Homo Deus

It has been a long time since I could read a book with an original vision on the future, far from the stereotype mainstream visions you can find in the social media. Prof. Yuval Noah Harari sketches an imminent transition from humankind to “Homo Deus”, a new species that is superior to our 'mankind', a species that has found the ‘divine’ key to immortality.

Our species Homo Sapiens was still relatively unimportant before a few million years, but due to technology, it could now create a species that is much smarter than its creator. Artificial Intelligence and genetic engineering will play a role in this creation, and I think the author is right in his expectation that, despite the moral objections, Homo Sapiens/ Homo Deus will engineer his future as soon as the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages.

The author points out that Homo Sapiens was not superior to other animals because of his consciousness, but rather because of his ability to mobilise his peers around ideas and stories. If homo sapiens now creates a new species, how will the new species treat homo sapiens? There is an interesting analogy with how homo sapiens treats other animals. The author made me aware that the question is not only how we kill animals, but also how we let them live their life, which is often equally cruel. See my earlier blog: “Animal Harm at Animal Farm”.

Science teaches us that the soul and the free will don’t exist, as they are the simple consequence of biochemical reactions in our brain. I don’t fully agree with these statements. It is true that science has revealed that there is no ‘supernatural’ substance like soul or free will, and indeed, our thoughts and feelings ARE the biochemical reactions and vice versa. But that doesn’t mean that soul and free will don’t exist as abstract notions and even as coherent sets of experienced sensations. The biochemical reactions are the only physical carrier in which the soul ‘resides’, but to say that the soul is just “chemical reactions” comes down to a reduction of the soul (pars pro toto). It denies the higher order coherence of these reactions. In my Dutch blog: “Ziel en lichaam”, I compare the body with computer hardware. The soul is the computer software. Does it make sense to say the software doesn’t exist? I would say no, unless you want to make clear there is no other natural or supernatural substance, which is a relatively recent insight I must admit.

Homo Sapiens embraces a religion of "humanism", meaning that our purpose resides in our own happiness. The “Meaning of Life” or “religion” of Homo Deus on the contrary would reside in the acquisition of data and knowledge, the author calls this new religion "dataïsm". His book suggests that my blog is already a small contribution to the vast and unstoppable ocean of data that is being created on the altar of this new religion.

An interesting note about history was that it makes you understand the past, but also that it can liberate you from your past. But this book is more about the future than about the past. It has the potential to become the futurism cult-book of the decade, very much like “Future Shock” in the seventies.