MALE SPEAKER 1: Professor
Harari is a good friend of mine
and a professor in the
University of Jerusalem.
He's been teaching an
introductory history class
for undergrads for
quite a few years.
And at some point he decided
that it would be a good idea
to compile the lecture
notes to a book
so that the life of his students
will be a little bit more easy.
So he wrote the book and
then what happened later
was completely unplanned.
The book became a
bestseller in Israel.
It was the top best
seller in the nonfiction
books for a few months.
Then translations to
foreign languages came.
The book has been
translated to 30 languages.
It's being sold now in most
of the European countries
and in Canada with
great success.
And now it's coming to the US.
And fortunately
there was our chance
to bring Yuval here
to visit us also
and to give the talk at Google.
So I'm really happy
to introduce him.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
YUVAL HARARI: It's a
pleasure to be here also,
not only to visit
[INAUDIBLE], but also to be
in Silicon Valley,
which for me is
a kind of special
place as an historian.
As an historian I focus
mainly on the history
of ideas, ideology,
mythology, religion.
And I think that the most
interesting place in the world
today, in religious terms, is
Silicon Valley, not the Middle
East, not Syria, or Afghanistan,
or Israel, or Jerusalem,
but Silicon Valley.
This is where the new religions
that will take over the world
are being formulated.
And this will also be the topic
of my talk for the next hour
or so, about the new
religions of the 21st century.
But in order to understand
the future of religion
we first have to say a few words
about its past and its present.
And I would like to
start with describing
what is the main religion,
or ideology, worldview
of the world today in the
middle of the second decade
of the 21st century.
And I think we can say that the
dominant ideology of the world
at present is liberal humanism,
or in short, liberalism.
Liberalism is a
worldview, an ideology,
that thinks that a source of
all authority and all meaning
in the universe is
the individual human,
the individual of the
specie Homo sapiens.
Liberalism has
several core ideas.
First of all, it believes
in the individual.
It thinks that every Homo
sapien is an individual,
which literally means
it cannot be divided.
The meaning of the
term "individual"
is that you cannot divide it.
The idea is, yes, of course,
you can divide the human body
or the human brain, but within
each individual there is kind
of a seed of light, a spark
that cannot be divided further.
Within each of us there
is this inner voice
and this inner voice in
each and every one of us
is the source of all the
meaning and all the authority
in the world.
Whenever we face a
difficult question,
a difficult dilemma,
choice in life
as individuals, or as
collectives, liberalism tells
us, listen to yourself,
connect to yourself.
Try to hear this inner
voice within yourself
and it will tell you what to do.
And listen to that,
not to anything else.
The second main idea or
hypothesis of liberalism
is that this inner
voice within ourselves
comes out of a space
of complete freedom.
Yes, there are influences,
constraints from outside,
physical, social, biological,
but if we go deep enough
within ourselves, we
will come, eventually,
to a space of complete freedom.
And from the space we need to
make our big decisions in life.
Thirdly, based on these two
ideas or two assumptions,
liberalism assumes that only
I can really know myself.
Nobody else, no outside person,
no outside system can really
know who I am because,
again, who I am really
is this inner voice which
enjoys complete freedom.
So I'm inaccessible
from outside.
Based on these ideas the
main value of liberalism,
which gives it its name,
is liberty, freedom.
We need to preserve the
freedom of the individual
to think, to feel,
and to act according
to what he or she thinks and
feels because, again, this
is the supreme and source
of authority and meaning
in the world.
Now all this may sound very
abstract and very theoretical.
So I would like to give
a few concrete examples
of what liberalism
means in practice
to our lives as individuals
and as collectives.
If you think about the
field of politics, so
what is liberal politics?
What is liberalism translated
into political terms?
You get a democracy with
elections and so forth.
If we want to know who should
rule this country, what kind
of economic policies to adopt,
what kind of foreign policy
to adopt, to make
war or to make peace,
who should we turn to
in order to get answers?
We should turn to the inner
voices of each individual.
So we have elections and
on election day everybody
goes by himself or by herself.
And at least theoretically
tries to connect,
I try to connect to
myself to listen,
what are my deepest feelings?
What's are my deepest personal
thoughts about this issue?
And I vote accordingly.
And this is how
we know who should
rule the country, whether
to make peace or war,
and so forth.
So this is liberal
politics, which
argues that the
voter knows best.
There is no source of authority
higher than the voter.
You get the same ideas
also in the economic field.
What is liberal economics?
Liberal economics is the view
that the customer is always
right.
There is no higher
authority than the authority
of the individual customer.
How do we know if a
product is a good product?
If the customers buy it.
There is no other method.
There is no higher
authority that
can say, yes, they didn't
buy it, but it's still good.
Let's say we are planning a car.
And we are organizing
a committee
of the wisest people
on the planet.
We take Nobel laureates
in physics, and chemistry,
and literature, and
peace, and whatever
and they come together
for five years
with a lot of money,
a lot of helpers.
And they design the perfect car.
And after five years
you start producing
this perfect car, engineered,
invented by the wisest people
on the planet.
And it goes on sale
and nobody buys it,
or very few people buy it.
It means that this car is
not a good car according
to the tenets of
liberal economics.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
YUVAL HARARI: Oh, perhaps.
But eventually you cannot
blame the customer.
Oh, we produce a perfect
car and we [? build ?]
a perfect PR campaign, but the
customers, they are stupid.
They don't understand
what is good for them.
This works in
communism, for example.
This is the idea of communism.
You have really wise
people sitting in Moscow.
They plan the car, which
they think is best.
And everybody, at least if they
are fortunate, gets this car.
And if they don't like
it, it's their problem.
But not in liberal economics.
In liberal economics the
highest authority in economics
is the customer.
You have the same ideas in the
fields of art and aesthetics.
Many times in history many
periods, many cultures, people
had ideas, what is art
and what is beauty?
And they thought that there
are some objective definitions,
objective yardsticks to
determine whether something
is art and whether
something is good art.
And then comes along liberal
art and liberal aesthetics
in the 19th, 20th century.
And just as in politics
the voter knows best.
And in economics the
customer is always right.
So in liberal art, also,
the customer or the viewer,
he is or she is the
highest authority.
According to liberal art, beauty
is in the eyes of the beholder,
in the feelings of the
person watching or seeing
the painting, the architecture,
the play, whatever it is.
In 1917, in a very,
very famous gesture
Marcel Duchamp
took a urinal, said
this art, called it
"Fountain," signed
his name, Marcel Duchamp,
put it in a museum in Paris,
said this is art.
This is beautiful.
And ever since then in
every introductory course
to art, to art
history in university
they bring this image
and the argument starts.
Is it art?
No, it's not art.
Who determines what is art?
Is it beautiful?
It's not beautiful.
And eventually, if
you are liberals,
you will reach the
conclusion that art
is whatever I define
to be art and beauty
is in the eyes of the beholder.
Whatever I think is
beautiful, it's beautiful.
And nobody out there
can come to me and say,
you think it's
beautiful, but it's not.
