21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari

Category: Non-Fiction;  Rating: 4 out of 5;  Tags: 21st Century Issues, World Politics

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is the third book in a series by Yuval Harari.  In Sapiens, he covered humanity’s history, from the dawn of our species to it’s possible future disappearance, and proposed that it’s our imagination, our ability to create and believe in myths, that makes us distinctly human.  In Homo Deus, he considered where humanity might be headed, with the prospect of dramatically increasing human longevity, improving happiness, and enhancing our bodies and brains through genetic engineering or by becoming cyborgs.

Now, in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari looks at the problems faced by civilization in this century, ranging from the consequences of rapid technological advancement to loss of trust in the liberal values that characterized the 20th century.

Technology will disrupt work for many, forcing them to retrain rapidly and often, as robotics and artificial intelligence replace human workers.  Even human creativity is not safe: to detect cheaters who use computers in chess championships, one of the things adjudicators look for is unusually creative moves – this is now a sign of AI, not human players.  Miners of Big Data may be able to hack our minds by knowing us better than we know ourselves, influencing us to make decisions that are bad for us and bad for the world.

Technology will also bring benefits.  Harari notes that twice as many people are killed in traffic accidents each year than are killed by war, crime and terrorism combined.  Self-driving cars could save the lives of a million people a year; AI doctors will give access to medical care to people in remote areas.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge may be inequality.  Already, “the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion.”  Once wealthy people are able to buy treatments to extend their lives and upgrade their brains and bodies, inequality will increase exponentially, possibly creating a small elite of superhumans, with normal people forming a huge, disadvantaged underclass.

Then there’s ecological damage and climate change.  Harari has a knack for the pithy phrase: “For thousands of years Homo sapiens behaved as an ecological serial killer; now it is morphing into an ecological mass murderer.”  It’s a global problem, which national governments are not equipped to handle.  The solutions are unlikely to come from the dogmas of nationalism or religion, so Harari favours a kind of secularism that starts by admitting how little we know. “Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.”

To battle the effects of Big Data and AI, Harari’s advice to a hypothetical 15-year-old student would be, first, to not trust the adults too much – their worldview is outdated – and then to know your own mind as well as you can.

 

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained, Annotation by Russell McNeil, PhD, Translation by George Long; Revised by Russell McNeil, PhD

Category: Non-Fiction;  Rating: 3 out of 5;  Tags: Philosophy, Stoicism, Ethics

 

The thoughts of a Roman emperor who lived from 121 to 180 CE are still relevant today.  Advice ranges from handling insults and depression to having the proper attitudes toward pleasure, pain, and death.

Personally, I prefer the interpretation of Stoicism presented in “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William B. Irvine.  The annotations and explanations of Russell McNeil, PhD, are more true to the historical period in which Stoicism was developed and practiced, but are more esoteric than Irvine’s, who has adapted the principles of Stoicism so they may be practiced by a modern audience.