Book: 20200421 to 20200509, "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" by Yuval Noah Harari

20200421 - Introduction

It's surprising that Yuval Noah Harari is a gay and a Jew.

This book sounds interesting.

Part I: The Technological Challenge

20200422 - 1. DISILLUSIONMENT - The end of history has been postponed

Yuval Noah Harari has pretty unique viewpoint to observe the world.

I agree that almost all abstract concepts are stories. How to make those stories reflect the real world? Verification, of  course.

The fascist, communist, and the liberal stories are a perfect example. They are not "doctrine" but story. Sometimes, a story need hundreds of years to convincing people to believe it. Why "separation of powers" doesn't work well in some countries? Because the people there need long time to practice it.

No one knows the future. It's not as bad as we thought, and it's not as good as we thought. It's better to admit that we don't know how it will become, and then observe the changes patiently.

20200423 - 2. WORK - When you grow up, you might not have a job

One major hinder of UBI is population explosion. What if people want to deliver a lot of babies when UBI is available?

Agree about all other parts. Work content will be harder and harder. Most of people will not be able of fitting in.

For the retired people who relied on pension, they are kind of like live on UBI. They seems are happy with their life, and don't complain much about no meaningful work to do.

But there will be large gap between people who have a job and those who don't have.

Perception is the most important.

AI don't understand our emotion/thoughts, but it can manipulate us. AI don't need to control any individuals, but it can affect most of our choices in most of the times. That's exactly what government needs.

20200424 - 3. LIBERTY - Big Data is watching you

There is no instinct. It's actually quick thinking/calculation.

At macro level, there is no freewill. Institution decides what crowds will do.

There are two major types of society: Diverse and Monism. Monism is rigid and with much less evolution.

In diverse society, do people still end with irrelevance? How can we reduce the data process and data generation effectively?

The wealth gap will get bigger. Even if UBI is populated. For the people who is supported by UBI, how can they make a meaningful life?

When intelligence reached certain level, will it get consciousness automatically? When will AI aware of and understand the real world?

20200425 - 4. EQUALITY - Those who own the data own the future

Who own the data? My opinion is, the one who can utilize the data own the data. Harari is wrong at this point.

Equality problem is going worse and worse. The poor will get UBI, and the rich will get richer and richer. I think the major reason is compound effect.

Only violent revolution can reverse that. Maybe.

Sooner or later, wealth will give people health, longivity, happiness, and even IQ.

The real wealth is perception and practice.

Part II: The Political Challenge

20200426 - 5. COMMUNITY - Humans have bodies

This chapter is about online community vs offline community, and the possibility of combining them together.

Facebook tried it hard, and so far, failed completely.

Apart from other technological challenges, the major hinder is the ultimate goal of a company: making money. Encouraging people going offline hurts Facebook profit in short term. And Zuckerberg is not brave enough to focus on long term profit.

So what is the best way to combine online and offline community? Maybe starting from offline first.

20200427 - 6. CIVILISATION - There is just one civilisation in the world

What is "civilisation"? It contains at least two parts.

The first part is our common imagination: political institution, economical institution, law system, culture, religion, etc.

The second part belongs to the real world: science (such as Three Laws of Newton, Theory of relativity, Calculus, Biology, etc. And all inventions based on them.

When the first part is in right direction, it accelerates the development of the second part. And there is only one right direction.

There is no real Civilization Collision. The second part is always same, the difference is in the first part. The word "collision" give us an illusion: there is no better or worse civilization, and they are just different. That's not true. Only one is correct. The one which can accelerate/encourage the development of the second part is correct.

Back to "globalization". Is it still good to us? How should we handle the problems it caused? Should we go back and isolate us by different countries?

20200428 - 7. NATIONALISM - Global problems need global answers

Nationalism doesn't really resolve the conflicts, it just push it back to other levels.

Without international order, there will be more conflicts among nations.

