The first is that many fields that face specific problems, such as maintenance, doctors, lawyers, design, programming, etc., are likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence, while those that require creativity, such as art, literature, business, etc. , which is an area that artificial intelligence cannot reach.

The second reason for optimism about artificial intelligence is that this artificial intelligence revolution, like many revolutions in the past, will replace many jobs, but it will also create many new jobs.

Why do you say that? I believe that all users who use the Get App to listen to this audio episode have only experienced one education model in the past few decades, which is continuous and hierarchical exam-oriented education. Everyone started when they were two or three years old. Go to kindergarten, then go through elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and possibly a master's and PhD.

People in the past concentrated on studying for more than 20 years in life, and there were only two purposes of studying. Before college, it was to go to college, and after college, it was to learn a major. This is the same whether in China or abroad, except that China may pay more attention to exams.

This education model has an implicit premise, that is, if a person spends more than two decades studying intensively, the learning results obtained can basically be applied to the rest of his life.

But Harari said this education model may be becoming outdated.

As we said in the first part, in the future, artificial intelligence will replace human jobs on a large scale, but this replacement will not happen in an instant, it will be a step-by-step process.

In other words, the past model of clearly separating study time and work time is definitely no longer applicable. It is possible that most people will face a situation of being constantly replaced and learning again in the future. Harari said in the book that major changes in the future are likely to change the basic framework of life, making discontinuity the most prominent feature. In other words, people in the future may leave school at the age of twenty, work for ten years, and then enter school again at the age of thirty, and so on. This is a discontinuous life.

After understanding this, Harari further pointed out that now we simply do not know how to deal with this situation. Whether it is exam-oriented education or so-called quality education, they are essentially education models in a segmented life. There is no difference in nature. How should this future, discontinuous, and lifelong learning education model be constructed? and unfolding, no one knows yet, and only a few people and companies are trying. In other words, our life is no longer centralized learning, but segmented lifelong learning. This is the educational problem we have to face in the era of information technology.

At the level of freedom, people pursue their own independence and true feelings. The most typical example is what has happened in the UK in recent years.

We all know that the UK held two referendums in 2014 and 2016. The former almost split the island of Great Britain into two parts, while the latter directly determined the outcome of the UK's imminent departure from the EU. The reason why the UK uses referendums to decide national decisions at this level is because it believes in and respects everyone's free choice and believes that everyone's choices are rational.

But Harari’s comment is that all referendums and elections always appeal to human feelings, not human reason. But whether it is reason or feeling, liberalism is against authority, that is, I have to choose what I want to do, rather than what I am assigned to do.

For example, free love means free choice, and parental orders are arrangements from authority. Based on the experience of the past hundred years or so, it seems that mankind will continue to pursue freedom. The UK is likely to face countless Scottish referendums until Scotland and England are completely separated. However, when artificial intelligence appears, the situation will It was starting to get a little awkward.

Compared with humans, the power of artificial intelligence lies in the collection, processing and analysis of information. These abilities will eventually evolve into powerful decision-making capabilities. And when the decision-making power of artificial intelligence exceeds that of humans in some fields, if you listen to artificial intelligence, it is another kind of obedience to authority. If you don’t listen to artificial intelligence, the possibility of making mistakes in decision-making will be very high. , when such scenes gradually cover more and more social fields, new social authorities emerge.

When all this happens, the most common scenario may be that artificial intelligence will tell you who is your best partner and what kind of major and job is best for you, even though you don't like this person in terms of feelings. You don’t like the job, but you know it’s probably right. What should you do? Should you believe in yourself or obey artificial intelligence? If you believe in yourself, you are likely to go astray, but if you believe in artificial intelligence, you will lose your freedom.

Therefore, after the rise of artificial intelligence, we may fall into a new authoritative or even authoritarian society. What’s even more frightening is that the authoritative society of artificial intelligence will be much more reasonable than the previous authoritative society dominated by humans. You may have no reason to fight against this authoritative society. In other words, on the issue of freedom, if we cannot handle the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, we may become puppets on strings in the future.

Although we often talk about equality and freedom together, as if they are the same thing, Harari said in "A Brief History of Humanity" that equality and freedom are not only not the same thing, but are even opposed to a certain extent. Because the core of freedom is to keep each person as independent and unique as possible, while the core of equality is just the opposite. What it wants to ensure is consistency between people, and at least the same rights and opportunities.

Therefore, if you want to ensure equality, you must restrict those who are more prominent; if you want everyone to be free, you will inevitably affect the equality of everyone.

The most typical example is in the United States. Democrats want society to be more equal, and they will not hesitate to raise taxes to help the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled, but this will inevitably affect people’s financial freedom; while Republicans want everyone to enjoy The greatest freedom, even if the gap between rich and poor is widened, will not hesitate, but in this case, equality will be impossible to talk about.

However, although there is a contradiction between equality and freedom, it does not mean that they are right or wrong. They are both right. Therefore, we can see that over the past hundred years, equality has become as important as freedom. achieved rapid development.

For example, more than half a century ago, Martin Luther King still had to speak out for the basic rights of black people, and half a century later, a black man actually became the president of the United States.

According to this logic, human society will become more and more equal, and the world will gradually become homogeneous and unified. However, this is not the actual situation. While information technology is shaking the foundation of freedom, it is also impacting equality.

The first level is the Internet

The second level of impact comes from artificial intelligence

The third level of impact is big data

Anyone who has flown before knows that today's boarding procedures are very complicated. It may take an hour or two from applying for a boarding pass to boarding the plane, and you have to go through at least two very strict security checks along the way. We are accustomed to this situation now, but in fact, more than ten years ago, flying did not have to be so troublesome. You basically took your electronic ticket, scanned your luggage, and then boarded the plane. About twenty minutes. So when did the boarding process become complicated? It was after terrorism spread around the world. The specific time was September 11, 2001, that is, after the 9.11 incident. In other words, the main reason why airports tighten security checks is terrorism.

