Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the Choose Yourself Network. Today on the James Altiger Show. Tourists function by capturing our imagination, turning our imagination against us, and causing us to overreact. This is the way terrorism functions. In a way, a terrorist is like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so small and weak, it cannot move in even a single teacup. So how does a fly destroy a china shop? The fly finds a bull, gets into the ear of the bull, and starts buzzing. The bull becomes so enraged that it loses its temper and destroys a china shop. This is what happened in the Middle East over the last 15 years. Al Qaeda could never have destroyed Iraq by itself. It got into the ear of the United States, and the United States went wild and destroyed the Middle Eastern China shop for Al Qaeda. This is how terrorism functions. And if you want to fight terrorism, you should start with your own imagination. So I have Yuval Harari with me, who is the author of Bill Gates' favorite book, Sapiens, and one of the highest recommended books by Mark Zuckerberg, Sapiens, and also his new book, Homo Duis. Now, Yuval, I have a a million questions, but first, hello. Thank you for for coming on. It's my pleasure. You're a professor at the, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So, and then you you wrote these great books. Bill Gates wrote a a glowing review of your book. Mark Zuckerberg recommended to everyone. I first heard of you before Sapiens came out. I watched your course on Coursera, which was fascinating. And it was this weird course where you're just sort of sitting in this white room talking on the video, and then occasionally, there's, like, images of, like, archaeological ruins. And and I'm thinking to myself, this is so ingenious, like, every chapter in this. And then the book came out, and it was even smarter. And then homo doulas came out about so so first off, I'm gonna interrupt you a lot, but I wanna just summarize what these books are, and correct me if if I'm wrong at any point. Okay. So Sapiens, was essentially what's happened before. Like, why did, Homo sapiens become not only the surviving human species over Neanderthals and the other human species that existed at the same time, but why were we the only, species to basically conquer the entire planet? And you sort of addressed that issue, and there's a lot of questions I have about that. But then it goes into homo deus, which is given the trend that's happened over the past 200,000 and particularly 70000 years, what's gonna happen in the next 100, 1000, 10000 years? And it's fascinating the things that you that you discuss. Deus. Deus. Like god. Okay. I stand corrected. Homo deus. Is that right? Yes. Homo deus. I'm telling everyone to read Homo Deus, but, I'm wrong. I can't pronounce. So so the first question I have, I you you bring up this really fascinating point that I never thought of. So Homo sapiens have been around for 250,000 years, and we were around at the same time as who else? The Neanderthals? Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo Denisovan, a bunch of others. I mean, where you had at least 6 or 7 different human species living side by side on the planet, and nothing indicated that Homo sapiens was special or superior to the others. We were kinda 3rd rate. Right? Like, we were sort of wimpy in this one little area of East Africa Yes. For many, many for, like, a 150,000 years. Yes. And then and then we weren't even around other humans then. Right? Because Neanderthals were in Europe. Yeah. In the Middle East and and Europe were Neanderthals. In East Asia, you had Homo erectus and and and so forth. There was some overlapping, but generally speaking, yeah, humans were just another kind of animal, with no greater impact on the ecological system than, ants or bees or dolphins or penguins or many other types. Is there any even archaeological evidence of human of Homo sapiens from, let's say, a 150000 years ago? Yes. We have evidence of Homo sapiens in East Africa from a 150000 years ago that looked almost exactly like us and even had the same size of brain or even a bit larger than our brain today. But we don't have any evidence of special technology or special achievements, and as and we didn't manage to break out of East Africa. The real rise to power of Homo sapiens began only around 70000 years ago, and then it's very quick. I mean, in a in an evolutionary flash, Homo sapiens spreads from East Africa to conquer the whole planet. And drive to extinction all the other human species around, the Neanderthals, the Homo erectus, and so forth, and it goes on to become the dominant species of the planet. So so I I wanna just, ask you one thing. And and, by the way, I I interrupt. Anytime I'm curious, I'm gonna interrupt a little bit. But, you say an evolutionary flash. And what's interesting there is not only in the scope of, like, mammals and so on, which have been around 1,000,000 of years, but even Homo erectus was around a 1000000 and a half years. We've only been we're kind of like a child. We're we've only been around 250,000 years, and yet something what what happened to us 70,000 years ago? It almost sounds like science fiction. Like like, we got infected with something, and then we started like, a special superpower, and our superpower is the ability to cooperate in very large numbers. Neanderthals, Homo erectus, chimpanzees, they can cooperate. Maybe a few dozen chimpanzees or Neanderthals could cooperate. Homo sapiens moved to cooperating in many 100 and then 1,000 and 1,000,000, and today we cooperate with billions of strangers on a daily basis. It's a global economy. So I I wanna ask you about that because it seems like there's 2 phases there. One is there's kind of just the tribal phase where we have our 30 close people that we know intimately. Mhmm. And then there's, a 150 people or so where we know it's enough