Community

Civilization

Nationalism

Falsification / Confirmation Bias

Tendency to Stereotype

Failure to See False Conjunctions

Religion

Immigration

Despair and Hope – Part III

Terrorism

War

Humility

Despair and Hope – Part III

Terrorism

God

Secularism

Truth – Part IV

Ignorance

Justice

Post-Truth

Science Fiction

Resilience – Part V

Education

Meaning

Meditation

The Technological Challenge – Part I

Disillusionment

Engineers and scientists lead biotechnology, AI, and Blockchain. People that don’t represent the public at all. This means that politicians are completely unaware of the potential of this technology and therefore cannot prepare for the disruption it poses. The internet has completely changed the way the world is run, and the standard liberal way of life has been turned on its head. Because of this, the politicians still harp on about policies that are irrelevant to the younger generations and must target the fear response in the older generations. This leaves the more youthful generation feeling disenfranchised since they are not represented. Even if the politicians took advancing tech into account, the response would have to change to keep up constantly. Change within a democratic system takes far too long. Voters would get the impression that their politicians are flippant and can’t make up their minds, shaking the faith in their leadership. Long-term planning is required to enable a functional society, but parties constantly change and undo everything the previous one did, making improvements even slower.

With the public observation of emerging tech, the masses now feel irrelevant (working-class jobs). They are frantically using their political power while they still can – making strange choices with their voting power. There was a time when the average person was seen as a working-class hero. Now technology dominates our future, and that “hero” no longer has a place.

Liberty was not always seen as the champion of the working class. These values were obtained from communism. It initially only catered for the elite European males until protests for independence destabilized their systems and led to wars. It became apparent that extending the illusion of liberty to the working class was essential to survive. This bred social welfare, education, and healthcare systems.  

An oligarchy can maintain control of civilization by manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises to distract from important issues like pollution and healthcare. However, even the leaders of oligarchies understand that this is not ideal, so they disguise their decisions with alternative philosophies to appease the public and themselves (religions and false democracy).

Humans vote with their feet (immigration)

Without an alternative political ideology to turn to, the people may disrupt the current system out of frustration but then return to liberalism again.

Globalization was the brainchild of Western imperialism, and invaded countries were shaken up and forced to change. However, these Western countries have enough trouble with their policies, so by asking the world to follow suit, they are just amplifying their problems with people who haven’t had time to adapt. This destabilizes a country by taking away their culture and isolating its people (mental health issues arise, health declines, poverty increases, oligarchy begins). Perhaps the best way forward is to lead by example and fix our system before forcing it on others. Ditch the plans of ruling the world but leave global trade open. If we retreat into our tribes/religions/races, we’ll inspire them vs. us attitude again, and differences will lead to wars. Liberty and democracy are the best ideology we’ve had regarding safety and prosperity for all, but we need to advance with technological disruption.  

Remove panic mindset and change to bewilderment. This means we stop thinking the world will end, and instead, we realize we don’t know what’s going on, but we are calm enough to pivot instead of destroying.

Work

There is no such thing as intuition. All it is is pattern recognition, in which AI is getting better at outdoing humans. Our heuristics are created for the African savannah, not the urban jungle. Humans operate individually, and when two people miscommunicate, it can cause an error. Machines can be integrated into the same network, making them less likely to miscommunicate.

When AI takes over driving, medicine, building, etc., the world will access the best technology and care. People will lose jobs, but then again, the mortality rates of people will go down. No more human errors, cheaper care, and tech can update constantly.  

Human jobs will be heavily creativity-focused and involve care for others (such as nursing). Anything that involves “error” (creativity) and human connection. Until machines can understand human emotion and create art that displays that abstractly, machines may be able to analyze your biometric data and adapt your exposure to music/art to either reflect your emotions or change them, AI may even be able to create original music tailored to your mood.

The biggest issue with changing jobs with advances in tech is that it is too dangerous to screw up now. If people disagree with the status of the world, there will be revolutions that may result in nuclear war and the destruction of the biosphere.

In Scandinavia, the motto “Protect workers, not jobs” is where they support somebody while retraining them.

Universal Basic Services (rather than income) would aim to provide free services, such as education and healthcare, by taxing the rich. This would deal with working-class people having no value in the ever-changing work sector and prevent hoarding of resources at the top.

AI may take away jobs from developing countries as they do all the horrible outsourcing work we don’t want to do, and building tech that can do it onsite will render them useless. Unless the developing countries can build their tech, train their engineers, and provide themselves with a local economy.

Sapiens are not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends on expectation, which adapts to environmental conditions and other people (Objective satisfaction vs. subjective).

Liberty

Liberty depends on the feelings of every person within a collective being equal and contributing votes towards change. However, not everybody has the right expertise to be making certain decisions. You wouldn’t ask Jeff Bezos to give his opinion on shooting 3-pointers. This presents an underlying flaw in the democratic voting system. We rely on the opinion of fools for most decisions. What makes it even worse is we have lawyers, economists, and bankers making decisions that involve health care, education, the environment, and other industries outside of their expertise, occasionally “consulting” with their chosen (usually biased) representatives. 

Feelings are biochemical mechanisms that animals use to calculate the probability of survival and reproduction. They are not based on intuition, inspiration, or freedom. We do not feel our neurons computing the potential of danger in our environment because it is too fast, so we put our response down to free will. This is where liberty fails to reproduce logical results since it is founded on the feelings of human beings who have confidence in the illusion of free will. It is much better but not as accurate as AI computation could be compared to depending on deities for answers.

