Understanding Human Hackability: Insights from Yuval Noah Harari
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Introduction
In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, we find ourselves living in a unique era that Yuval Noah Harari describes as a time when humans are becoming increasingly hackable. This article explores Harari's insights on how advances in biotechnology and information technology create unprecedented potentials for understanding, predicting, and even manipulating human desires and decisions. As Harari eloquently discusses in his conversations, the interplay between human biology and technology presents both exhilarating possibilities and profound ethical dilemmas.
The Concept of Human Hackability
What Does It Mean to Be Hackable?
On Impact Theory, Yuval Noah Harari coined the term "hackable humans" to describe a new reality where technology can decipher human thoughts and behaviors in ways unimaginable in the past. Historically, oppressive regimes had limited access to information about individuals, preventing any genuine predictions or manipulations of their desires. However, today's technology can make such predictions accurately due to:
- Biometric Data: Increasing data collection on our health, movements, and physiological states.
- Computing Power: Advances in computational capabilities allowing for deeper data analysis than ever before.
With these tools, corporations and governments have the ability to not only predict choices but also actively influence human desires, making individuals susceptible to targeted marketing or political propaganda.
The Dual Nature of Technological Advancement
Risks of Manipulation
Harari warns of the ethical dangers associated with this hackability. With corporations using our biometric data, we risk losing the autonomy to make independent choices. For instance, algorithms could manipulate our preferences on a consumer level, which could extend to more significant decisions, such as political allegiances just by hitting the right emotional chords.
- Examples of manipulation include:
- Targeted advertising based on deep insights into personal data.
- Political campaigning influenced by tailored messages appealing to individual vulnerabilities.
The Potential for Good
Conversely, the same technology that poses threats can also foster incredible advancements, particularly in healthcare. Harari envisions a future where:
- Accessible Health Diagnostics: Algorithms could potentially monitor health continuously, identifying issues like cancer before they become severe, allowing for timely interventions.
- Better Personalization of services tailored specifically to individual health needs or preferences, leading to an era where all people—even those in remote areas—can access quality healthcare via their smartphones.
Self-Discovery in the Age of Algorithms
The Role of Algorithms in Self-Understanding
One of the compelling ideas Harari presents is that algorithms could offer insights into aspects of our identities—such as sexual orientation or even mental health—earlier in life than we might discover through personal reflection. Algorithms can process biometric inputs and predict deeper aspects of our identities. For example,
- Case Study: An algorithm developed at Stanford can use photos to predict sexual orientation, which raises powerful questions about self-recognition and societal acceptance.
- Implications: Understanding such personal attributes earlier could change societal dynamics, especially in cultures where coming out remains dangerous or taboo. But, these advances also raise concerns about privacy and data misuse.
The Psychological Impact of Reinvention
Continuous Learning and Adaptation
With a rapidly changing job market, Harari emphasizes the need for continuous self-reinvention, especially in facing potential job displacement due to automation. He poses the question: Can humans adapt and thrive amidst continual change?
- Emotional Intelligence: He argues that future education should not just be about vocational skills but should focus on emotional stability and the ability to deal with uncertainty.
- Examples of Reinvention:
- A truck driver might transition to a yoga teacher, only to find that, years later, that job is also automated. How do we prepare for such significant shifts?
Education for an Uncertain Future
Emily Harari posits that for today's aspiring university students, education should focus on flexible skills rather than static knowledge. He elaborates:
- Mental Flexibility: Developing strategies for lifelong learning and emotional resilience, essential qualities for adapting to ongoing shifts.
- Career Versatility: Learning not just for a particular job but to embrace changes in industries and roles throughout one's lifetime.
Conclusion
Yuval Noah Harari presents a thought-provoking view that humanity's future is rife with intriguing possibilities interspersed with pressing ethical challenges. The prospect of being "hackable" not only invokes concerns about autonomy and privacy but also introduces groundbreaking opportunities for self-knowledge and societal improvement. As we stand on the brink of a future heavily influenced by biotechnology and information technology, it becomes ever more critical to navigate these waters thoughtfully and diligently, understanding our capacity for adaptation and emotional intelligence as core components of human evolution. By doing so, we can emerge from these technological realities not just as better consumers or citizens, but as more self-aware and empowered individuals.
