By Yuval Noah Harari
In the past, humans could not afford such carelessness. Ancient foragers were always alert and attentive. Wondering in the forest in search of mushrooms, they watched the ground for any telltale bulge. They listened for the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. When they found an edible mushroom, they examined it with the utmost intention to distinguish it from its poisonous cousins. Members of today's affluent societies don't need such keen awareness. We can wander the supermarket aisles while texting messages. And we can buy any of thousands of dishes, all supervised by the health authorities.
The Knowledge Illusion: We think we know a lot, but individually, we know very little because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own. This is not necessarily bad. Our reliance on groupthink has made us masters of the world. And the knowledge illusion allows us to go through life without the impossible task of having to understand everything ourselves. But the world is becoming more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what's going on. People rarely admit their ignorance because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds.
Humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.
When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that's fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that's a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful or incur their wrath. For better or worse, fiction is among the most effective tools in humanity's toolkit. By bringing people together, religious creeds make large-scale human cooperation possible.
Art plays a key role in shaping people's views of the world. And in the 21st century, science fiction is arguably the most important genre of all, for it shapes how people understand things such as AI, bioengineering, and climate change.
Humans control the world because they can cooperate better than any other animal, and they can cooperate so well because they believe in fictions. Poets, painters, and playwrights are therefore at least as important as soldiers and engineers. People go to war and build cathedrals because they believe in god. And they believe in god because they have read poems about god, seen pictures of god, and have been mesmerized by theatrical plays about god. Similarly, our belief in the modern mythology about capitalism is underpinned by the artistic creations of Hollywood and the pop industry. We believe that buying more stuff will make us happy because we saw the happiness paradise with our own eyes on television.
The best advice I can give a 15-year-old stuck in an outdated school system somewhere in Mexico, India, or Alabama is, "Don't rely on the adults too much." Most of them mean well, but they just don't understand the world. In the past it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults because they knew the world quite well and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Because of the increasing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.
In the end, it's a simple empirical matter. If the algorithms indeed understand what's happening within you better than you understand it yourself, authority will shift to them. Of course, you might be perfectly happy seeding all authority to the algorithms and trusting them to decide things for you and for the rest of the world. If so, just relax and enjoy the ride. You don't need to do anything about it. The algorithms will take care of everything. If, however, you want to retain some control of your personal existence and the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don't take much baggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.
If you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. The answer isn't a story.
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