Dystopia

In an interview with David Runciman on the excellent podcast Talking Politics, Yuval Noah Harari discussed some of the themes raised in Homo Deus. I wanted to think about them in writing.

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Dividuals: we are not one unified thing, but a collection of various selves composed of sets of memories, manifested in neural networks. We are various systems, hormonal and skeletal and arterial and neuronal. We are different with different people and a various stages through life. We can believe opposing schemas from one day to the next, depending on environment and mood and stimuli. How can a 'dividual' have a vote?

He suggests that Facebook and Amazon track us over time and, with their astonishing algorithms, have a better sense of who we are, what we want and what we are going to do than we do - or than our closest friends do. Should that algorithm vote for me?

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AI: he sees AI as potentially threatening to our freedom. As in an artificial system that can make decisions for us. This has been played out by various thinkers - Nick Bostrom and Sam Harris for example. But Runciman was doubtful. In the four years since Harari's book was published, computers may have got even better at chess, but they don't have the capacity to imagine. Whatever consciousness is, they're no nearer to it.

Runciman sees the threat coming from a different place. Governments seem to be managers in the cause of those who put them in power. And who did that, these days? Not the voters but the financial backers. Those with great wealth have an excessive say in the direction of policy. They can manipulate voters either directly, through selective messaging on social media, or through funding campaigns for those sympathetic to their needs - and who are then expected to make it happen.

In addition, he suggested that rather than really smart machines getting smarter, the 'dumb' machines are maybe making us dumber. Tied in as we are to the desire to be recognised via the little screen we carry with us all the time, having our reading and watching and listening curated by the algorithms that know what we already like and keep us quiet by providing more of the same. No challenges, no contradictions, no discussion or debate, just a solidification in the world view we've already adopted from our all to limited milieu.

This in turn has repercussions for our freedom: if Big Data 'knows us better than we know ourselves', it can then be used to say that 'what we really want is x' and this has totalitarian implications - a case argued in this article on The Conversation.

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Visions: who has one now? The Fascists once did; the Communists once did; even Liberals once did. Market forces creates its own vision of the future - feeding on consumption, validating the rich, weakening the poor. Maybe only the people in Silicon Valley have a vision now... Oh, but what is it? Immortality and designer babies... for the rich... what about for the poor? Keeping them happy and foolish with UBI, VR and fake food that tastes delicious, gives you all the nutrition you need and just the right number of calories to sit at a screen all day. Yippee.

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OK. I'm depressed now. But then that's been coming. The futility as I seek to retain hope through wonder, beauty, love... but feel it sink as reality strikes. People don't want to change. They don't want to grow. They want to be right. Me too, I'm sure.

We're like cornered rats. Protecting ourselves and striking out. Some days I feel I can't take it any more. That I don't have the energy to work out complicated ideas. That I don't have the energy to debate them. That I don't have the energy to rise up. That I don't have the energy to live in a life where contempt and hatred and the ongoing validation of 'my rights' are such a large part of public discourse.

I want to go home but there is no home. I'm in a nightmare Oz and Kansas no longer exists.