## Metadata - Author: [[Yuval Noah Harari]] - Full Title: Homo Deus - Category: #books ## Highlights - In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes.23 Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. ([Location 571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=571)) - Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries.25 For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda. ([Location 622](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=622)) - Now try to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting married at forty, she still has 110 years to go. Will it be realistic to expect her marriage to last 110 years? Even Catholic fundamentalists might baulk at that. So the current trend of serial marriages is likely to intensify. Bearing two children in her forties, she will, by the time she is 120, have only a distant memory of the years she spent raising them – a rather minor episode in her long life. It’s hard to tell what kind of new parent–child relationship might develop under such circumstances. ([Location 749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=749)) - Once people think (with or without good reason) that they have a serious chance of escaping death, the desire for life will refuse to go on pulling the rickety wagon of art, ideology and religion, and will sweep forward like an avalanche. ([Location 803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=803)) - What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules. This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and hopeless war on biochemical crime. ([Location 993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=993)) - Biological engineering starts with the insight that we are far from realising the full potential of organic bodies. For 4 billion years natural selection has been tweaking and tinkering with these bodies, so that we have gone from amoeba to reptiles to mammals to Sapiens. Yet there is no reason to think that Sapiens is the last station. Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons were enough to transform Homo erectus – who could produce nothing more impressive than flint knives – into Homo sapiens, who produce spaceships and computers. ([Location 1042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1042)) - Many scholars try to predict how the world will look in the year 2100 or 2200. This is a waste of time. Any worthwhile prediction must take into account the ability to re-engineer human minds, and this is impossible. There are many wise answers to the question, ‘What would people with minds like ours do with biotechnology?’ Yet there are no good answers to the question, ‘What would beings with a different kind of mind do with biotechnology?’ ([Location 1090](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1090)) - Throughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the ability to design and create living beings; to transform their own bodies; to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of course to escape death and live indefinitely. Humans are in the business of acquiring all these abilities, and then some. ([Location 1104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1104)) - Homo sapiens is not going to be exterminated by a robot revolt. Rather, Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants will look back and realise that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics. This will not happen in a day, or a year. Indeed, it is already happening right now, through innumerable mundane actions. Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human. ([Location 1132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1132)) - No clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine almost always begins by saving people from falling below the norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to surpass the norm. ([Location 1182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1182)) - This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated. ([Location 1284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1284)) - The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn’t want us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape – and we can begin to think and dream differently. ([Location 1309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1309)) - For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion. ([Location 1386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1386)) - While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism’s inherent flaws. If you start with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the ideal is close to realisation. ([Location 1391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1391)) - You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, but it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just imagine. ([Location 1411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1411)) - This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped thousands of generations ago continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer necessary for survival and reproduction in the present. Tragically, the Agricultural Revolution gave humans the power to ensure the survival and reproduction of domesticated animals while ignoring their subjective needs. ([Location 1620](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1620)) - How exactly does a baboon calculate probabilities? He certainly doesn’t draw a pencil from behind his ear, a notebook from a back pocket, and start computing running speeds and energy levels with a calculator. Rather, the baboon’s entire body is the calculator. What we call sensations and emotions are in fact algorithms. The baboon feels hunger, he feels fear and trembling at the sight of the lion, and he feels his mouth watering at the sight of the bananas. Within a split second, he experiences a storm of sensations, emotions and desires, which is nothing but the process of calculation. ([Location 1678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1678)) - one core emotion is apparently shared by all mammals: the mother–infant bond. Indeed, it gives mammals their name. The word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma, meaning breast. Mammal mothers love their offspring so much that they allow them to suckle from their body. Mammal youngsters, on their side, feel an overwhelming desire to bond with their mothers and stay near them. In the wild, piglets, calves and puppies that fail to bond with their mothers rarely survive for long. Until recently that was true of human children too. Conversely, a sow, cow or bitch that due to some rare mutation does not care about her young may live a long and comfortable life, but her genes will not pass to the next generation. The same logic is true among giraffes, bats, whales and porcupines. We can argue about other emotions, but