When you mention terrorism, you will immediately think of words such as blood, cruelty, violence, etc., and then you will also think of many famous terrorist incidents, such as 9·11 and the Charlie Hebdo incident. In the general impression, terrorist organizations are those organizations that are enemies of human civilization and have extreme violent tendencies. Their purpose is to retaliate and cause killing, so they use methods such as suicide bombs to attack civilians. But Harari said that our overall impression of terrorism is wrong. Although it is true that a small part of terrorism is for pure killing, most terrorism has a clear political purpose and they want to change politics to a certain extent. situation. To put it simply, the ultimate goal of those terrorists targeting the United States is to subvert the U.S. government.

Since they are targeting the government, why do they always target civilians?

The book writes that terrorist acts actually cause very few casualties. Taking the United States as an example, since 2001, the average number of people killed in terrorist acts in the United States every year is ten, while the number of people killed in car accidents is 40,000. In other words, the actual harm of terrorism is far less than that of a car accident.

But the paradox is that Americans are far more afraid of terrorism than car accidents, and this is exactly the effect that terrorists want. The purpose of terrorists is not to cause real killings, but to use information technology to create panic. Therefore, terrorists' methods are very cruel and only target civilians.

What they want is visual and psychological impact. A vicious incident can spread all over the world within a few hours, causing most people to panic. Once the masses panic, the government has to step in to quell the panic. Therefore, the United States spends a lot of manpower and material resources to fight against terrorist organizations. As a result, the entire world begins to become turbulent.

Harari has a good metaphor for this: a terrorist is like a fly that wants to destroy a china shop, but it doesn't have that much power, so it gets into the bull's ear, makes the bull crazy, and then Rush into the china shop.

This is the truth about terrorism. It can be said that without the Internet and information technology, terrorism would not be able to develop at all. So far, we do not have the best strategy to deal with terrorism, because it is rooted in information technology and then creates unlimited panic. We can neither cut off information technology nor completely contain panic, so we can only strengthen it through Security checks reduce the occurrence of terrorist incidents. But doing so would not only cost too much, but also achieve little.

Perhaps the only way to deal with terrorism is to let everyone correctly understand that terrorism is not that terrible.

To some extent, the reason why people today are extremely panicked about terrorism is not only the main reason of information technology, but also related to long-term peace.

Since the end of World War II, except for some areas, most people in the world have not seen or felt war for a long time. War has indeed been on the decline over the past nearly eighty years, and the famous psychologist Stephen Pinker wrote a famous book about it called "The Better Angels of Our Nature." He believes that the decrease in violence in the past few decades is due to changes in human nature, with fewer elements of violence and more and more kindness.

But Harari believes that the reason for the decrease in wars is not that human nature is getting better and better, but that the nature of wars is changing.

In the past, humans frequently launched wars because wars were profitable and huge profits.

In the agricultural era, the most basic production resources were land and population, so various empires in history liked to occupy land and plunder populations through war.

In the industrial era, the value of people and land was declining, and various natural resources became important.

However, in the era of information technology, war seems to have lost its role.

However, despite this, Harari still reminds us to be wary of war. The reason is simple. Although war is unprofitable for most countries, for a small number of people, war still has great appeal.

For example, terrorism hopes that wars will break out between various countries so that they have the opportunity to change the political landscape, just like ISIS. Moreover, although terrorist organizations are not rivals of other countries in terms of military strength, it is entirely possible for them to gain an advantage in information warfare.

Just imagine, if a terrorist organization invades the U.S. nuclear bomb system and causes the nuclear bomb to explode on the spot or launch it at other countries, World War III may break out. In other words, information technology allows current wars to mainly take place in areas where there is no smoke of gunpowder, but there is still the possibility of large-scale wars in the future.

Harari believes that we cannot relax our vigilance against war just because of the nearly eighty years of peace, and that the nature of war is changing. The process of war may occur in areas that we cannot see, and the result will be the annihilation of human society. disaster. This is Harari’s view on the issue of war.

Yuval Harari asks us, what is a company?

The answer is that the company is nothing. It does not have any specific carrier or body. It is, please note the following judgment, it is our common imagination.

As long as we think this company exists, and we know it is a company, then it exists. What a novel experience this was, which is why I jumped up at the time. Those companies were producing products every day, issuing press releases every day, and the two companies were even at war, and they could still recruit employees. It turned out that they did not exist. What a novel realization this is.

You might say what’s so great about this, it wouldn’t exist if it didn’t exist. No, when a company is just our common imagination, if you recognize this, we actually gain a new perspective on the world. Many things are different.

I remember a friend of mine who was a designer and he was very confident in his aesthetic. One day, he came to our house as a guest. During the chat, he brought up a topic, saying that children nowadays love to watch "Peppa Pig" every day. Does the painting of that thing meet the high-end aesthetics? A pig is drawn to look like a hairdryer.

I will never let our children watch "Peppa Pig." After I heard this, I said, I advise you to let your children watch it, regardless of whether it suits your aesthetic taste or not.

Why? Because he is the common story and common imagination of this generation of children. When your child goes to kindergarten, your child can't get in the middle of a conversation about "Peppa Pig". What's his mentality? #notes

Let me give you another example. A friend of mine has just been admitted to a prestigious school in the United States and is going to study in the United States soon. But now that there is nothing going on during the summer vacation, he asked one of his teachers, what preparations should I make for my future life in the United States?

The teacher said, let's do this. Let me give you this suggestion. You should study the big states in the United States and see what states there are and where they are. But that’s not important. What’s important is that you match the celebrities, heroes, famous songs, famous movies, and famous folklore in American history with these states one by one, and then write them down as much as possible. #notes

He said what's the use? It is very useful. You go to a prestigious school in the United States and you have classmates from all states in the United States. When you meet any classmate and find out which state he is from, you will immediately have a conversation with him. This is the first step in your life in the United States. A stepping stone, it is more useful than any knowledge in your head.