well i think this is maybe the most important thing to know about living right now in the 21st century that we
are now hackable animals that we have the technology to decipher what you think what you want to predict human
choices to manipulate human desires in ways which were never possible before hey everybody welcome to impact theory
our goal with the show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on
your dreams alright today's guest is one of the most profound thinkers of our time a two-time
winner of the polanski prize for creativity and originality his books have sold over 12 million copies and
of mankind spent six months on the sunday times bestseller list and also made him a number one new york times
best-selling author his work has been recommended by countless luminaries including bill gates richard branson
mark zuckerberg and barack obama he's won a litany of awards including the society for military history's mankato
award for outstanding articles on military history and the 2017 handelsblatt's german economic book
award for the most thoughtful and influential economic book of the year additionally he's one of the most sought
after and influential speakers in the world he's given multiple ted talks on hot button issues relating to the human
race and in 2018 he was invited to give the main stage keynote speech on the future of humanity at the world economic
forum annual meeting in davos he has a phd from oxford is a tenured history professor at the hebrew university of
jerusalem and in addition to his many books he's also written for such prestigious global outlets as the
financial times the new york times the wall street journal and the guardian so please help me in welcoming the man who
does a yearly 60-day silent vipassana meditation retreat the best-selling author of 21 lessons for the 21st
century yuval noah harari good to have you on the show thank you it's good to be here dude very excited
so i've been obsessively reading your books since sapiens came out uh and just really really blown away and behind the
scenes there's a guy here named chase somewhere who you will have to meet today who has just been an absolute
champion for your books internally because of the way that you really frame the historical and where we're going in
a way that becomes very accessible for today and who we are and that i think is the cool nexus of um 21 lessons is that
you're really attacking how does this all make sense how is the passing form where we are and how does where we are
fiction content and dealing in sci-fi and things like that these ideas are really really important to us for
creating guides on how to be essentially and the idea that i wanted to start with is your notion of
some of the things that are happening technologically become a little bit dangerous because you can hack a human
and if you could explain what you mean by hacking a human and then how do we end up hacking ourselves in a
right now in the 21st century that we are now hackable animals we have the technology to decipher how humans or
what you think what you want to predict human choices to manipulate human desires in ways which were never
you need a lot of data especially biometric data not just about where you go and what you buy but what
is happening inside your body and inside your brain and secondly you need a lot of computing power to make sense of all
enough data and enough computing power to hack human beings even if the kgb of the gestapo followed you around 24 hours
inside you and they certainly didn't have the computing power necessary to make sense even of the data they were
able to collect so the kgb could not really understand you could not really predict all your
beginning to be able to do and this is because of the merger of the revolution in biotech we are
getting better in understanding what's happening inside us in the body in the brain and at the same time the
revolution in infotec which gives us the computing power necessary when you put the two together when infotech merges
better than i understand myself and then these algorithms cannot just predict my choices but also manipulate
and that so that's what you're calling hacking that you're hitting me with the right emotional message at exactly the
right time based on my biometric data yeah this is one of the things you can do then you can predict you can
manipulate you can eventually also re-engineer or replace if you really hack a system you really understand how
computers and ai would be able to replace humans in more and more tasks and maybe push millions of humans out of
the job market as a result all right so i i fully understand the dangers and we will talk about some of what we were
talking about off camera which is we've got this whole story called neon future where we're exploring that notion of
what happens to what you've called the useless class when they're pushed out of the job
market and what does that do economically but going just staying with the the notion of the hackability for a
second so it's funny as you were describing it and i know you bring this sense of like uh
there's some like real significant problems we need to take a very serious look at and i get almost giddy with
excitement because i have potentially delusional levels of optimism i'm very open to that no i
agree i mean the thing about this ability to hack humans is that it has also potentially tremendous positive
consequences and this is why it's so tempting if it was only bad then it was it would have been like an
easy deal to say okay we don't want that and let's stop researching or going in that direction but it is extremely
tempting because it can provide us for example with the best healthcare in history something which goes far beyond
anything we've seen so far this can mean that maybe in 30 years the poorest person on the planet can get
a better health care from her or his smartphone then the richest person today gets from the best hospitals and the
um is nothing like we've seen so far yeah now that that's really extraordinary and if you had to take the
positive look and say okay we have this ability let's just say it's already there we've got all this biometric data
empower themselves and i'll use an example that i found profoundly interesting from your book so you said