since mammal youngsters cannot survive without motherly care, it is evident that motherly love and a strong mother–infant bond characterise all mammals. ([Location 1704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1704)) - Whereas hunter-gatherers were seldom aware of the damage they inflicted on the ecosystem, farmers knew perfectly well what they were doing. They knew they were exploiting domesticated animals and subjugating them to human desires and whims. They justified their actions in the name of new theist religions, which mushroomed and spread in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution. Theist religions began to argue that the universe is not a parliament of beings, but rather a theocracy ruled by a group of great gods – or perhaps by a single capital ‘G’ God (‘Theos’ in Greek). We don’t normally associate this idea with agriculture, but at least in their beginnings theist religions were an agricultural enterprise. The theology, mythology and liturgy of religions such as Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity revolved at first around the relationship between humans, domesticated plants and farm animals. ([Location 1749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1749)) - Christianity, for example, maintained that humans hold sway over the rest of creation because the Creator charged them with that authority. Moreover, according to Christianity, God gave an eternal soul only to humans. Since the fate of this eternal soul is the point of the whole Christian cosmos, and since animals have no soul, they are mere extras. Humans thus became the apex of creation, while all other organisms were pushed to the sidelines. ([Location 1777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1777)) - the gods had to mediate between humans and the ecosystem. In the animistic cosmos, everyone talked with everyone directly. If you needed something from the caribou, the fig trees, the clouds or the rocks, you addressed them yourself. In the theist cosmos, all non-human entities were silenced. Consequently you could no longer talk with trees and animals. What to do, then, when you wanted the trees to give more fruits, the cows to give more milk, the clouds to bring more rain and the locusts to stay away from your crops? That’s where the gods entered the picture. They promised to supply rain, fertility and protection, provided humans did something in return. This was the essence of the agricultural deal. The gods safeguarded and multiplied farm production, and in exchange humans had to share the produce with the gods. This deal served both parties, at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem. ([Location 1781](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1781)) - After all, when ‘the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become’ He resolved to ‘wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them’ (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. ([Location 1805](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1805)) - The Agricultural Revolution was thus both an economic and a religious revolution. New kinds of economic relations emerged together with new kinds of religious beliefs that justified the brutal exploitation of animals. ([Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1841)) - In recent years, as people began to rethink human–animal relations, such practices have come under increasing criticism. We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one. If and when computer programs attain superhuman intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing these programs more than we value humans? Would it be okay, for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and even kill them to further its own needs and desires? If it should never be allowed to do that, despite its superior intelligence and power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs? ([Location 1902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1902)) - Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? How come politicians don’t ask that kids be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? After all, Darwin’s ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. ([Location 1955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1955)) - The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don’t hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless want to believe that each human possesses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and can survive even death intact. ([Location 1962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=1962)) - The Turing Test is simply a replication of a mundane test every gay man had to undergo in 1950s Britain: can you pass for a straight man? Turing knew from personal experience that it didn’t matter who you really were – it mattered only what others thought about you. According to Turing, in the future computers would be just like gay men in the 1950s. It won’t matter whether computers will actually be conscious or not. It will matter only what people think about it. ([Location 2241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2241)) - Responding to the shifting winds of the scientific community, in May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legally recognise animals as sentient beings, when the New Zealand parliament passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Act. The Act stipulates that it is now obligatory to recognise animals as sentient, and hence attend properly to their welfare in contexts such as animal husbandry. In a country with far more sheep than humans (30 million vs 4.5 million), that is a very significant statement. ([Location 2271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2271)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of co-operating flexibly in large numbers. ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2419)) - As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the same stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organise mass-cooperation networks. Sapiens often use visual marks such as a turban, a beard or a business suit to signal ‘you can trust me, I believe in the same story as you’. ([Location 2604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2604)) - Most people presume that reality is either objective or subjective, and that there is no third option. Hence once they satisfy themselves that something isn’t just their own subjective feeling, they jump to the conclusion it must be objective. If lots of people believe in God; if money makes the world go round; and if nationalism starts wars and builds empires – then these things aren’t just a subjective belief of mine. God, money and nations must therefore be objective realities. ([Location 2616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2616)) - We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another. ([Location 2643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2643)) - Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes. 19. Signing the Belavezha Accords. Pen touches paper – and abracadabra! The Soviet Union disappears. 