Please use this thread to discuss the above mentioned chapter.

I just started this book and will try to comment on things as they arise. Harari says "We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent famine, plague and war – and we usually succeed in doing it.” I look forward with interest to whether he will comprehend how fragile is our current stability and prosperity in the face of climate change. Famine, plague and war, along with the fourth horseman death, are forestalled by fossil fuels. Without this cheap energy the world would struggle to maintain political stability. So the best path for climate policy is to directly cut temperature with solar geoengineering, allowing a much more gradual shift away from fossil fuels, combined with major efforts to convert CO2 into useful products. I don’t think Harari is right that “we know quite well what needs to be done.” Our world has very low comprehension of actions that could actually mitigate climate change and prevent these traditional apocalyptic threats.

Writing before the COVID pandemic, Harari makes a few comments that look overly optimistic. He gives a great summary of the death toll from various plagues, but expresses confidence that by 2050 medicine will be able to deal with them more efficiently. He suggests a plague killing millions would be seen as an inexcusable human failing for which we would demand the heads of those responsible. He says future plagues are likely to be created by humans.

I finally received my copy of Homo Deus and just finished reading the first chapter. I will comment on one section of interest.

In his opening chapter, The New Human Agenda, Harari identifies the right to happiness as the second big human project after the pursuit of immortality. Many people in the past have defined happiness as the supreme good. This pursuit can take different forms.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus, for example, saw the pursuit of happiness as an individual’s quest, although modern thinkers saw it as a collective effort. Bentham wanted the greatest good for the greatest number of people. He called on society to collaborate not for the glory of the king, but so that everyone would be better off.

It is tempting to think that peace and prosperity will bring happiness, but Epicurus warned us of this – he told us that becoming happy was hard work. The blind pursuit of fame and wealth will bring misery, he called for moderation in everything.
In America for example, despite the many technological and political breakthroughs that have taken place over the last 50 years, the reported subjective well-being of the population was the same in the 1950’s and the 1990’s.

Harari gives us the scientific reasons for this. We have a psychological and biological ceiling for happiness. Psychologically, we are only happy when reality meets our expectations, not when we live in peace and prosperity. In fact, the better our conditions, the greater our expectations become.

Biologically, we are limited by our capacity to feel pleasure and pain. In fact, it doesn’t matter what happens in the external world, but only what happens biochemically within our brains. We don’t feel angry because something bad happened in the world, we feel angry because that event created a biochemical reaction that made us feel angry. We are reacting to our own anger.

Also, being dependent on pleasure can be risky, since the more we crave it, the more it controls our lives, and drives us to get more of it – often at the expense of more important things. Further, because our biochemical system is central to our happiness, much effort has been invested in rigging this system through alcohol and psychiatric drugs
.
2,300 years ago, Epicurus warned about the extreme pursuit of pleasure, saying that it would lead to misery. Buddha made a more radical claim, that the pursuit of pleasure was itself the root of suffering – that our feelings left us craving for more instead of satisfying us. To become happy, we need to slow down our pursuit of pleasure, not accelerate it.

But, for the majority, our intolerance for unpleasant sensations and our craving for pleasant ones will only increase. Scientific research and the economic system appear to be geared to that end.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am I finally received my copy of Homo Deus and just finished reading the first chapter. I will comment on one section of interest. In his opening chapter, The New Human Agenda, Harari identifies the right to happiness as the second big human project after the pursuit of immortality. Many people in the past have defined happiness as the supreme good. This pursuit can take different forms.

Harari makes the excellent observation that the Buddhist theory of happiness accords with biochemistry, ie that pursuit of pleasant sensations leads to suffering.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
The Greek philosopher Epicurus, for example, saw the pursuit of happiness as an individual’s quest, although modern thinkers saw it as a collective effort. Bentham wanted the greatest good for the greatest number of people. He called on society to collaborate not for the glory of the king, but so that everyone would be better off.

Bentham is a very interesting moral theorist, with his utilitarian concept of maximising happiness designed to produce a logical consequentialist ethic. The risk is that utilitarianism can produce a superficial short term morality that does not adequately engage the long term effects of actions.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
It is tempting to think that peace and prosperity will bring happiness, but Epicurus warned us of this – he told us that becoming happy was hard work. The blind pursuit of fame and wealth will bring misery, he called for moderation in everything.