In the past, we often said that knowledge is power, but many people do not recognize this sentence. They think that reading is a leisurely thing, just flip through it, and don’t delay making money. Such people actually do not understand what knowledge is power. .

Do you think only scientific and technological knowledge is power? No, knowledge may not be the truth, and it may not even be a tool that can be used right away! As long as this knowledge is shared imagination, it is power.

Why? Because a person's power does not depend on how strong he is, but on how capable he is of mobilizing the cooperation of strangers. What is easiest to mobilize cooperation is, of course, the imagination that we all agree on. In the book "A Brief History of Humankind", Yuval Harari also opened up a particularly big imagination for us.

Suppose we travel back to Europe 100,000 years ago, and you will find that there are actually two types of humans living on that land, one is our ancient ancestor Homo sapiens, and the other is Neanderthals. If you look at these two human species 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals will win by a large margin. They are tall, powerful, and cold-resistant. But why didn’t Neanderthals survive, but Homo sapiens did? Yuval Harari has such a speculation, saying that it is probably like this:

Our ancient ancestors of Homo sapiens had an ability that Neanderthals never had, and that was the ability to talk nonsense.

But please note that the scale of human collaboration behind these two sentences is different. How many Neanderthals are willing to go to the forest to catch rabbits together at this moment? How large a scale of collaboration can be organized? But it is said that there are fairies in this forest, and once our ancestors of Homo sapiens created this imagination and story and spread it from ten to ten, it would become the common imagination of many people.

With so many people around the world, don’t we still believe that at the end of December, there is an old man who goes around giving gifts to children all over the country and all over the world at Christmas? Don’t we all believe this story? When a story spreads from one person to another, the scale of human collaboration it can unite will be much larger.

So what's the result? Where are the Neanderthals today? It has turned into a fossil. And the descendants of our ancestors of Homo sapiens can watch TV and hold press conferences here today.

"A Brief History of Today" tells us that the common story we face is changing. This change is a turning point for human civilization of our generation.

What is the story shared by our generation of humanity? In fact, when it comes to the fundamentals, there are two words: one is freedom and the other is equality.

You can imagine that if we go back three to four hundred years, no civilized person in the world will think that freedom and equality are natural. Freedom and equality are the two most basic stories of our modern human civilization.

But Yuval Harari tells us that there may be something wrong with these two stories. But please note that this time it is not other people who deprive humans of freedom and equality, but technological power.

Let's look at freedom first. Let's imagine a scenario. Assume that the day when artificial intelligence is particularly developed will actually be realized in a few years.

One day your artificial intelligence doctor tells you that based on my current judgment of your physical condition, your current condition is very worrying. I have calculated now that you should take this medicine. Then a pill pops out of a small mouth. Do you want to take it or not?

You said I don’t feel anything. I’m in good health. The artificial intelligence doctor is very nice and explains to you very politely, yes, you don’t feel it now, but this is what I have learned from you through the big data of billions of people around the world. Tens of thousands of sensors have calculated that you are indeed sick. The medical principles behind my medicine are supported by 10 million pages of medical documents. Please take it now. If you really want to check it, the original data is here, you can check it yourself. You can't check it. What should I do with such huge data? You just have to eat.

Well, please note that even if artificial intelligence does not turn into a terrifying monster to counterattack humans, it is diligently serving us and is our tool. We pay for their services and we are their masters. But think about it, when technology has developed to that level and you follow other people's arrangements for something you don't understand, do you think you still have freedom?

Artificial intelligence helps you with marriage matching?

Robots are totally for your benefit. It is serving us sincerely in accordance with our direction of advancing technology. But freedom is like a bubble, leaving us. This is the first story we believe.

There is another story called equality. Yes, we all believe that everyone is equal and that everyone is born equal.

Okay, let’s imagine a technological future scenario. Your artificial intelligence servant has developed an ability that allows people to gradually and deeply transform their bodies. Like me, I am definitely the first to buy weight loss services, and some people may choose to make themselves more beautiful and taller. However, as this technology advances, some people will buy the kind of service that makes them smarter, has stronger memory, and can concentrate in a short period of time. All of us here know what a terrible flaw it is to be unable to concentrate in a short period of time, and robots can help you do it.

But don’t forget, all these services may be expensive and only a few people can afford them at first. What does this mean? It means that a person's economic ability can be directly converted into his social competitiveness through this technology. Thinking further, a family's economic ability can be converted into the social competitiveness of the family's descendants through this technology.

Thinking of this, I know you already understand that this is something that has never happened before in human history. In the past, the reason why we believed in equality was because time has a power. No matter how rich and powerful you are now, time will level you.

The emperor's son may be a fool, and the rich man's son may be a prodigal. There is a saying that if you don't bring it with you in life, you won't take it with you in death. This refers to your wealth.

But if there is such a technological bridge that allows your wealth advantage to be passed on across generations, the most basic foundation of human equality will be shaken. And we think, if that time comes, will the World Cup, the Olympics, and the Nobel Prize still have any meaning? You just spent money to have an operation on yourself, and then what’s the big deal about winning an award?

The reason why we think these awards are great is because we think everyone is an equal person. Some people rely on their own efforts and talents, and then they stand on the podium and win, so we think he is very charming. We cheered him on. If all these competitions become a venue for people to transform themselves, turn themselves into products, and then go out to experiment, is a competition without charm still a competition? Is a victory without cheers still a victory? All the rituals of our civilization collapsed.

There is another layer. Yuval Harari reminds us here that when the artificial intelligence technology and biotechnology we just talked about, when they are combined, they will give birth to an unprecedented prosperity for human civilization. It will really be great at that time. We will have food to eat, clothing to wear, lack of material things, and be completely away from human beings.

Don't you think this is good? People cannot live without meaning. So on the one hand, Yuval Harari tells us good news. In the future, human beings will be extremely prosperous and will have no material scarcity. On the other hand, he tells us great bad news. In the future, some people will be busy doing useful things every day. Meaningful things are exhausting to death, but life is very fulfilling; there are also some people who find that all they can do is what machines can do, there is nothing they can do, and their lives have no value. Even those rich people sympathize with him very much and give him a free income every month. You don't have to do anything, you just receive the money. But what is the meaning of his life?