19.   © NOVOSTI/AFP/Getty Images. Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants. ([Location 2645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2645)) - In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy. ([Location 2837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2837)) - Writing thus facilitated the appearance of powerful fictional entities that organised millions of people and reshaped the reality of rivers, swamps and crocodiles. Simultaneously, writing also made it easier for humans to believe in the existence of such fictional entities, because it habituated people to experiencing reality through the mediation of abstract symbols. ([Location 2883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=2883)) - Human cooperative networks usually judge themselves by yardsticks of their own invention and, not surprisingly, they often give themselves high marks. In particular, human networks built in the name of imaginary entities such as gods, nations and corporations normally judge their success from the viewpoint of the imaginary entity. A religion is successful if it follows divine commandments to the letter; a nation is glorious if it promotes the national interest; and a corporation thrives if it makes a lot of money. When examining the history of any human network, it is therefore advisable to stop from time to time and look at things from the perspective of some real entity. How do you know if an entity is real? Very simple – just ask yourself, ‘Can it suffer?’ ([Location 3095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3095)) - Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey. Religion gives a complete description of the world, and offers us a well-defined contract with predetermined goals. ([Location 3213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3213)) - Spiritual journeys are nothing like that. They usually take people in mysterious ways towards unknown destinations. ([Location 3217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3217)) - religions seek to cement the worldly order whereas spirituality seeks to escape it. ([Location 3237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3237)) - From a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit only for individuals rather than for entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who fume against stultified religious structures often end up forging new structures in their place. It happened to the dualists, whose spiritual journeys became religious establishments. It happened to Martin Luther, who after challenging the laws, institutions and rituals of the Catholic Church found himself writing new law books, founding new institutions and inventing new ceremonies. It happened even to Buddha and Jesus. In their uncompromising quest for the truth they subverted the laws, rituals and structures of traditional Hinduism and Judaism. But eventually more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their names than in the name of any other person in history. ([Location 3262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3262)) - Though science indeed deals only with facts, religion never confines itself to ethical judgements. Religion cannot provide us with any practical guidance unless it makes some factual claims too, and here it may well collide with science. The most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as ‘God exists’, ‘the soul is punished for its sins in the afterlife’, ‘the Bible was written by a deity rather than by humans’, ‘the Pope is never wrong’. These are all factual claims. Many of the most heated religious debates, and many of the conflicts between science and religion, involve such factual claims rather than ethical judgements. ([Location 3293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3293)) - According to the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert and to various Inuit groups in the Arctic, human life begins only after a baby is given a name. When an infant is born the family waits for some time before naming it. If they decide not to keep the baby (either because it suffers from some deformity or because of economic difficulties), they kill it. Provided they do so before the naming ceremony, this is not considered murder.2 People from such cultures might well agree with liberals and Christians that human life is sacred and that murder is a terrible crime, yet condone infanticide. ([Location 3301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3301)) - When religions advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise their beautiful values. But God often hides in the fine print of factual statements. The Catholic religion markets itself as the religion of universal love and compassion. How wonderful! Who can object to that? Why, then, are not all humans Catholic? Because when you read the fine print, you discover that Catholicism also demands blind obedience to a pope ‘who never makes mistakes’ even when he orders his followers to go on crusades and burn heretics at the stake. ([Location 3306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3306)) - As for the idea that the ancient Jews carefully preserved the biblical text, without adding or subtracting anything, scientists point out that biblical Judaism was not a scripture-based religion at all. Rather, it was a typical Iron Age cult, similar to many of its Middle Eastern neighbours. It had no synagogues, yeshivas, rabbis – or even a bible. Instead, it had elaborate temple rituals, most of which involved sacrificing animals to a jealous sky god so that he would bless his people with seasonal rains and military victories. Its religious elite consisted of priestly families, who owed everything to birth and nothing to intellectual prowess. The mostly illiterate priests were busy with the temple ceremonies and had little time for writing or studying any scriptures. During the Second Temple period a rival religious elite gradually formed. Due partly to Persian and Greek influences, Jewish scholars who wrote and interpreted texts gained increasing prominence. These scholars eventually came to be known as rabbis, and the texts they compiled were christened ‘the Bible’. Rabbinical authority rested on individual intellectual abilities rather than on birth. The clash between this new literate elite and the old priestly families was inevitable. Fortunately for the rabbis, the Romans torched Jerusalem and its temple in 70 AD while suppressing the Great Jewish Revolt. With the temple in ruins, the priestly families lost their religious authority, their economic power base and their very raison d’être. Traditional Judaism – a Judaism of temples, priests