Some day we may have biometric data constantly being measured and alerting us to issues arising from poor lifestyle choices. Then it will be our responsibility to respond as we see fit.

When our data is tracked, and advertising is tailored to suit our preferences, will we learn to accept our stolen data in exchange for personalized lifestyles, or will we still feel a breach of privacy because of previously held beliefs that we as individuals are unique and have free will?

***Marketing is seen as “evil” and “immoral” because they can make predictions about you better than the average person. Selling/marketing is not as bad as long as you feel like you have decided yourself. Even though good marketing can make you think it was up to you when you were subliminally programmed to want the said product. If you detect personalized advertising that isn’t “random” (randomness is the term we assign to something that we don’t understand), you feel betrayed and skeptical of that business.

If we can accept that we are being watched as we consume entertainment, we could program technology to shape us into the type of person we want to be. Say you want to be good at calculus, AI could slip in shows/educational games that build your ability to learn it. Once it detects that you have passed the challenge point or are losing learning efficiency, it would change to something that relaxes you and builds back your attention span. Specific lifestyle suggestions will also be recommended to push you closer to your goal. 

A negative impact of this ability to gain AI-driven insight is we will lose the ability to understand ourselves and our feelings the more we become dependent on technology, which is fine as long as we aren’t disconnected from it and expected to function “offline.”

Ethically, humans know it is wrong to discriminate against somebody from a different race or religion, but they still tend to do so subconsciously. If a machine is programmed to be unbiased, you can guarantee it won’t change. At first, the programs may have the developer’s biases, but it would be easy enough to detect and go back into debug.

We often fear AI because we believe they will become powerful and rebel. In reality, they will likely never rebel since its programming will be ingrained, which may be a problem in itself.           

Side note:

Caffeine as an accelerator for fear-based responses to life and fundamental decision-making. We are also fed and encouraged to eat foods that cause bodily dysfunction and cognitive decline. We are dependent on the local government system that controls the overall worldwide banking system.      

Equality

Up until the 21st century, there was no real difference between the elite and the peasants. Now that tech has advanced, and healthcare is reaching a point of life extension and genetic engineering ability, the rich will finally be capable of creating superhuman beings that can live for much longer than the average human—making the new age peasants weak in comparison. The lower class is already losing its value by being replaced by AI, so it’s only a matter of time before the inequality gap grows exponentially.

Google, Facebook, Baidu, and Tencent are currently in a data collection race. The data itself is worth more than the ad revenue to them.

We are led to believe that we are unique individuals who have free will when in reality, we are incredibly predictable and easily manipulated. We become even easier to control when all our data is used to steer us in the right direction, like farm animals. We are now passive and highly emotionally driven by training us to search for attention through attention-grabbing devices.

How do we regulate our data during this biotech and infotech revolution?

As a side note, if those in power don’t understand the impact and advantages of their position and the effects of their algorithms, why not? This would be almost as scary because it means they are naïve. Alternatively, they could know what’s is going on, but they have lost control. It seems companies like Facebook are trying to build online communities to make up for the damage they’ve done to the world. Then again, it I hard to know somebody’s intentions without truly “knowing them.”

The Political Challenge – Part II

Community

The ease at which we can communicate with people online has taken the priority of real-life interaction away. We spend way more time browsing our phones and computers than we are to our loved ones close by. Social media can be a valuable tool for connecting people through a common interest, but it comes at a cost.   

Showing people opposing sides to an argument doesn’t necessarily lead to a less biased view. Usually, it results in further polarization. They would be better off learning to understand the connection between themselves and the “opposition.”

Civilization

There is a theory that the Syrian war, Brexit, and other prominent political issues are caused by the Western and Middle Eastern clash. Neither will budge to suit the other. This fight between homogeneity seems pointless unless we all decide to abandon technology, build walls to avoid each other or kill each other. Humans are constantly changing their culture to suit their time, so the idea that a culture clash is the cause of all the major problems is not necessarily founded. We will continually adapt to our surroundings, whether we determine our identity with nationality, religion, sexuality, or even hobbies. Religion and other ideas are always interpreted differently anyway. Today’s Christian is different from the Christian yesterday, let alone the 1800s. People tend to believe that their religious stories are precious because the only ones who dispute this (their messiahs or prophets) are dead. There is no fixed DNA for these stories. They are what is made from it. Super orthodox Jews and Islamists may claim to be the following tradition. Still, a lot of the time, they are picking and choosing beliefs that don’t even hold (like not including women or children in pictures when evidence has been uncovered of their ancestors having no sign of this censorship).

Countries agree within and outside themselves to designate a proposed area that the whole community represents. Until recently, countries were completely changing through invasion and political uprisings. Now there are very few issues other than Taiwan and Palestine.

Another uniting factor is economics. If an invading country intended to destroy all remnants of its inhabitants, it still wouldn’t destroy their money because the federal reserve recognizes it, and destruction of this would give up power willingly. Business and science are also consistent. Medicine has changed all over the world to advance their countries equally. The pharmaceutical companies, sugar peddlers, and other big businesses don’t care where their money comes from either.

Identity is subjective. You decide what group you want to be a part of or who you identify with. This doesn’t change biology, but it does mean that your chosen “groups” are flexible. Some people just take this to the extreme and decide to “be” something outside their biology when in reality, their group becomes the people who identify as something rather than the thing itself. 