You see, after the lack of determination, what we lack is meaning. People cannot live without meaning.

Yuval Harari made a particularly heart-wrenching statement here, saying that the embarrassment of the future will not be that life cannot continue, but that even the value of being enslaved and exploited has disappeared.

Many people did not see these twists and turns, and they still acted according to the original story. Who should read this book the most? I think the first reader who should rush to read it is US President Trump. This is not my guess here. The first chapter of this book is about shouting out Trump.

You see, when Trump took office as President of the United States, he shouted "America First". Well, you are the President of the United States, so there is nothing wrong with you saying that; you said that you want to buy American goods and hire American workers, well, you are President of the United States, it’s okay for you to say that; but the question is how did he do it? He wants to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico, go to the European Union and say that the European Union is the enemy of us Americans, start a trade war with China, and so on.

Yuval Harari tells him in this book that even if you want to build a wall, you should not build it on the border between the United States and Mexico. You should build a wall to surround Silicon Valley in the United States. The people inside should no longer be allowed to work. Because what will take away American jobs in the future is the artificial intelligence being developed in Silicon Valley. Even if everything goes as planned and the trade war with China moves many jobs back to the United States, what will happen after they are moved back? You will find that they have all become robots, and there is no need to hire American workers. Therefore, there is a sentence in Yuval Harari’s book that tells us that we may be worried about the right dilemma, but we may be concerned about the wrong problem.

I think this sentence was meant for US President Trump. Of course, there are many situations where we judge the dilemma correctly but care about the wrong problem.

Let me give you another example. For example, many people are worried about whether our generation will encounter war in the future if the world is in such chaos. Yuval Harari reminds us that you have judged the dilemma correctly, but you are concerned about the wrong issue. ,Why?

Because war is no longer a means to solve problems in this era. What were the patterns of wealth in the past? It is the specific land and resources on it. And what is the shape of wealth now? It has become collaboration, data, science and knowledge.

Do you still need to grab granaries, pastures, gold mines and land? So war can no longer solve the problem. So those of you who are worried about war, as this quote goes, you feel the dilemma, but you're probably concerned about what's going wrong.

Yuval Harari said that although terrorism is causing trouble to the whole world, we need to know what terrorists care about. Is it useful to just fight them? What they care about is not to achieve any real results by transforming the world. They just want to create sensational news. They want to create that kind of impact in a meaningful way, so they like to do those big things. So at this time, will it really be completely effective for us to use armed force to fight against terrorists? Maybe in addition to the military, we should ask a kind of person to solve this problem. Who is it? Director of television dramas.

Because he wants to create attractive dramas, we use dramas to counter his dramas. I guess you will find it strange when you hear this. How can it be possible to solve the problem of terrorists through TV directors?

Prison’s ideas for dealing with habitual offenders #notes

Why do you say that? Because what have the Chinese been doing in the past hundred years or so? In enlightenment, salvation, survival, and rise. Now we have the opportunity to be a part of inventing the next story of all humanity.

Of course, this book should also have a group of readers, which is the most important audience. This is not to praise you, but to the users who got the App and are now watching this conference.

It has been 40 years since China's reform and opening up, and now we are the second largest economy in the world. This is China’s global position now.

Not long ago, an artificial intelligence scientist wanted to return to China from the United States to work. Someone asked him, why do you want to return to China? He said that there are two biggest variables for all mankind in this era, one is China and the other is artificial intelligence. So for people like me, there are other choices in life. Of course, I can go back to China to engage in artificial intelligence. We Chinese are one of the biggest variables in the world, and we are the most curious about the future.

When CITIC Publishing Group published Harari's first two books, "A Brief History of Humanity" and "A Brief History of the Future," it took Harari on tours across China. Harari was frightened. He said: "I am just an ordinary historian. Why do you Chinese treat me like a rock star? Your applause is too warm and you have gathered too many people." This is China. We are so curious about the future. We are more curious about the future than anyone in the world can imagine.

At any stage, the West is a problem for us. We must learn from them. We Chinese are broad-minded. After all, we are not Westerners. But Yuval Harari told us today that there is something wrong with the West’s own story, and we are likely to have to break it into pieces and start over again to find the next common story for all mankind.

Many people may feel panic after reading this book. The original stories are gone, how can I find the meaning of my existence?

Is this kind of panic unusual?

Panic has been the norm for the past 200 years, but there are always a group of people, present in every era, who think that mankind has many problems that I can solve through my creativity.

After World War II, when so many people were in panic, there were still a group of people starting businesses. Those great companies, such as Toyota and IBM, were focused on solving human problems of that era. So what was their success? It is a success achieved by solving new problems of mankind in a new environment.

Many people look at the stock market and wonder how they are doing so well. They are companies with hundreds of billions of dollars and companies with trillions of dollars. The answer is very simple: they have solved human problems.

Kevin Kelly once said that the truly great companies in the next 30 years have not yet been born. After reading the book "A Brief History of Today", I have a deeper understanding of this sentence. Why don't you look at who has a market value of over 1 trillion US dollars in the stock market now? Because we humans as a whole are facing brand-new problems, and solving brand-new problems requires brand-new companies and brand-new ideas, there are huge opportunities for our generation.

I sometimes chat with some entrepreneurs, and they always complain that it is difficult to find entrepreneurial projects. People who say this either misunderstand entrepreneurship or misunderstand what a company is. What is a company? Companies are designed to solve human problems. All great companies solve common human problems. The more common human problems you solve, the bigger the company will be. The more original your solution is, the longer your company will exist. So what is entrepreneurship? To start a business is to treat yourself as a worker and find a job for the entire society.

So for the rest of us, this book, A Brief History of Today, what is it? It's a 21-item list of big problems that our generation can solve. There are so many problems that we need to solve.