and head-splitting warriors – disappeared. In its place emerged a new Judaism of books, rabbis and hair-splitting scholars. The scholars’ main forte was interpretation. They used this ability not only to explain how an almighty God allowed His temple to be destroyed, but also to bridge the immense gaps between the old Judaism described in biblical stories and the very different Judaism they created.4 ([Location 3385](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3385)) - Religions have the nagging tendency to turn factual statements into ethical judgements, thereby creating serious confusion and obfuscating what should have been relatively simple debates. Thus the factual statement ‘God wrote the Bible’ all too often mutates into the ethical injunction ‘you ought to believe that God wrote the Bible’. Merely believing in this factual statement becomes a virtue, whereas doubting it becomes a dreadful sin. ([Location 3406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3406)) - It is customary to portray the history of modernity as a struggle between science and religion. In theory, both science and religion are interested above all in the truth, and because each upholds a different truth, they are doomed to clash. In fact, neither science nor religion cares that much about the truth, hence they can easily compromise, coexist and even cooperate. Religion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in power. Through research, it aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, fight wars and produce food. As individuals, scientists and priests may give immense importance to the truth; but as collective institutions, science and religion prefer order and power over truth. They therefore make good bedfellows. The uncompromising quest for truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the confines of either religious or scientific establishments. ([Location 3448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3448)) - Modernity is a deal. All of us sign up to this deal on the day we are born, and it regulates our lives until the day we die. Very few of us can ever rescind or transcend this deal. It shapes our food, our jobs and our dreams, and it decides where we dwell, whom we love and how we pass away. At first sight modernity looks like an extremely complicated deal, hence few try to understand what they have signed up for. Like when you download some software and are asked to sign an accompanying contract that consists of dozens of pages of legalese—you take one look at it, immediately scroll down to the last page, tick ‘I agree’ and forget about it. Yet in fact modernity is a surprisingly simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. ([Location 3464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3464)) - Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. ([Location 3483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3483)) - Premodern games such as chess assumed a stagnant economy. You begin a game of chess with sixteen pieces, and you never finish a game with more. In rare cases a pawn may be transformed into a queen, but you cannot produce new pawns nor upgrade your knights into tanks. So chess players never have to think about investment. In contrast, many modern board games and computer games focus on investment and growth. Particularly telling are civilisation-style strategy games, such as Minecraft, The Settlers of Catan or Sid Meier’s Civilization. The game may be set in the Middle Ages, the Stone Age or some imaginary fairy land, but the principles always remain the same – and are always capitalist. ([Location 3646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3646)) - This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. ([Location 3820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=3820)) - In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’.4 This could well be the humanist motto. ([Location 4080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4080)) - People feel bound by democratic elections only when they share a basic bond with most other voters. If the experience of other voters is alien to me, and if I believe they don’t understand my feelings and don’t care about my vital interests, then even if I am outvoted by a hundred to one I have absolutely no reason to accept the verdict. ([Location 4243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4243)) - A liberal may counter that by exploring her own inner world she develops her compassion and her understanding of others. But such reasoning would have cut little ice with Lenin or Mao. They would have explained that individual self-exploration is an indulgent bourgeois vice, and that when I try to get in touch with my inner self, I am more than likely to fall into one or another capitalist trap. ([Location 4275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4275)) - Hitler’s political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority accorded to the personal experience of common people in twentieth-century politics. Hitler wasn’t a senior officer – in four years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal. He had no formal education, no professional skills and no political background. He wasn’t a successful businessman or a union activist, he didn’t have friends or relatives in high places, nor any money to speak of. At first, he didn’t even have German citizenship. He was a penniless immigrant. ([Location 4353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4353)) - Marx and his followers understood the new technological realities and the new human experiences, so they had relevant answers to the new problems of industrial society, as well as original ideas about how to benefit from the unprecedented opportunities. The socialists created a brave new religion for a brave new world. They promised salvation through technology and economics, thus establishing the first techno-religion in history, and changing the foundations of ideological discourse. Before Marx, people defined and divided themselves according to their views about God, not about production methods. Since Marx, questions of technology and economic structure became far more important and divisive than debates about the soul and the afterlife. In the second half of the twentieth century humankind almost obliterated itself in an argument about production methods. Even the harshest critics of Marx and Lenin adopted their basic attitude towards history and society, and began thinking much more carefully about technology and production than about God and heaven. ([Location 4615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4615)) - If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome. ([Location 4639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4639)) - In addition to social and ethical reforms, Christianity was responsible for important economic and technological