Random Wisdom: December 2018

I just finished reading the book - 21 Lessons for the 21stCentury by Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval is my favorite author, he has written three books: Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The writing style of Yuval is very descriptive, scientific and information. He does a lot of research on each topic, he writes. Everyone must read his books, to learn how the humankind and other species evolved, how the future will be and how the present is going on.

In this post, i am going to share the learning from the book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. There are 21 lessons shared y Yuval in this book, and i am going to cover all the lessons in one series of the lessons from the books, in this post, i am going to share the first five lessons from the books.

1: Disillusionment - The end of history has been postponed

"Humans think in stories rather than in fact, numbers or equations, and the simpler the story, the better."

We all just the believer of the stories, whatever we heard from our birth via our friends, family and other people, we start believing on that and we think that is the only truth in the world but, it’s not. it's just a story that is told by many from a very long time. We don't think about the relevance of the story, we just don't want to go against the mob, who believe in the story. We try to play a safe game. Why, it is best explained by Yuval as:

"It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation."

In old time, we hear the story by the people but in today's time, the stories are conveyed via media, social media, movies etc. What is the real purpose and how much truth, we don't know. Everything is business in today's world, don't blindly believe.

We are surrounded by imaginary stories, you can check in all your surroundings, whether in politics, entertainment, religion, education, friends, family, technology, media, social media etc. So, what to do -

"instead of directly believing on everything that come s to in front of you, find the truth, find your own truth out of it and then believe."

2: Work - When you grow up, you might not have a job

We are living in a too competitive world, everyday modern technology invented, new machines are replacing the human hands, new software’s are replacing the human minds. The Internet of Things, Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Big data, is continuously changing your world. There are new algorithms in development, that may read your mind before you now, this algorithm knows you better then you know yourself. There is continuous follow-up of your daily routines, daily buying/selling habits, daily eating habits. In short, whatever you do, they know it all. And you are the one who is giving this all information to them via social media, online shopping, online bookings, whatever you do on a computer or mobile, it’s all tracked and stored in their servers. And they can use it in whatever way they want to use it.

In Yuval words -

"Human have two types of abilities - Physical and Cognitive. In the past machines competed with humans mainly in raw physical abilities, while humans retained an immense edge over machines in cognition. Hence as manual jobs in agriculture and industry were automated, new service jobs emerged that require the kind of cognitive skills only humans possessed: learning, analyzing, communicating and above all understanding human emotions."

But now AI (Artificial intelligence) is outperforming the human on the cognitive skills and we don't know of any third field of activity- beyond the physical and cognitive - where humans will always retain a secure edge.

We are in the problem of jobs in near future, there will be no job or very less jobs for the human in the coming future. The new jobs require a lot of intelligence and specific skills that everyone cannot learn. So i am not sure where the human society is going without any job. We will be living in a world without job soon.

The main reason the threat of the job losses does not result merely from the rise of info tech. It results from the confluence of info tech with biotech.

So, what are the new questions coming in front of us -

What to do to prevent jobs from being lost; what to do to create enough new jobs; and what to do if, despite our best efforts, job losses significantly outstrip job creation.

Yuval suggest on the job threat for the future:

"If we manage to combine a universal economic safety net with strong community’s ad meaningful pursuits, losing our job to the algorithms might actually turn out to be a blessing. Losing control over our lives, however, is a much scarier scenario. Notwithstanding the danger of mass unemployment, what we should worry about even more is the shift in authority from humans to algorithms, which might destroy any remaining faith in the liberal story and open the way to the rise of digital dictatorships."

3: Liberty - Big data is watching you

As i mentioned above that, our privacy is going to become public with time. The big data is watching everything that you are doing on line and storing it in their servers and making your life decisions without your knowing it. if you don't believe, just start analyzing about your buying habits, your eating habits, your travel habits.... this all is decided by the online algorithms based on your previous buying or selling or routines stored in their system.

In a famous interview in 1987, Thatcher said that -

"There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women... and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves."

With the big data, the control of our life is given to algorithms and big data systems. Now the feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom - they are based on calculation. Based on your previous actions stored in big data systems and via this we are losing our liberty to the big data and algorithms.

We normally think that no outside system can understand my emotions and feelings better than me but now it is a myth. The big data and AI is watching you 24 hours and they are closely analyzing all your emotions, all your decisions, all your actions. So, now they know more about you then yourself.

We are now just playing the drama of decision making. We are just the actors now; the writer of the decision script is the big data and AI systems.

Winston Churchill famously said that -

"Democracy is the worst political system in the world. except for all the others."

