Looking Ahead
As a part of my short programs for executives or longer courses for students, I usually cover three key topics, one of which is thinking about the future. I explain we are prone to solve problems or develop strategies based on the way the world is today, rather than anticipating what might happen next. I always liked Einstein’s comment on this: he was said to have remarked that today’s problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.[i]
What do I do? Well, I have to admit I am a bit sneaky. I start with presenting demographic data. The United Nations collates social statistics from around the world, and their data on population trends are wonderful. I usually show both current population figures and future predictions for a number of countries (using the so-called ‘median’ projections, which have, so far, appeared the most accurate), pushing the future out to 2050 as a way to provoke interest. Next, I ask the group about other trends they can identify. The discussion is always enjoyable, and my role in the debate is pointing out that some ‘trends’ are not really trends, but simply hopeful or anxious assertions. We usually go on to genetics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and much more.
Then comes the slightly sneaky bit, where I turn the tables and explain that, in fact, no-one can predict the future; many of the trends we have discussed may not be sustained; and whatever is going to happen next is yet to be revealed. This is my entrée into scenario analysis, the power and value of imagining possible futures, and how very different possibilities alert us to the importance of contingency planning, assessing risks and opportunities which might arise if the world goes in one direction or another. Oh, and I also point out that it is a waste of money to buy books about the future, because they will all be wrong! I do add that I am a great believer in reading science fiction, however, as it offers some wonderful future scenarios to consider.
All this takes us to Yuval Noah Harari. Late last year I was looking for a book as a focus for discussion. We had three possibilities. One was ‘The Death of Truth’ by Michiko Kakutani: this is a truly excellent book, but that was the problem: it wouldn’t be the source of debate and disagreement, as we would all just nod and say “yes”![ii] The second was ‘White Working Class’ by Joan Williams, a short analysis on what she described as “class cluelessness” in the US; it was going to provoke discussion and disagreement, and that was the one chosen.[iii] The third was ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’ by Yuval Noah Harari.
Yuval Noah Harari is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and, based on the success of his books over the past few years, more recently a TED talk guru.[iv] He became prominent with an overview of history, ‘Homo Sapiens’. [v] An engaging and interesting account of the past, it focussed on three critical stages in human development. While acknowledging the importance of the use of fire some 800,00 years ago, he first focussed on what he describes as the cognitive revolution, new ways of communicating and thinking, and with that the emergence of ‘imagined realities’, allowing homo sapiens to go beyond small groups (of around 150) to larger clans, relying on planning, cooperation, and using language to ways to define an expanded social reality. Next, 10,000 years ago, came the agricultural revolution which led to the appearance of what he described as imagined orders (codes and states) and the emergence of bureaucracies. Finally, the third key stage was the scientific revolution, which quickly led to the growth of capitalism (linked to both science and empires), the industrial revolution, the end of small communities, and the obliteration of earlier ways of living together. The book ended by asking ‘where next?’ Harari argued we faced three choices, genetic engineering, cyborgs, or homo sapiens surpassed. It was broad brush, exciting, controversial in places [vi], and very readable. Given a push by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, it sold over a million copies.
Homo Sapiens was followed two years later by ‘Homo Deus’, subtitled ‘A brief history of tomorrow’.[vii] If there is one thing Homo Deus proves, it is that being a history professor does not make you a good futurologist. Harari is entranced by digital technology, research on the brain, and some of the recent ‘findings’ from AI experts and the like. Homo Deus is really a rerun of the last part of Homo Sapiens. It repeats much he had covered before, and is based on a series of contestable ideas: we are driven by our bodies (happiness is merely dopamine released into our brains); our minds work by running inbuilt programs, etc. The book gives an overview of human society today, and suggests we are seeing the end of famine, disease and wars, with new challenges emerging: achieving the end of death, ensuring happiness, and having god like powers. However, the core is his assertion we are creatures of our biology and the processing machine called the brain, a sophisticated set of learning systems (aka algorithms).