There is some higher authority.
If you think that
this is beautiful art
and you're willing to pay
millions of dollars for it,
and it costs millions
of dollars today,
this fountain, then it's art.
The same idea is also applied
to the field of ethics.
How do you know if an
action is good or evil?
If it's ethical or unethical?
Well, suppose I live
in the Middle Ages.
And I fall in love
with another guy.
And I go to the priest and
tell him in confession this
and this happened.
So the priest will say, this is
very evil, what you have done.
You will go to hell for this.
Why?
Because God thinks it's
evil, because scriptures
say it's evil, because I,
the priest, say this is evil.
And then I say to the priest,
but I feel very good about it.
So the priest would say, but
we don't care what you feel.
Your feelings are unimportant.
You don't determine what is
good or evil by what you feel.
Then came liberalism in
the modern age and said no.
The highest authority
in the field of ethics
is also the feelings
of individuals.
There's nothing beyond that.
If it feels good, do it.
If you feel good about it, if
everybody feels good about it,
then there is absolutely
no reason in the world
why it should be evil or bad.
Now, there are, of
course, problems.
What happens if a
particular action causes
some people to feel good and
other people to feel bad?
This is when you have arguments
within liberal ethics.
Say, for example, an
extramarital affair.
I have an affair
outside of marriage.
I feel very good about it,
but if my spouse finds out
he will feel bad about it.
And probably I will
also feel bad about it.
And if we, say, we divorce as
a result and we have children,
they will feel bad about it.
So what is more important,
my good feelings
at a particular time, or the
bad feelings of my spouse,
or my children?
Different people have different
views on this question,
but as long as they are
liberal, the argument
will be done in
terms of feelings.
The question will be, what
feeling is more important?
Even very religious people
today understand this.
And if you think about the
terrorist attacks in France
on the Charlie Hebdo,
after the attack
all kinds of organizations,
Muslim organizations and even
non-Muslim organizations
began to say things
like, but look,
this newspaper, it
was not doing something
very wholesome
because it was causing
millions of devout Muslims
around the world to feel bad.
It didn't take into
account their feelings.
Now it's very interesting
that they use this argument
because even those
who try to say it's
not good to draw a caricature
of the prophet Mohammad,
they don't say it's not good
because Allah forbade it,
or because it's wrong
according to the Quran.
They say it's not
good because it
hurts the feelings of people.
So even those
arguments are praised
in liberal terms of feelings.
And finally, just to
give a last example
from the field of education.
What is liberal education?
The main idea of
liberal education
is that the student or the
pupil is the highest authority,
not the teacher,
not the professor.
In liberal education
the main thing
you try to teach your
pupils or your students
is to think for themselves.
They are the highest authority.
You go from kindergarten
to the university
and you ask the teacher,
you ask the professor,
what are you trying to teach?
And he or she will
say, well, I try
to teach history, or
mathematics, or physics,
but above all I try
to teach my students
to think for themselves.
This is the most
important thing.
If he or she are liberal
educators it doesn't always
work, of course, not all
the universities or schools
manage to do it, but this is
the general ideal accepted
by all liberal
institutions of education.
Now when we look at the
world of today in 2015
we can say that the
liberal package dominates
most of the world.
This liberal package
contains human rights,
which are these walls,
defenses established
to protect the inner
freedom of each individual.
This is the human rights.
This package contains
belief in individualism,
in liberal democracy,
in free market economy.
And I think we can say
that not everybody accepts
this particular
package, but it is
the dominant ideological
package of the world today.
And there is very little
viable alternatives,
or real alternatives to
this package at present.
Over the last few years, we have
seen a lot of social protests
in different places
in the world,
but the vast majority
of the protests
were done in the name
of the liberal values,
not against them.
People are coming to the
governments and saying,
you don't live up to
the liberal ideas.
We want the politics
to be more democratic.
We want economics, the
economy, to be more free.
The vast majority
of social protests
did not have any
alternative to this package.
They simply wanted it
to be implemented better
than it is being
implemented today.
Another potential source
for an alternative
which more and more
people speak about
is China, the rising
superpower of the 21st century.
However, even though China is
definitely an economic giant,
it is still an
ideological dwarf.
In terms of ideology or
religion China has very little
to offer the world,
at least at present.
In theory and officially, it
is still a communist country,
but it is very far from
being communist in practice.
And it has no alternative
idea to either
its official communism
or to the liberal package
of how else to run human
society in terms of values.
Maybe in the next decade,
two decades, three decades
we will see the rise of
a completely new ideology
in China, but
speaking as of 2015,
China is extremely good in
business, in making money,
in making products,
but ideologically it
seems to be bankrupt.
The third main alternative
to the liberal package
is radical Islam, or radical
religions in general,
but very often we
focus on radical Islam.
However, even though radical
fundamentalist Islamic
movements oppose
the liberal package,
they don't really have
any relevant alternative
that can be offered
and implemented
in the 21st century.
The reason is that most of
their ideas are out of date
by centuries, by
hundreds of years.
The 21st century challenges
humankind in new ways.
We are facing enormous
opportunities,
enormous new opportunities,
and enormous new dangers
that we need to confront.
And radical Islam has very
little relevant things
to say about these new
challenges and new dangers.
To give just a few examples,
perhaps the most important
question in
21st-century economics
is what do we need people
for in the economy?
In a situation when it
is likely that computers
will be able to do more and
more things better and better
than Homo sapiens, this
becomes a real question
for the first time in history.
The most basic economic value
of humans is being put in doubt.
And nobody really has an
idea how the job market would
look like in 40
years or 50 years,
and what humans will
still be necessary for,
or least most humans.
What will they do?
If there is a young man or
woman today, say, 20 years old,
going to college, and
asking himself or herself
what should I study
today so that in 30 years
I will have a good job?
Nobody knows what
to tell him or her.
Nobody knows.
We don't have a clue
how the job market would
look in 30 or 40 years.
And again, it's not even clear.
It's not that there
will be different jobs.
It's not even clear
that there will
be any jobs for most humans.
Another very big
challenge and opportunity
concerns biotechnology.
The possibility of extending
human life and human health
indefinitely, with
80 being the new 40.
What will this do to
society, to sexual relations,
to family structures?
This is very big questions.
Another very big
question, which emanates
from this field of
biotechnology is the possibility
of, for the first time in
history, real biological gaps
opening between the
rich and the poor.
Previously in history
there were always
gaps between rich and
poor, but these gaps
were social, economic,
legal, not biological.
There was no real
biological difference
between the king
and the peasant.
They had the same basic
physical, cognitive,
and emotional abilities.
Now with the advent
of biotechnology
we are facing a possibility,
it's not a prophecy,
it's not certain, but
there is a possibility
of real biological gaps opening
and Homo sapiens splitting
into different biological
castes, or even
different species.
These are the kinds
of problems that we
need to confront in
the 21st century.
And the problem of radical
Islam and radical Christianity,
Judaism, and so
forth, is that they
have nothing relevant to
say about these questions.