people that we could gossip about them. Yes. So so if I don't know Jack, but you do, you could tell me he's good to hunt with or not. But but there's sort of a limit to that. Yes. A 150 people. And then you you sort of mentioned there's a 3rd stage, which is we can believe in some kind of fiction, like, for instance, a religion or nationalism or capitalism. And that allows us like, if you're in China and I'm here and we're both Christians, we could work together somehow. Exactly. I mean, to pass the 150 line, to start cooperating with many 100 and then 1,000 and then 1,000,000, the basis for that is the imagination. We don't have an instinct for cooperating on a large scale. We cooperate with millions of strangers if and only if we all believe in the same fictional stories. The human superpower is really based on fiction. We are as far as we know, we are the only animal that can create and believe in fictional stories, and all large scale human corporation is based on fiction. So so so let's see how that first, there's lots of ways that happens now, but 70,000 years ago when we basically just started to kill off other all the other human species, how do you think it was Well, when we were doing it? One option, which we have anthropological and some archaeological evidence, you begin to see trade between different groups with something you didn't see with Neanderthals or with other other species other human species. People who don't know each other trade all kinds of items. And how do they do that? From what we know from anthropological studies, you create, in order to trade with somebody, you must trust that person. If you don't know him or her personally, how do you trust? And the way to build trust is to imagine that you are part of a bigger family. So you create some mythical ancestor and you say you meet in the middle of the jungle and you say, hey. You are my kind of distant cousin because we are both descendant from the same ancestral figure, and we are both protected by the same ancestral spirit. So even though we don't really know each other, we are kind of the same family. And this goes all the way to the present. If you take a dollar bill and look at it, you still have ancestral spirits on the dollar bill, all these dead presidents. Hey, you know Lincoln. I also know Lincoln. Hey, we are we are buddies. Of course, Lincoln really existed. And also, it's very likely that some of these ancestral spirits also began as real life people. But with the passage of time, both with these ancient chiefs and with the dead presidents, the myth is far more important than the actual flesh and blood person. You know, it's really interesting about money because not only is there sort of our ancestors, like, here's a $1 bill, George Washington, but there's also things like In God We Trust. In God We Trust. There's this pyramid with the I. Like, there's all these sort of mythological Yes. There's there's a lot of stories on the dollar bill. Money is probably the most successful story ever told because it's the only story everybody believes. I mean, not everybody believes in in in God or in the same God. Not everybody believes in in the in nationalism, but everybody believes in money and in the same money. If you think, for example, about, I don't know, the Islamic state. So when they entered all these cities in Syria and Iraq, they destroyed government, offices, and they tore down statues, and they killed people and so forth. One of the things they never did, they never burned the money. When they entered the bank in Mosul and found in the vault lots and lots of American dollars with pictures of American presidents and with slogans of Christian slogans about God with us and all that, they didn't burn it. They took it and they used it because even the Islamic state believes in the dollar bill. It's so interesting. So so so back to 70,000 years ago, do you think a bunch of human tribes that didn't really know each other that well kind of banded together and started sort of dominating over the Neanderthals or the other human species that were around? Yes. We have evidence for that. As I said, the best evidence is for trade between different sapiens bands, which you don't see with Neanderthals. And you see, for example, seashells from the shores of the Mediterranean popping up in archaeological sites in Hungary or in the middle of France, 100, thousands of kilometers away from the seashore because it was these, shells were traded, between different sapiens groups. You also find evidence for many groups cooperating, in in hunting. You have these massive hunting, traps, and you needed hundreds of people to build and operate these hunting traps that you drive entire herds into a trap and then kill in one afternoon, hundreds of bison or whatever. And you also find evidence in burial sites. Like in Russia, there is a very interesting burial site from 30000 years ago, and you find some tribal chiefs or something buried with 1,000 and 1,000 of ivory statues and beads and jewelry. And there is absolutely no way that a single tribe of, say, a 100 or 200 people could have manufactured and accumulate so many intricate objects. I mean, each each bead demands hours of work by an experienced artist. And here you have a a grave from 30000 years ago with thousands of such objects, So it must have been the collective effort of thousands of people to create and accumulate these objects. So so what do you think it was that happened? I mean, clearly, all along, we have the same DNA that we had a 150,000 years ago, that we had 70,000 years ago. So what do you think happened to the human brain to allow us to suddenly, accept this notion of fiction and and cooperating as a result of fiction? By the way, we didn't think it fiction. No. We believed in gods, and we believed in whatever, what, money, and and so on. We don't think money is a fiction. Well, when you think about this carefully, you