innovations. The Catholic Church established medieval Europe’s most sophisticated administrative system, and pioneered the use of archives, catalogues, timetables and other techniques of data processing. The Vatican was the closest thing twelfth-century Europe had to Silicon Valley. The Church established Europe’s first economic corporations – the monasteries – which for 1,000 years spearheaded the European economy and introduced advanced agricultural and administrative methods. Monasteries were the first institutions to use clocks, and for centuries they and the cathedral schools were the most important learning centres of Europe, helping to found many of Europe’s first universities, such as Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca. ([Location 4646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4646)) - Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scriptures as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity. Think, for example, about the acceptance of gay marriage or female clergy by the more progressive branches of Christianity. Where did this acceptance originate? Not from reading the Bible, St Augustine or Martin Luther. Rather, it came from reading texts like Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality or Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’.14 Yet Christian true-believers – however progressive – cannot admit to drawing their ethics from Foucault and Haraway. So they go back to the Bible, to St Augustine and to Martin Luther, and make a very thorough search. They read page after page and story after story with the utmost attention, until they finally discover what they need: some maxim, parable or ruling that, if interpreted creatively enough means God blesses gay marriages and women can be ordained to the priesthood. They then pretend the idea originated in the Bible, when in fact it originated with Foucault. The Bible is kept as a source of authority, even though it is no longer a true source of inspiration. ([Location 4666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4666)) - For liberalism to make sense, I must have one – and only one – true self, for if I had more than one authentic voice, how would I know which voice to heed in the polling station, in the supermarket and in the marriage market? ([Location 4867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=4867)) - If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable. The more painful the sacrifice, the more convinced they will be of the existence of the imaginary recipient. A poor peasant sacrificing a valuable bull to Jupiter will become convinced that Jupiter really exists, otherwise how can he excuse his stupidity? The peasant will sacrifice another bull, and another, and another, just so he won’t have to admit that all the previous bulls were wasted. For exactly the same reason, if I have sacrificed a child to the glory of the Italian nation or my legs to the communist revolution, that’s usually enough to turn me into a zealous Italian nationalist or an enthusiastic communist. For if Italian national myths or communist propaganda are a lie, then I will be forced to concede that my child’s death or my own paralysis have been completely pointless. Few people have the stomach to admit such a thing. ([Location 5052](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5052)) - We see then that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. ([Location 5076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5076)) - Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional. ([Location 5089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5089)) - Indeed, even Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and the other champions of the new scientific world view refuse to abandon liberalism. After dedicating hundreds of erudite pages to deconstructing the self and the freedom of will, they perform breathtaking intellectual somersaults that miraculously land them back in the eighteenth century, as if all the amazing discoveries of evolutionary biology and brain science have absolutely no bearing on the ethical and political ideas of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson. ([Location 5096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5096)) - It is telling that already today in many asymmetrical conflicts the majority of citizens are reduced to serving as shields for advanced armaments. ([Location 5163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5163)) - Over the past half century there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. ([Location 5182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5182)) - Science fiction movies generally assume that in order to match and surpass human intelligence, computers will have to develop consciousness. But real science tells a different story. There might be several alternative ways leading to super-intelligence, only some of which pass through the straits of consciousness. For millions of years organic evolution has been slowly sailing along the conscious route. The evolution of inorganic computers may completely bypass these narrow straits, charting a different and much quicker course to super-intelligence. ([Location 5189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5189)) - If the algorithm makes the right decisions, it could accumulate a fortune, which it could then invest as it sees fit, perhaps buying your house and becoming your landlord. If you infringe on the algorithm’s legal rights – say, by not paying rent – the algorithm could hire lawyers and sue you in court. If such algorithms consistently outperform human capitalists, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. This may sound impossible, but before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already legally owned by non-human intersubjective entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed, 5,000 years ago much of Sumer was owned by imaginary gods such as Enki and Inanna. If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms? ([Location 5405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5405)) - Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives, and to reinvent themselves repeatedly. Many if not most humans may be unable to do so. ([Location 5462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5462)) - The liberal belief in individualism is founded on the three important assumptions that we discussed: 1.     I am an in-dividual – that is, I have a single essence that cannot be divided into parts or subsystems. True, this inner core is wrapped in many outer layers. But if I make the effort to peel away these external crusts, I will find deep within myself a clear and single inner voice, which is my authentic self. 2.     My authentic self is completely free. 3.     