What about finding a sense of value in life for those whose lives have no value? In fact, this matter has happened long ago in history.

During the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s, the American film industry and broadcasting industry developed greatly, giving meaning to life to American workers in desperate situations.

Let’s take the security industry as an example. This security industry is not about installing some anti-virus tool into your computer. It is not a security industry.

Do you realize this? We all have an operating system now, which is a biological operating system. In the future, those big companies will use their technology to hack into our operating system like a hacker and take away all kinds of our data. What are you taking away the data for? Don't think that this is a privacy issue. Many people say that our data leakage is a privacy issue. You have underestimated the problem.

In the future, people who may obtain your data will give you very unfair treatment. Don't think there's no sign, you know? Now some websites can determine which community you live in and what your past consumption records are. I know you don’t care much about money anyway, so the prices of the goods and services I see for you are more expensive than others. This matter has been reported by many media. The data you leak will make you suffer an unfair treatment.

Someone else has talked about such an idea. If one day, biotechnology develops greatly and a medicine is invented that can prolong life. Anyway, if you take one pill, you will live 50 years longer. Do you want to buy it?

Want to buy? Well, please note that the price will not be the same for everyone. With big data at that time, pharmaceutical companies knew how rich your family was. Everyone spent 50% of their property to buy this medicine. Some people got it for almost free, while others paid a lot. You said this might be another kind of fairness. But in the face of such a prospect, do you really not want to protect your data? Protecting your own data will be such a big industry in the future.

The book "A Brief History of Today" lists 21 issues for mankind in the future. All of these issues seem to be unsolvable dilemmas for us today. But for God’s sake, do these common predicaments of mankind require a historian to give us exact answers? Historians, please don’t write any more. This is what our generation has to do. Every time a problem is solved, huge social value will be generated, and then a very small part of it will be realized as commercial value. So I recommend that everyone who wants to start a business, or is potentially joining a startup, read this book.

Because here is your list of solutions to human problems, and behind each list topic is a company worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars. This is why today at the world premiere of this book, we would like to recommend it to you.

Here I would like to quote a quote from Mr. Wang Bin, the chairman of CITIC Publishing Group and a senior publisher. When we were talking about this book, he told me that eliminating an old issue and creating a new one is how each generation of us promotes historical progress.

Therefore, everyone who publishes books actually has a mission. Many people say that book publishing is a sunset industry? Don't worry, it won't happen. Why? Because the bounden duty of the publishing industry is to promote the birth of new issues. Choose them, promote them, and condense stories that are recognized by the widest range of people. This matter will be valuable in any year or month. In this day and age, it's especially valuable.

We are living in an era where the meaningful value provided by virtual products is catching up with the material value provided by original physical products.

This era of human hunger and lack of physical products is officially passing.

Without any psychological barriers, people can consume virtual products like a refrigerator or a vacuum cleaner. This is the future trend.

Nowadays, some things that seem commonplace to us, such as Confucius' "It is a joy to learn and practice it from time to time, and it is a joy to have friends come from afar." Because Confucius talked about it for more than two thousand years, it sounds good to us. It's vernacular.

Once some big stories are formed, they will not change for a long time, and the greatest blessing of our generation is that things that remain unchanged are undergoing subversive changes.

All colleagues should read these three books by Yuval Harari. They can help you understand the big framework of the future and the huge opportunities in history, and you can also better understand the company's business.

Yuval Harari implies a way of thinking about problems in his book, looking at the things that are unchanging on the largest scale.

There is one of the most unchanging things in human nature, which is called self-rationalization.

This world is creating new meanings in many parallel dimensions.

In fact, the essence of human society is nothing but various chains of contempt.

Which era and which company is the greatest? The companies that produce the most scarce value of that era are the greatest.

No matter what you do in the future, you rely on your punches and kicks, and you think it is difficult for those smart people to push open the next door. What will help us push it open? It is to make completeness based on the current situation.

Harari is a representative figure who manages his own completeness

The three major problems that have plagued mankind throughout history are famine, plague and war. Now, thanks to technological, economic and political progress, we have all three problems under control.

But we Homo sapiens are never satisfied, and now we are going to do three major things

In the age of hunter-gatherers, humans were not considered the most precious

People in agricultural societies believe that God is the first precious thing and man is the second precious thing.

As soon as the theory of evolution appeared and the idea of ​​God was overturned, people needed an updated theory to explain why people are superior to other animals.

But biologists can't explain consciousness. People don't need consciousness at all, and animals also have consciousness.

Therefore, "people are conscious" cannot be regarded as the theoretical basis for "people are the most precious".

The great thing about human beings, what enables them to achieve large-scale flexible cooperation, is not consciousness, nor the subjective reality imagined by individuals, but the so-called "Intersubjectivity"

God, country, money, companies, values, these are all interconnected subjectivities we imagine. #case

What historians are most concerned about is what stories people jointly imagined and invented in each period.

Moreover, not only do we have a stronger joint imagination, but we also use this fictional meaning to transform the world and even ourselves.

The fictional is much more important than the real. #memory

A religion that satisfies the following three characteristics is a religion

The human rights that Western liberals talk about are actually religion.

For example, should abortion be allowed? Catholic opposition to any form of abortion consists of three steps:

The first step of moral judgment: human life is sacred! Science has nothing to say about this. If you say it is sacred, then it is sacred.

The second step of factual statement: Life is already produced at the moment of conception, so even if it is only a fertilized egg, it cannot be aborted. Science has a strong say here.

The third step of moral guidance: Based on the previous moral judgment and factual statements, Catholicism requires that abortion cannot be performed.

In the past, science has been helping religion expand its power, but from now on, science is beginning to defeat religion.

The greatest religion at the moment is none other than humanism.