realize, oh, yes. It's just a story. I mean, you look at it. You can't eat it. You can't drink it. There is it has no value. Right. But, you have this common story that everybody accepts that, yes, this piece of green paper is worse, like, I don't know, like a banana. So I go to the supermarket. I give it to a complete stranger I've never met before. And because he also believes in this green piece of paper, he gives me a banana, and I can eat it. This is really amazing. And what enables us to do it, we are not sure what happened to in our brain 70,000 years ago. Probably some genetic mutation or a couple of mutations changed the internal structure of the brain in such a way that people that humans, could start creating and believing in things that exist only in their own imagination. We know that other animals can lie, and other animals can imagine some things at least, but to create entire fictional narratives, That that's not possible. I mean, you cannot convince, say, like, you go to a bunch of chimpanzees and you tell them, okay. You now go to the forest and you gather all the bananas you find and you bring me these bananas. And because of this good deed, after you die, you'll go to chimpanzee heaven. And there you'll receive lots and lots of bananas in in the afterlife. No chimpanzee will ever believe such a story. So Humans believe it. This is why we can build cathedrals and mosques and go on crusades and jihards and and and so forth. So so it's interesting because are some it seems like the history of the human race right up until the present moment is about constructing these elaborate stories. And you go into a a lot more into it even in the second book where you describe, you know, our belief that that went from, a sort of theism to humanism to maybe what what we we'll we'll get to it, but kind of a transhumanism. But, what it it's almost then not just a history of fiction, but a history of persuasion. Because what are the types of fictions that succeed over others, or is this just more of a survival of the fittest type of type of thing? There is absolutely no rule of thumb. Well, maybe 1. It should be simple. Mhmm. If you want, successful stories are simple. People don't like most people don't like complicated stories. So like so like to explain why didn't the harvest come? God was angry. Yes. Something like that. You start talking about genetics or quantum physics, you lose 99% of of people. So the story needs to be simple. Beyond that, some of the most successful stories in the world are the strangest stories. Like, one of the top five stories ever says that there once was a woman who was a virgin, and she gave birth to a son even though she was a virgin. And this son could do anything he wanted, but then dead people killed him. But he got back to life and got up to heaven. And if you believe the story I now told you, after you die, you'll go also to heaven and enjoy everlasting happiness there. This is one of the top five stories in human history. So strange. Why do you say top 5? Like, have you identified the other 4? Because I don't want to insult anybody and say this is the top one. Uh-huh. But I think capitalism, like the capitalist story is also very, like, there in the in in the top five, and you have and a few other such stories are very, very powerful. What And some of them are, you know, so strange. Why did this story convince billions of people? I mean, strange. Well, it's interesting because in Sapiens, you there's 2 kind of almost conflicting, narratives that are happening across the past 70,000 years. One is an amazing story, which is fascinating, which is that wherever Homo sapiens go, we destroy everything bigger than us. Yes. So so in particular, you you you show the example of Australia, which is amazing. Like, why did Homo sapiens even think that they can get to Australia? They had to go 100 of miles over water. Like, how did they even get there? And then they destroy everything bigger than them over the course of 2000 years. Mhmm. So how how do you think they got there? We are not sure. I mean, they must have built boats or some other craft, and this is 50000 years ago. They must have built some kind of sailing vessels, and but they also needed to get organized. You couldn't colonize Australia 50000 years ago just by, I don't know, 10 people be drifting by accident to the Australian shore. You needed, a large number of people to cope with a completely new ecosystem about which humans knew nothing. They didn't knew they didn't know the animals, the plants, the mushrooms, the it was all strange and new. And also, of course, you needed, a large enough genetic, basis to start a colony. I mean, 10 people in a few generations, they all die out because of genetic, illnesses. So it it was probably a kind of more organized expedition. How did you convince, 50000 years ago, 100 of people, to go on such an expedition? Probably some very good story. Well, so so so what's interesting though is that you described it not only with Australia, but with, America and and every place humans went, every all of our potential predators, were destroyed. So Not just predators. All large animals. In Australia, 50000 years ago, you had dozens of different species of large animals. And within a few 1000 years, 95% of them disappeared. The only one remaining is the kangaroo that we still are familiar from Australia today, but even this kangaroo was quite small. You had giant kangaroos in Australia 50000 years ago, and they all disappeared. And so so so there's this kind of history of violence that that even tracks into the the latter part of our history. And you you describe this after post agricultural revolution when we start having wars and, you know, battling for resources. But then at the same time, there's this almost conflicting narrative of unification where we go from tribes to groups of tribes to villages to cities to kingdoms to empires. And now even you can argue, belief systems like capitalism or websites like Facebook have gone beyond the boundaries of countries to create more of a global communication system. And so so is there, kind of a a unification of these strands between violence and and unity? You can say that there are basic two trends in history which seem to be irresistible. 