It follows from the first two assumptions that I can know things about myself nobody else can discover. For only I have access to my inner space of freedom, and only I can hear the whispers of my authentic self. This is why liberalism grants the individual so much authority. I cannot trust anyone else to make choices for me, because no one else can know who I really am, how I feel and what I want. This is why the voter knows best, why the customer is always right and why beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, the life sciences challenge all three assumptions. According to them: 1.     Organisms are algorithms, and humans are not individuals – they are ‘dividuals’. That is, humans are an assemblage of many different algorithms lacking a single inner voice or a single self. 2.     The algorithms constituting a human are not free. They are shaped by genes and environmental pressures, and take decisions either deterministically or randomly – but not freely. 3.     It follows that an external algorithm could theoretically know me much better than I can ever know myself. An algorithm that monitors each of the systems that comprise my body and my brain could know exactly who I am, how I feel and what I want. Once developed, such an algorithm could replace the voter, the customer and the beholder. Then the algorithm will know best, the algorithm will always be right, and beauty will be in the calculations of the algorithm. ([Location 5488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5488)) - During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the belief in individualism nevertheless made good practical sense, because there were no external algorithms that could actually monitor me effectively. States and markets may have wished to do exactly that, but they lacked the necessary technology. The KGB and FBI had only a vague understanding of my biochemistry, genome and brain, and even if agents bugged every phone call I made and recorded every chance encounter on the street, they did not have the computing power to analyse all that data. Consequently, given twentieth-century technological conditions, liberals were right to argue that nobody can know me better than I know myself. Humans therefore had a very good reason to regard themselves as an autonomous system and to follow their own inner voices rather than the commands of Big Brother. However, twenty-first-century technology may enable external algorithms to ‘hack humanity’ and know me far better than I know myself. Once this happens, the belief in individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms. People will no longer see themselves as autonomous beings running their lives according to their wishes, but instead will become accustomed to seeing themselves as a collection of biochemical mechanisms that is constantly monitored and guided by a network of electronic algorithms. For this to happen, there is no need of an external algorithm that knows me perfectly and never makes any mistake; it is enough that the algorithm will know me better than I know myself, and will make fewer mistakes than I do. It will then make sense to trust this algorithm with more and more of my decisions and life choices. ([Location 5506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5506)) - Your Kindle can, for example, monitor which parts of a book you read quickly, and which slowly; on which page you took a break, and on which sentence you abandoned the book, never to pick it up again. (Better tell the author to rewrite that bit.) If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it will know how each sentence you read influenced your heart rate and blood pressure. It will know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them. ([Location 5751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5751)) - The new religions are unlikely to emerge from the caves of Afghanistan or from the madrasas of the Middle East. Rather, they will emerge from research laboratories. Just as socialism took over the world by promising salvation through steam and electricity, so in the coming decades new techno-religions may conquer the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes. ([Location 5869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5869)) - Just as the spectrums of light and sound are far broader than what we humans can see and hear, so the spectrum of mental states is far larger than what the average human perceives. We can see light in wavelengths of between 400 and 700 nanometres only. Above this small principality of human vision extend the unseen but vast realms of infrared, microwaves and radio waves, and below it lie the dark dominions of ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Similarly, the spectrum of possible mental states may be infinite, but science has studied only two tiny sections of it: the sub-normative and the WEIRD. ([Location 5904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5904)) - For example, in papers published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – arguably the most important journal in the subfield of social psychology – 96 per cent of the sampled individuals were WEIRD, and 68 per cent were Americans. Moreover, 67 per cent of American subjects and 80 per cent of non-American subjects were psychology students! In other words, more than two-thirds of the individuals sampled for papers published in this prestigious journal were psychology students in Western universities. Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan half-jokingly suggested that the journal change its name to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology of American Psychology Students.1 ([Location 5917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5917)) - Though Kalahari foragers are somewhat less modern than Harvard psychology students, they are not a time capsule from our distant past. They too have been influenced by Christian missionaries, European traders, wealthy eco-tourists and inquisitive researchers (the joke is that in the Kalahari Desert, the typical hunter-gatherer band consists of twenty hunters, twenty gatherers and fifty anthropologists). ([Location 5935](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5935)) - The humanist revolution caused modern Western culture to lose faith and interest in superior mental states, and to sanctify the mundane experiences of the average Joe. Modern Western culture is therefore unique in lacking a specialised class of people who seek to experience extraordinary mental states. It believes anyone attempting to do so is a drug addict, mental patient or charlatan. Consequently, though we have a detailed map of the mental landscape of Harvard psychology students, we know far less about the mental landscapes of Native American shamans, Buddhist monks or Sufi mystics. ([Location 5944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5944)) - In all probability there is an infinite variety of mental states that no Sapiens, bat or dinosaur ever experienced