They have no answers
to these questions
because they don't even
understand the questions.
If you read even very wise books
written thousands of years ago,
the people who wrote these books
knew nothing about genetics,
knew nothing about
nanotechnology, or computers.
So how can you expect to get
answers to these questions
from people who
didn't know anything
about the subjects in question?
Now it's true that if you count
heads, if you count people
there are many more people
today on the planet that
are interested in
God and scriptures
than in nanotechnology
or genetics,
or who understand
these subjects.
But history is not
made by numbers.
It's not that you
need a lot of people
to make historical changes.
Very often historical
changes are
made by relatively
few numbers of people.
If we go back to the last big
technological and economic
revolution that swept
the world, the Industrial
Revolution of the 19th century,
it was done by very few people.
Most people in the 19th
century knew far more
and were interested far more
in the Bible and the Quran
than in steam engines, or
railroads, or coal mines.
The same thing we see today, we
saw also in the 19th century.
It was also full of religious
fundamentalist movements.
For example, in the Islamic
world, you had in Sudan,
the Mahdi in the late
19th century, which
established a
religious theocracy.
And also beheaded people and
fought wars and so forth.
Caused a lot of [? steel ?]
in Victorian England
when the followers of
the Mahdi beheaded,
executed General Charles Gordon,
a famous British commander.
Nobody almost remembers
the Mahdi today.
Similarly in India you
had a religious revival
led by [INAUDIBLE],
whose main idea,
the main message [INAUDIBLE] had
to India in the 19th century,
is that all the answers to all
the questions are in the Vedas,
in the holy scriptures
of Hinduism.
The Vedas are never wrong.
All the answers are there.
If you have any difficulty, open
the Vedas or ask the Brahmans.
Tens of millions of
people followed him.
In the Christian world you
also saw such movements.
Pope Pius IX, the
Catholic pope, he,
in the middle of
the 19th century
had this new idea that
the pope is never wrong.
It is a new idea.
It's not an idea
for the Middle Ages.
The Catholic dogma, the Papal
Infallibility, it's called,
the pope is never
wrong when it comes
to questions of ethics,
morality, and so forth.
This is not a medieval dogma.
It goes back only to the
middle of the 19th century.
And then millions of people
followed Pope Pius IX.
In China the biggest
war of the 19th century
was not the Napoleonic War,
was not the American Civil War.
By far the biggest war
of the 19th century
was the Taiping Rebellion,
which started in 1850
when this person Hong
Xiuquan, he had a vision.
God revealed himself to
Hong and told Hong a secret
that Hong was
actually the younger
brother of Jesus Christ.
And he had a divine
mission to establish
the kingdom of Heavenly Peace
on Earth starting with China.
Millions of people followed
him and they did not
establish any peace.
They waged the most terrible
war of the 19th century
with at least 20 million dead.
These are the
smallest estimates.
So you had your full share
of religious fundamentalism
also back in the 19th century.
Nobody almost today
remembers these people
or these movements.
They did not change the world.
The Industrial Revolution did.
Well, these people in Sudan,
or in India, or in China
were concerned about
scriptures, and God, and heaven,
and so forth.
A few engineers and
a few technicians,
and bankers, and
financiers in Manchester,
in Liverpool, and Birmingham,
they changed the world.
They shaped the world
in which we live today.
Now there was one ideological
or religious movement
which began in the
19th century which
did manage to change
the world and which
is far more important.
And when we think back
about the 19th century
and we ask ourselves,
what was the big ideology,
the big ethical ideas that
came from this period,
we think not about the
Pope Pius IX, or the Mahdi,
we think about
socialism and communism.
In 1800 there were hardly
any socialists or communists,
very few.
Even in the middle
of the 19th century,
there was still a fringe
group of bizarre people
who have such
thoughts, but there
was one crucial characteristic
about these bizarre people,
like Marx and Engels, that
enabled them to really
change the world and to
create an ideology that
spread over the entire planet.
And helped to shape
our life today.
The crucial thing about
Marx and Engels, and later
Lenin and Trotsky,
and all these fellows
is that they did not just
read old books from hundreds
of centuries previously.
They studied the technology and
the economy of their own day.
And they tried to create
a new ideology, which
will be suited to
the new opportunities
and challenges of 19th-century
technology and 19th-century
economics.
Lenin was once asked in
a very famous occasion,
Lenin was asked
by his followers,
please, Vladimir, tell us in
simple language what communism
is.
We are not going to read
[? "The Capital," ?] a very,
very dense book.
We don't want to hear now
this long philosophical talk.
In very few words tell
us what communism is.
And Lenin answers,
communism, communism
is power to the workers'
councils, the Soviets,
plus electrification
of the entire country.
You cannot have communism
without electricity,
without the steam engine,
without telegraph, radio,
railroads.
The Communist system of
production and economics
demands these things.
You could not have
established a Communist regime
in 16th-century Russia.
Impossible.
First you must have an
Industrial Revolution.
Communism and
socialism are custom
built for the world following
the Industrial Revolution.
This is why they're
so successful.
In a way communism and
socialism were the harbingers
of the new religions
we see today
in the 21st century in the
sense that they were based
on technology and
on the economy.
After thousands of years in
which technology played almost
no role at all in religious
and ideological thought,
communism was the first
techno-religion, a religion
or ideology if you
prefer that promises
roughly the same things
that were promised
by the traditional religions.
It promised peace, prosperity,
paradise, but here on Earth
with the use of technology,
not in the afterlife
by the act of some divine power.
This is the definition
of a techno-religion.
It promises whatever it
promises here on Earth
with the help of technology.
And communism was perhaps
the first to show the way
and it completely changed our
entire ideological discourse.
Previously the
main dividing lines
between people and their beliefs
concerned questions like,
do we believe in God, what god?
Do you believe in a soul?
What kind of soul?
What happens after death?
These were the main questions
that divided, say, Christians
from Muslims and
Shiites from Sunnis.
After communism
everything changed.
Now people more and more
began to define themselves
by how they think about
technology and economics.
Sounds very strange,
but not very long ago,
30 years ago,
humankind was almost
destroyed in a nuclear
war between two camps who
were divided not in what
they thought about soul,
or God, or the afterlife.
The were divided in
what they thought
about how economic production
should be organized.
So communism really changed
the rules of the game.
Even if you don't
accept what Marx said
you started speaking in
similar terms in the questions
that you asked.
And we see indeed that
the traditional religions,
Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,
Christianity, they
did not disappear.
It's not that people
stopped believing in them.
They just became less and less
relevant, less influential.
They were transformed
essentially
from a creative force
into a reactive force.
In the Middle Ages they
were very creative forces.
Much of the new technological,
economic, political,
administrative techniques
of the Middle Ages
were pioneered by
the Catholic church.
The best equivalent for Silicon
Valley in the 13th century
is the Vatican.
This is where all of the new
ideas about administration,
about information
processing, this
is where you went,
to the Vatican.
The first archives,
libraries, systems
for archiving information,
cataloging information,
this is something the
church was best in doing.