The largest branch of humanism: the mainstream thought in Western countries—liberalism

Humanism advocates that we worship human nature, use human nature to replace the position of God in past religions, and use human experience to create meaning for the external world. That is, you should listen to your inner voice

Knowledge = Experience ✖ Sensitivity

liberalism

socialist humanist

evolutionary humanists

After two world wars and a cold war, the final result was that liberals won

If we look to the future at this moment, liberalism is in crisis.

Based on three assumptions

Science has enough evidence that all three hypotheses are wrong.

First assumption: I have an indivisible self

Second assumption: I have free will

The third assumption: No one knows myself better than I do.

All three assumptions of liberalism have been overturned. Liberalism is really meaningless.

First, if artificial intelligence is so powerful that the economic and military value of a human being as a worker is gone, then the political and economic system will deem humans worthless.

Second, maybe human beings as a whole are valuable, but each person as an individual is worthless.

Third, maybe some individuals are still valuable, but they are "supermen" who have been biologically upgraded.

useless person

"People without autonomy"

"man of god"

Judgment from scientific experiments, coupled with these three practical trends, liberalism is gone

New religions are brewing in the twenty-first century. One is called "technological humanism" and the other is called "data education".

Human experience can be upgraded, but it can also be degraded

While the market and economic system require them to make these upgrades, they will also be required to downgrade other cognitive abilities.

Technological humanists will be at a loss in the end. They will once again face a crisis of meaning.

From a mathematical perspective, we can imagine a person, an animal, a company or a country as a data processing system

If you imagine everyone as a processor, and communication between people is information exchange, then the entire human society is a data processing system

The entire history of mankind is the history of adding efficiency to this system.

Values: Information must flow.

Discipline: Continuously produce and digest information, maximize your own information flow. #memory

Promise: If you allow information to flow freely and make the web of all things more and more perfect, it will benefit everyone.

First, are living things really just a bunch of algorithms? Is life really just about data processing?

Second, which one is more valuable, intelligence or consciousness?

Third, what would society, politics, and daily life be like if unconscious but highly intelligent algorithms knew us better than we know ourselves?

This is true from the peasants who were oppressed by theocratic and royal power in ancient times to the workers who are exploited by capitalism and consumerism today.

Each round of revolution and leap has not fundamentally changed this model, but has pushed the pros and cons of this model to a more extreme level: the more developed human imagination is, the more severe the suffering each individual faces.

The history of human development from the beginning of signs of life one hundred thousand years ago to the intertwining of capital and technology in the 21st century. One hundred thousand years ago, there were at least six human races on the earth. Why are we the only one left today?

We were once just an inconspicuous group in a corner of Africa, and our impact on the ecology of the earth was no different than that of fireflies, orangutans or jellyfish. Why can we reach the top of the biological chain and eventually become the masters of the earth?

The deepest and most fundamental driving force behind the brilliant civilization created by mankind from ancient times to today lies in the cognitive revolution driven by imagination.

And the way it uses the human "species" as a clue to outline the history of human civilization from ancient times to high-tech modern society is also the most innovative thing.

From a physical and chemical perspective, it is nothing more than a combination of atoms and molecules. From a biological classification perspective, it is nothing more than a family of primate mammals called Hominidae.

In fact, higher animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are very close to us in a biological sense.

📖 As the book says, 60,000 years ago, a female ape gave birth to two children, one of which became the grandfather of all chimpanzees, and the other became the grandmother of all humans.

In middle school biology, species are divided into phyla, order, family, genus and species. Today's human beings belong to the species "Homo sapiens" under the genus "Human" and are the only species under this family and genus.

But in history, there have actually been other “human” races.

Archaeological and genetic studies have proven that a small number of these races other than "Homo sapiens" interbred with our ancestors, and a little bit of their genes remain in some peoples today, but the vast majority of ancient humans were between 70,000 and 30,000 They were wiped out by our ancestors years ago, or at least their living space was squeezed out by our ancestors, just like the dodo was hunted to extinction

But why can "Homo sapiens" defeat other ancient human races and win? You have to know that our ancestors were inferior to other races in terms of size, mobility and agility.

The most fundamental answer lies in the fact that our ancestors had a more developed ability, which is language ability. He introduced a very vivid and interesting theory: the gossip theory.

What does that mean? Biologists believe that animals like Homo sapiens can produce a particularly large number of sounds, which can be combined into many sentences and develop complex meanings.

This gossip theory sounds strange, but it has been confirmed by many studies and experiments. Harari believes that it is the key to our understanding of the progress and development of human civilization.

To illustrate this point, Harari further cited a classic sociological research result, which is the "Dunbar's Number", also known as the Law of 150.

So what is the basis of this ability? This is what I just introduced to you, the ability to describe virtual objects.

This is the first crucial revolution Harari talks about: the cognitive revolution

The so-called cognitive revolution means that animals such as "Homo sapiens" have developed language abilities, which exceed the expression level of ordinary animals such as "there is a lion by the river" and can gossip about themselves.

And through Bagua's own ability, Homo sapiens developed the ability to describe virtual objects.

The ability to describe virtual objects allowed our ancestors to believe in one thing together, which made it possible for them to cross the threshold of 150 people, form a complex society, and develop a high degree of civilization.

Harari pointed out that this is a huge breakthrough even from the perspective of biological evolution.

Evolution based on genetic mutations

An evolutionary approach based on division of labor and cooperation

You can imagine before humans entered the agricultural age, the so-called gathering age. In this era, men hunted and women gathered fruits. There was no "slash-and-burn farming" and productivity was extremely backward. Then you may think that people in this era must have lived very miserable lives, often not having enough to eat, and not as smart as the humans who later entered the agricultural society, right?

But Harari tells you that your idea is exactly wrong. Archaeologists have proven that the nutritional status of ordinary people who lived in the gathering era was much better than that of ordinary people who later entered agricultural society. Their brain capacity was even larger than that of ordinary people who later entered agricultural society. In other words, from an evolutionary perspective, humans have experienced species degradation from the age of collecting to agricultural society. Why is this so?

Let me first explain why people in the collecting era have more developed bodies and brains than people in early agricultural societies.