in 4 billion years of terrestrial evolution, because they did not have the necessary faculties. In the future, however, powerful drugs, genetic engineering, electronic helmets and direct brain–computer interfaces may open passages to these places. Just as Columbus and Magellan sailed beyond the horizon to explore new islands and unknown continents, so we may one day embark for the antipodes of the mind. ([Location 5987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=5987)) - If we start using the attention helmet in more and more situations, we may end up losing our ability to tolerate confusion, doubts and contradictions, just as we have lost our ability to smell, dream and pay attention. The system may push us in that direction, because it usually rewards us for the decisions we make rather than for our doubts. Yet a life of resolute decisions and quick fixes may be poorer and shallower than one of doubts and contradictions. ([Location 6050](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6050)) - As any farmer knows, it’s usually the brightest goat in the herd that stirs up the most trouble, which is why the Agricultural Revolution involved downgrading animals’ mental abilities. The second cognitive revolution, dreamed up by techno-humanists, might do the same to us, producing human cogs who communicate and process data far more effectively than ever before, but who can barely pay attention, dream or doubt. ([Location 6058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6058)) - According to humanism, only human desires imbue the world with meaning. Yet if we could choose our desires, on what basis could we possibly make such choices? ([Location 6098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6098)) - What might replace desires and experiences as the source of all meaning and authority? As of 2016, there is one candidate sitting in history’s reception room waiting for the job interview. This candidate is information. The most interesting emerging religion is Dataism, which venerates neither gods nor man – it worships data. ([Location 6115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6115)) - Dataism is most firmly entrenched in its two mother disciplines: computer science and biology. Of the two biology is the more important. It was biology’s embrace of Dataism that turned a limited breakthrough in computer science into a world-shattering cataclysm that may completely transform the very nature of life. You may not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms, and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods for processing data. But you should know that this is current scientific dogma, and it is changing our world beyond recognition. ([Location 6138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6138)) - According to this view, free-market capitalism and state-controlled communism aren’t competing ideologies, ethical creeds or political institutions. They are, in essence, competing data-processing systems. Capitalism uses distributed processing, whereas communism relies on centralised processing. ([Location 6147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6147)) - According to this view the stock exchange is the fastest and most efficient data-processing system humankind has so far created. Everyone is welcome to join, if not directly then through their banks or pension funds. ([Location 6159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6159)) - Political scientists also increasingly interpret human political structures as data-processing systems. Like capitalism and communism, so democracies and dictatorships are in essence competing mechanisms for gathering and analysing information. Dictatorships use centralised processing methods, whereas democracies prefer distributed processing. ([Location 6215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6215)) - Present-day democratic structures just cannot collect and process the relevant data fast enough, and most voters don’t understand biology and cybernetics well enough to form any pertinent opinions. Hence traditional democratic politics is losing control of events, and is failing to present us with meaningful visions of the future. Ordinary voters are beginning to sense that the democratic mechanism no longer empowers them. The world is changing all around, and they don’t understand how or why. Power is shifting away from them, but they are unsure where it has gone. In Britain voters imagine that power might have shifted to the EU, so they vote for Brexit. In the USA voters imagine that ‘the establishment’ monopolizes all the power, so they support anti-establishment candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. ([Location 6241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6241)) - Precisely because technology is now moving so fast, and parliaments and dictators alike are overwhelmed by data they cannot process quickly enough, present-day politicians are thinking on a far smaller scale than their predecessors a century ago. Consequently, in the early twenty-first century politics is bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration. It manages the country, but it no longer leads it. Government ensures that teachers are paid on time and sewage systems don’t overflow, but it has no idea where the country will be in twenty years. ([Location 6261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6261)) - Ruthless billionaires and small interest groups flourish in today’s chaotic world not because they read the map better than anyone else, but because they have very narrow aims. In a chaotic system, tunnel vision has its advantages, and the billionaires’ power is strictly proportional to their goals. When the world’s richest tycoons want to make another billion dollars, they can easily game the system in order to do so. In contrast, if they felt inclined to reduce global inequality or stop global warming, even they wouldn’t be able to do it, because the system is far too complex. ([Location 6279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6279)) - From a Dataist perspective, we may interpret the entire human species as a single data-processing system, with individual humans serving as its chips. If so, we can also understand the whole of history as a process of improving the efficiency of this system through four basic methods: 1.     Increasing the number of processors. A city of 100,000 people has more computing power than a village of 1,000 people. 2.     Increasing the variety of processors. Different processors may use diverse ways to calculate and analyse data. Using several kinds of processors in a single system may therefore increase its dynamism and creativity. A conversation between a peasant, a priest and a physician may produce novel ideas that would never emerge from a conversation between three hunter-gatherers. 3.     