If you are a king
in the 13th century
and you wanted
somebody who knows
how to handle information,
to help you run your kingdom,
you turned to monks.
You turned to priests.
They were the experts.
So back then they were
still very creative forces.
But in the last 200 years
they became reactive forces.
They're still there,
but most of what they do
is react to the changes, to the
inventions, to the discoveries
that other people make.
Like somebody invents
the contraceptive pill
and completely changes
the sexual [? sphere ?].
And then the pope
and the priests,
they scratch their head,
what do we do with this?
What do you do?
Is it OK?
Is it not OK?
They react.
Similarly somebody
invents the internet.
And then you have all the
Jewish rabbis also scratching
their heads, what
do we do with that?
Is it OK?
[INAUDIBLE] just use it
like this, like that?
And it's not only technology.
Also new ethical ideas, the
20th century is full of them.
Perhaps the most
important is feminism.
After thousands of years
of patriarchal society,
we have the feminist
revolution completely changing
social structures,
families, and so forth.
And again, you have all
the rabbis and Ayatollahs,
and priests, they think, how
do we need to react to that?
It's not our initiative, but we
have to do something with it.
So they are reacting in
this way or that way.
A very good way of
grasping the changing
place of these
religions in the world
is to ask yourself
two questions.
First, ask yourself what is
the most important discovery
of the 20th century.
And this is a very
difficult question
because there is a
lot to choose from.
Perhaps it's antibiotics.
Perhaps it gave each one of you
at least 10 years of your life,
on average, you
owe to antibiotics.
It's a huge difference.
Maybe it's nuclear weapons.
Maybe it's the computer.
Maybe it's not technology,
but some ethical idea,
like feminism.
Perhaps feminism is the
most important discovery
of the 20th century.
Difficult question to decide.
Now ask yourself
a second question.
What is the most
important discovery made
in the 20th century by
[? faced ?] religions,
religions that believe in
God, like Islam, or Hinduism,
or Judaism.
Again, it's a very
difficult question
because you can't
think about anything.
What did these people
discover in the last 100
years that changed our lives?
Yes, they are still
influential in the way
that they react to the
inventions and discoveries
of others, but what new
things did they discover?
I, at least, can't
think about anything
which you can mention
in the same sentence
with antibiotics, or
feminism, or nuclear weapons.
So we see that the
usual challenges
that we think that
perhaps there are still
in the world to liberalism
are not really challenges.
Neither China, nor Radical
Islam, nor the social protests,
they don't really have
a relevant alternative
to the liberal package.
But this does not mean
that liberalism is safe.
Just the opposite.
It seems that we
are on the verge
of the collapse of liberalism.
And the collapse of
liberalism will not
happen because of things
that people are doing now
in Syria, or Iraq, or in
Libya, but because of things
that people are doing
here in Silicon Valley,
and in Stanford University,
and in my university,
and in the Hebrew University.
What kind of things?
Well, it starts with
the life sciences.
The basic problem of liberalism
today in the early 21st century
is that the life sciences are
telling us that it is nonsense.
The basic beliefs on which
liberalism are built or perhaps
sounded sensible in the
18th century, in the era
of Locke and Rousseau
and these people.
But there is a huge gap between
what liberalism tells us
about the world, and
about Homo sapiens,
and what the life sciences
in the early 21st century
are telling us
about Homo sapiens.
Liberalism believes
in individualism
as we said earlier, that each
one of us is an individual.
We have this ray of light, this
inner core which is individual.
This is our real self.
Well, according to the
life sciences today
there are no such things.
All animals, including
humans, are not individuals.
They don't have souls.
They don't have any essence.
They don't have any inner core.
They are basically a collection
of biochemical algorithms,
all kinds of
algorithmic systems that
build the brain, that build
the human beings, the giraffe,
the elephant, whatever it is.
And if you peel all the layers,
all the systems that make up
an animal, an organism
like an onion,
you peel one layer
after the other,
one layer after the
other, in the end
you won't get an inner
core of light, or a soul.
You will get nothing.
There is just nothing
left when you take out
all these different biochemical
algorithms, nothing is left.
There is no individual.
Secondly, these
biochemical algorithms
that make up an
organism are not free.
There is no such
thing as freedom
according to the life sciences.
All systems in nature, including
these biochemical algorithms,
they work according to just
two possible principles.
Either they are deterministic
or they are random.
Perhaps some events
on the quantum level
insert a certain randomness
into the biochemical processes
of our brain, of our
nervous system, of our body,
but that's it.
The word "freedom"
simply has no meaning
in the life sciences of today.
Taking these two ideas together
that an organism, including
Homo sapiens-- which
is just another animal
like the chimpanzees,
and giraffes,
and so forth-- if
an organism is just
a collection of algorithms,
and these algorithms
are not free in any
sense, this means
that at least potentially
an external system,
an external entity can
understand me perfectly.
It just needs to understand
all the algorithms that
come together to build this
machine, this structure.
And the crucial insight is
that even our sensations, even
our emotions, even our
feelings, liberalism
believes above all
else in our feelings,
how you feel about politics,
about art, about sexuality,
this is the holy grail of
liberalism, our feelings.
But now come the life
sciences and say, feelings?
Feelings are just biochemical
algorithms calculating what?
Calculating either
of two things,
probabilities of survival and
probabilities of reproduction.
That's it.
The Homo sapiens, like
giraffes, like elephants, they
are calculating all the
time, all their body
is just a calculating machine
for calculating probabilities
of survival and reproduction.
This, again, may
sound a bit abstract.
So I will give two
simple examples.
First of all,
problems of survival.
Let's say you are a baboon.
And you are somewhere in
the Savannah in Africa.
And you see a tree
with bananas on it.
And you ask yourself, should
I go and take these bananas?
But you also see that
there is a lion nearby.
Now should I or shouldn't
I try and get these bananas
and risk that while I eat the
bananas the lion will eat me?
Now in order to reach a
good answer I basically,
what I need to do, is to
calculate probabilities
and I need to take into
account a lot of information
in order to do it correctly.
I need information
about the bananas.
How far are they from you?
Are there any
obstacles in the way?
How many bananas?
Are they ripe or are they green?
It's one thing if there
are 20 ripe bananas
and it's another thing if there
are just two unripe bananas.
I also need information
about the lion.
How far is it?
How big is it?
Is it asleep?
Is it awake?
Does it seem hungry?
Does it seem satiated?
And thirdly, I need a lot
of information about myself.
How fast can I run?
How hungry I am?
If I'm on the verge
of starvation,
if my energy is so low that
I may die within a few hours
if I don't eat something, then
no matter how big the danger is
I should try and
get these bananas
because otherwise
I'll die anyway.
If, on the other hand, I
just know I had a big feast,
there is no reason to risk
my life for these bananas,
even if the danger
is relatively small.
Now to reach a good
decision, a good decision
means a decision that
will enable me to survive,
I need to take all that
information into account
and weigh it together somehow,
calculate all the probabilities
together.
How do I do it as a baboon?