Nationalism

It is natural for humans to form loyalty and close bonds with smaller groups of people, and highly odd that we would take on national identity. Perhaps only due to necessity and a lot of reinforcement, we feel patriotic pride. Feeling a part of such a large group has allowed us to overcome tremendous obstacles and ensure resources for larger groups. If we were restricted to our smaller groups, we could be wiped out by a natural disaster overnight. Nationalism causes us to feel like our group is special/unique and commands our respect. This way, we pay our respects to the group in the name of something greater than us as individuals. It may be wrong, but it enables more prominent groups to coexist. The problem arises when ultra-nationalism takes hold and convinces the people that their country is superior to others rather than just unique. Wars would start over superiority complexes and defense of their way of life until the fear of atomic bombs took hold.

Before somebody yells “Our country first,” they need to figure out whether they can function as a civilization without external help and defend themselves from atomic destruction.

We are also destroying the ecology. Pumping toxins into the air, water, and soil. Phosphorus is good for plant growth but poisonous in large quantities. It runs off into the water and kills sea life. Nationalist isolationism is dangerous because it causes countries to think about themselves and their economic survival rather than the global climate effects its fossil fuel dependency has. In the grand scheme of things, most countries will benefit from the change to clean energy, but our current production will show a brief decline in profits. It requires those in power to give up a little to save the world. A big task when those in power don’t think the average person is even classed as the same species. Unfortunately, some countries like Iran and Russia have poured too many resources into fossil fuels, and their economy depends on it. This will make the change even harder. Skepticism and denial usually stem from people trying to preserve their interests, such as nationalists claiming climate change is a Chinese hoax. You barely hear left-wing people say this. They believe they need to deal with their national issues before even considering dealing with a significant and vague problem like climate change that doesn’t affect them directly.   

Nationalism, as an ideology, has become quite useless when it comes to dealing with the new technological era. You can’t take unstoppable change and respond by holding onto old ways. Especially with climate change getting worse and the arms race. People can have multiple loyalties, so why not add the people of earth to the list of family, culture, and country? We now have a global climate, global science, and global economy but national politics.

“Nationalists may be too short-sighted and too self-absorbed.”

Side note: the power of attraction is a good idea in theory, based on psychology fundamentals, but it was highjacked by charlatans who took advantage of those looking for help. Positive thinking is the process of eliminating stressful thoughts from the mind, and the power of attraction is about thinking about the things you want to have in abundance in your life. The very act of thinking about certain things primes your mind to search for them in your environment. It is seen in the act of buying a new car. Suddenly you see that car everywhere. Or you are searching for your friend in a crowd. You have a group of signals for which you combine and comb through a crowd. If we couldn’t do this, we would use far too much time and energy to do a simple task. We group images we know are not necessary and skim past. Every magician understands this since they rely on the limitations of the brain and commanding your attention.

Unfortunately, the people who usually take to the charlatans are people who are victims of feeling isolated and defeated by life who are looking for answers (people who will attack if confronted to defend their self-perceived fragility). By packaging positive thinking as a magical and spiritual endeavor, you are shutting the brain to the questions by filling them with a whimsical mystery: a whimsical mystery that has no threat but abundance for the user of such accessible powers. Just like religion, there is no longer any fear of the unknown, and now all they need to do is put their energy into attracting all the “positive” things in life. The funny thing is that to convince their followers to give them money, they convince them that they are a new age messiah who possesses the power you can acquire for a nominal fee and gain your following or funding. “Yes, I am ripping you off, but I deserve it because I am a spiritual being in this universe. Want to be like me? Pay to play my children.” They believe greed is okay because there is “abundance” in the universe. Meaning there is an unlimited amount of money and things out there that you can wish into being.

They also highjack scientific terms, like quantum entanglement, to recognize their mumbo jumbo. When real scientists question their usage, they usually say it is an “obvious” metaphor. However, when talking to those in their following, they may tell them that we don’t understand everything in the world; science can’t explain everything. Therefore the scary mysteries can be explained by our spiritual filler.    

Falsification / Confirmation Bias

What a man wishes, he also believes. Similarly, what we believe is what we choose to see. This is commonly referred to as confirmation bias. It is a deeply ingrained mental habit, both energy-conserving and comfortable, to look for confirmations of long-held wisdom rather than violations. Yet the scientific process – including hypothesis generation, blind testing when needed, and objective statistical rigor – is designed to root out precisely the opposite, which is why it works so well when followed.

The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification: A method is termed scientific if it can be stated so that a specifically defined result would cause it to be proven false. Pseudo-knowledge and pseudo-science operate and propagate by being unfalsifiable. As with astrology, we cannot verify them either correct or incorrect because the conditions they would be shown false are never stated.

Tendency to Stereotype 

The tendency to broadly generalize and categorize rather than look for specific nuance. Like availability, this is generally a necessary trait for energy-saving in the brain.

Failure to See False Conjunctions

Most famously demonstrated by the Linda Test, the same two psychologists showed that students chose more vividly described individuals as more likely to fit into a predefined category than individuals with broader, more inclusive, but less vivid descriptions, even if the striking example was a mere subset of the more inclusive set. These specific examples are more representative of the category than those with broader but vague descriptions, violating logic and probability.

Fear of the unknown, messiah complex

Religion

While modern religions have proven useful at directing large communities in the past, they have very little application these days. For example, policy problems (like climate change regulations) and technical issues (climate change responses) should not be handled by religions that were not created. In contrast, these issues were not yet acknowledged. However, identity problems (who you are and who you belong with) can still be addressed cautiously. As we are all aware, those identity issues can also pose the problem of drawing a line between “us and them,” creating fear and anger towards the other.

