Robert Oppenheimer once reminded us, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” because one group, acting in the hinterlands of Brazil or in the Florida Keys makes a decision on the life or death of a whole species.Īs we acquire the power to destroy, we also acquire the power to create. In practical terms, this means we can now eliminate every Zika- or malaria-causing mosquito and every Lyme disease-carrying tick. For instance, “gene drives” ensure that every descendant of a particular species expresses a particular genetic trait. Our newfound powers take the randomness out of genetics and ensure directed evolution. About half of what lives on our planet today depends on our decisions, what we find cute, useful, beautiful or harmful. Absent humans, likely there would not be a whole lot of Lhasa Apsos. A cornfield is a good example of completely unnatural selection absent humans, no single species would grow in orderly rows, eliminating almost all other life forms, not even being able to self-reproduce. Whereas what lived and died used to depend only on natural selection and random mutation, now at least half of what lives and dies is due to human selection. We are redesigning life itself.Īfter nearly four billion years of Darwinian evolution, we have created a separate and independent evolutionary logic. It’s because we are fundamentally redesigning our species and a vast number of other species. We are becoming a Homo deus, but not because we are algorithms. If one is to truly describe a human species with God-like powers, one might focus on a Homo evolutis, an emerging species that has ever-greater powers to determine what lives and dies on this planet, and soon on other planets. Nor is evolution, especially human-driven evolution. While Harari is an extraordinarily broad-thinking and smart individual, biology is not a field he’s very comfortable in. We have very rough blueprints that tell us that a fundamental redesign of a conscious human, for a very different environment, is increasingly feasible. We now understand how organisms thrive in the equivalent of boiling battery acid or very high-radiation environments. Our rapidly emerging ability to alter life may lead to a fundamental redesign of parts of humanity that don’t end in disaster and enslavement but instead allow us to live a healthier life, perhaps even on very different planets as we explore the Milky Way. One has to wonder whether Harari’s conclusions would not be so dire had his initial historical focus been on the peak of Greek ingenuity, the Renaissance or the emergent computer-biological age. And yet those long-term trends tell us a whole lot more about where almost all of humanity is headed - which may turn out to be a far more optimistic tale than that painted by Harari. The evening news doesn’t lead with the impact of all the United Nations millennium goals being met. It’s also possible that, despite recent elections, we are evolving into a gentler, less violent, more empathetic, better educated and more successful species. Given nuclear weapons, and our ability to alter broad swaths of our climate and environment, this prediction may not be entirely unjustified. So it is not surprising that he paints a picture of a doomed humanity.
(Perhaps our world is destined to become the Matrix-like simulation that some Silicon Valley heavyweights believe we are already living within?)Īs a historian, Harari has focused on when life was most decidedly nasty, brutish and short. Channeling his inner existentialist, Harari argues that modernity can be summarized in a single phrase: “humans agree to give up meaning, in exchange for power.” In his view, “every organism - including Homo sapiens - is an assemblage of organic algorithms … and there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to duplicate or surpass.” I suppose I had expected a lot of biology alongside the history and sociology, but this book turns out to be more of an IT-AI treatise, based on the premise that all organisms are just algorithms and life is a simple data-processing continuum. Harari attempts to explain comprehensively why centuries of decisions and actions by humans have led in a linear way to Homo deus - a God-like human who nonetheless has no meaning and will soon be rendered irrelevant and ultimately eliminated. The result is a fascinating, challenging, entertaining and infuriating read. In Homo Deus, his sweeping overview of the past, present and future of the human species, this medieval military historian reminds me of a great debater, one who lays out his case with zero doubts.