I don't take out a
piece of paper and pen,
or a calculator, or a computer.
I don't have it.
And I don't need it
because my entire body
is a calculator that was
built for millions of years
by natural selection
to do exactly that.
What we call emotions,
sensations, feelings,
are simply
biochemical algorithms
that take all that information,
all the huge amounts
of information from
outside and inside,
and within a split second
reach a certain decision,
a certain probability.
Now the result does not
show up as a number,
like in some futuristic
science fiction
movie that the
baboon or the person
sees a number in
front of his eyes, no.
The result will come
up simply as a feeling.
This is what feelings are.
They are the result
of these calculations.
If the result is that I
should try and get the banana,
it will come up as the
emotion of courage.
I will feel very courageous.
My chest will be puffed up
and I will run to the bananas.
If the calculations
reach the conclusion,
reach the result that I
shouldn't risk my life,
the chances are too small,
then the result again,
will not be a number.
It will be a feeling.
It will be the feeling,
the emotion of fear.
I will feel very
frightened and run away.
And sometimes the calculations
are just in the middle.
It's not clear if it's a good
idea or a bad idea in terms
of survival to reach
for these bananas.
And this too will show up
as an emotion, as a feeling.
I will feel confused.
I will feel I don't know what
to do, to take the bananas,
not to take them.
This too will be a feeling.
The other type of
calculation problems
that this machine is
built to calculate
concerns not survival,
but reproduction.
And again, if you are a peacock,
you look at the peacock.
If you are a human,
you look at a human.
And you need to make up your
mind, sometimes very quickly,
is this a good mate or not?
And again, lots of information
floods in from the eyes,
from the ears, from the
nose, from within the body.
And within a split second
you get the result, not as
a number, but as a feeling.
You will feel this is
beautiful, this is attractive,
or, no, it's not beautiful,
it's not attractive,
it's disgusting, whatever.
All of these sexual
feelings, again, they
are biochemical algorithms.
They are not some
spiritual whatever
that comes from the sky.
They are the result of very,
very complex biochemical
algorithms that
natural selection
has evolved and selected
for millions upon millions
of generations until
they came to us.
Now so far these
biological insights
actually supported liberalism
because liberalism,
as I said earlier, it
believes in feelings
as the supreme
source of authority.
What I feel, this is
the supreme source
of authority on the planet.
And biologists
could come and say,
this is actually a
very keen insight.
This is true because if
you want to make decisions
about your life and you have two
potential sources of authority,
say the Bible or
your own feelings,
biologists will tell you,
go with your feelings.
The Bible contains the
wisdom of a few priests
in ancient Jerusalem.
That's it.
Your feelings contain
the wisdom of millions
upon millions of
years of evolution,
the algorithms that
are your feelings
have passed the most rigorous
tests of natural selection.
Each one of your genes, and
each one of your algorithms
is here today because it has
succeeded for millions of years
to pass the most rigorous
tests of natural selection.
So if you need to
make a decision
you better go with
your feelings.
This was the situation
maybe until today.
But now things are changing.
In two ways things are changing.
First of all,
biologists decipher
the biochemical algorithms
that compose our body
and that are responsible
for our feelings.
They are no longer mysterious
entities as they were before.
We understand them
better and better.
Why I feel this way in
this particular situation.
And secondly, we have
computer scientists
that are creating better and
better electronic algorithms.
Now the question
that arises today
is what will happen once
we create an algorithm that
knows me better,
that understands me
and my feelings better than
I can understand myself?
What will happen then is
that authority will shift.
It will shift away from
the feelings of individuals
to these outside algorithms.
Our feelings at
present, you can say,
are the best algorithms
in the universe.
But after all, they
are becoming outdated.
They appeared maybe the way
that we have them today maybe
a few tens of thousands of years
ago in the African Savanna.
So far they have been the
best algorithms around,
but we are now at the
position to produce an updated
version, something better.
And when we have
better algorithms
then the authority
will shift to them.
This is already happening in
at least a few fields of life,
most clearly in the
field of medicine
and decisions about your own
body, and your own health.
I think it's not far fetched
to say that all of you
are now listening to this
talk, including myself,
the most important
decisions about our bodies
during our lifetime will not
to be taken by our feelings.
They will be taken by
external algorithms,
algorithms that understand
our own internal systems
and that have statistics
about millions
upon millions of other
humans, and therefore
can make better predictions
and better decisions
about our bodies than
just my own feelings.
To give a concrete
example I think
it was a year ago, two
years ago that this
is very famous story came
out with Angelina Jolie
that she had a
double mastectomy.
Why?
Not because she discovered
she had breast cancer.
She didn't have breast cancer.
But she went and did a
genetic test scanning her DNA.
And it showed that she carries
a mutation in one of her genes
that, according to the
statistical database,
means she has an 87% chance
of getting breast cancer.
And she had a lot of breast
cancer cases in her family.
I think that her mother died
at a relatively young age
from breast cancer.
She did not have breast
cancer at the time.
Her feelings told her
nothing, that she is sick,
that she should do something.
But the external
algorithms told her
you have an 87% chance
of getting this disease.
So she had a double
mastectomy, which
is a very, very big decision
to make in a person's life.
And likewise I think most of
the big decisions we will make
about our lives in our
lifetime will actually
be taken by such
external algorithms,
not based on our inner feelings.
Now when this will spread to
more and more fields of life,
liberalism will collapse,
not necessarily violently,
but it will simply
become outdated.
People will move authority
to a different place.
This has happened
before in history.
In the transition from the
Middle Ages to the modern age,
in the Middle Ages at the
time when the dominance was
of [? faced ?] religions, when
people had faced a decision,
a problem, the practical
guideline they received
was listen to scriptures.
Read what is written
in scriptures.
This will give you an answer.
Now the rise of liberalism
was not a theoretical change.
It was not just a
matter of philosophy.
It was a practical matter
of how people actually
make decisions in
their daily lives.
If previously, when they faced
a problem, say, who to marry,
they opened scriptures
and looked for the answer.
Now, with the rise
of liberalism,
the guidance was listen
to your feelings.
Go maybe at night,
climb the high mountain.
Look at the moon.
Look at the sea.
Try to connect to yourself.
See what you really feel
and go with your heart.
Go with your feelings.
This was a practical guidance.
It was not just theory.
Now we move to the next stage.
When people say, don't
listen to your feelings,
what do they know?
Listen to Google, or listen
to Amazon, or to Facebook,
or whatever.
They understand
how you feel better
than you know how
you feel because they
have much more information.
And they have much
better algorithms
than what natural
selection gave you.
They have information not
only about your emails
and your books and so
forth, but the latest rage
is all these biometric devices
that you wear on your body,
and that gets a constant
stream of information
about your blood pressure
and your sugar levels,
and whatever.
And, of course, do a DNA test,
and so forth and so forth.
And if you have all this
information and these superbly
built algorithms you can
get much better answers
than from your feelings, or
certainly from the Bible.
So we see the potential
rise of a new kind
of religion, a data religion.
If previously God was in the
center of events and then
humans were in the
center of events.