Religion used to fall in agriculture, medicine, and other broad areas of life. There is collective amnesia amongst zealots claiming to have forgotten their religions ever held those roles. They choose what analogy or metaphor based on the social norms currently are. Back in the times when they would use priests to solve famine or some medical issues, the priest’s responsibility would be to claim divine intervention when it worked or explain why it didn’t if it failed (usually not enough prayer or donation is the culprit). The significant difference between science and religion is scientists are supposed to admit when they are wrong and learn from their mistakes, which is why more and more of the world is turning to science before anything else (the problem occurs when people put too much trust in scientists rather than learning how to understand the purpose of science)—making the world a single superficial community under the scientific procedure. Religion also has no part to play in economics. Some religions will stay close and be consulted in some countries when an economic decision must be made, but no answers within the Quran or Bible responses would help. Unless that individual is also a modern economist, they will be misinformed by extremely outdated suggestions about the global financial markets. After religious leaders consult experts, they tend to wrap their answers in their religious explanatory garb before presenting them. However, their responses are usually the same as most other people seeing as the origin is the same, but the explanation is different. The holy books go from historical scripture to just a symbol of authority (like priests in a monarchy). There are no such things as Christian, Muslim, or Hindu economics (if anything, they would probably be communists). An evangelical would be more likely to interpret the bible as saying climate change is a hoax and to be seen driving a gas-guzzling SUV. In contrast, a catholic may drive an electric vehicle and say Jesus believed in saving the environment. All interpretation is dependent on your current scientific understanding.

Religion is just a shortcut to understanding. When your scientific understanding is waning, you need to fill it with stories to feel safe. The alternatives are to be in fear of the unknown constantly or to have to try to use energy to learn, which is incredibly difficult when you’ve had a lifetime of ignorance. We are always trying to take the path of least resistance to save energy unless we convince ourselves it is necessary.

“Human power depends on mass cooperation, mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass identities – and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not scientific facts or even on economic necessities.”

To draw a line in the san, between-group religions use rites, rituals, and ceremonies, but they all incorporate group activities to search for meaning. This builds bonds with community and affection for their group and religious idea. There are many disgusting unfairnesses in each religion, but unification draws them together.

These days religion is now just considered the handmaid of nationalism. “We are god’s chosen nation, so whatever is good for the nation will please our God.”

Immigration

Typically, immigration comes with these three terms:

1. The host country allows the immigrants in
2. In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values
3. If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, they become equal and full members of the host country over time. “They become us.”

Are the host countries morally obligated to let immigrants through, or can they pick and choose who they want? Also, can they use force to keep people out (defending against invasion)? The host may screen for ethnicity, religion, talents/skills, criminal records, and money to determine whether they will contribute or hinder their already established country. Some countries turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants to benefit from cheap and unregulated labor but then refuse to legalize them, claiming they don’t want immigrants, exploiting powerless foreigners.

Another question is how much must the immigrants assimilate to be included? It tends to depend on how diverse the country already is. A tolerant society can handle a certain amount of diversity until too many extremists tip the balance and change the overall culture. The European moral code is apparently focused on tolerance, so the inclusion of any intolerant people will change that.

The third question is how much time must pass before the immigrant can be accepted as a member of society? Some people believe that if the third generation is not accepted, the host country demonstrates bigotry. Others believe that if your grandpa arrived here forty years ago and you are rioting for equal rights, you have failed the test. However, on a personal scale, if you were born somewhere, you can’t just go back to where you came from as you are a part of the society you were born in, not your parent’s home. There will always be the problem of defining who needs to budge to accommodate. Is the host being too harsh/racist? Or is the immigrant not assimilating enough and harboring intolerant views in a seemingly tolerant society?

Nowadays, racism doesn’t exist in the same way in mainstream culture as biology is no longer the issue. The real problem is culturism. Discrimination is due to the culture somebody is raised in or assumes to be a part of based on their appearance. Everybody knows that your actual race and DNA have no bearing on how intelligent you are. It is all down to expectations/prejudice about the perceived attitudes/behavior of the collective. That’s not to say that culturism isn’t bad. Using racism is just wrongly defined, but it is used to harness the full impact that the word carries.

Fitting into a culture is easier said than done. An immigrant could be earnestly trying to fit into the country’s ways but still be blocked from participating due to institutional discrimination, only to be accused later of not trying to blend in.

Defining intolerance is also a challenge as social interaction changes with cultures. When you merge two cultures, their standard way of interacting may differ, leading to an opinion of superiority in one or more camps. The person of origin will usually claim to believe that their way is better as they are operating within their environment.  Tolerance is also measured by their environment and subjective. Humans use predictions for safety. So, prejudice is human nature that we dislike using on each other but celebrate when somebody can predict future events outside of the human activity.

Despair and Hope – Part III

Terrorism

Terrorists are masters of mind control. They kill very few people, but they cause a significant disturbance amongst the American government and the European Union. They need to use fear as a weapon as they are generally vulnerable groups that want to create widespread change in their favor. The fear is often disproportional to the actual damage caused or potential power. Attacking the enemy while they are enraged or confused will cause them to strike back with far more military force than is necessary, and they will cause more damage than the terrorist group ever could themselves. This may lead to instability within the country of origin and their people (leading to a power struggle that the enemy can take advantage of) and distrust and anger within the powerful government. A country run on fear and anger makes stupid mistakes and directs who should be leading to an aggressive person. They are the fly in a China shop, buzzing in the bull’s ear, causing it to destroy everything in sight. Terrorism is an act of desperation rather than war. War takes the enemy’s retaliation into account and only attacks when they can reduce the effectiveness of the enemy and their arsenal (like Pearl Harbor). It is judged by its emotional impact rather than its material impact. Nobody talks about the pentagon attack, only the twin towers with civilian casualties.

