Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Science and Technology => Topic started by: torridon on August 28, 2016, 08:11:14 AM
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So says Yuval Harari; we will either upgrade ourselves to inorganic lifeforms or go extinct.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq)
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So says Yuval Harari; we will either upgrade ourselves to inorganic lifeforms or go extinct.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq)
This is a summary of his book Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind taken from Wikipedia.
The book surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century. Its main argument is that Homo sapiens dominates the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Besides, the author claims that prehistoric sapiens may have committed a massive genocide, leading other homo species such as the Neanderthals into extinction. The book further argues that Homo sapiens can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, because it has a unique ability to believe in things existing purely in its own imagination, such as gods, nations, money and human rights. The author claims that all large scale human cooperation systems – including religions, political structures, trade networks and legal institutions – are ultimately based on fiction.[5]
Other salient arguments of the book are that money is a system of mutual trust; that political and economic systems are actually religions rather than economic theories or ideologies; that the agricultural revolution started as a promise of luxury but ended as a trap that made peoples' lives worse; that empire has been the most successful political system of the last 2,000 years; that money, empires and religions are the powers that are unifying the world; that the treatment of domesticated animals is among the worst crimes in history; that people today are not significantly happier than in past eras;[6] and that humans are currently in the process of upgrading themselves into gods
I have no idea what this is doing in the Science and Technology section. The man is a historian.
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He is speculating on possible future developments, based on his understanding of human history.
The trouble is none of it means we will be any happier than we are now or were in the past.
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He is speculating on possible future developments, based on his understanding of human history.
The trouble is none of it means we will be any happier than we are now or were in the past.
He can speculate as much as he likes, his speculation is not scientific.
He may be drawing inspiration from the practices of victorians like Karl Marx, who believed that history was a science and that there were laws which determined historical progress. He would be better employed writing Dr Who scripts than airing "scientific" opinions on news magazine programmes.
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I tend to agree HH, but he's not following Hegelian/Marxist lines of philosophy of history.
There is a New Scientist review of his new book "Homo Deus":
We are the gods of the future... (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130880-500-we-are-gods-of-the-future-but-what-will-we-do/)
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In future humans will be a combination of Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Yes ElonGates.
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In future humans will be a combination of Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Yes ElonGates.
Not Busk Elates?
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So says Yuval Harari; we will either upgrade ourselves to inorganic lifeforms or go extinct.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045q3yq)
All it would take is a meteor mass extinction and who knows perhaps what we now consider the human race would split into separate groups.
Like something out of the time machine with the Morlocks.
What has happened in the past, ( species changing and becoming quite different) could happen again.
When the dinosaurs were wiped out a lot of other things were wiped out too, but other things evolved in their place.
Perhaps it never finishes, evolution.
It's probably arrogant to think we are the last version.