1 is the trend towards human empowerment. As time goes by, humankind becomes more and more powerful, largely because they will invent new technologies and new ways to organize ourselves. And once you discover a new technology or a new, way to organize, you almost never go back. And secondly, as time goes forward, so humankind becomes more and more unified, largely because we have better communication technology and better transportation technology. And and, also, I guess you suggest that as we get more and more connected, our rate of technological change obviously gets faster because we were able to exchange ideas more faster and develop technologies that makes humankind better as a species or as a as a as some as a group? Yes. It's easier to exchange ideas, to exchange merchandise, to exchange people, and this generally tends to contribute to even faster economic growth and and faster invention of of new technologies. And yet and yet there's a really another this the next really fascinating part of Sapiens and and believe me, I wanna get to the second book, but I just wanna plow through all the fascinating things in in Sapiens. Mhmm. The the next fascinating thing is that you discussed the agricultural revolution, and we all think of it as, okay, we kind of discovered able to organize in terms of farms and villages and so on. And you said that you you you kind of make the point that this essentially ruined us as a or partially ruined us as a species in some sense. Like, our lives as individual maybe it empowered us more as a species, but as individuals, it made our lives worse. Yes. There is a big difference between the collective power of humankind and the individual life. In terms of collective power, obviously, agriculture made us more powerful. Without agriculture, we could not have cities and empires and so forth. At the same time, the life of the average person became worse. If you think about it from the viewpoint of the not the king or the high priest, but the average peasant woman in ancient Egypt, life is harder than as a hunter gatherer 10000 years previously. You have to work much harder. The human body and mind evolved in adaptation to the life of hunter gatherers. You go to the forest to look for mushrooms, you climb trees to pick apples. This is what you do. And suddenly, what you do all day as a peasant is you bring water from the river in buckets and you harvest the corn and you grind the corn. It's much more difficult for the body and it's very boring to the mind. Even today, the jobs of 100 of millions of people around the world are far more boring than going to the forest to look for mushrooms. Yeah. And and you mentioned earlier that, the hunter forager brain might have even been bigger than the brain we have now. Do you think if we took a hunter forager baby from, like, 40000 years ago and, like, a a 0 year old and brought him or her here and raised him, do you think it would be a smarter person? That's a good question. We we're not sure. I mean, what we what we do know is that in order to survive as a hunter gatherer, you needed superb skills, both physical and mental. You relied on other people, of course, but without superb skills of your own in many different fields, you couldn't survive. You needed to know how to track animals, how to find mushrooms, how to make shoes, how to take care of of injury, how to cooperate with other people effectively, many things. Today, you need to know far less. I, for example, I teach history at university. I need to know history, and that's about it. Everything else, I take my salary from the university. I go to the supermarket. I buy it. I don't know how to prepare my own food. I don't know how to make my own clothes. I don't know how to take care of my my my health. I mean, for all that, I rely on other people. As a collective, we obviously know far more than people in the stone age. As individuals, we probably know far less. Yeah. So so now I wanna get into you know? So in the second book you or in the first book, you bring us all the way to here. You get through, the agricultural revolution and the rise of kingdoms and empires, and everything's there to sort of, a, support some kind of story like religion or nationalism or whatever, and that leads to wars and battles for resources. You make one interesting point, or many interesting points. But after the scientific revolution and after the wars of the 20th century, war itself is diminishing now. Because as you point out, it's not like China would invade Silicon Valley for its silicon. It's now everything's ideas, and it's much more abstract, the the resources we have. Mhmm. Yeah. You see a decline in in international violence, I think, due to two main reasons. First of all, nuclear weapons have transformed war between superpowers into collective suicide, which is why we didn't have any such war since 1945. And secondly, there is a change in the nature of the economy from a material based economy to a knowledge based economy. The main assets in the past were material like gold fields, gold mines or wheat fields. And these are the kinds of things you can conquer through violence. You invade, say, in the mid 19th century. So United States invades California, takes it away from Mexico, and, hey, we now have all these gold mines. We we are richer. Makes sense to to wage war. Today, more and more the main assets are is it the main asset is knowledge. The source of wealth of California today is the knowledge in the minds of engineers and technicians and CEOs, and you just cannot conquer it by force. If the Mexicans