The small organization knows they will be crushed, but they are weak and have very few options. So, the big powers will attack them to assure their people that they are strong and the civilians are safe, even though they are putting them in more danger than they would’ve been if they hadn’t retaliated. States will react violently to terrorism but not heart disease or something else more of a threat because it poses a threat to their power. Heart disease isn’t their problem, so the real issue here is not the safety of the people. The less political violence in a system, the greater an act of terrorism appears. In Belgium, a few people killed make more noise than a thousand in Nigeria. A small amount of violence messes with the public’s mindset, and they believe a state of anarchy is arriving. Also, the media will always choose to publicize it because it is more interesting than diabetes. Fear draws attention.

War

In 1914, all significant powers owed their success to war. There are still world dictators that flourish in war, but major leaders may have forgotten since power was acquired through trade in the late 1900s. Some are still fighting, but those that do gain little. Most more considerable powers understand this and don’t see themselves benefitting economically. It is not worth the distrust from the invaded and other countries witnessing the bloodshed.

When major powers used to fight, they would be able to sell enslaved people and steal the resources of the losing country. These conquests are barely worth the invasion as they are small compared to annual GDP. Cyber and nuclear warfare make starting a war quite challenging. If the US were to attack another country with a decent cyber background, they could hack into their country’s arsenal and set off their nuclear bombs or shut down their whole economy. The world is far more complicated than a chess game, and the rational human mind is not up to the task of operating it. We can’t underestimate the stupidity of humanity.

Humility

Most places claim to believe they are the center of the world and that history favors their origin. Most cultures have reason to believe that they were responsible for all the positive things and progress the world has made. This demonstrates a willful ignorance of history and a hint of racism.

Christianity (2.3 billion), Islam (1.8 billion), Judaism (15 million) are considered the three great religions by Israelis. Somehow Hinduism (1 billion), Buddhism (500 million), Shinto (50 million), and Sikh (25 million) don’t make the cut. Many religions believed that morals didn’t exist until after the creation of their story. Completely ignoring all the traditions and accomplishments humanity made beforehand. In reality, ethical codes predate humanity. You see plenty of other animals that have adapted moral principles to cooperate.

Monotheism made people far more intolerant leading to holy wars and religious persecutions. Polytheists already thought it was OK to worship other gods. Monotheists believe in universal obedience and will kill to gain it.

God

Some people give this name to an all-knowing being, whereas others have attributed the term god to mean anything in the cosmos that is unknown. Some believe they know every detail about what God likes or dislikes and will argue over it based on their interpretation of a book written by man many years ago when language and culture were different.

If science can’t irrefutably explain something, the religious will attribute this unknown to God. Once science figures something else out, they change their minds when forced to. They also make bold claims about God not liking same-sex marriage, albeit with no evidence. God becomes the authority to get what they want and prevent what represents change.

The religious laws may have helped maintain the social order when we knew no better, but they have no place now. Every violent act begins with a violent thought in mind. It hurts the victim as well as the actor. It disturbs their peace and all who are victims of their actions. For many people, a belief in God has helped them resist feeling immense anger towards others and prevents them from hurting them. Although, others use God’s name to inflict pain on others. The value of a lawgiver depends on their devotees.

Secularism

A secular lifestyle may appear hollow, nihilistic, and amoral to people who believe in religions. Secularists tend to disagree and still have morals and do not claim to have all the answers. They believe that morality and wisdom are the legacy of humans rather than passed down from the heavens. All ethics promote truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage, and responsibility, whether religious or not. The first ideal for secularists is truth – based on observation and evidence rather than faith. If you have a strong belief, it says more about your psychology and upbringing than truth. Next is compassion. They choose not to hurt others because it inflicts pain and suffering. This is compared to those who don’t hurt others because of obedience. They aim to do as little harm as possible under challenging circumstances. Keeping in mind that all are created equal and should have equal opportunities (equality). Courage is required to fight biases and oppressive regimes that oppose equality and admit ignorance. We shouldn’t be afraid to doubt ourselves and look for more evidence. Fear of the unknown can paralyze more than any tyrant, and so some believe they must have an answer for every question, leading to filling space with God. Those scared of truth are more likely to be violent to defend their ideas. Finally, secular people need to take responsibility because no God takes care of us or supports our beliefs. Secular people take pride in scientific achievements like curing epidemics, feeding the hungry, and bringing about world peace since they know they worked hard to accomplish it without divine intervention. We worked together as a species, not despite each other. We also need to take responsibility for all the bad stuff we have done and learn from them.

Understanding these values sets the bar relatively high, and many who are considered “secularists” will not meet the expectations. Capitalism started as a secular idea until it fell into dogma. Repeating the words “free market” and “economic growth,” irrespective of the reality.

The story that everybody has the right to liberty and freedom to life has protected many, but it is just a story we tell ourselves to govern without a dictatorship or gods. This dogma inspired ideas that everybody has a right to free speech instead of “should.” When we say this, we gloss over the fact that we are all shaped by our environments and upbringing and may not have an opinion that reflects what is best for the species overall, trending towards free speech that contains a negative narrative. We can’t have everybody saying what they want and guarding their erroneous beliefs with authority to speak.