that growing up that it was unclear to you that you were gay but that now stanford has developed an algorithm that
essentially can look at three or four photos of somebody's face and predict with 91 accuracy whether or
not they're gay which seems impossible but if that's true the level of data that we could give ourselves about our
that seems useful how would you encourage people to use that well it's a very good example i
mean the stanford algorithm actually there is a lot of problems with that research and let's put it aside but
and um one of the most important things in my life and also in i think in my scientific career
was the realization of how little i know about myself and humans in general there was so many
important ideas and important facts we don't realize about ourselves i was 21 when i finally realized that i was gay
which is you know when you think about it it's it's absolutely amazing i mean it should have been obvious at age you
an attractive guy an attractive girl and just follow the focus of the eyes where do the eyes go and whom do they focus on
and the implications are really mind-boggling when an algorithm knows such an important thing about you before
you know it about yourself now it can go in all kinds of directions it really depends on where you live and what you
do with it in some countries you can be in trouble now with the police and the government uh you might be sent to some
re-education facility in some countries like with you know surveillance capitalism so maybe i don't
know about myself that i'm gay but coca-cola knows that i'm gay because they have these algorithms and they want
to know that because they need to know which commercials to show me let's say coca-cola knows that i'm gay and i even
noted about myself that they know it and pepsi doesn't coca-cola will show me a commercial with
a shirtless guy drinking coca-cola but pepsi will make the mistake of showing a girl in the bikini and next day without
my realizing why when i go to the supermarket when i go to the uh to the restaurant i will order coca-cola not
birthday party of somebody from your class and somebody just heard that there is this cool new algorithm
which tells your sexual orientation and everybody agrees it will be a lot of fun to just have this game that
everybody takes turn with the algorithm and and everybody else looking and then and seeing the results would you like to
quite a shocking experience okay but even if it's done in like complete privacy you know it's it's it's a very
deep philosophical question what does it mean to discover something like that about yourself
all the philosophers and saints and sages tell people to get to know yourself better it's one of the maybe
for all of history this was a process of self-exploration which you did through things like
data algorithm and the philosophical implications are quite mind-boggling it's interesting so let's talk about
that so the implications you're outsourcing the self-discovery process to me that sounds so profoundly useful
because all day the people that write in to me they're asking basically one essential question how do i find the
thing that i love because i tell people you need to develop a passion in your life i don't think you find it i think
you develop it but they need to start from an area of real interest it needs to be actually something that at a
hardwiring level they're just they get that response so then their next question is like how
right how do i get into that how do i discover the thing that triggers me like that and if i discover it then how do i
coca-cola is doing or whatever but give it to you in a way that can move you in a desired direction so i'll give you a
specific example that you give in the book so talking about how let's say there was an algorithm that knew you'd
just broken up with somebody knew that you were in the grips of heartache because they're they're reading your
biometrics they're watching your heart in fact give it to us that that example that you you put so the biometrics
they're reading you the it's the song it knows what songs to pick yeah i mean something is as simple as choosing music
so you you were just dumped by a boyfriend or girlfriend and the the algorithm that controls uh the music
from the music do you want the music to uplift you or do you want the music to kind of connect you to the deepest level
of sadness and depression and ultimately we can say that the algorithm can follow different kinds of
be in you can just tell the algorithm what what you want and it will do it if you are not sure you can tell the
and the algorithm can do that better than than any human dj and what we really need to understand in this regard
is that what music and most of art plays on in the end is the human biochemical system at least according to the
dominant view of art in the modern western world we had different views in different cultures but in the modern
it doesn't necessarily have to be joy great art can inspire also sadness can can inspire
anger can inspire fear it can be a whole palate of emotional states but out is about inspiring human emotions
they're actually playing on the homo sapiens biochemical system and we might reach a point quite soon
when an algorithm knows this instrument better than any human artist a movie or a poem or a song
inspire me in one situation might not inspire me in another situation and as time goes on and the algorithm gathers
more and more data about me it will become more and more accurate in reading my biochemical system and
knowing how to play on it as if it was a piano like okay you want joy i press this button and out comes the
that's so interesting to me all right so right now real world you can snap your fingers and you can have one algorithm
that's tied to one biochemical process in your life for real what would you want to monitor and
get that feedback on now that's easy i mean healthcare if there is like something seriously wrong in my body
that i don't know about like i don't know cancer or something i would like the algorithm to find that out i don't
mind you can't outsource it i mean today when you need to diagnose cancer there are exceptions but in most cases there
is a crucial moment when you feel something is wrong in my body and you go to this doctor and that doctor and then