On the contrary, the diet structure of ancient people who entered agricultural society was relatively simple most of the time.

Scientists have also confirmed that the brain capacity of people in the collecting era was larger than that of people in agricultural societies.

On the contrary, many people in agricultural societies live in a small area all their lives, growing a small wheat field. Their life is simple and boring, their activities are narrow, and they never interact with each other even if they are dozens of miles apart. Their brains actually process less and less information.

So since human individuals are actually experiencing degradation from the age of collecting to agricultural society, why do humans continue to evolve in this direction?

The answer is that agricultural society greatly increased the possibility for Homo sapiens to reproduce.

This involves a fundamental issue of values. From a biological perspective, the criterion for evaluating evolution is not how strong or fast an individual is, but how much the species' genes have spread. Harari made an analogy. It's like today, whether a company is good or not depends mainly on how much money it makes, rather than whether its employees are happy or not.

Entering agricultural society, everyone's physical fitness has declined, but the transmission efficiency of ethnic genes has greatly improved. This is the true meaning of evolution.

Therefore, Harari said, the agricultural revolution seems to be a progress, but for individual human beings, it is actually a huge trap.

This involves what Harari said, the second leap of human imagination brought about by the agricultural revolution.

first leap

So what does the second leap mean?

Harari said that the social order we live in is ultimately derived from imagination. This theory has three important manifestations #notes

So Harari finally concluded that as human beings, we cannot escape from the order established by imagination.

You may ask, since the order is imaginary, then theoretically speaking, different people should imagine very different orders. For example, Westerners imagine that God created all things, and Chinese imagine that Pangu created the world. This was indeed the case in ancient society. But how to explain the era of globalization we are facing today? Is it because all mankind happened to imagine it together?

Why is money so magical?

You may still remember the political economic point of view taught in middle school politics textbooks. Money is essentially a general equivalent, but Harari will tell you that this understanding is not essential enough.

The essence of money is as follows

This is easy to understand. Everyone understands the logic of money, and everyone understands the logic of swords.

But empires don't just rule by violence. It also spreads unified laws, writing, language and currency, and even a common culture. Moreover, most of the empire's elites themselves believe that they are working for the overall benefit of all the empire's subjects.

Harari specifically mentioned China. In ancient times, China believed that it should benefit all directions and spread Chinese culture. The so-called destiny is not to exploit the entire world, but to educate all peoples.

In the 21st century, Harari believes that a new "global empire" concept is emerging, which may further break the boundaries of past nation-states, bring people around the world under its banner, and solve some common problems, such as environmental protection and development issues, etc. .

In fact, belief has been around since ancient times. We have said before that our ancestors Homo sapiens have the ability to imagine virtual things. They will naturally use this ability to imagine things that do not exist in the real world, such as ghosts and gods, such as God. From this, polytheism, monotheism, Different types of religion such as nature worship or ancestor worship.

But what Harari wants to point out is that many of the ideas and values ​​​​in modern society are actually beliefs.

Harari’s answer is: not at all. This brings us to the final part: the scientific revolution.

The first is to be willing to admit your ignorance #list

The second is centered on observation and mathematics #list

The third is to use existing theories to acquire new abilities #List

However, Harari also pointed out that the scientific revolution, like all revolutions in history, is the product of continuous leaps of human imagination and will also bring huge material benefits.

However, this leap is not necessarily a good thing for individual humans.

To put it bluntly, our species is a species that lives in imagination and reality at the same time. This ability to live in "dual reality" has allowed us to achieve great achievements, but it has also made most of us fall into more miserable situations. The situation is the same from the peasants who were oppressed by theocratic and royal power in ancient times to the workers who are exploited by capitalism and consumerism today.

Each round of revolution and leap has not fundamentally changed this model, but has pushed the pros and cons of this model to more extreme levels.

Because today's technological progress has reached a point where it is possible for humans to cross the boundaries of biology, use technological means to transform themselves, and complete the next step of evolution.

In other words, the way species evolve has progressed from genetic evolution to division of labor evolution in the past, and may continue to progress from division of labor evolution to technological evolution in the future.

From a traditional perspective, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. But now that you understand "A Brief History of Humanity", you will know that there are deeper crises and changes hidden behind it. Harari’s point of view is that behind every revolution and leap, there is great suffering suffered by individual human beings, and this time will be no exception. #memory

1. About 13.5 billion years ago, the matter, energy, time, and space of the universe became what they are today, forming the science of physics.

2. Approximately 3.8 billion years ago, molecules combined to form a fine structure - the organism, achieving biology

3. 2.5 million years ago, humanoid creatures appeared

4. About 2 million years ago, different human species existed in the entire world, including Homo Rudolfus in East Africa, Homo erectus in East Asia, and Neanderthals in Europe and West Asia. However, it is only known that about 10,000 years ago, only Homo sapiens remained. This kind of person

5. About 70,000 years ago, "Homo sapiens" began to create more complex structures, forming "culture", and culture continued to develop, forming history.

Natural genetic mutation

There is a lion by the river

Gossip

fictional story

time #notes

Features

form different languages ​​and cultures

The formation of the gluttonous gene

monogamy

Life

War is a social phenomenon that has appeared in collecting societies. Human beings are closely related but they still kill the old and the weak

Domestication

Influence

1. The concepts of home and territory emerge.

2. The importance of “the future” has become increasingly prominent.

3. Text

In the post-agricultural revolution era, human beings have developed rapidly through writing and shared fictional stories, which has resulted in different classifications of social groups.

What lasts a long time will inevitably separate. It is just a temporary situation. What will last a long time will inevitably merge. This is the general trend.

Four worlds of considerable size and complexity

Today's world

The condition for all humans to become “us” (the basis for cooperation between sapiens and strangers)

Gatherers have no concept of money at all

agricultural revolution period

After the rise of cities and kingdoms

Conditions: The empire must have rulers of different ethnic groups, with different cultures and independent territories

Features: The territory can be flexibly adjusted and can be expanded almost infinitely.

common criticism

law

development path

Time: Human power has grown unprecedentedly in the past 500 years. In 1500 AD, the population was approximately 500 million, and now the population is 7 billion.