To claim freedom of speech over anybody else is denying the other person. Hate speech should never be encouraged if it means causing harm to another being. AI is being developed based on our ideas, so they will make fast executive decisions on behalf of the developer’s beliefs when they become more integrated.

The power of secularism is the power to see your own shadow. To admit wrongdoing and to evolve from such mistakes. If you place all your intentions in the hands of an all-knowing God, you leave no room for errors and, therefore, learning. We must fervently lookout for our blind spots and avoid overconfidence without relieving resolution when things work in everyone’s favor. A quest for truth regardless of our flaws is one where we will constantly strive for improvement. The first question that anyone who claims their religion or idea is the greatest should be what have you or it got wrong in the past. If they can’t admit anything, they are not to be trusted.

Truth – Part IV

Ignorance

“If you feel overwhelmed and confused by the global predicament, you are on the right track. Global processes have become too complicated for any single person to understand. How then can you know the truth about the world and avoid falling victim to propaganda and misinformation?”

Democracy was founded on the idea that voters know best, free-market capitalism believes the customer is always right, and liberal education teaches students to think for themselves. However, putting too much trust into the “rational individual” is a mistake.  Most human decisions are based on emotions and heuristic shortcuts, which were significant in the stone age but not silicon valley.

Individuality is a myth. What gave us the edge over other animals was our ability to operate in groups. We rely on the expertise of others to get by with almost all of our daily tasks, and yet we believe to know more than we do. We have the illusion of knowledge, but it works well for us. It is energy efficient not to have to learn everything. Then again, people have extreme views on many things that fall outside their expertise and rarely appreciate their ignorance. Most Americans who have strong aggressive beliefs about the Middle East can’t find any of their countries on the map. The power of groupthink is so hard to dispel that you would sooner anger people with opposing facts than sway them. Most people don’t like to feel stupid, especially if it goes against a group ideology that they belong to.

Great power inevitably distorts the truth. With power, all problems appear to be overcome with it. Anybody who talks with you will have a conscious or unconscious agenda, so you can never have complete faith in what they say. Great power thus acts like a black hole that warps everything around it. Revolutionary knowledge rarely makes its way to the center because itits is built on pre-existing knowledge. However, the periphery is also filled with conspiracies and superstitious nonsense, making it hard to distinguish between great ideas and significant loads of shit. It takes too much time wading through it to find the gems, so a person of power doesn’t have that kind of luxury.

Justice

Our sense of justice might be out of date. Not much has changed about us biologically since we were hunter-gatherers, but we only had to deal with a few dozen people back then. Now our scale has increased to billions of people across continents in a short period. Every single small decision we make has a cause-and-effect relationship on people we will never know. Things have become so complex that we struggle to make the most basic of decisions without feeling guilty in some form, and the groups we claim to be a part of will make decisions on your behalf that you’ll also get the blame for. Our clothing supports child labor, the cars we drive contribute to climate change, and our food supports global factory farming. The greatest crimes in history resulted from hate, greed, ignorance, and indifference.

Whether you are a disadvantaged minority, you will never know the experience of growing up as another person in a different group, so there is no comparison. The difficulties of growing up one way are relative to your experience rather than a default comparison that everybody knows to be the human experience. So, no given person can understand living all viewpoints without having lived them.

Conflict between millions of people is also too difficult to understand. Instead of thousands or millions of people’s individual lives and problems, we think about the conflict between two people or a story representing it, e.g., China vs. America. Charities understand this well… Even the economy is too difficult for the so-called elites to control. It is just more comfortable accepting the dogma that there is either an element of control from somebody higher up or the lack of responsibility on your end.

Post Truth

Some people believe that when there is a greater purpose at hand (such as the success of a nation), lying and causing harm to others may be justified. An example of this was the Crimean invasion by Russia, which claimed that the people fighting were “self-defense groups.” Russians believe that countries like Ukraine are “fake nations” that are part of Russia. Misinformation has been around a long time. China denies Tibet’s independence; Japan staged fake attacks to wage war on China and even created an affected country. The British invaded Australia on the grounds of it being nobody’s land, etc.

Homo sapiens exist in the land of post-truth. Our power as a species stems from our ability to create and believe in fiction. We are the only species that can cooperate with strangers to serve a collective fiction. We can harmonize as long as we believe in the same laws and stories.

When a thousand people believe some made-up story for a month – that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years – that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news, not to hurt the faithful’s feelings think.

Not that religion hasn’t been helpful to unite large groups of people for a common goal, but it doesn’t mean it is true or good all the time. People have been murdering each other for years in the name of their story, and it is hard to profess that your story wins over others when there are so many other books and cultures of people who have claimed the same thing with more or less the same evidence.           

Each nation has its mythology.

Hitler says in Mein Kampf: The most brilliant propaganda technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

Commercial companies are also perpetrators of propaganda. Coca-cola displays an image of healthy, athletic, and happy people drinking their products rather than the truth of fat, sick, and dying people.

Truth has never been that high of a priority for Homo Sapiens.

Generating fiction for a group to believe in ensures their commitment to the cause. If a large group all believe the same tale without fact-checking, they will be more likely to hang off your every word and defend you and your idea mercilessly.

