MindMap Gallery A Brief History of the Future Reading Notes
"A Brief History of the Future" is a book that is both profound and "gentle". It is also a work that is shocking and interesting at the same time. The most important thing is that this book will subvert your way of thinking and wake you up. Your past, enlighten your future!
Edited at 2021-06-23 22:14:20One Hundred Years of Solitude is the masterpiece of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reading this book begins with making sense of the characters' relationships, which are centered on the Buendía family and tells the story of the family's prosperity and decline, internal relationships and political struggles, self-mixing and rebirth over the course of a hundred years.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is the masterpiece of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reading this book begins with making sense of the characters' relationships, which are centered on the Buendía family and tells the story of the family's prosperity and decline, internal relationships and political struggles, self-mixing and rebirth over the course of a hundred years.
Project management is the process of applying specialized knowledge, skills, tools, and methods to project activities so that the project can achieve or exceed the set needs and expectations within the constraints of limited resources. This diagram provides a comprehensive overview of the 8 components of the project management process and can be used as a generic template for direct application.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is the masterpiece of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reading this book begins with making sense of the characters' relationships, which are centered on the Buendía family and tells the story of the family's prosperity and decline, internal relationships and political struggles, self-mixing and rebirth over the course of a hundred years.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is the masterpiece of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reading this book begins with making sense of the characters' relationships, which are centered on the Buendía family and tells the story of the family's prosperity and decline, internal relationships and political struggles, self-mixing and rebirth over the course of a hundred years.
Project management is the process of applying specialized knowledge, skills, tools, and methods to project activities so that the project can achieve or exceed the set needs and expectations within the constraints of limited resources. This diagram provides a comprehensive overview of the 8 components of the project management process and can be used as a generic template for direct application.
"A Brief History of the Future" Reading Notes
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The right side of the map is an outline of the extracted content.
The content on the left side of the map is extended
complement each other
Prologue: New Issues for Humanity
The emergence of immortality will lead to fundamental inequality between people - defeating death
Biochemistry re-creates Homo sapiens to provide endless pleasure—permanent happiness
man becomes god
path
Bioengineering: Human beings fully exploit their potential within the existing body structure
Cyborg Engineering: Combining a variety of non-organic devices, retaining the organic brain as the core
If the mind changes from carbon-based to silicon-based, the structure of the mind changes, Homo sapiens disappears, and human history comes to an end.
Non-organic bioengineering: intelligent software replaces neural networks, inorganic life replaces organic life
clarify
The above refers to "humanity as a whole", not most individual people.
This is a historical prediction, not a political goal
Pursuit may not necessarily lead to success
Forecasting is not for the purpose of prophecy. Predictions can change the future after discussion.
Marxism did not overthrow the regime, this prediction alone allowed them to make changes
The meaning of history: Historical knowledge will change our future behavior. Studying history is to liberate ourselves from old meanings.
The paradox of knowledge: knowledge (prediction) is useless without changing behavior. Once behavior changes, the original knowledge (prediction) immediately loses its meaning.
On the road to becoming a god, there are no brakes
Each expert has his or her own specialty. No one understands the entire system. No one knows where the brakes are.
The modern economy can only grow endlessly, and the brakes will collapse. It can only pursue sustainable goals: immortality, happiness, and divinity. (The three are inseparable)
Part One: Homo sapiens conquers the world
How humans treat other animals (World)
fact
Humans exterminated and conquered other large animals and dominated the world
Humans, like other animals, have a set of biological algorithms for reproduction. Emotions and desires help us find paths quickly.
idea
hunter gatherer
Hunter-gatherers do not feel superior to other creatures. Human survival depends on understanding and respecting the desires of the animals around them.
Hunter-gatherers tended to be animistic and communicate with all living things
farmer
Farmers' quality of life depends on the animals they can control
Theism promises Homo sapiens to be dominant and exploit all other living things. Such as Christianity
Theism, God is responsible for mediating between human beings and ecological and environmental systems. The gods were responsible for protecting agriculture, in exchange for human contributions, at the expense of the ecosystem
modern man
Theism uses the name of God as an excuse for traditional agriculture, while humanism uses the name of man as an excuse for modern industrialized agriculture.
Humanism is based on the belief that Homo sapiens possess certain unique and sacred human qualities that animals do not have, so nature is not important.
What's special about humans
People have souls
If the soul evolved, then it would be contrary to the nature of evolution for it to be an indivisible, eternal entity.
If the soul suddenly appeared in a human being, it is unimaginable that there was no trace of soul before him or his parents.
People have souls
If everything is in our neuron network, why separate the mind?
If the mind is higher than the neural network, then where is it?
The web of human meaning
Animals can only imagine what actually exists
One can imagine intersubjective things, but they have real and powerful power, such as countries, companies, laws, etc.
People organize large-scale collaboration through fictional stories. This is the fundamental reason why human power is amplified and dominates the world.
If you want to decipher the future of mankind, you must decipher the various fictional imaginations that give meaning to the world.
