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In 1938 humans were offered three global stories to choose from, in 1968 just two, and in 1998 a single story seemed to prevail. In 2018 we are down to zero.
After all, emotions are not some mystical phenomenon—they are the result of a biochemical process.
Can you guess how long it took AlphaZero to learn chess from scratch, prepare for the match against Stockfish, and develop its genius instincts? Four hours. That’s not a typo. For centuries, chess was considered one of the crowning glories of human intelligence. AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide.
In human-only chess tournaments, judges are constantly on the lookout for players who try to cheat by secretly getting help from computers. One of the ways to catch cheaters is to monitor the level of originality players display. If they play an exceptionally creative move, the judges will often suspect that it cannot possibly be a human move—it must be a computer move. At least in chess, creativity is already considered to be the trademark of computers rather than humans!
In fact, today computers and algorithms are already beginning to function as clients in addition to being producers. In the stock exchange, for example, algorithms are becoming the most important buyers of bonds, shares, and commodities. Similarly in the advertising business, the most important customer of all is an algorithm: the Google search algorithm. When people design web pages, they often cater to the taste of the Google search algorithm rather than to the taste of any human being.
Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including the conditions of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and so even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before. If universal basic support is aimed at improving the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed at making people subjectively more satisfied with their lot and preventing
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Feelings are therefore not the opposite of rationality—they embody evolutionary rationality.
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.”
For although there was nothing magical or free about our feelings, they were the best method in the universe for deciding what to study, whom to marry, and which party to vote for.
However, soon computer algorithms might be able to give you better counsel than human feelings.
In the process, Homo sapiens itself will likely disappear. Today we are still apes of the hominid family. We still share most of our bodily structures, physical abilities, and mental faculties with Neanderthals and chimpanzees. Not only are our hands, eyes, and brains distinctly hominid, but so are our lust, our love, our anger, and our social bonds. Within a century or two, the combination of biotechnology and AI might result in physical and mental traits that completely break free of the hominid mold. Some believe that consciousness might even be severed from any organic structure and could
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A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, her neighborhood, her profession, and her nation—so why not add humankind and planet Earth to that list? True, when you have multiple loyalties, conflicts are sometimes inevitable. But then who said life was simple? Deal with it.
Traditional religions have lost so much turf because, frankly, they just weren’t very good at farming or healthcare. The true expertise of priests and gurus has never really been rainmaking, healing, prophecy, or magic. Rather, it has always been interpretation. A priest is not somebody who knows how to perform the rain dance and end the drought. A priest is somebody who knows how to justify why the rain dance failed, and why we must keep believing in our god even though he seems deaf to all our prayers.
Yet it is precisely their genius for interpretation that puts religious leaders at a disadvantage when they compete against scientists. Scientists too know how to cut corners and twist the evidence, but in the end, the mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different tack. That’s why scientists gradually learn how to grow better crops and make better medicines, whereas priests and gurus learn only how to make better excuses. Over the centuries, even the true believers have noticed the difference, which is why religious authority has been dwindling in more and more
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Immigration
Some Cultures Might Be Better than Others
TERM 1: The host country allows the immigrants in. TERM 2: In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values. TERM 3: If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, over time they become equal and full members of the host country. “They” become “us.”
In addition, many pro-immigrationists stress that it is impossible to completely stop immigration: no matter how many walls and fences we build, desperate people will always find a way through. So it is better to legalize immigration and deal with it openly than create a vast underworld of human trafficking, illegal workers, and undocumented children.
Anti-immigrationists reply that if you use sufficient force, you can completely stop immigration, and except perhaps in the case of refugees fleeing brutal persecution in a neighboring country, you are never obliged to open your door. Turkey may have a moral duty to allow desperate Syrian refugees to cross its border, but if these refugees then try to move on to Sweden, the Swedes are not bound to accept them. As for migrants who seek jobs and welfare, it is totally up to the host country whether it wants them in or not, and under what conditions.
Numerous countries turn a blind eye to illegal immigration or even accept foreign workers on a temporary basis because they want to benefit from the foreigners’ energy, talents, and cheap labor. But the countries then refuse to legalize the status of these people, saying that they don’t want immigration. In the long run, this could create hierarchical societies in which an upper class of full citizens exploits an underclass of powerless foreigners, as happens today in Qatar and several other Gulf states.