Part of the story here is that we need a meaningful story to justify our actions, and that pursuit of fame and wealth in the absence of such a story creates misery. This reminds me of Paul’s idea that we are saved by faith rather than by works, meaning that faith reflects a story about how to live, providing the principles needed to choose our actions.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am In America for example, despite the many technological and political breakthroughs that have taken place over the last 50 years, the reported subjective well-being of the population was the same in the 1950’s and the 1990’s.

This reflects the loss of faith produced by secularity. The happiness theory that a free autonomous individual is the unit of society fails to bring people together with a coherent vision. Subjective well being depends on social connections that are corroding under the influence of individualistic values.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
Harari gives us the scientific reasons for this. We have a psychological and biological ceiling for happiness. Psychologically, we are only happy when reality meets our expectations, not when we live in peace and prosperity. In fact, the better our conditions, the greater our expectations become.

This reminds me of Jevons Paradox, roughly that the more we have the more we want. I don’t think reality can ever meet expectations unless we are at spiritual peace, so happiness has to imagine a future world that does meet expectations and look to how we could transition from our present unhappiness toward a better state.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
Biologically, we are limited by our capacity to feel pleasure and pain. In fact, it doesn’t matter what happens in the external world, but only what happens biochemically within our brains. We don’t feel angry because something bad happened in the world, we feel angry because that event created a biochemical reaction that made us feel angry. We are reacting to our own anger.

This is a reductive theory from Harari. Biochemical response is generated by an external stimulus, so it does matter what happens in the world.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
Also, being dependent on pleasure can be risky, since the more we crave it, the more it controls our lives, and drives us to get more of it – often at the expense of more important things. Further, because our biochemical system is central to our happiness, much effort has been invested in rigging this system through alcohol and psychiatric drugs

We have an instinctive pleasure drive, which does distract us from more important values. The temptations of pleasure lead us to give priority to short term over long term results.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am .
2,300 years ago, Epicurus warned about the extreme pursuit of pleasure, saying that it would lead to misery. Buddha made a more radical claim, that the pursuit of pleasure was itself the root of suffering – that our feelings left us craving for more instead of satisfying us. To become happy, we need to slow down our pursuit of pleasure, not accelerate it.

The ascetic tradition from Buddhism posits that a focus on higher spiritual values can enable us to live under the eye of eternity, whereas the pursuit of pleasure renders us oblivious toward the eternal values that overcome suffering.

LevV wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 6:44 am
But, for the majority, our intolerance for unpleasant sensations and our craving for pleasant ones will only increase. Scientific research and the economic system appear to be geared to that end.

This is a Brave New World scenario, that the masses are being turned into vegetative blobs, manipulated by corporate interests to see their personal comfort as the only good.

To my teacher, S. N. Goenka (1924 - 2013),
who lovingly taught me important things.

The dedication is revealing: Goenka was a prominent teacher of buddhist vipassana meditation. You can take an introductory ten day meditation course designed by him. The first 3 days involve sitting all day long and just paying attention to the air entering and leaving your nostrils, which builds discipline, stillness, and concentration. On the 4th day they introduce concepts of observing what is going on in your mind, treating it with equanimity and not reacting. On the final full day, loving kindness and goodwill meditations are introduced.
https://www.vridhamma.org/10-Day-Courses

I don't have the self discipline to do much with this, but I have tried the first type of meditation off & on. I have not been able to try the 2nd type, vipassana, where you observe & process thoughts that arise (instead of dismissing them to focus on the breath). My job was so stressful that attempting to examine the inevitable anxiety felt instantly self defeating. But hey, now that I'm retired maybe I can benefit from trying this more seriously...

Despite the horrendous toll AIDS has taken, and despite the millions killed each year by long-established infectious diseases such as malaria, epidemics are a far smaller threat to human health today than in previous millennia.
...No one can guarantee that plagues won't make a comeback, but there are good reasons to think that in the arms race between doctors and germs, doctors run faster.
...Consequently, though in 2050 we will undoubtedly face much more resilient germs, medicine in 2050 will likely be able to deal with them more efficiently than today.
pgs. 12 - 13

Although it feels like Harari is skating on thin ice at times in making predictions about pandemics pre-Covid, he is largely accurate. The Spanish flu of 1918-19 killed somewhere in the range of 25 - 50 million people. (Right after the devastation of WWI !) Covid-19 has killed 6.8 million so far. The covid vaccine is very strong support for his statements about the accelerating pace of the medical arms race - a new class of vaccines produced in an astonishingly short time.