you do this test and that test until they finally realize okay we just discovered you have cancer in your liver
in this case feelings of pain very often uh it it's quite late in the process by the time you start feeling pain
usually the cancer has spread and maybe it's not too late but it's going to be expensive and painful and problematic to
through my my feelings i want an algorithm that with biometric sensors is monitoring my health 24 hours a day
without my being aware of it it can potentially discover this liver cancer but it is just a tiny just a few
cells are beginning to to to to split and to spread and it's so easy and cheap and painless
to take care of it now instead of two years later when it's already spread and it's it's a big
the big temptation because it comes with the whole other the long tail of dangers i mean this
algorithm the the the healthcare system knows almost everything about you so one of the biggest
battles in the 21st century is likely to be between privacy and health and i guess that health is going to win
most people will be willing to give up a very significant amount of privacy in exchange for far better health care now
we do need to try and enjoy both worlds to create a system that gives us a very good healthcare but without compromising
our privacy keeping the yes you can use the data to tell me that there is a problem and and we should do this or
that to solve it but i don't want this data to be used for other purposes without my knowing it whether we can
reach such a balance and like you know have your cake and eat it too that's a big political question
definitely airs on the side of wanting the healthcare um you've talked really powerfully about story about how stories
like money which i don't think most people think of as a story um as being you know these tremendous things that
control all of our lives that point us all in the same direction that gives us sort of a common code by which to live
how can people take control of the story that they tell themselves about themselves which i find
is really just a story which we constantly construct and and embellish i mean you can say that the entire human
mind is a machine that constantly produces stories and especially one very important story which is my
story and different people have different specialized in different genres some people build their stories a
tragedy some people build their story as a comedy or as a drama but um in the end i the self is a story
identity my story has been outsourced to things like facebook that you build your facebook account
day just building a story and becoming extremely attached to it and and publicizing it to everybody and you tend
to make this fundamental mistake you think it's it's the this is really me and um so why is that a mistake
i'm actually really curious first of all if you take something like the profile that people create about themselves in
existence your actual reality both in reality and outer reality like the percentage of time you smile in your
and you know you go on some vacation um and you post the the images from the vacation so usually you're smiling in
your in your swimming suit on the beach with your girlfriend and boyfriend holding this cocktail and everything
with your boyfriend five minutes ago and then this is the image that everybody else is seeing and thinking oh they must
have such wonderful time and afterwards like a year later or two years later you look back and this is what you see
do you think there should be more there should there should definitely be more and what would be the outcome if we were
it's going to be very very painful and difficult i think it is worth the effort but it's just very difficult we
like yeah this is the story it flows and then when you actually see how a movie is produced this is insane like
you have this tiny bit of a scene you repeat it 50 times and sometimes you know you shoot this
scene this scene scene two comes after scene one but actually it was filmed long before that so sometimes you you
you feel the breakup of of the lovers before you film the the first meeting for all kinds of
scheduled reasons and locations so the the end result is completely seamless and perfect but it is actually made up
from all these tiny tiny disconnected bits that have been you know this is from here and this is from there and we
with the reality as it is is very very high it's very difficult it demands a lot of effort and it is often
very painful because you have to acknowledge many things about yourself that you don't want to acknowledge them
i don't know going to some retreat and just taking out a week or two from life to really observe inside to really
that i will be able to finally connect to my inner child and i will discover my true vocation in life and i will
the first thing you usually encounter is all the things you don't want to know about yourself there is a reason that
that that you don't want to know them i think it's worth the effort but it's a very very hard
delusional somebody is self-delusional the more likely they are to be happy you've said one of the big questions as
a historian you're trying to answer is as we've moved forward as a you know a species of society have we
actually gotten happier so there is some importance it sounds like that you place on happiness so why
then would you want people to do that hard work of facing the realities recognizing the things about themselves
that they don't necessarily want to recognize is that because you think it leads to more happiness i think that
a whole i mean ultimately this leads to things like wars and like genocide and like in empire and you know i come from
israel i come from the middle east so i am surrounded by millions of people who are killing each other because of all
kinds of fictional stories and delusions that they believe in so sometimes it's an important defensive
mechanism it's very difficult to live just with the raw truth all the time but the price of delusion and the price
of not being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality it adds up and eventually it adds up to things like
genocide and war that sounds like a pretty extraordinary price to pay yeah i would agree with you
faced with being put out of work that we are one of the useless class and we have to do this reinvention at a career level