Increasing the number of connections between processors. There is little point in increasing the mere number and variety of processors if they are poorly connected to each other. A trade network linking ten cities is likely to result in many more economic, technological and social innovations than ten isolated cities. 4.     Increasing the freedom of movement along existing connections. Connecting processors is hardly useful if data cannot flow freely. Just building roads between ten cities won’t be very useful if they are plagued by robbers, or if some paranoid despot doesn’t allow merchants and travellers to move as they wish. These four methods often contradict one another. The greater the number and variety of processors, the harder it is to freely connect them. The construction of the Sapiens data-processing system accordingly passed through four main stages, each characterised by an emphasis on a different method. ([Location 6288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6288)) - The first stage began with the Cognitive Revolution, which made it possible to connect vast numbers of Sapiens into a single data-processing network. ([Location 6304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6304)) - Sapiens used their advantage in data processing to overrun the entire world. However, as they spread into different lands and climates they lost touch with one another and underwent diverse cultural transformations. The result was an immense variety of human cultures, each with its own lifestyle, behaviour patterns and world view. Hence the first phase of history involved an increase in the number and variety of human processors, at the expense of connectivity: 20,000 years ago there were many more Sapiens than 70,000 years ago, and Sapiens in Europe processed information differently from Sapiens in China. However, there were no connections between people in Europe and China, and it would have seemed utterly impossible that all Sapiens could one day be part of a single data-processing web. ([Location 6307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6307)) - Humanism holds that experiences occur inside us, and that we ought to find within ourselves the meaning of all that happens, thereby infusing the universe with meaning. Dataists believe that experiences are valueless if they are not shared, and that we need not – indeed cannot – find meaning within ourselves. We need only record and connect our experiences to the great data flow, and the algorithms will discover their meaning and tell us what to do. Twenty years ago Japanese tourists were a universal laughing stock because they always carried cameras and took pictures of everything in sight. Now everyone is doing it. If you go to India and see an elephant, you don’t look at the elephant and ask yourself, ‘What do I feel?’ – you are too busy looking for your smartphone, taking a picture of the elephant, posting it on Facebook and then checking your account every two minutes to see how many Likes you got. ([Location 6430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6430)) - Throughout this book we have repeatedly asked what makes humans superior to other animals. Dataism has a new and simple answer. In themselves human experiences are not superior at all to the experiences of wolves or elephants. One bit of data is as good as another. However, humans can write poems and blogs about their experiences and post them online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes their bits count. Wolves cannot do this. Hence all the experiences of wolves – as deep and complex as they may be – are worthless. No wonder we are so busy converting our experiences into data. It isn’t a question of trendiness. It is a question of survival. We must prove to ourselves and to the system that we still have value. And value lies not in having experiences, but in turning these experiences into free-flowing data. ([Location 6439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6439)) - By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our primary source of authority and meaning and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is just the product of biochemical algorithms.’ ([Location 6480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6480)) - All truly important revolutions are practical. The humanist idea that ‘humans invented God’ was significant because it had far-reaching practical implications. Similarly, the Dataist idea that ‘organisms are algorithms’ is significant due to its day-to-day practical consequences. Ideas change the world only when they change our behaviour. ([Location 6491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6491)) - In ancient Babylon, when people faced a difficult dilemma they climbed in the darkness of night to the top of the local temple and observed the sky. The Babylonians believed that the stars controlled their fate and predicted their future. By watching the stars the Babylonians decided whether to get married, plough the fields and go to war. Their philosophical beliefs were translated into very practical procedures. Scriptural religions such as Judaism and Christianity told a different story: ‘The stars are lying. God, who created the stars, revealed the entire truth in the Bible. So stop observing the stars – read the Bible instead!’ This too was a practical recommendation. When people didn’t know whom to marry, what career to choose or whether to start a war, they read the Bible and followed its counsel. Next came the humanists with an altogether new story: ‘Humans invented God, wrote the Bible and then interpreted it in a thousand different ways. So humans themselves are the source of all truth. You may read the Bible as an inspiring human creation, but you don’t really need to. If you are facing any dilemma, just listen to yourself and follow your inner voice.’ Humanism then gave detailed practical instructions on how to listen to yourself, recommending techniques such as watching sunsets, reading Goethe, keeping a private diary, having heart-to-heart talks with a good friend and holding democratic elections. ([Location 6493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6493)) - The scientists not only sanctified human feelings, but also found an excellent evolutionary reason to do so. After Darwin, biologists began explaining that feelings are complex algorithms honed by evolution to help animals make correct decisions. Our love, our fear and our passion aren’t some nebulous spiritual phenomena good only for composing poetry. Rather, they encapsulate millions of years of practical wisdom. When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem. In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. ([Location 6511](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6511)) - In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore. ([Location 6597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01BBQ33VE&location=6597))