21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

We usually fail to realize that feelings are in fact calculations, because the rapid process of calculation occurs far below our threshold of awareness. We don’t feel the millions of neurons in the brain computing probabilities of survival and reproduction, so we erroneously believe that our fear of snakes, our choice of sexual mates, or our opinions about the European Union are the result of some mysterious “free will.”

This is not a joke. In a pioneering 2015 study people were presented with a hypothetical scenario of a self-driving car about to run over several pedestrians. Most said that in such a case the car should save the pedestrians even at the price of killing its owner. When they were then asked whether they personally would buy a car programmed to sacrifice its owner for the greater good, most said no. For themselves, they would prefer the Tesla Egoist.

But now an algorithm might discriminate against you personally, and you will have no idea why. Maybe the algorithm will find something in your DNA, your personal history, or your Facebook account that it does not like. The algorithm discriminates against you not because you are a woman or an African American but because you are you. You don’t know the exact reasons, and even if you knew, you would not be able to organize a protest with other people, because there are no other people suffering the exact same prejudice.

Zuckerberg says that Facebook is committed “to continue improving our tools to give you the power to share your experience” with others.8 Yet what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences. In the name of “sharing experiences,” people are encouraged to understand what happens to them in terms of how others see it. If something exciting happens,

the gut instinct of Facebook users is to pull out their smartphones, take a picture, post it online, and wait for the “likes.” In the process they barely notice what they themselves feel. Indeed, what they feel is increasingly determined by the online reactions.

Human power depends on mass cooperation, and mass cooperation depends on manufacturing mass identities—and all mass identities are based on fictional stories, not on scientific facts or even on economic necessities.

Today, in contrast, while many individuals still make such racist assertions, they have lost all of their scientific backing and most of their political respectability—unless they are rephrased in cultural terms. Saying that black people tend to commit crimes because they have substandard genes is out; saying that they tend to commit crimes because they come from dysfunctional subcultures is very much in.