you're living longer your career life is 50 60 70 80 years whatever that looks like in a time where every seven to ten
years like it's just it's a completely new world what do you think the human capacity for
that level of reinvention is well that's a very important question it has little to do with immortality
because even without immortality we are heading in the direction even if people if the lifespan remains as it is 80
one of the things many people don't realize about the ai revolution and the automation revolution they imagine it as
truck drivers and taxi drivers and doctors and whatever losing their jobs you have a few difficult years of
so what we are really going to face is a cascade of ever bigger revolutions in the job market and in many other
a big disruption in 2025 you have an even bigger disruption in 2035 and even bigger one in 2045 and so forth and if
you look say the job market so okay you were a truck driver and they no longer need you but there is new
demand for yoga teachers so you somehow reinvent yourself at age 40. i'm no longer truck driver now i'm a yoga
thank you very much we now have these amazing applications connected with biometric sensors to your body they know
exactly what you're doing with every tiny muscle as you do this posture or that posture
yourself again as a designer of virtual world games and you do it somehow but 10 years later
you have to do it again because this too has now been automated and even if you get support from the
government and there is all these uh education for for adult uh a system the really big question is again it's
and you know when you're 20 what you're doing is basically to reinvent yourself or to invent yourself
it's even more difficult but you sometimes but you somehow do it but when you get to be 40 50 60 it becomes more
and more difficult you have more to let go of i've invested so much in building this career this personality
i don't know whether we can do it yeah that is the question that i think we'll ultimately be forced to answer
we're talking to somebody who's 18 right now they're trying to decide do i go to college yes or no should they go to
that's it's a very difficult question the first thing they should realize is that nobody really knows
what the job market would need in 20 years the best investment i would say is in emotional intelligence
and in mental balance and these kinds of skills of how to keep changing throughout your life
but these are the most important tools so whatever you choose you can go to law school you can go to ballet school but
in developing my emotional intelligence my mental balance my ability to keep changing and learning and reinventing
that you can fold up and move to another location very quickly and easily that's a great
analogy so given that it's so hard to predict the future you've talked a lot about the
what is the role that a science fiction writer can play or storyteller filmmaker whatever the case may be
most people their understanding of these technologies and their potential for good or for bad it really comes from
in understanding and preparing us for these kinds of of development there is almost no talk in the uh political
arena about ai and biotechnology the scientific community is of course very deeply engaged with it
it would be very difficult for them to understand the professional jargon and all the statistics and and so forth
what's what could what could happen uh ranging like some of my favorites are my all-time favorite is brave new world
by aldo saxley which was written back in the early 1930s and i think is the most prophetic and profound
i totally understand all right so before i ask my last question tell these guys where they can
i want to bring more clarity to the public conversation on what's happening in the world
and what i i see my mission as bringing clarity to the public discussion especially in terms of focusing people's
attention on the most important questions i try to give some answers too but i don't care a lot if people don't
agree with me about the answers about the solutions the important thing i think is is to agree about the questions
and i would end by saying that there are three big challenges to humankind in the 21st century
there are nuclear war climate change and technological disruption and these should be the first
three items on the political agenda of every country and this is not the case right now i would like it to be the case
all right guys when i say that you're going to learn just an absolute metric ton of stuff from this man dive into his
first three books they are absolutely extraordinary you will learn so much about where we've
come from where we're going and where we are today that it will give you the ability to look at yourself in a totally
new way to understand yourself not even just at the operating system level but like at the kernel level it was so
fascinating to see him walk us through that entire lineage it's unlike anything that i've read
before and reading the books as a trilogy and understanding um how they all work together is is breathtaking so
i highly highly highly encourage that and the fact that he's out there in a populist way getting people to ask these
questions i think is so critical and he threw out go back to the beginning of this episode he threw out some amazing
business ideas without i think even meaning to but i thought wow somebody could actually run with these and they
would be extraordinary and that's just the way his mind works he really is one of the most profound
thinkers of our time dive in he's accessible and that is one of the most beautiful things and remember he's a
historian so the way that he's putting this all in context is is truly extraordinary and once you understand
things at why they are the way they are then it just brings a whole new ability to see through the lies fake news the
stories we tell ourselves all of the just natural human attachments to really come to an understanding of the way the
world actually is and once you understand that then you can begin to move in a way that makes sense and
allows you to reach your own goals all right if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends
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