As long as this debate isn’t settled, it is extremely difficult to answer all subsequent questions about immigration.
DEBATE 2: The second clause of the immigration deal says that if they are allowed in, the immigrants have an obligation to assimilate into the local culture.
Anti-immigrationists agree that tolerance and freedom are the most important European values, and accuse many immigrant groups—especially from Muslim countries—of intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. Precisely because Europe cherishes tolerance, it cannot allow in too many intolerant people. While a tolerant society can manage small illiberal minorities, if the number of such extremists exceeds a certain threshold, the whole nature of society changes. If Europe allows in too many immigrants from the Middle East, it will end up looking like the Middle East.
Pro-immigrationists tend to demand a speedy acceptance, whereas anti-immigrationists want a much longer probation period.
Anti-immigrationists tend to argue that the immigrants are not fulfilling term number 2. They are not making a sincere effort to assimilate, and too many of them stick to intolerant and bigoted worldviews. Therefore, the host country has no reason to fulfill term number 3 (to treat them as first-class citizens), and has every reason to reconsider term number 1 (to allow them in). If people from a particular culture have consistently proven themselves unwilling to live up to the immigration deal, why allow more of them in and create an even bigger problem?
Pro-immigrationists reply that it is the host country that fails to fulfill its side of the deal. Despite the honest efforts of the vast majority of immigrants to assimilate, the hosts are making it difficult for them to do so; worse still, those immigrants who successfully assimilate are still treated as second-class citizens even in the second and third generations. It is of course possible that both sides are not living up to their commitments, thereby fueling each other’s suspicions and resentments in an escalating vicious circle.
An additional problem concerns accounting. When evaluating the immigration deal, both sides give far more weight to violations than to compliance. If a million immigrants are law-abiding citizens but one hundred join terrorist groups and attack the host country, does it mean that the immigrants are complying with the terms of the deal or violating them?
How then should we treat these differences? Cultural relativists argue that difference doesn’t imply hierarchy, and we should never prefer one culture over another. Humans may think and behave in various ways, but we should celebrate this diversity and give equal value to all beliefs and practices. Unfortunately, such broad-minded attitudes cannot stand the test of reality. Human diversity may be great when it comes to cuisine and poetry, but few would see witch-burning, infanticide, or slavery as fascinating human idiosyncrasies that should be protected against the encroachments of global
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It would be wrong to tar all anti-immigrationists as “fascists,” just as it would be wrong to depict all pro-immigrationists as committed to “cultural suicide.”
Terrorists are masters of mind control. They kill very few people but nevertheless manage to terrify billions and rattle huge political structures such as the European Union or the United States.
Since September 11, 2001, each year terrorists have killed about 50 people in the European Union, about 10 people in the United States, about 7 people in China, and up to 25,000 people elsewhere in the globe (mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria).1 In contrast, each year traffic accidents kill about 80,000 Europeans, 40,000 Americans, 270,000 Chinese, and 1.25 million people altogether.2 Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5 million people annually, while air pollution kills about 7 million people per year.3 So why do we fear terrorism more than sugar, and why do
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Terrorists calculate that when the enraged enemy uses his massive power against them, he will raise a much more violent military and political storm than the terrorists themselves could ever create. During every storm, many unforeseen things happen. Mistakes are made, atrocities are committed, public opinion wavers, neutrals change their stance, and the balance of power shifts.
In this respect, terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot move even a single teacup. So how does a fly destroy a china shop? 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 after 9/11, as Islamic fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern china shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage. And there is no shortage of short-tempered bulls in the world.
The less political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock at an act of terrorism. Killing a few people in Belgium draws far more attention than killing hundreds in Nigeria or Iraq. Paradoxically, then, the very success of modern states in preventing political violence makes them particularly vulnerable to terrorism.
How then should the state deal with terrorism? A successful counterterrorism struggle should be conducted on three fronts. First, governments should focus on clandestine actions against the terrorist networks. Second, the media should keep things in perspective and avoid hysteria. The theater of terror cannot succeed without publicity. Unfortunately, the media all too often provides this publicity for free. It obsessively reports terrorist attacks and greatly inflates their danger, because reports on terrorism sell newspapers much better than reports on diabetes or air pollution. The third
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about 20 percent of all Nobel Prize laureates in science have been Jews, though Jews constitute less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population.
