Prepare for the future: Homo Deus

Algorithms, immortality, dataism

6 min readMay 16, 2020

Introduction to the book

In the early 21st century, the train of progress is pulling out of the station, and it will probably be the last train to leave the station called Homo sapiens. In order to get a seat, you need to understand the power of biotechnology and algorithms since the main products in this period won’t be food, textiles or vehicles, but brains, bodies and minds. Those who get a seat will acquire divine abilities, turning themselves into Homo Deus. Those who won’t will have to face extinction. — Yuval Noah Harari. Author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Facts

Today

In 2012, war killed 120,000 people, whereas 1.5 million died of diabetes. Famine has greatly decreased and the word “peace” has acquired a different meaning rather than just “the absence of war”. So…

What will humanity aim for, once it has eradicated hunger and stopped war?

Immortality

Religion insists that the meaning of our existence is found in our life after death, meaning that death is a vital and positive part of the world. But religions arose at a time when we didn’t have enough understanding of our biology. Yes, alchemists believed in the Philosopher’s Stone, but they had no idea about the existence of telomeres, stem cells, senescent cells or anything alike. What do scientists have to say about living forever nowadays?

Raymond Kurzweil and de Aubrey de Grey believe that humans maintaining a healthy body and bank account by 2050 have high chances of cheating death. Can you imagine a more interesting challenge than defeating death, a more promising market than the market of eternal youth?

Happiness

Several thinkers have said throughout history that happiness is even more valuable than life itself. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, thought (paraphrased):

If there’s no life after death, the whole point of living is being happy.

Today we know that happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don’t remain happy when we have a prosperous existence, but when reality reaches our expectations. And when conditions improve, our expectations balloon.

Science also explains that we aren’t happy because we’re promoted in our jobs or win the lottery, but because of biochemical reactions that happen in our bodies.

Thus, what Yuval suggests in this book is that if we want to live forever happily, we need to forget a little about our economy, politics and possessions and start thinking about hacking our biochemistry.

Algorithms vs Soul

Probably the most important point that you should remember after reading this summary (and hopefully after reading Homo Deus) is that algorithms matter more than ever before in the 21st century.

Algorithm: a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems, and reach decisions. In other words, an algorithm isn’t a particular calculation but rather the method followed when doing the calculation.

In essence, organisms are algorithms. What we call emotions, sensations and thoughts are most likely to be just highly-refined algorithms that went through several quality tests in a process called evolution.

However, we don’t know yet the evolutionary benefit of these subjective experiences. If a chain of electrochemical reactions leads to movements in the leg muscles, why add subjective experiences to this chain?

This also raises the question: since organisms are algorithms, does it really matter the material that the processor is made of and could machines outperform humans?

Soon, books will read you while you read them. And whereas you quickly forget most of what you read, Amazon will never forget a thing.

Dataism

Dataism is very likely to be a new religion and it declares that the universe is nothing but a continuous flow of data and that the value of an entity depends on how it contributes to this data processing. What’s its motto?

Information wants to be free. If you experience something, record it. If you record something, upload it. If you upload something, share it.

Dataism holds that you and I are constantly contributing to this data flow. People who take this seriously believe in the motto. For what’s the point of living a wonderful life if nobody or only a few know about it?

Although this may sound like a matter of trendiness, it could actually become a matter of survival. If we don’t let the system know we are valuable enough, the system could end up thinking that, and so could people.

What is real?

I think most people are aware of two types of reality: objective and subjective. The first one is observed in gravity the laws of physics and chemistry, while the second one consists of personal beliefs and feelings.

But what if I told you, there is still a more interesting part of the story: intersubjective reality. What is said in Homo Deus is that this classification of the world is formed by entities that depend on what a whole society thinks. For example, you cannot eat, drink or wear a dollar bill. But you can give Walmart this piece of paper in exchange for bread.

Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories.

How to survive the revolution?

Real-life applications are changing rapidly. Atoms won’t become obsolete from one day to another, however, we can learn how to make different nano-materials. DNA is still going to have the instructions to build life. But we are now able to tweak genes. Therefore, it’s real-life applications the ones we need to keep up with.

Humans in the future, who will have a longer lifespan and live in an incredibly fast-changing world, won’t have enough with studying one career when they’re in their 20s. They’ll have to reinvent themselves constantly if they want to remain relevant.

The useless class could not only be unemployed but also unemployable.