And, there are many global issues need international cooperation to resolve, such as nuclear war and climate change.

So, nationalism doesn't resolve the big problems, no matter how big or how small the nation is.

20200429 - 8. RELIGION - God now serves the nation

Religion is also based on common fiction. It helps strangers under the same religion to cooperate in ancient time, but not much else.

Nowadays, religion is mainly used as a tool to help government managing/ruling people. It helps people to set up their identity, falsely.

Because religion is not based on science, so it does more harm than benefit now.

Religion cannot tell us how to resolve a problem, but it can use attractive stories to explain why something happened. Of course, there is no way to verify their explanations.

Religion definitely cannot help to resolve global level issues.

20200430 - 9. IMMIGRATION - Some cultures might be better than others

Nice chapter. It changed my perception about immigration.

At individual level, different culture is a bit like (different) strong personality. Normally it's not an issue, unless the immigrants don't respect local law.

To accept massive scale immigrants, the major challenge is about the cost. new comers need to learn local language and skills, need extra social benefit support. But for long term, it's beneficial to the host country.

The difference is mainly about culture. Under the same culture background, it's easier for strangers to cooperate.

There is definitely a limit about how many migrants a country can accept per year. In my opinion, 0.1% of local population per year is fine. (Why 0.1%? No idea, just my instinction.) To Australia, that means 25k immigrants per year. However, there are 92k immigrants in 2016, 78k in 2017, 53k in 2018. But, if we subtract the number which left Australia, the net immigrant number will be cut in half.

I guess the critical factor is the government support, especially about TAFE education. Learning language and skill needs time. It's quite normal if it takes more than 10 years. Without the support  from government, it would become mission impossible, then those immigrants would be the burden of local economy for long, long time.

Now I understand why it's not easy for Japanese to build factories/companies oversea. Japanese don't want to accept different culture. That makes Japan a rigid country.

Part III: Despair and Hope

20200430 - 10. TERRORISM - Don’t panic

Terrorism use our imagination against us. We are so used to a society without any political violence, that we cannot bare any terrorism casualty.

It's a bit like COVID-19 virus.So far it killed around 228k people around the world, less that what traffic accidents killed, but the whole world fell into recession. Not to mention there maybe only 12% of those death truly caused by COVID-19.

To against terrorism, the government should,

1. Attack the network of terrorism, especially the network.

After getting rid of paper notes and Bitcoin, it should be easy to cut off the financial support of terrorists.

2. Reduce the exposure of terrorism activities.

This is not easy. Media always want to get more attention.

3. Train our brain to tell the real threat.

Terrorism only kills hundreds of people ever year. Comparing with that, traffic kills 1.2 million people per year, diabetes kills 3 million people per year, and pollution kills 7 million people per year.

20200501 - 11. WAR - Never underestimate human stupidity

In 21st century, wealth comes from creativity. Creativity is not something we can get/capture through war. So, it's not likely any country willing to launch large scale war.

Russia looks like won the local war, but I don't see any benefit they got from occupying Crimea in 2014.

However, some people are stupid. For example, what's the point of forcing all countries that the whole South China sea belongs to China? Or, what's the point occupying Taiwan by force?

Yes, we should never underestimate human stupidity.

20200502 - 12. HUMILITY - You are not the centre of the world

Religion was very important in human history. However, it's time to let it go.

Based on the first principle, we need to verify what we perceived. If there is something that we cannot verify, no matter how hard we try, that means it's just our illusion.

20200502 - 13. GOD - Don’t take the name of God in vain

Yuval Noah Harari thinks God is almost not related to religions. Interesting.

I agree every word he says.

One of the critical points is the morality of other animals. If rat and monkey have morality, why Homo Sapiens need religious God to get it?

Law has replaced the position of religious God. We don't need to make up a story of God to let other people to awe. Law can do it easily, and is more effective.

20200502 - 14. SECULARISM - Acknowledge your shadow

Secularism is against the holy book. It actually admits that law is higher than religion regulations in real world. And it almost admits that holy book cannot resolve all problems.