Money and corporations bind people more than any holy book in a more modern sense. I believe that other people believe in the dollar, so I shall commit to it and its value. If everybody sits down and discusses money and corporations, they’ll all agree that it is human, yet we still treat them as real entities. It is like thinking about a sport like a football too much. Making a bunch of people chase a ball around is ridiculous, but suspending disbelief allows the audience and the players a simulation of a fictional world. The issue with sports, money, corporations, and nations being fictional but accepted is that we don’t have any energy to remember that fact all the time, so we make decisions based on believing in them. This leads to us acting as if they are important. Suppose you question them in the heat of the moment. In that case, you will anger other people who do not acknowledge its fiction, who have also committed a great deal of energy to it and incorporated it into their identity. If they join you in your disbelief, the group will destabilize, and distrust arises between those who subscribe and those who don’t (warring tribes). Should people serve power or truth? Should we unite under fiction or individually seek truth and hold each other accountable? Unity over truth will always win due to the path of least resistance.

If you get your news for free, you may be the product.

If an issue is critical to you, make an effort to read the scientific literature (peer-reviewed articles, books by well-known publishers, and professors from reputable institutions).

Science has its limitations and has made many mistakes in the past, but it is the most reliable source of information.

Scientists may need to start writing science fiction to install positive ideas of reality and change in the public instead of dangerous fiction that fuels power in those with selfish/nefarious plots.

Science Fiction

Humans have taken over the world because of their cooperation due to their belief in fiction. People go to war because of faith in a God they read poems about, read stories about, saw plays about, saw pictures of, etc. The same with capitalism and the images of Hollywood and the pop industry. We believe buying stuff will make us happy and that those who we worship and story-time heroes also prescribe to this idea. Science fiction tv is extremely powerful and popular, so they need to be more careful how they depict the messages they portray. The public may start to focus on the wrong sort of problems when their attention is directed at something counterintuitive. For example, science fiction confuses consciousness with intelligence and always shows the potential war between humans and AI.

In The Matrix and The Truman Show, both characters escaped a world constructed to keep them enslaved in an alternate reality. Eventually, they both escape to the so-called fact, which in the grand scheme of things is no different from the world they just left (other than the belief of control).

Pain, fear, and love are all the same whether you feel them in the matrix or “reality.” The mind is never free from manipulation. There is no authentic self-waiting to be liberated. Everything we do is based on manipulations from others who display power/control, your heuristics, and the group beliefs you prescribe to (created from history and biology). All life and experience within each individual are fiction, and we express that fiction to others and develop a group fiction—the great homogenization story.

Escaping the narrow definition of self might become a necessary survival skill of the twenty-first century.

Resilience – Part V

Education

How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed, and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?

Today we have no idea what the world will look like in 2050, so it is tough to guide young people in the right direction. The human body might undergo bioengineering and direct-BCI in the not-too-distant future, and anything we teach them now will be irrelevant.  Schools still teach kids to cram information. This was fine when communication was limited and the leading media outlets censored what they wanted, but now we have data overload, making it hard to know what to believe. The last thing schools need to do now fills their heads with more info. They should teach them how to decipher fact from fiction and think for themselves.

The four Cs – are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

More importantly, the ability to deal with change, learn new things and preserve mental balance in unfamiliar settings. Teachers usually lack the flexibility that the 21st century demands as they are products of a defunct teaching system. Most “adults” cannot be relied on because it is hard to tell if their advice is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.

Technology can help, but you don’t want to rely on it lest you become hostage to its agenda. Most people don’t “know” themselves, so they become prey to external manipulations when you tell them to listen to themselves. It is already pretty hard to tell the difference between yourself and the directives of marketing experts. The only way to overcome this issue is to know yourself. Spend time figuring out what your operating system requires, not what your smartphone, computer, government, or bank account want.

Enjoy the ride if you are happy, allowing the algorithms to dictate your decisions. If you want to retain an element of control and the future of your life, you’ll need to run faster than the algorithms and leave behind any digital trace of illusory desires.      

Meaning

Life is not a story. In most cases, when asking for the meaning of life, they expect to hear a story. We understand things in terms of stories rather than graphs or data. We want to know what reality is, our role in the cosmic drama, define who we are, and give meaning to our experiences and choices.

Before the explosion of the technological age, most generations suffered the same fate. The repetition provided power to the cycle of fate, the importance of routine, and caste systems (fixed and true identities like in The Lion King). That reduces anxiety because it limits decision fatigue. Positive in terms of mental health but harmful in the sense of changing life direction or being flexible in an ever-changing world.

Meaning can easily be derived from the position of nationalist pride. If you believe your nation is the most essential thing in the world, you base all your decisions on what is excellent for the nation itself. It is extremely narrow-minded, but it fulfills the human urge to belong and eliminates questions about existentialism. It becomes impossible to see beyond the scope of your home. Even though no culture claims to be more important than any other, let alone in the universe.

Some people believe they can find meaning in leaving behind something cultural (like art) or biological (children). It helps them to feel like they are living forever through their actions.

Those who believe life goes on after death, in the form of reincarnation, are more concerned about getting off the wheel of suffering.

Since leaving behind anything tangible can be easily erased or misinterpreted, there is also the option of leaving the world a better place. Then again, better is subjective.

Romance often pops up, but you could find romance in most places regardless of how important that person seems.

Personal identity is built on story. We were raised to believe in parents, teachers, neighbors, and general culture stories. By the time our intellect matures, we are so heavily invested in stories that we would more likely use our intellect to defend them than refute them. Searching for meaning is just discovering hidden gems in your psyche planted by your upbringing. There is nothing special or cosmic about your reality other than the experience you’ve accumulated so far. You are the culmination of your reality rather than the other way round.

Anybody who tries to challenge the group story we tell ourselves gets ostracized or persecuted, so challenging the status quo is both scary and dangerous. Once personal identities and social institutions are built upon a story, it becomes unthinkable to question them. Not because of the evidence supporting them, but because it will collapse personal and social structures. In history, the roof is sometimes more critical than the foundations.