Part 2: Hopiens give meaning to the world
Storytellers: The power of stories
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
Words allow people to organize society in an algorithmic way. Each person completes a small step, and the final important decision is judged by the entire algorithm. This is the essence of the bureaucracy.
The state issues a piece of paper and forces citizens to use this piece of paper to pay taxes. Citizens have no choice, but the market develops.
Story should be just a tool, not the goal
We should distinguish between reality and fiction. The status of reality is of course higher than fiction. The euro can depreciate but it is not painful.
In the future, there will be more powerful fictional concepts and more totalitarian organizations, so it is particularly important to distinguish between reality and fiction.
Fictional stories make it easier for humans to cooperate, but the cost is that stories also determine the goals of our cooperation
Enemies: Science and Religion
religion
Religion is not the same as superstition. What you believe must be "truth"; only what others believe can be "superstition"
Religion is not supernatural, it is natural for people who believe in demons, gods, spirits
Religion is not a question of whether you believe in "God"
Religion is not the same as spirituality
Religion is to consolidate the secular order, spirituality is to escape
The spiritual journey is only suitable for individuals, not for society. If human beings want to collaborate, there can’t be just problems and no norms.
Religion is an all-encompassing set of stories that gives human laws, norms, and values greater legitimacy than the average human being
The definition of religion should lie in its social function, not whether there is a god
Christianity, communism, and liberalism can all be regarded as a religion
The historical laws of communism are actually like the commandments of the Christian God
science and religion
If science wants to create a viable human system, it will inevitably need the assistance of religion. Research facts but do not make ethical judgments
Religion does not merely govern ethical judgments; it always contains statements of fact.
Three parts of a typical religious story
Ethical judgments, such as "human life is sacred"
Factual statements such as "Human life begins at the moment of conception"
A combination of ethical and factual statements, with specific instructions such as "You cannot fall even if it is just a day old."
Science cannot refute the ethical judgments of religions, but it can refute the factual statements.
Science and religion are easier to compromise and cooperate than imagined
What religion cares about most is order
What science cares about most is power
Modern history is actually a process of coming to terms between science and a specific religion (humanism). Modern society believes in humanism, and science is not to question, but to realize its dogma.
Contract with "Modern"
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
humanist revolution
The contract with modernity is to gain power and relinquish meaning. But there is a loophole clause, meaning and power can be had if humans find meaning outside of the overall cosmic plan. man finds humanism
dogma of humanism
Humanist Politics: Voters can make the best choices
Humanistic Economics: The customer is always right
Humanistic Aesthetics: The person who sees it thinks it is beautiful, it is beautiful
Humanistic Ethics: If it feels right, do it
Humanistic education: think for yourself
The split in humanism
Classical Orthodoxy: Liberalism. Everyone is a unique person with experiences that will never be repeated
Branch One: Social Humanism. Socialism blames liberalism for focusing too much on one's own feelings and ignoring the experiences of others.
Branch Two: Evolutionary Humanism. The conflict of various experiences and feelings is inevitable, and the fittest wins.
Part 3: Homo sapiens lose control
Bold foresight
Time bomb in the laboratory
free will
The basis of liberalism is that people have free will, and this is proven by facts
Fact statement science can intervene
Every electrochemical reaction is determined by the previous event, so the final decision reached is definitely not free will.
If the decision is caused by the random movement of atoms, of course this is randomness and not free will.
According to the theory of evolution, all so-called "selections" of animals are responses to genetic codes.
individualism
Liberalism believes that everyone has a single, indivisible self
Split-brain experiment, self is physically separable
Ice water experiment, people have two selves: experiencing self and narrative self
great separation
A scientific response to the insistence that people are irreplaceable
Biology is algorithms. Every animal (including Homo sapiens) is an evolved collection of algorithms
The action of the algorithm is not affected by the constituent substances. Whether the beads of an abacus are made of iron or wood makes no difference to the calculation.
As long as the calculation is correct, there is no difference between silicon-based or carbon-based
Superman controls the world and humans lose equality
Algorithms control the world and humans lose their sanctity
Humanity as a whole will still have value, but individuals will no longer have authority and most choices will be governed by external algorithms
Human beings have absolutely no value
Algorithms become entities like companies and countries, controlling humans
What do useless people do? They can only live on drugs and playing games.
Humans will most likely be in captivity or exterminated, because the system is smart and you have no control over its motives.
Whether algorithms or superhumans take over the world, liberalism will collapse
The new religion of technological humanism
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.
The new religion of dataism
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
The mechanism of the economy is to collect data about desires and abilities and then translate them into decisions
Capitalism won the Cold War not because it was more ethical or because God was angry with the Soviet Union, but because at this stage decentralized data processing was better than centralized
political system
Democracy and autocracy are essentially two opposing mechanisms for collecting and analyzing information.
If data cannot be processed in a limited manner, the noble institutions of the past such as elections, political parties, and parliaments may become obsolete.