Now data or information
becomes the supreme source
of authority and of
meaning in the world.
It starts with simple
things like, you've
got to an intersection
in the road to turn left
or to turn right, don't
listen to your feelings.
Listen to [? ways. ?] It knows
much better than your gut
intuition whether to go
this way or that way.
Then you move to a more
sophisticated level.
What book to buy?
I go, I enter the
Amazon website.
I want to buy a new book.
The first thing that happens is
that a banner pops up and says,
I know you.
I know you.
And I know that
you and people like
you will enjoy this book
or that book, or that film.
And the annoying thing is
that they are often correct.
They really know me
better than I know myself.
They can recommend
the best book for me.
So at present it's still based
on something quite, not very
sophisticated, like they
know the previous books
that I've read and bought.
And they try to make an
extrapolation from that.
But now we're moving to a
far more sophisticated level
when the books start to
read me while I read them.
If I read a book on a Kindle,
or some other electronic device,
the device can know
whether I finished
the book, how quickly
I read it, when
I stopped in reading the book,
which parts I read quickly,
and which parts I read slowly.
This is a wealth of
information, which
conveys a very good idea
about my experience of reading
the book.
The next stage is to connect
this two facial recognition
programs.
And the book will know not
only when I read fast or slow,
but when I laughed, when
I cried, when I was bored.
This is an immense device that
can, of course, help Amazon not
only recommend books, but do
many [? more ?] [INAUDIBLE]
more sophisticated things.
And eventually we will
reach even questions like,
whom to marry.
In the lives of most
individuals perhaps one
of the most important
questions is
the question of who to marry.
And now instead of
going to the priest
and asking, Father, who should
I marry, or going to my parents,
or trying to connect
to my feelings,
and making bad decisions,
I can ask Google,
dear Google, who should I marry?
And Google will answer,
well, I know you
from the moment you
were born, at least
sometime in the future.
I've read every email
you've ever written.
I've listened to every
phone call you've ever made.
I remember every failed
date you went to.
If you want, I can show you
the graphs of your sugar level
and blood pressure during every
date and every sexual encounter
you had in your lifetime.
And of course, I also
know your potential mates,
like if I have to choose
between two people.
So yes, I know him and I
know him, or her and her
just as I know you.
And based on all this
information and not only
on all this information,
but based on databases
off millions and millions of
successful and unsuccessful
relationships, I can recommend
to you at a probability of 87%
that you had better go
with A and not with B.
And one more thing.
I know you so well
that I also know
that you are disappointed
by what I just told you.
I told you to choose A, but
secretly you actually prefer B.
And I also understand why
you make this mistake.
You give too much importance
to physical appearances,
to external beauty.
Now I'm not saying that
beauty's not important.
Beauty is very important.
But you give it too much weight.
In my calculations,
which are based
on these enormous
statistical databases,
I know that beauty
counts for 9.62%
of the success of
a relationship.
But your old-fashioned
biochemical algorithms,
because of things that happened
in the African Savanna,
give this data,
beauty, they give it
27.5%, which is far too high.
So believe me, even
though you feel
that B is the right
answer, go for A.
And this is an
empirical question.
If enough people enough
times will consult and get
a good answer that they will
be happy with, then with time
more and more decisions
about small things and about
big things will be
done in such a way.
Authority will shift
from the feelings,
from the inner feelings
of the individuals
to the wisdom of these
external algorithms.
This is a very favorite topic
in many science fiction movies,
and books, and whatever.
The usual plot of science
fiction movies or books
goes like this.
Computers or robots
become very powerful.
Then there is a big war
between humans and the robots,
or humans and computers.
And the computers are so
powerful, they know everything.
They can do anything,
but they don't
understand the inner
spirit of humanity.
They don't understand
love or whatever.
And this is why humanity
wins in the end.
This is a very common plot
in many of these movies
because their
audience is humans.
So they have to sell
this kind of fiction.
Otherwise people won't buy it.
People won't like it.
But there is a fallacy here.
And the fallacy is that why
do you think that computers
or robots will not
understand the emotions,
the feelings, love, whatever?
It's not some otherworldly
spiritual thing.
It's, at least according
to the life sciences,
it's an algorithm.
So why think that
a computer will not
be able to understand
an algorithm?
OK, it's a
biochemical algorithm.
It's not an
electronic algorithm.
But what's the difference?
The mathematics is the same.
The calculations are
basically the same.
Why does it matter
how it is done?
The second fallacy,
which is part of it
is that most of these
movies, not all of them,
but most of them
imagine it as a kind
of war between
humans and computers,
or humans and robots.
When the far more likely
scenario, which we are already
seeing now, is not
a war but a wedding.
We are talking about a merger
of the two kinds of algorithms,
the biochemical and the
electronic, not a struggle,
or not necessarily a struggle.
Now there is one
question that still
hovers over this
entire discussion.
And this is whether the
life sciences are right.
Does life really
mean nothing more
than information processing?
It may seem like it when
you read the latest articles
and books on the discovery
of the life sciences,
but there is still one
big hole in the story.
And this is the question
of consciousness,
of subjective experiences.
What is called in philosophy the
hard problem of consciousness.
We now understand
very well, we know
how to find correlations
between particular biochemical
or electrochemical
patterns in the brain,
and certain subjective
experiences.
But we are very,
very far from being
able to understand how is
it that a particular pattern
of electrochemical
signals in the brain
creates a subjective experience
of love, or anger, or hate,
or whatever.
The life sciences--
or currently most
of them-- have this
dogma that, OK, we
don't know how to explain
it, but in 20, or 30, or 50
years with more
experiments, more knowledge
we will understand how
electrochemical signals are
transformed into
subjective experiences.
But at present in 2015
this is just dogma.
Still today we don't have a clue
how electrochemical patterns
can turn into
subjective experiences.
Maybe the life sciences
have got it wrong.
Maybe humans and
other animals are not
reducible to algorithms.
This is an open question.
However, in historical
terms, it's not as important
as you might think because
a religion or an ideology
does not have to be correct
in what it says in order
to take over the world.
We have many cases
previously in history
when religions and
ideologies, which
said what we think today to
be completely erroneous things
about the world, nevertheless
managed to take it over.
In scientific terms the story,
for example, that Christianity
tells about the world,
how the world was created,
how humans were created, how
things work in the world,
it's not true.
It's simply not true, at
least according to science.
But this did not
prevent Christianity
from taking over
most of the world.
So you don't need the truth
to take over the world.
Similarly with these
new data religions,
maybe they are based on a
misunderstanding of life,
but this will not
necessarily prevent them
from taking over the world.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Hi.
My question is a bit random,
but you mentioned feminism.
And how we're now
starting with feminism.
But some of the
other books I read
talked about how
actually way back when,
like around the agricultural
revolution, I guess,
there was no patriarchy.
It was equal society
where everybody
caught small animals, and
harvested stuff, and whatever.
So at what point in human
history did it become uneven?