Secularism is great. It admits that we are not perfect, and the world is not perfect. We make mistakes all the time, so need to be careful about out decisions and actions. We may need to adjust our perception and behaviors at anytime.

I think, if someone really believe secularism, then he/she doesn't believe in the holy book anymore.

Part IV: Truth

20200503 - 15. IGNORANCE - You know less than you think

Admit ignorance is the first step to build the correct perception of the world.

We are in Information Explosion age. There are too much information. Most of the information are wrong or partly wrong or only represent a small piece of truth. How to tell what information is valuable? How to keep independence in inevitable group thinking?

In my opinion, reading classic non-fiction books is the most important step. This helps to understand the major points of the world.

20200503 - 16. JUSTICE - Our sense of justice might be out of date

The world is too complicated, which make it impossible to recognize justice.

What can we do then? Yuval Noah Harari gives no answer.

In my opinion, justice doesn't exist. What we can do is to ignore any micro level justice, and then focus on macro level justice.

However, democracy is based on micro level justice, which make the pursuing of macro level justice the "Prisoner's Dilemma".

Is there any hope? I am pessimistic.

20200504 - 17. POST-TRUTH - Some fake news lasts for ever

The whole world is in chaos, and it was in chaos from the very beginning. There is no way to make it clean and pure.

Human society is based on common fiction, which means there is no way to get rid of those fictions.

What we can do is: pay money to get more reliable information truth ( I don't think this one works, in most of the cases), and do more research on important issues (so ignore those minor issues, and admit that we don't know the truth of them).

20200504 - 18. SCIENCE FICTION - The future is not what you see in the movies

Science fiction is more important than other genres of fictions. It helps us to get used to "science" and logic.

This chapter asks the root question: What are we? What do we want?

This is really difficult to answer. Money helps a bit, but definitely not much. Love, sex, health, etc. all help, but in the end, there is still something else we desire. But we don't know what it is.

I guess, meditation is the only resort we have.

Part V: Resilience

20200505 - 19. EDUCATION - Change is the only constant

There is no specific way of proper education. The only thing we know is "life time learning".

My question is: can "life time learning + meditation" beats algorithms?

If most of the wealth belongs to virtual wealth, what should we do about it? What's the meaning of our lives?

20200509 - 20. MEANING - Life is not a story

So, there is no real meaning of the world, and there is no real meaning of our lives.

All "meaning" is just our imagination. (including all religions and all doctrine)

What we can do is to stop suffering.

Then, how about "Mans Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl?

It's going to be more and more interesting now.

20200423 - 21. MEDITATION - Just observe

I was shocked to know that Yuval practice 2 hour meditation everyday! Lucky he doesn't have kids. :-)

Anyway, we don't need so much "time" to success in career. It seems that meditation can drastically improve our productivity. Success is 99% of hard work and 1% of inspiration. Meditation brings us inspiration.

Where does this inspiration come from? Meditation let us forget about those fictional stories, and focus on reality. Then reached the first principle.

To me, meditation is the only way to understand "life". To understand life, we have to ignore those stories, and focus on the real "life".

Then how about memorization? To memorize, we may have to associate something to something else we already know.

Reference:

Natalie Portman and Yuval Noah Harari in Conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ledJBbRfH8g

20200509 - Q&A

To find "self", we need to stay as "observer".

This reminds me of the classic book "The Catcher in the Rye". Sooner or later, I need to read this book again. But 2 hours meditation everyday for years? I don't know how I can get that much time.

Elon Musk said population decline is one of the major threats to human society, but Yuval Noah Harari believes it's actually good thing. Why's the difference?

I think Elon Musk knows more about the progress pace of technology. Yuval Noah Harari is too optimistic. There will not be enough and good enough robots/machines looking after people in aged care facilities, and robots will not be smart enough to replace human workers/farmers.