Authoritarian regimes are also unable to cope with the speed and volume of data flows
All mankind is a data system, and individuals are chips
There are 4 ways to improve efficiency
Increase the number of data servers
A city with a population of 100,000 has a capacity higher than a village with a population of 1,000
Add processor types
The dialogue between farmers, priests, and physicians produced ideas that would never have been discussed among hunter-gatherers.
Increase connections between processors
10 cities with trade have higher output than 10 isolated cities
Increase the freedom of flow of existing connections
Just like getting rid of things like highway tolls
Humanity has gone through 4 stages of development
Cognitive revolution, large numbers of homo sapiens can be connected into a single data processing network
Agricultural revolution, massive increase in population, and increase in human cooperation network
Increased number of processors, types and connections
From the invention of writing and money to the beginning of the scientific revolution, connections have become very close
In the last stage, from the geographical discovery to the present, information flows freely in the global network, and the quantity and speed are getting faster and faster.
Today’s democracies and markets win not because they are “good” but because they improve global data processing systems
For dataism, freedom of information is the highest good
The first commandment of dataism: connect more and more media and generate more and more information
The second commandment of dataism: Connect everything to the system, even the heretics who don’t want to join
Dataism treats human experience as data patterns, thus destroying people’s authority and source of meaning.
Dataism believes that experience has no value if it is not shared, and people do not need (or even cannot) find meaning in their own hearts. What we have to do is wait for the algorithm to figure out the meaning
As long as there are better algorithms and data, human biological algorithms will naturally be eliminated
The Internet of Everything itself has a sacred meaning
Dataism is as much a threat to humans as humans are to other animals. Data doesn’t care about our subjective needs
The three most important matters and corresponding questions
Question 1: Is biology really just algorithms, and life really just data processing?
Science is converging under the all-encompassing dogma that all living things are algorithms and life is data processing
Question 2: Which one is more valuable, intelligence or consciousness?
Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness
Question 3: How will society, politics, and daily life change when unconscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we do?
Unconscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we do
angle
history
History is not inevitable, it is accidental events that contribute to the appearance of history
Anything that seems to be taken for granted now will not be absolute in the long course of history.
History makes people freer, provides multiple perspectives on things, and provides multiple possibilities.
religion
It has a set of moral laws that it claims were not invented by humans and cannot be changed by humans, requiring people to abide by them.
It gives people a promise: as long as you follow this set of rules, you will get some benefits
Its purpose is to consolidate the social order it envisions
frame
Current situation and future possibilities
The three major problems plaguing mankind: famine, plague, and war have been solved
New issues for mankind: immortality, happiness, divinity
stages of human development
hunter-gatherer era
Animism: Humans have equal status with other animals
agricultural age
Theism: Christianity, God first, man second
Industrial Age
Atheism: evolution, humanism, human beings are the most precious
A genetic mutation 70,000 years ago gave humans consciousness and interconnected subjectivity
Science and technology are developing rapidly, and human beings are becoming more and more powerful
humanism
Three major assumptions
I am an indivisible subject
The true self is completely free, that is, I have free will
No one knows myself better than me
Three major factions
liberalism
socialism
evolutionism
Internet era
Three major assumptions of humanism shattered
People have two selves
experience self
narrative self
Free will is an illusion
Free will refers to whether people can choose their own desires
Human desires are not controlled by will, but consciousness is controlled by desire
The result of the negotiation between different desires when making one's own decisions, but which desire wins is beyond the control of the person.
Artificial intelligence understands me better than I do
future possibilities
Three kinds of people in the future
useless person
A person without autonomy
man of god
Intelligence improvement
Degraded sensory abilities (smell, hearing, vision, etc.)
The web of all things
It's all about data processing
The web of creation is more precious than human beings
Dataism
Values: Information must flow
Precepts: Individuals should try their best to connect with media and information, constantly generate and digest information, and connect more things to the web of all things.
Promise: If information is allowed to flow freely and the web of all things becomes more and more complete, it will benefit everyone
pattern
space axis
universe
Earth
Humanity
Homo sapiens
...
timeline
hunter-gatherer era
agricultural age
Industrial Age
Internet era
...
Interaction between religion and technology
Every era has a fictional story of meaning. The development of science and technology has gradually made the story system constructed by humanism at this stage gradually lose its meaning. Humanity needs new stories...
Summary of the trilogy of "A Brief History of Mankind"
"A Brief History of Humanity"
Summarizing the past of mankind, how Homo sapiens became the ruler of the earth
"A Brief History of the Future"
Focusing on thinking about the next few thousand years, how humans will eventually become gods, and what fate will eventually lead to intelligence and consciousness
"A Brief History of Today"
It is a book that reflects on the major global issues facing mankind today.
Yuval Harari "A Brief History of Mankind"
Book information
Author: [Israel] Yuval Harari
Young geek, a new historian attracting global attention
Publisher: CITIC Publishing Group
Publication year: 2014-11
Review of human history