As you read on, the assertions multiply. He tells us there is no evidence to support the idea of a soul. The mind, consciousness, is about sensation and response There are causal links between electrical activity in the brain and subjective experiences (but he doesn’t explain why he believes electric activity create subjective experience, and not the other way around). Science and religion are both systems that reveal to us the way the world is: science in terms of stories about the observable world, religion in stories about the ethical world. They are interwoven, and facts are combined with ethical judgements to give us ‘practical rules’. Both differ from spiritual journeys, the way to an unknown destination, anticipating an issue to appear in his third book.
Unsurprisingly, he keeps slipping back to the present, arguing our world today is a consequence of what he calls the ‘magical pie’ of market capitalism. This, he claims, is accompanied by the rise of humanism, a revolutionary new religion, without any ‘gods’, which comes in three varieties: individual liberalism; socialist or communist humanism; or evolutionary humanism. But, if he has a scientist’s view of homo sapiens, Harari’s always hedging, wondering if life really is just data analytics. He ends his account with three questions: Are organisms just algorithms? What is more valuable, intelligence or consciousness? What happens when highly intelligent algorithms (intelligent systems) know us better than we know ourselves?
He does have a vision of the future, one where a small, breakaway group of superhumans and techno-elites will eventually split off from the rest of humanity. Those who acquire the skills and proprietary algorithms to re-engineer brains, bodies and minds will become gods; those who don’t will be rendered useless and die off. This dystopian vision rests on many questionable assumptions, of which one is we don’t have free will, and never did, a philosophical question that Harari insists is settled. But he’s a master of betting each way: nearly at the end he suggests organisms may not just be algorithms at all. Help! The book’s a muddling mish-mash!
Enough by way of background. Having left history in his wake, and after introducing the theme of humans as gods, Harari wants to offer us more insights into the future. These are to be found in ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’.[viii] When I first read it, I hadn’t realised it was a compilation of various talks, and articles. I don’t mind the approach (I’ve used it in the past), but little work was done in rewriting to get rid of duplications and ensure an overall style. Is that important? Perhaps not, but while I no longer write sustained pieces of fiction or non-fiction, I still focus on consistency, working on my blogs while keeping to my ‘no more than 4 pages’ rule!
Back to Harari on the 21st Century. The title is a giveaway: this is a teacher, not a facilitator at work. He is going to tell us about a number of issues, offering insight, and, we hope, some ideas about how they might be addressed. However, I soon discovered my mistake: Harari never quite concludes his ideas, and is fond of using the ‘on the one hand … on the other’ approach!
To help people who are trying to look ahead, the book is in five parts. The first is a rerun of Homo Deus, with the same vast sweep about the changes taking place in technology, and how they will impact on our lives. Once again, he describes a world in which genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will allow the creation of a new class of ‘superhumans’, leaving it rather unclear if these new god-like creatures will be enhanced homo sapiens or robots. Later sections address political challenges, ‘despair and hope,’ truth and resilience. If Harari was a historian in the past, he has become a seer, and ends by suggesting we can all find salvation in meditation.
It’s an approach that leads to obvious criticism. His skills as a historian seem to have been set aside in writing this book. Quite apart from his over-excited focus on AI and related matters, Harari “writes as if he understands absolutely everything about what’s going on in the world but needn’t stoop to details. Many of the book’s chapters have their genesis in occasional pieces of journalism, and much of the text is windy punditry.” That same reviewer went on to note “Near the end, Mr. Harari claims, bizarrely, that rationality “is a myth,” having misinterpreted the findings of behavioral economics, which show only that humans don’t always behave in ways that fit the highly restrictive economic definition of rationality. If rationality is a myth, it’s hard to understand why he should recommend to his readers that “if you want reliable information, pay good money for it,” excellent though that idea is. How can there be any such thing as reliable information if there is no such thing as rationality?” [ix]
It is tempting, too tempting, to continue quoting other critics’ observations. Perhaps I should satisfy myself with this one. “The book seems to be building to a climax when it addresses the meaning of life … is he going to give us a story which will help us navigate the challenges of the 21stcentury? Sadly not. The closest we get is a half-baked version of Buddhism. ‘The Buddha taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying. Suffering emerges because people fail to appreciate this [Really!!]… The big question isn’t ‘what is the meaning of life?’ but rather, ‘how do we get out of suffering?’ … If you really know the truth about yourself and about the world, nothing can make you miserable. But that is of course much easier said than done.’ Indeed. Harari has worked out his own salvation: ‘Having accepted that life has no meaning, I find meaning in explaining this truth to others.’ Given his six-figure speaking fees, this makes perfect sense.”.[x] Snarky! One other comment: “The 22nd lesson of this book is obvious: no single member of the tribe Homo Sapiens can know everything. If this new age needs new stories, then we have to let more people tell them”. [xi] His book ends stoking fears about AI and robots (the cyborgs are coming!) while boosting the pop culture of mindfulness.