The difference between modern scientific system and previous knowledge system

The criterion for value judgment of “knowledge” lies in its practicality, which is based on whether it allows humans to create new substances, gain power or rights.

Nationalism is the only modern ideology in which death remains central

The impact of ideology on science

Common mentality and starting point: admit one’s ignorance

European imperial expeditions changed the course of the world: national cultures transformed from independent development to the gradual integration into a single human society

The relationship between science and empire

The role of credit: Capitalism uses human credit to realize the rules of small capital operating big capital

Conditions for the rise of capitalism: “Trust” underpins money transactions

The role of capitalism: Promoting the rise of modern science and also influencing the emergence of European imperialism

The relationship between government and capital markets: reduce intervention and allow the market to operate freely

finite theory

After the Industrial Revolution, animals faced a survival crisis and Homo sapiens became the global hegemon.

Homo sapiens isolated themselves from nature and created a set of standards to live by

The state and market are replacing the old ways of family and community

Nuclear power becomes the only check and balance standard and means in the new world

Money is not everything, the happiness that money brings has its limits

The biological explanation of “happiness”: producing enough serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin #notes

Homo sapiens maintain their lives by connecting to machines and other biological creations, and the future of sapiens will become the existence of non-homo sapiens.

Crisis awareness: Intelligent robots develop independent consciousness and rise up to resist their human masters

Two possibilities: Homo sapiens evolved or was completely wiped out, and the development of history is still unknown.

The emergence of immortality will lead to fundamental inequality between people

Biochemistry re-creates Homo sapiens to provide endless pleasure

path

clarify

On the road to becoming a god, there are no brakes

fact

idea

People have souls

People have souls

The web of human meaning

Animals all live in dual realities of objective reality and subjective experience. The world of Homo sapiens has a third reality, with various stories about money, gods, countries and companies.

70,000 years ago, the cognitive revolution allowed humans to start talking about things that only existed in human imagination. This can facilitate the cooperation of hundreds or thousands of people

5,000 years ago, people invented writing and money

Story should be just a tool, not the goal

religion

science and religion

Pre-modern people believed they were living within some great cosmic plan, which limited human power but also gave everything meaning

"Modern" is a contract, the essence of which is: people give up meaning in exchange for power

Without meaning, the reason why modern society is still developing is because of the rise of a revolutionary new religion: humanism

The contract with modernity is to gain power and relinquish meaning.

dogma of humanism

The split in humanism

free will

individualism

A scientific response to the insistence that people are irreplaceable

Superman controls the world and humans lose equality

Algorithms control the world and humans lose their sanctity

Whether algorithms or superhumans take over the world, liberalism will collapse

Still believing that humans are the pinnacle of creation, Homo sapiens upgrades to god-man, fighting against the most complex mindless algorithms

Just like humans can only see a small segment of the spectrum, the psychological spectrum is much wider than what we experience. Becoming a godman can explore new lands of the mind.

Technological humanism faces an unsolvable dilemma. It believes that human will is the most important thing in the universe, so it promotes human development and control. However, once the will is controlled, human beings lose their sanctity and cannot stand in the face of technology.

Dataism believes that the universe is composed of data, and the value of any phenomenon or entity lies in the contribution of data processing.

economic system

political system

All mankind is a data system, and individuals are chips #notes

For dataism, freedom of information is the highest good

Dataism treats human experience as data patterns, thus destroying people’s authority and source of meaning.

The three most important matters and corresponding questions

end of history theory

current reality

❗️The real challenge

Human vs AI

Three possible solutions to the disappearance of jobs

In the past, divine authority was established through religious mythology.

In the liberal story, man's authority comes from his having free will.

In the future, belief in individual freedom is overturned and authority comes from big data algorithms.

Equality in the historical process #notes

In the future, inequality will tend to solidify

Human beings need to deal with the body, senses, and real environment, but technology has made us farther and farther away from the body.

The value of community

It is wrong to compare the conflict of civilizations to the competition between species. #notes

Modern civilizations are interconnected #notes

Nations formed because humans faced challenges that no tribe could solve alone.

A common global enemy gives mankind a common identity. #notes

We already have a global ecology, a global economy, a global science, and political globalization has become a necessary option.

The role of traditional religion

While many countries use modern tools and structures, they also rely on traditional religion to maintain their national identity.

Immigration is an agreement with three clauses

In reality, landlord countries usually hold culturalism, and culturalism is not racism.

logical conditions for terrorism

The right way to deal with terrorism

The development of the times has made war unprofitable

Even if war is unprofitable, do not underestimate human folly and remain humble.

All cultures tend to be self-centered

Taking Judaism as an example to criticize cultural centrism

We need God as the ultimate interpreter of nature’s mysteries

We need God to guide us morally

The behavior of believers determines the value of a god. If the believers are peaceful and friendly, it does not matter which god they believe in or whether they believe in a god.

Secularism is not the opposite of belief in God; it has its own positive ideals

Secularism acknowledges imperfection and is willing to change various realities. It does not believe that a perfect society can be achieved by adhering to a certain dogma.

The rational individual, the basis of liberalism, is a myth

Power does not help get more truth

Humankind’s sense of justice evolved from ancient times and cannot adapt to the modern world

Humans simplify the world to fit their stone brains.

Even though the complete truth is constantly missing, deception can still be reduced.

Human beings rely on fictional stories to establish cooperation, and Homo sapiens is a post-truth species.

The worst problem with modern science fiction is that it confuses consciousness with intelligence

traditional education #notes

Education for the future

When we ask about the meaning of life, the answer we usually want to hear is a story.

The Story of Liberalism: Through Choices, Individuals Make Meaning for Everything

Mind and brain are two issues

The stories get more complex, the algorithms get more sophisticated, and it gets harder and harder to observe yourself.