Rightly or wrongly, people might reach the same conclusion about big data algorithms, they have lots of hitches, but we have no better alternative. Already, today, the truth is defined by the top results of the google search. For everything, we depend on google now, going somewhere, take help from google map, for eating outside, take help from google, for booking anything first take help from google. Whatever in the world, you want to know, just take help from the google.

With time, we are just going to live in a digital dictatorship world. The real problem with the technology is not the technology but the inventor and the user of those technologies. As with the robots, the problem is not their own artificial intelligence, but rather the natural stupidity and cruelty of their human masters. For example - I July 1995 Bosnian Serb troops massacred more than 8000 Muslim Bosniaks around the town of Srebrenica.

So, what Yuval have for us in terms of Liberty -

"Digital dictatorship are not the only danger awaiting us. Alongside liberty, the liberal order has also set great store by the value of equality. Liberalism always cherished political equality, and it gradually came to realize that economic equality is almost as important. For without a society safety net and a modicum of economic equality, liberty is meaningless. But just as big data algorithms might extinguish liberty, they might simultaneously create the most unequal societies that ever existed. All wealth and power might be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, while most people will suffer not from exploitation, but from something far worse- irrelevance."

4: Equality - Those who own the data own the future

In the last few decades, people all over the world were told that humankind is on the path to equality, and the globalization and modern technologies will help us get there sooner. The 21st century might create the most unequal societies in history.

As mentioned above the rise of AI might eliminate the economic value and political power of most humans. people will depend on AI and big data for everything soon. In the book, Yuval have warned us as -

By 2100 the rich might really be more talented, more creative and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers. Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it. If the rich use their superior abilities to enrich themselves further, and if more money can buy them enhanced bodies and brain, with time the gap will only widen. By 2100, the richest 1% might own not merely most of the world's wealth, but also most of the world's beauty, creativity and health.

So, now the question arises, who owns the data? - Yuval, explained it as:

"The data is owned by attention merchants. They capture our attention by providing us with free information, services and entertainment, and they then resell our attention to advertisers. Yet the data giants probably aim far higher than any previous attention merchant. Their true business isn’t to sell advertisements at all. Rather, by capturing our attention they manage to accumulate immense amount of data about us, which is worth more than any advertising revenue. We aren't their customers- we are their product."

"In the longer term, by bringing together enough data and enough computing power, the data-giants could hack the deepest secrets of life, and then use this knowledge not just to make choices for us or manipulate us, but also to re-engineer organic life and to create inorganic life forms."

"A popular app may lack a business model and may ever lose money in the short term, but as long as it sucks data, it could be worth billions."

"As more and more data flows from your body and brain to the smart machines via the bio metric sensors, it will become easy for corporations and government agencies to know you, manipulate you, and make decisions on your behalf."

Everywhere, everything is consuming your personal data and feeding in their systems to manipulate you as per their convenience and indirectly use you as their product and sell you to other organizations. So indirectly you become the product instead the consumer and the funny thing is that you don't know about it.

5: Community - Humans have bodies

The new trend of mobile, TV, computers, people started forgetting themselves. Observe, while eating, travelling, spending time with family and friends. Most of the people now, spends most of the time with their mobiles. They are too busy with their mobile, that even don’t notice, what's going on in their surroundings. On the misuse of mobiles, i have written in another post, you can read it here.

Yuval also mention this in his book as -

"Humans have bodies. During the last century technology has been distancing us from our bodies. We have been losing our ability to pay attention to what we smell and taste. Instead we are absorbed in our smartphones and computers. We are more interested in what is happening in cyberspace then in what is happening down the street, It is easier than ever to talk to my cousin in Switzerland, but it is hard to talk to my husband/wife over breakfast, because he/she constantly look at his smartphone instead of at me."

"If you don't feel at home in your body, you will never feel at home in the world."

Instead of knowing people from other countries over the glob better to know your neighbors, better to know your close friends and spend time with them. Everything has a meaning, while eating if you keep looking in your mobiles, your attention is busy with the mobile instead of the food that you are consuming. It will impact bad on your body, because you are the product of what you consume. And the way you consume your food, decides how your body reacts out of it.

Take care of your energy your body and your time. It’s not everlasting. It is getting old and weak day by day.

We will discuss the remaining lessons learned from the book in other posts of this series. The other lessons will be on the topics from Civilization, Nationalism, Religion, Immigration, Terrorism, War, Humility, God, Secularism, Ignorance, Justice, Post-truth, Science fiction, Education, Meaning and Meditation.

I recommend the book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari to everyone, it’s a very good and knowledgeable book and while reading the books, it challenges you to think on many topics covered in the books.

The learning from the book will be continues in other posts, stay tunes and subscribe and follow the blog.

Thanks

-Mahesh

Random Wisdom

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21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Part 1