At this point, you might be wondering what Yuval Noah Harari has done to deserve this critique. So, I don’t like the book much, and nor do some reviewers. However, it is much more than that. Harari’s book is the most recent in a long, very long line of books about the future. One of his predecessors was John Naisbitt, whose forecasts included the emergence of a single global economy, the decline of the nation state, the US Presidency and Congress becoming obsolete, and the US and Russia collaborating on tackling climate change! [xii] As I discuss issues about the future in class, I said I suggest all books on the future are not worth the money. They will either prove to be wrong, or they will contain a few guesses that turn out to be correct. However, if that’s the case, it’s no more than luck. Since no-one can predict the future, those who claim to have such insights are deluding themselves, and misleading their readers in the process.
Is there nothing to guide us? Yes, we can take a lesson from science fiction writers. They make it clear they are writing fiction. While much of what is written in that genre is concerned with trying to understand people and relationships, (ranging from mawkish romances to insights into motivations and interpersonal confusions), the good writers also think through some important ‘what ifs?’. They offer a complicated canvas on which we can explore the possible impact of the changes we are making now or could happen next: not by predicting, a la Harari, that this will happen, but rather challenging us to consider the world of possibilities and consequences.
What do we know about the future? Some past trends may be sustained in the short term. People are living longer; families are getting smaller. Digitisation is likely to keep affecting everything from business to government, changing education, health care, and many other activities, but it is impossible to know exactly how. That’s the problem with these sorts of changes: history shows that ‘revolutions’ of this kind take a long time to work through, and life is riddled with unforeseen consequences. Just look at the longer-term impact of changes that came from the industrial revolution, or those resulting from the development of the internal combustion engine. Harari the historian might have remembered history is not an account of continuing progress, but rather a sobering insight into the unanticipated, demonstrating that random and serendipitous events push people, institutions and nations in unexpected directions.
Is there nothing we can do to affect the processes of change? Of course there is. Not through the currently fashionable topics in TED-talks and the like, which at present appear to be centred on mindfulness and decluttering, behaviours that are guaranteed to ensure we don’t pay attention to the changes taking place around us. Rather we should be relying on the old-fashioned rational processes of analysis and reflection. Seeing ahead is impossible, but thinking ahead, trying to imagine and anticipate what might happen is both possible and essential. To be fair, in his 21 Lessons, Harari did highlight one critical issue: humility is essential. Humility in trying to look ahead, and in humility in accepting we don’t know what we don’t know.
[i] Of course, he didn’t say that! What he said was “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels”: this was in an article about the implications of the newly developed processes to unleash atomic energy – New York Times – May 25th, 1946, p.13 – ‘Atomic Education Urged by Einstein’
[ii] A book on ‘Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump’, New York: Duggan, 2018.
[iii] Published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017
[iv] From now on, I will just call him Harari.
[v] Subtitled A Brief History of Humankind, the English edition was published by Harvill Secker in 2014
[vi] It led to considerable criticism from professional historians: see, for example the summary given by Graeber and Wengrow, ‘How to Change the Course of Human History’, Eurozine, 2 March 2018
[vii] Again, the publisher of the English version was Harvill Secker, in 2016, a year after the Hebrew version.
[viii] Published in 2018 by Spiegel and Grau.
[ix] https://www.wsj.com/articles/21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-review-the-yogabots-are-coming-1536188948
[x] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/11/12/21st-century-schizoid-man-a-review-of-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-by-yuval-harari/#1d3e134174a3
[xi] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/15/21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-by-yuval-noah-harari-review
[xii] John Naisbitt, Megatrends, UK: 1980; and John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, Megatrends 2000, Morrow, 1990