YUVAL HARARI: Did
patriarchy arise?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
YUVAL HARARI: Well, the
simplest-- I have a thing.
Do you hear me?
The simplest answer
is that we don't know.
One of the things I
like most about science
is that when we
don't know something,
we can simply say we don't know.
We have very little idea
how gender relations were
prior to the
agricultural revolution.
After the agricultural
revolution
when we have in mass
of first archaeological
and then written
records, we know
that they were patriarchal.
Like you see even
10,000 years ago,
you find the remains of
people from 10,000 years ago,
after the agricultural
revolution.
You see that in times of famine
they allowed the girls to die
and kept the boys.
The boys were fed-- you see in
skeletons that girls suffered
far more from malnutrition than
boys in the same community.
So this is a clear evidence
of patriarchy shortly
after the agricultural
revolution.
How did gender relations,
or family structures,
how did they look like 20,000
years ago, 50,000 years ago?
There are many theories.
We have no firm evidence.
Even if 50,000 years ago there
was a matriarchal society,
or an egalitarian
society, this is not
the case in the
last 10,000 years.
So even if feminism,
the feminist revolution
returns things to what they
were like 50,000 years ago,
in terms of the
last 10,000 years,
it's still probably the
biggest social revolution
that occurred.
What is even more
important to realize
is that not only we don't know
what was the situation 20,000
years ago, we don't have at
present any good explanation
for patriarchy.
Many people think that the
domination of society by men
and the domination
of women by men
is obvious because men
are physically stronger.
The problem with this
very common theory
is that in human societies,
and even other ape societies,
there is no direct correlation
between physical strength
and social power.
In human society, for
example, people in their 60s
usually dominate
people in their 20s
even though they are
weaker physically.
Or when you look
at organizations,
like the Catholic church,
so the pope is not
the strongest
Catholic in the world.
And he did not
become pope by going
go around beating all the
other bishops and cardinals.
You become pope or
you become president
by building coalitions
of supporters.
Social skills are the key for
social power among humans.
And it's often argued that women
have superior social skills.
They are better in compromising.
They are better at understanding
how other people think,
what other people want.
Whereas men are much
more self-centered
and have difficulty
understanding or caring
about what other
people think and feel.
So if this is true we should
have got matriarchal societies.
And among our closest cousins in
nature, the bonobo chimpanzees,
we indeed find
matriarchal societies.
So how come in Homo
sapiens, nevertheless
in most societies in
the last 10,000 years
women were dominated by men?
We just don't know at present.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] it could
have been a survival strategy.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: By the group.
YUVAL HARARI: Which?
AUDIENCE: If you
had other groups,
like if you have
more men, you were
more likely to win
over the other group.
YUVAL HARARI: Ah, but it's
not a question of numbers.
Again, if the main
thing is violence, then
again you get to a situation
in which men are expendable.
AUDIENCE: I'm not saying it is.
I'm just saying it
might have been, right?
YUVAL HARARI: OK.
AUDIENCE: It's very
dense material.
Thank you for your presentation.
I have a couple of comments.
Maybe you want to expand on
them and then one question.
So on the point that
we don't know what's
going to happen in the future
with the jobs going away,
so there are people
thinking about that.
Jeremy Rifkin, for
example, he talks
about the zero marginal
cost economics, right?
So which poses a
problem for capitalism.
So we have some
ideas about that.
YUVAL HARARI: Yeah, there
are people thinking about it.
It's not the
Islamic state, which
is leading the world
thinking on the questions
of the future of the job market.
This is exactly the problem.
AUDIENCE: Right.
The other thing that I
noticed in your talk,
so when you say communism
slash socialism,
and then say, OK, this is
an ideology, a religion,
think of it as an
ideology and a religion
and compare it to
religions, I sort of
disagree there because I think
you can't really compare it
with religions because
they base their belief
system on irrationality,
whereas socialism was more
or less based on a belief
system of rationality.
And maybe that's the reason
it collapsed so easily,
so to speak, because
in the end people
were trained to think rationally
about everything else.
So, but let's move on.
On the issue of, ask
yourself a question, what
did liberal society
do for us and what
did the church do
for us, I could
think of Gregor Mendel, right,
and his genetics experiments.
But I will go to something
else, which is to say,
did the United States
invent the nuclear weapon?
It didn't.
It provided a framework.
It provided the
funding to do that.
So the church provided the
funding for the Sistine Chapel
and for a lot of other things.
So I think we sort
of glanced over it.
But my biggest points
in the presentation
is I agree with
liberalism as an ideology.
I'm very liberal myself.
I probably have 10% that
I'm scratching my head over,
but one thing that you
sort of glossed over
is the role of society,
of social interaction
between humans.
I mean, I don't
believe that it's only
the question of go
deep into yourself
and think about what
your decision will be.
I mean, there's the test
for that, or the famous rail
or track experiment, or
the prisoners in the camp,
or whatnot.
It's also about the bond
between those people.
And I think-- would
you agree that that
has a factor in [INAUDIBLE].
And then speaking of Google and
data stuff, I work in privacy.
So I'm going to fight from
that happening too soon.
YUVAL HARARI: OK.
So I'll try to answer
in quick succession
to the different questions.
Well, about social
interaction, yes,
when you look at
how people actually
make decisions
liberalism is wrong.
We don't really go and
connect to ourselves
and decide from there.
The impact of society
and culture is enormous.
But, again, as I said
before, the thing
with religions and ideology
is they don't have to be true.
When they tell us connect to
yourself, follow your heart,
and make your
decisions from there.
And this is how we
build our economy,
our politcs-- it's not true.
But in terms of
ideology, and this
is what they are selling us
and this is what many of us
believe, that we go
to the supermarket
and we buy whatever
we want to buy.
The fact that our brain was
washed for hours and hours
by commercials and so forth,
liberalism discounts it.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
YUVAL HARARI:
Liberalism says no.
Within yourself there is
an inner core of freedom.
And nothing can really touch it.
Nothing can really change it.
Now, we know that it's not true.
But this is why it's an
ideology or a religion.
Now I will also say
a few words about why
I call it a religion and
not just an ideology.
It's really a
question of semantics,
of how you define things.
Many people define
religion as belief
in God or supernatural powers.
Nobody defines it as
believing irrationality.
Religious people think
they are very rational.
They never say, I'm
religious, I'm irrational.
Maybe a few of them do, but
the vast majority of them
don't think that religion is
superstition or irrationality.
Now, if you define
religion as belief in gods,
then, yes, liberalism
or communism, no,
they are not religions.
And certainly data
religion is not a religion.
But this is a very narrow
definition of religion.
There have been
religions in history
in which gods played a very
minor role like Buddhism
and Confucianism.
And we still call them religion.
For me the basic
definition of religion
is in terms of the
function it plays
in history and in society.
Religion gives legitimacy
to human lows and norms
by hanging on to some super
human power or law of entity.
We come to people and we say,
you have to behave like this.
And they ask, why?
So you don't answer,
because I said so
or because a couple of
people invented this law
and now you must obey.
This won't work.
You must go to some
super human authority.
