It looks as if Harari is predicting an immortality project but withholding his approval. Hence even if we don’t achieve immortality in our lifetime, the war against death is still likely to be the flagship project of the coming century.” He acknowledges that immortality could have dark sides and discusses a few of them, but given our fear of death or our belief in the sanctity of life, he concludes that the war against death will have “irresistible momentum” and “seems to be inevitable.” Yet almost immediately he notes, “The scientists who cry immortality are like the boy who cried wolf: sooner or later, the wolf actually comes. He admits, for example, that he is skeptical that the project for immortality will succeed any time soon. The reader quickly sees, however, that for better and for worse, that is not Harari’s intention. It sounds like we are about to be exposed to standard futurist fare, with bold predictions of an eye-popping future. We cannot say what kind of political system it will have, how its job market will be structured, or even what kind of bodies its inhabitants will possess.Towards the beginning of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari discusses what he expects to be the three great projects for the human future: the quest for immortality, the quest to re-engineer human beings to be happy all the time, and the quest for god-like powers. In contrast, in 2016 we have no idea how Europe will look in 2050. Sure, dynasties might fall, unknown raiders might invade, and natural disasters might strike yet it was clear that in 1050 Europe would still be ruled by kings and priests, that it would be an agricultural society, that most of its inhabitants would be peasants, and that it would continue to suffer greatly from famines, plagues and wars.
In 1016 it was relatively easy to predict how Europe would look in 1050. Consequently we are less and less able to make sense of the present or forecast the future. Our new-found knowledge leads to faster economic, social and political changes in an attempt to understand what is happening, we accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. Today our knowledge is increasing at breakneck speed, and theoretically we should understand the world better and better. “Centuries ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics and economics changed at a leisurely pace too.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI HOMO DEUS FREE
Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?” I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments.
Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. “If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory.
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