reinvade to reconquer California, let's say they succeed somehow, they won't gain anything. I mean, there are no Silicon mines in Silicon Valley. The wealth is in the minds of the engineers, and you cannot conquer it by force. So there are still places in the world where you have a lot of violence. These tend to be the places where the economy is still old fashioned material economy like the Middle East. Oil fields, I mean, it still made sense for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait because the wealth is in the ground. It's oil, and you can conquer it. But generally speaking, there is a decline in human violence. What about, like, terrorism? So you mentioned in Homo Deus that terrorists are almost, by definition, weak because they don't have the resources to take over our country, for instance. So they're they're trying to more create fear than death. Yes. And but what if a terrorist organize what if technology becomes so simple for nuclear weapons or for biological warfare that terrorists are able to get a hold of that technology? You don't really seem to be that worried about that in the next phase. Game changer. Mhmm. I mean, once you have weapons of mass destruction in the hands of tiny groups accountable to nobody, that's a game changer, and that's a very big threat. So far, we haven't reached that point. So far, terrorism has been mainly a psychological menace. It it functions I mean, terrorists function by capturing our imagination, turning our imagination against us, and causing us to overreact. This is the way terrorism functions. In a way, a terrorist is like a fly that tries to destroy a China shop. The fly is so small and weak. It cannot move in even a single teacup. So how does a fly destroy a China shop? The fly finds a bull, gets into the ear of the bull, and starts buzzing. The bull becomes so enraged that it, you know, it loses its temper and destroys the China shop. This is what happened in the Middle East over the last 15 years. Al Qaeda could never have destroyed Iraq by itself. It got into the ear of the United States, and the United States went wild and destroyed the Middle Eastern China shop for Al Qaeda. This is how terrorism functions. And if you want to fight terrorism, you should start with your own imagination. You should free your imagination from being captured by terrorists. That's the most effective way to fight terrorism. Let's stop to take a quick break. We'll be right back. You know, that is really interesting what you just said about freeing the imagination. I'm gonna I'm gonna hold on to I'm pinning that to my mental wall here, and we're gonna get back to that. But, so now next steps. You you in in Homo Deus, you kind of go in 2 directions. 1 is you talk about how humans could take the next step by, improving their, you know, using technology to improve their lifespans, their happiness, and, their their kind of their powers, what what are we capable of doing. But then there's another direction too, which is that it might not be humans at all we're dealing with 500 years from now because data is becoming so powerful. Now we're we're going from humanists to dataists Yes. That the that the needs of data might be more important than the needs of humans. And and and I I saw some criticisms like, oh, that's not how artificial intelligence works. And yet, people I I think a lot of that the the those comments are wrong in the sense that look at what we do on Amazon. We don't now look for what our friends are recommending. Amazon has all these algorithms that uses that sees what millions of recommendations are and says based on what your browsing history is and other people's browsers, you might like these books. Yes. So so already, we're kind of allowing giving up our humanism, our our right to privacy, for instance, in for the needs of data, for the needs of big data. And so which so let's start on the first one, how we could become superhumans and what's happening in that direction. Well, I mean, given the advances in bioengineering and brain computer interfaces and so forth, I think it's very likely that within a century or 2, Homo sapiens will disappear and be replaced by a completely different kind of being, something which will be more different from us than we are different from Neanderthals. But but would we it seems like because that would be largely because of sort of some sort of biological engineering. Like Yes. But but we'll still be able to you know, those super Homo sapiens will probably still be able to mate with current Homo sapiens. It wouldn't be necessarily a DNA change, unless maybe it would be. We don't know. It could it could go in the direction of just biological engineering. Just as Homo sapiens, 70000 years ago, a small change in DNA leading to a small change in brain structure was enough to transform an insignificant ape into the rule of the world. So a few more changes in DNA causing a few more changes in brain structure, who knows what the consequences will be. And and your point is that we now because we now are starting to get the actual ability to change our own DNA structure, that could happen quickly. That is one possibility. Another possibility is that we will start connecting brains and computers and create cyborgs so that after 4000000000 years of organic evolution, we will start seeing nonorganic or partly inorganic life forms on Earth. And this is not science fiction. It's beginning to happen. Yeah. You gave several examples, actually. Like, you gave the example, the one that was amazing, the woman who wears a transcranial helmet, there's a before and after. She has to go in some some shooting simulator. Mhmm. The first time, she's afraid. She doesn't shoot everything. The second time, it's like she's a female Rambo Yes. And just destroys everything and and was in total flow the whole time, so she doesn't even realize what's happening. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, so you have things like connecting the brain to a bionic hand, and you have things like these these helmets that you give stimulate you stimulate the brain, to create all kinds of mental states and abilities that otherwise you you can't have. So this is another direction of humans and machines or humans and computers merging. In many science fiction movies, you have this the robots are rebelling and trying to kill the humans. But it's more likely we'll see a wedding than a war, that humans and robots or humans and computers will merge to form cyborgs, which will have very different abilities in a very different emotional world than what we today have. So we are not talking talking about exterminating humans. We are really talking about changing or upgrading them into something different. But it's very interesting because you you point out how this might change the current story we live under. So let let's say our our our umbrella story is, humanism. So it seem it seems like there's always these kind of umbrella stories, then stories within stories within stories. So let's say our our our big story right now is humanism versus the theism. So humanism suggests that, you know, all humans are created equal. We we have human rights and and Well, I I would say that theism, like monotheism, says that authority comes from God. Humanism says no, authority comes from humans. Authority comes from human feelings and free choices. Whenever you have a problem in life, you don't ask God, you don't ask the pope, you don't ask the bible, you ask your feelings. You want to know who should be president of the US, you don't ask the pope or the bible, you ask people. How do you feel about it? What do you think? And in in in humanist politics, the voter is the highest authority. There is no authority higher than the choices of the voter. In economics, what is humanist economics? It's an economics in which the customer is always right. You want to know what is a good product product? You ask the customer. If the customer likes it, it's a good product. Same in ethics. What's good? What's bad? Human feelings. If humans if something makes you feel good and it doesn't make anybody else feels bad, nothing can be wrong with it. Like in the past, you had all these religious doctrines against homosexuality. What's so wrong with 2 men, loving each other? Oh, God said it's a sin. So it's bad. And then humanism comes along and says, we don't care what God said. Let's let's let's ask human feelings. I mean, do you love him? Yes. Do you love him? Yes. Is anybody hurt by this? No. So what could be wrong with it? Very simple. Now the next phase, what we see in the 21st century is that human feelings are losing their authority, and instead we see the rise of a new authority which is data. You have a problem in life. You don't ask your feelings. You certainly don't ask God. You ask Google or Amazon and their algorithms. They know you better than you know yourself. So will will will it ever be, though, when you say this wedding of kind of AI and robotics with humans, will there ever would you ever see a situation where there's kind of a new elite classism where the the billionaires who first make it to the finish line of this wedding of technology and biology, will they be the ones who kind of decide human history at some point? Yes. This is one of the big dangers in the 21st century of creating a very unequal society in which that a tiny elite not only controls most of the power and wealth, but also has the ability to upgrade itself. And in a way, for the first time in history, to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. So you have different biological costs, and the rich are really better. They have superior abilities compared with the poor. In the past, the aristocracy always imagined that it was superior but it wasn't true. There was no real difference in ability between the king and the peasant. In the future, this might become a realistic possibility that the son of the billionaire will actually be superior in capabilities to the son of of a working class person per person. So so, do you see this as, something that, you know, you think was likely to happen? Or, like, where do where do you kind of see the next steps in terms of both, antiaging, superior happiness, superior abilities, and so on? Like, how how will it kind of unfold? Because it's already sort of unfolding as as we mentioned. Yeah. I mean, so far, still, it's it's mainly economic, but it might become biological inequality. You see a larger and larger difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor. It might reach a point when the rich can live indefinitely, young and beautiful forever. Maybe not forever, but indefinitely. Well, you mentioned in in, in in the book that so far, medical technology hasn't really advanced the cap on life expectancy. So, like, roughly, the cap is, let's say, 90 years old. Mhmm. I mean, some people there's outliers and and and so on. And that even, you know, 100 of years ago or perhaps 70000 years ago, the cap was also 90 years old. Yes. So do you think that cap will, for the first time, ever increase? There is a there is a likely possibility that, again, not in 10 or 20 years, but in 50 or a 100 years, it would be possible to increase human life expectancy. And once you can do that, you can increase it almost indefinitely. If you have the technology to live to be a 150, it's probably enough, to make it to a 1,000. Because you will need to learn how to rejuvenate the human body or how to connect effectively organic and inorganic parts. And once you have that, there is really no time limit. Well So Oh, sorry. Go ahead. So, again, it's not a certainty, and it's much more difficult than some people imagine, but it's not impossible that say within a century, you it will be possible to extend human life indefinitely if you have enough money to allow yourself to pay for all the