However, although I hope another pandemic never arrives, at least make it after the 2050 date Harari mentions. I'm not sure anyone could have predicted that some sort of death cult would form after the Covid pandemic. "Scientists dunno WTF they're talking about! Vaccines are poison! There must be no medical restrictions on individual freedoms to socialize or refuse treatment." And so on... Any new pandemic in the intermediate term will be met with strong anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-restriction movements. A highly contagious disease has a better environment now - many people don't seem to care how many die as long as they are free to spread death. If enough time passes those sentiments could die out or be forgotten, but might quickly be revived.

Breaking the Law of the Jungle
The third piece of good news is that wars too are disappearing.

I think Harari is making an argument similar to Stephen Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature.

When in 1913 people said that there was peace between France and Germany, they meant that 'there is no war going on at present between France and Germany, but who knows what next year will bring'. When today we say that there is peace between France and Germany, we mean that it is inconceivable under any foreseeable circumstances that war might break out between them.
p.17

That is certainly amazing, but obviously not true globally.

Over the last seventy years humankind has broken not only the Law of the Jungle, but also the Chekov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third. Throughout history, if kings and emperors acquired some new weapon, sooner or later they were tempted to use it. Since 1945, however, humankind has learned to resist this temptation. The gun that appeared in the first act of the Cold War was never fired.
pgs. 17 - 18

I understand the point, but don't really like the statement in bold. The US dropped two atomic bombs in August of 1945, but since then no one has dropped an upgraded thermonuclear weapon. Well OK technically true, but we keep building additional quantities of more lethal weapons. And these new smaller "tactical" nukes are oh! so! tempting! Fingers crossed that Harari is correct...

Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger, and destroys the china shop. This is what happened in the Middle East in the last decade. Islamic fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by themselves. Instead they enraged the USA by the 9/11 attacks, and the USA destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them. Now they flourish in the wreckage. By themselves, terrorists are too weak to drag us back to the Middle Ages and re-establish the Jungle Law. They may provoke us, but in the end, it all depends on our reactions. If the Jungle Law comes back, it will not be the fault of the terrorists.
p. 19

The latest Hamas attack was not a fly & teacup or a buzzing bull's ear situation. But an overreaction is almost certain - I don't think Israel will stop until all tunnels are collapsed and the area rid of Hamas as far as they can. International cries to avoid genocide or war crimes - we'll see what happens, but I'm not optimistic. If Hamas HQ is built underneath a hospital, well sorry, but that hospital will be gone soon - civilian casualties may become of tertiary interest, which could backfire in the quest for future stability. We'll see if and how this spreads. There is no way the Middle East will accept what Israel delivers even if it is perceived to be restrained. The laws of the Jungle and Chekov are being tested in more than one area of this planet...

Department of Defense Announces Pursuit of B61 Gravity Bomb Variant
Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced that the United States will pursue a modern variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, designated the B61-13, pending Congressional authorization and appropriation.

..."Today's announcement is reflective of a changing security environment and growing threats from potential adversaries. The United States has a responsibility to continue to assess and field the capabilities we need to credibly deter and, if necessary, respond to strategic attacks, and assure our allies."
John Plumb
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy

10/27/2023
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/R ... b-variant/

Does this announcement support or refute Harari's descriptions of the Laws of the Jungle and of Chekov? He states we have entered a new phase where wars in most of the world and the use of nuclear weapons is completely unthinkable - they haven't been used since the end of WW2 due to mutually assured destruction. And yet here we are - building new nukes - ones that are more powerful while maintaining "modern safety, security, and accuracy features."

A few more questions:

• Why is the assistant SecDef for "Space Policy" announcing this? Are nukes moving into orbit or will they be delivered from deep space?
• Should congress approve this? Hey, it's merely an upgrade, not an increase in the number of nuke warheads.
• Will this "newk" to be introduced in a first act, not be used in the third just like all the others?
• After nearly 80 years are we now approaching Chekov's dreaded Third Act?

On edit: Here are some simulations of the effects of this proposed bomb.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/nu ... c107&ei=20