Now there are two kinds
of superhuman authorities
we find throughout story.
One kind is gods.
They are these superior
beings with personalities.
If you don't do this,
they'll become angry.
They'll punish you.
But there is another
option, which
was common throughout
history and this
is to turn to natural laws.
The argument is human laws,
[? the laws ?] of society
were not invented by humans.
They reflect the laws of nature.
Therefore they
are not arbitrary.
They are not random and
you can't change them.
You have to follow them.
So this is the case with
Buddhism and Confucianism.
This is the case also with
communism or with Nazism.
The Nazis come and
say, look, it's
not Hitler that invented this
whole racial theory and then
that they should be
exterminated and so forth.
This is the laws of nature.
Natural selection,
you've read Darwin.
There are different biological
groups and so forth.
Now we can say that
the Nazis misunderstood
Darwin and the
theory of evolution.
But in their eyes, the laws,
like the Nuremberg Laws
did not reflect some whim
of Hitler and the party.
It reflected the
ultimate laws of nature.
And if we don't
follow these laws
we will disappear,
like other species
that have disappeared before us.
So in this sense I
think that we can
speak about these ideologies
actually as religions
because they fulfill
the same function.
They give legitimacy to
human laws and norms.
And the last question
was about Gregor Mendel,
that the church did
contribute, say, to genetics.
But it's not really the church.
I'm not sure that--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
YUVAL HARARI: Yeah, I'm not sure
that the pope was very happy
if he knew what Gregor
Mendel was up to,
or what would come out of it.
Which is not the same
as the United States
financing the Manhattan Project.
They knew exactly where they
were heading and they got it.
So I think that there
is a difference there.
AUDIENCE: So a few kind of
questions dash comments.
One is what is your
take on, I know
of at least a myth or
a fact of one society
that was matriarchal
in history, the Minoan.
And I wonder if it
actually does end up
being supported by
historical facts, what
are the reasons that this
culture kind of vanished?
That's one question.
And the other one is with
respect to science fiction,
not all science fiction
is as you've described.
And specifically--
YUVAL HARARI: I know.
AUDIENCE: No,
specifically as you
were talking I was thinking
of Heinlein and Asimov
who exactly have the
stories specifically talking
about these exact things.
And I wonder how you think
they would incorporate in
our future history, so to speak.
YUVAL HARARI: OK.
So about the Minoan
culture, I'm not an expert.
As far as I know, but you
have to check it with experts,
as far as I know it was for
a time believed that it was
a matriarchal society,
but no longer.
Today the archaeological and
the deciphering of the writing
system show that it was probably
as patriarchal as any other,
maybe a little less, but it was
still a patriarchal society.
We have some genuine examples
of matriarchal societies.
For instance, I think there
is a certain region in China
in the southwest
of China that there
is a genuine matriarchal
society there,
but this is very, very rare.
The vast majority of
societies and cultures
known to science in the last
10,000 years were patriarchal.
About science fiction, yeah,
you're of course right.
There are many strands
and not all of them
follow the basic script
that I described,
like the "Frankenstein" script,
or the "Frankenstein" myth.
But even in the case of the
writings of Asimov, for me
the most interesting
tension and connection
is between biology
and computer science.
Very often when people
think about the ideas
that I raised in the
last part of the lecture,
they give all the importance
to the advances in computer
science to our ability to create
better and better algorithms
and computer programs.
But in my eyes the
real revolution
is actually from
the life sciences.
The really big revolution
is when the life sciences
are telling us that
animals are basically
biochemical algorithms.
If they didn't tell
us this then you
can have all the advances
you want in computer science.
It won't impinge on humanity.
You will still
have humans, which
are something
completely different.
And all the advances in
robotics and computers,
OK, we'll have better computers.
We'll have better robots,
but it won't really
make much of a difference to us.
Where it becomes really
amazing and really frightening
is that once you
realize-- and this
is a contribution of
the life sciences--
that actually humans
working in the same way,
then you can make
the connections.
And this is the really
frightening stuff.
This is also why I think
more and more companies
like Google that started simply
as, in the computer business,
are moving more and more to
the biotechnology business.
And then the two industries
are merging into one.
The most fundamental
idea in this respect
comes from the life
sciences, which says,
organisms are algorithms.
This is the most important,
I think, insight of our age.
And also the most
important question
because we don't
have any proof of it.
Currently, it's just dogma.
We don't have any explanation
of how any kind of algorithm
can create subjective
experiences.
Indeed, in the field
of computers we are,
as far as I know, we're
not even close to creating
subjective experiences
in computers.
It's just a dogma that
people will say, yes.
It's the same.
To give another
historical reference, back
in the 19th century
when they tried
to understand humans, and the
human mind, and the human soul,
or whatever you would
like to call it,
one of the main theories
was that humans were not
algorithms.
Humans were steam engines.
This is the basic
metaphor that stands
at the basis of
Freudian psychology.
Humans usually try
to explain themselves
in terms of the most
sophisticated technology
of the day.
Ah, we are like
this because this
is the most sophisticated
thing I know.
In 1900, the most
sophisticated machine,
the most sophisticated
technology,
which was the basis
for the whole economy,
was the steam engine.
So people came and said, ah, the
brain is like a steam engine.
There are valves and there
are pressures and so forth.
So even today we say that when
we want to unload our angst,
like we pick up the telephone
and we release some steam.
The idea is that the human being
is built like a steam engine.
It has all these
pressures inside.
And if you block it
here it goes there.
And much of Freudian
psychology is built on this.
So today this sounds
childish and silly.
Oh, the human being is
like a steam engine?
We have a much better
technology is the computer.
So we say, ah, humans are
not like steam engines.
They are like computers.
But at present at least
this is just a dogma.
We don't have the hard
facts to actually prove it.
AUDIENCE: This is sort of, I
believe, a personal question.
So you may skip if you
don't want to answer.
But reading your
book it appeared
to me and one of
friends in India
that you have absolutely no
bias when I read your book.
Is that really true?
Do you have any
attachments [INAUDIBLE]
of any nation, religion?
You may skip that.
YUVAL HARARI: Well, it's
a very big compliment.
Maybe the highest compliment
you can give a scientist
is that he or she has no bias.
I tried to write the book
with as little bias as I can.
I think you can read
between the lines
that there are some things
I like more than others,
some ideologies,
religions, and so forth
that I like more than others.
But I think that my
aim as a historian
is above all to describe
reality, not to judge it.
It's very important
afterwards to make judgments,
to decide what is good, what is
bad, where we should progress.
But the most basic
challenge is first of all
to describe reality.
And if you start with a certain
agenda then very quickly
you become blind
to much of reality
because one thing almost
certain about reality
is that it's complex.
You take any
historical development,
the agricultural revolution,
the Industrial Revolution,
you will always find some bad
things, and some good things,
and some neutral
things about it.
So if you start with
the idea of this is bad,
you can't see at
least half the story.
AUDIENCE: Thank you
very much, Yuval.
It was really, really--
[APPLAUSE]