expensive treatments. And is there is there, I mean, even though all the Malthusian predictions of doom because of overpopulation have proven false, do you think there is a danger if everybody starts living to 500 that there's an overpopulation issue? Or I think there are much bigger problems. First of all, it won't be available for everybody, for the 8,000,000,000 people on the planet. And if you have such kind of technology, then resources are not a problem. You could basically almost, you know, the amount of energy in the universe is is in almost infinite. It's just a a question of capturing it. The really big problem will be social and political. Just imagine the amount of anger that, immortality for for a few rich will will will create. Throughout history, death was the great equalizer. The poor always comforted themselves that, yeah, things are not are unequal now, but in the end, the rich will also die. Just think how much anger there will be if the poor continue to die, but the rich have the money to live young and beautiful indefinitely. And from the side of the rich, you'll have immense anxiety, because you could still die. You can't they they can't bring you back from the dead. They can extend your life, but they can't bring you back. So if you have an accident, if a bus runs you over, if a terrorist blows you up, you're dead. Just think how much anxiety to know that if you're careful and lucky, you can live forever. But if you're unlucky, that's it. You you you miss forever. I mean, today, people are willing to take risks. Like, I flew here from Israel. I it's dangerous. I go to, I don't know, I go to, to India to climb the Himalayas. It's dangerous. Yes. But I'll die anyway, so I take risks. If you think that you have a fighting chance of living indefinitely, you won't be willing to take any risks. And you will be I mean, Woody Allen would look like the least neurotic person in the world compared to the levels of anxiety we're talking about. Says one Jew to another. So, so I wanna I wanna the the the next thing you talk about in terms of the technological or biological engineering of humans is happiness. And you and you talk about 2 opposing stories and which one we're sort of leaning towards. There's sort of this kind of quasi Buddhist, story of, okay, a key to happiness is to just crave less things. Yes. And this is the 3rd noble truth in Buddha's, you know, 4 4 truths. Or we could just biochemically take pills that increases dopamine all the time in our brains. Yes. And society is, of course, leaning towards the latter. Yeah. And, but but there's there's the argument that, you know, these neurochemicals, no one's ever really figured out how to, make it nonaddictive Mhmm. And, you know, how to how to slow down the metabolism of them and so on. Do you think that's an area we will possibly conquer? That's a very I mean, I think this is the path we are heading towards, and it's a very, very dangerous path, because we don't understand ourselves well enough to start manipulating our internal systems. Over the last 1000 of years, we've gained the power to manipulate the world outside us to control the animals, the forests, the rivers, but we didn't really understand in-depth the ecological balance. So we used our power in an unwise way, and now we are facing an ecological collapse. We pushed the ecological system out of balance with all our manipulations. And it's because it happened so slow. It's the same thing as you mentioned in the, agricultural revolution. Things happened so slow. It seems good at first Yes. All these improvements. The steam engine seemed good at first, and then you realize 300 years later, uh-oh, but we can't go back. And the thing now is that we are starting to gain control of the world inside us, to control our bodies, our brains, our minds in the way that we previously tried to control forests and rivers. But we don't have a good understanding of our internal system, especially of our minds. So the danger is that all these internal manipulation will end up with an internal ecological disaster. We'll face a kind of mental breakdown just as today we face an ecological breakdown. Because we have the power to manipulate, we lack the understanding of how complex the system is and how it keeps balance and how it actually functions. And then and then, I guess that another strand of this is an economic breakdown in the sense that so in Homo Deus, you you talk about kind of this move from humanism to to a new story of dataism. And at the same time, that could mean, of course, the collapse of almost every industry. Yes. So if we're all driving around self driving cars, that's gonna eliminate 90% or more of the automotive industry, the insurance industry, the real estate industry. All these industries are potentially going to collapse, leave making data valuable, but not humans. Mhmm. And so what what happens then? Like, how does how do things unfold from there? Because that that does I mean, even Elon Musk talked about this in a speech the other day, you know, calling for a universal basic income. But how does this realistically play out? We don't know. Mhmm. I mean, what we do know is that the job market in 30 years will be completely different from what it is today. Many, even most jobs that exist today will not exist in 2050. But they're not gonna be like, it's not like factory workers are suddenly gonna be, you know, robotic scientists. That's the problem. I mean, previously, people say, oh, we've been there before. Fear of automation. But what we saw previously, okay, you didn't need farm workers because you held all the tractors. So people moved from being agricultural laborers to being factory hands. And then you had automation in the factories. So people moved from working in a factory to being a cashier at mo at Walmart. The next stage is going to be far more difficult. Working in the field, in a factory, as a cashier in Malta, in