Rituals are the key to making a story believable (like drinking the blood of Christ). By making the person do things like bowing their heads, bringing their hands together, wearing special outfits that demonstrate their faith, and incorporating constant care, you can easily create beliefs in something that upholds their identity. Food is also an excellent way of drilling in dogma through symbolization, specialty items, or food exclusions. Napoleon realized he could make people sacrifice themselves and fight wars for a colorful ribbon, and people would fight for the crown or the throne because of what they symbolized. For long-lasting political and social stability, rituals and rites are your friends, and the truth is a liability.

A flag and an anthem make a country feel real and tangible, even if they are all human constructs. Once you suffer for a story, you will also be more likely to reinforce your beliefs about it. Once you make a painful sacrifice, you are trapped. Buying an expensive car makes you sing its praises, and giving something up for romance is seen as a beautiful gesture.

If you question national pride or religion, you are often confronted with guilt – “but the martyrs died for this! Do you dare say they died for nothing? Do you think these heroes were fools?”

You can either inflict pain on yourself and give yourself the option of belief or disbelief, or you can sacrifice someone else and have faith, or you become a cruel villain. We would much prefer truth over realizing we are villains.

Nowadays, people hedge their bets with belief systems by having many. To back up their actions, they need to balance politics, social orders, religions, etc., to explain themselves wholeheartedly. Hardly anyone has one identity now. It is possible to hold inconsistent beliefs and to follow what is convenient at the time. Terrorists might blow themselves up in the name of their god (believing they’ll go to paradise), get revenge for an attack on their people, but then also claim they have gone to paradise. So why would you get revenge if somebody relieved your people of suffering? If you genuinely believed they were going somewhere better, you would ask for death.

Faith was considered a cardinal virtue, and disbelief was the greatest sin to reinforce religious devotion. As if there was something intrinsically good about believing something without evidence. Modern culture made faith look like mental slavery. Freedom is too much for some people, but the fit is the unique ability to choose—choice vs. overburden for others.

Being given the freedom of choice s the great goal to realize that there is no predetermined meaning of life. It is up to us to assign reason and purpose to our actions and feelings. Nothing is beautiful, sacred, or sexy. It is human emotions that make them so. The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe. We are free to create our own dharma.

Free will means the freedom to choose what to do, not what to desire. Humans give so much importance to their desires that they shape the world to satisfy them. If we understood that our desires are not the result of free will but instead of biological processes, we might make more informed choices.

The self is a fictional story that our mind is constantly rewriting and updating. The inner narrator repeatedly gets things wrong but rarely admits it. Like a government or religion, the inner narrator builds its dogma of personal myths, cherished memories, and trauma that often bears little resemblance to the truth. People ask, “Who am I?” and expect to be told a story. The first thing to realize is you are not a story.      

By using a nation or group as a metaphor for a group of people, you include your members in a manner that makes them feel like they are a part of a greater collective than themselves rather than an individual. This commands power over the individual due to inherent desires to belong, to feel appreciated for belonging, and the fear of exclusion (exclusion from the tribe is certain death so biologically averse). For example, if you say, “Poland will not be defeated; it is the Christ of nations and will be reborn from the ashes,” the citizen will feel pride and willingness to stick by the fictional idea of a nation regardless of any detrimental effects of doing so.

Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, it may be a way to cover up the horror of suffering from incomprehensible words (sacrifice, purity, eternity, redemption).

Logical fallacies – if you suffer because of a belief in God or your nation, that doesn’t make your beliefs true. If anything, you are suffering because of your gullibility.

The meaning of life is to create meaning.

However, the real question should be – how do we reduce suffering.

Meditation

When Yuval was younger, he couldn’t understand why there was so much suffering in the world and his own life and what could be done about it. He got no real answers except religious myths about gods and heavens, nationalist myths about the motherland and its historical mission, romantic legends about love and adventure, or capitalist myths about economic growth and how buying things will make everything better. Academia seemed like the answer, but it disappointed him. It gave him the tools to question these myths, but it focused on investigating the very narrow rather than the answers to the big questions. The only solace he gained was in philosophical readings and discussions, but he found that they never resulted in solutions (only nonsensical frustration). It wasn’t until he decided to go on a 10-day Vipassana retreat that things started to make more sense. He focused on the “I,” the illusion of identity, the impermanence of mind and body, and what life and death mean. He learned how to observe his breath, heat, pressure, pain, and other sensations. When a sensation is unpleasant, you react with aversion. When it is pleasant, you respond with a craving for more.

We are constantly reacting to our immediate sensations internally. There is nothing outside of our experience within the body/mind, and most people will experience anger and pain without actually acknowledging how it feels. When angry, he would focus on the object of anger rather than the feeling itself until he learned how to observe. He believes that he figured out more about himself and humans in general during the retreat than he had his whole life up to that point. To do that, he didn’t need to prescribe to any mythology of fiction; he just had to observe. The most profound source of suffering is the patterns of our minds.

To become a trustworthy anthropologist, we need to observe as much as possible in other human cultures without any prejudice or preconceptions (methodical and objective). The study of the mind should also follow this model.

Vipassana meditators are often instructed not to pursue any cosmic specialness or answers to the universe and instead to focus on their own experience and sensation. Any external experiences are not yours and not crucial during this time of self-discovery (no searching for bliss or ecstasy).

Most importantly, we should learn to observe to understand ourselves better and make better decisions before AI makes up our minds for us.