in in Walmart, these are all low skilled jobs. It's relatively easy to switch from one to the other. But when you look to the future, people say, ah, we won't need cashiers and taxi drivers and and and insurance agents, but we will need many software engineers. So this is what everybody will do. But there is a problem there. It's very difficult for a 50 year old unemployed cashier from Walmart to reinvent herself as a software engineer. It was easy relatively to move from the field to the factory to Walmart. It's going to be very, very difficult to move from Walmart to Silicon Valley. So it's gonna be interesting to see, you know, as I mean, it's not like you give one set of predictions in Homo Deus. You present all these possibilities that all seem very realistic, and it's all based on what is currently happening Yes. Which is why you see people like Elon Musk talking about it, why Bill Gates is recommending your books, and so on. It's all based in the reality right now and then directions we've been going. So so, you know, a, I wanna recommend Sapiens and and Homo Deus. These are just brilliant books. I've already recommended I I've written, an article of 40 books that have changed my life, and Sapiens was was, I believe, number 1 on the list. So I've already been recommending your books in a huge way, but Homo Deus also just a remarkable book. One final question, which is given all of this thought that you've put into it, and I can't you must have read, like, 10 gazillion books to do the research on this. Like, it seems like you know every battle in history and every archaeological remain ever discovered. But given all the thought and energy you've put into this, how has how have these thoughts and discoveries and theories changed your own life? Like, how do you try to make your current life better given the knowledge you have and that you're sharing with people? I sit for meditation 2 hours every day. I noticed your acknowledgments to Esa and Goenka, so Vipassana meditation. Exactly. I do Vipassana meditation. I start and finish every workday with 1 hour of of meditation, and I go every year to sit a long meditation retreat of, 30 to 60 days. And for me, you know, it it it gives me balance and and peace and and calmness and really the ability to, to find myself in in this ever changing and hectic world. So it's almost like you're you separate yourself from all of the stories. The stories are the things that are constantly running through all of our heads. Yes. But when you sit in meditation, you kind of are are almost putting in a little distance between your the stories and and who maybe biologically you are. Yeah. The the whole idea of meditation is forget about all the stories in your mind. Just observe reality as it is. What is actually happening right here, right now? And you start with very simple things like you observe the breath coming in and out of your nostrils or you you observe the sensations in your body. Oh, there is heat. There is sweat. There is some movement here. And this is reality. And, you know, over the last century, people I mean, for for all of history, people have been given more and more importance to these stories, imaginary stories. And they have been losing the ability to tell the difference between fiction and reality. And for me, meditation is one of the best ways to kind of regain this ability to really tell the difference, what is real and what is just a fictional story in my mind. I I think even so so meditation obviously is a great way to practice separating out those stories from reality. But even having a healthy skepticism and just saying just asking yourself what where is the fiction in this situation? Even if in relationships or in ethics or in in any sort of philosophy Mhmm. I think that's an initial practice somebody can do who's listening to this, who's not an expert meditator, for instance. Definitely. I mean, to really what is real? That's a very difficult and very important question, becoming, I think, ever more difficult because our fictions are becoming so much more sophisticated and so much more enticing and powerful that it's so difficult. I mean, one good place also to start, if you're not sure whether something is real or just a fiction created by humans, you can always ask yourself whether it can suffer. Something that can suffer is real. Some and, you know, like the nation is a fiction created by humans. It cannot suffer. People say that, I don't know, Germany suffered a defeat in the 1st world war, but this is a metaphor. Germany cannot suffer. It has no mind. It has no consciousness. It doesn't feel anything. German people as individuals, yes, they can suffer. Horses in the war, they can suffer. Chickens can suffer, but Germany cannot suffer. Similarly, if a corporation goes bankrupt, the corporation doesn't suffer. It cannot. It has no mind. But, the employees, they they can suffer. So it's not it's not the only test, of course, but it's one very simple test that you can always ask about these big entities, corporations, nations, God, so forth. Can they suffer? Well, Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, I've been waiting to have this conversation for probably 5 years. So thanks so much for for coming on the show, and I highly, highly recommend the books, and good luck. Thank you. For more from James, check out the James Altucher Show on the choose yourself network at jamesaltucher.com, and get yourself on the free insiders list today. Hey. Thanks for listening. Listen. I have a big favor to ask you, and it'll only take 30 seconds or less. And it would mean a huge amount to me. If you like this podcast, please let me know. Please let the team I work with know. Please let my guests know, and you can do this easily by subscribing to the podcast. It's probably the biggest favor you could do for me right now, and it's really simple. 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