- And ladies and gentleman we begin with the session, have
you already, can I hear a nice, loud round of applause, wonderful. (audience claps) Wonderful, may I please call on stage Vice-Chairperson of the India
Today group, Kallie Purie to begin our next session,
and please put your hands together as I invite our
guest for the evening, best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari. Please put your hands together
to welcome Kalli and Yuval. (crowd applauds) - Good evening, I hope you
guys have had a very happy, happy hour because a little intoxication is needed for this next session. War is obsolete. You're more likely to die by committing suicide than in conflict. Famine is over. You're more likely to die
over-eating than by starvation. Death is just a technical problem. Immortality is in. Forget about computers,
humans can be hacked, in fact in 200 years
there will be no humans, and ladies and gentleman this is just the diesel for his book. Shocking predictions such
as these about our future have made Professor Yuval
Harari a global rage. His two best-selling books,
Sapiens and Homo Deus have been published in 40
different languages and are quoted widely by intellectuals
and world leaders alike. He has a PhD in History from Oxford but he's a historian
who predicts the future. So I'm really not sure sure what Oxford' doing in the History Department there. I am especially happy to
welcome him to the Complex because he believes it's
the human ability to believe and tell stories, a
common network of stories, that makes us special
to other living beings. It's our human spark, our
secret source, it's what make us superior to other living beings. And journalists at the
heart of it all are actually story-tellers, so making a couple of jumps I've decided what he's
really saying is that media and journalists are what
makes humanity tick. (crowd applauds) And know you know media
needs all the support these days, so thank you Yuval. I now have the great pleasure
of inviting Professor, who has come back traveled to the future and come back to tell the
tale for his keynote address. (audience applauds) - So hello everybody. Let me just make friends
with this computer and I'll be with you in a moment. Yes, so what I want to talk
to you today is about the role of nationalism and nations in
the world of the 21st Century. Until a short time ago it seemed
that nationalism was waning and that humankind is on a path to becoming a single,
global, peaceful community. But now nationalism is making
a comeback and not just in some remote corners
of the world but also in the hegemonic powers of Western Europe, of North America, of
Russia, China, and India. What does the revival
of nationalism signify? Does nationalism offer real solutions to the unprecedented
problems of the 21st Century? Or is it a kind of escapist
indulgence that might doom humankind and the
entire ecosystem to disaster? Before addressing this question we need to dispel a very widespread myth. Contrary to what many people
think, nationalism is not a natural and eternal
part of the human psyche, or of human biology, it's
actually a very, very recent evolutionary development; yes
homo sapiens is a socia animal by nature but for millions of years, until about 5000 years ago, humans
lived in small, intimate communities, in which
everybody knew everybody else. Only the last 5000 years or so,
these small clans and tribes unite to form larger and larger groups, until they formed large nations comprising millions of strangers. Whereas the basic characteristic
of the ancient clans and tribes was that they
were intimate communities. Everybody really knew everybody else. Nations are communities of strangers. You don't know most other
people in your nation. I don't the eight million other people who share my Israeli citizenship. You don't know the 1.2
or 1.3 billion people who share your Indian citizenship. They are your brothers, and sisters, and friends only in the imagination. So if nationalism and
nations are not natural to humans why and how did they appear? They appeared not a long time
ago because nations can solve large-scale problems that
small tribes cannot solve, and nations can utilize
large-scale opportunities that small, intimate clans cannot utilize. The first big groups of
people, kingdoms and nations, appeared about four to
five thousand years ago in the Indus Valley, the Nile Valley, the Euphrates Valley, and
the Yellow River Valley. Until that point those
river valleys were populated by many small, independent tribes. The river was the
life-blood of these tribes. It was the source of their prosperity, but it was also a source of great danger. If there was not enough
water in the river, there was drought, and
people starved to death. If there was too much water
in the river then the river overflowed, flooding villages, and fields, and granaries, and again
people starved to death. There was nothing that the
small, independent tribes could do about these problems,
because each tribe commanded just a very small part of the river, and could mobilize only
a few hundred people to dig canals, and build
dams, and so forth. This was one of the main
reasons why the small tribes coalesced to form large
kingdoms and nations. And these nations now commanded
thousands of kilometers and millions of people, and
they could build the large dams, and canals, and reservoirs, and granaries, that helped humans control
the river and that increased the security and prosperity of the people who lived in these kingdoms
and in these nations. And indeed for thousands of
years nations provided people with many essential services
and with a greater degree of security and of prosperity. The milder forms of nationalism
and patriotism have been among the most benevolent
of human creations because they enabled
cooperation between strangers. They enabled me to care
about people that I never met and never will meet, and to cooperate effectively with them
towards common goals. And this was very good. Some people imagine
that without nationalism we will all be living
in a peaceful paradise, but actually far more
likely without nationalism we would be living in tribal camps, and indeed if you look today at the world, then most of the peaceful
and prosperous nations of the world like Sweden,
and Switzerland, and Japan they have a very strong
sense of nationalism. Countries that don't have a
strong sense of nationalism like Afghanistan, and Somalia, and Congo are usually chaotic and poor. So the key question to ask
about the role of nations and nationalism in the 21st
Century is whether nations are still the right framework
to address our main problems and opportunities and to ensure
the security and prosperity of humans and the answer is no. Nations are no longer the right framework. Nations today in the 21st Century are like the small, independent tribes that lived along the Indus Valley 5000 years ago. We, all humans now on
Earth, we now live along a single, global river,
a river of information, of scientific discoveries, and
of technological inventions. This river is the source of
our prosperity but it is also a great threat to human civilization and to the survival of the human specie. No nation can hope to regulate this river of information and innovations by itself. All the big challenges we
now face are global in nature and therefore they
demand global solutions. These are the nuclear challenge,
the ecological challenge, and the challenge of
disruptive technologies. So let's start by looking
at the nuclear challenge, which is the most
familiar challenge to us, because it has been with us since 1945. Since the 1950s and 60s
it has become very clear that no single nation can protect its self or the world against the nuclear danger. During the Cold War many
people believed that humankind is simply incapable of
rising up to the challenge of nuclear weapons and they
thought that sooner or later the Cold War will turn into a very hot, nuclear war which will destroy human civilization and
much of life on Earth. As we all know this did not happen. Humankind managed, at least
until today, to prevent nuclear war and the Cold War
actually ended peacefully, but this was not due to the
actions of a single nation, like the United States, it was
due to the collective action of many nations, the US and
Soviet Union, and China, and India, and then an aligned movement; they all contributed to changing
the most fundamental rules of geopolitics; for thousands
of years war seemed to be an inevitable and natural part
of international relations. War was the standard
tool that every country used in order to advance its interests. But since 1945 thanks
to the combined actions of many nations war has been declining. Since 1945, there has not been a single war between great powers. Few borders have been redrawn
through naked aggression and many countries, not all
countries, but many countries, simply stopped using war as
a standard political tool. In 2017, last year, despite
horrendous conflicts in some hotspots like Syria,
and Yemen, and Ukraine, actually fewer people died
in 2017 from human violence than from obesity, or car
accidents, or suicide. For the first time in history you are now your own worst enemies. You have a greater chance
of killing yourself, statistically, you have a greater chance of killing yourself than of being killed by any solider, or terrorist, or criminal. Sugar is now a greater danger
than gunpowder and you are more likely to die from
drinking too much Coca-Cola than from being blown up by Al-Qaeda and this is all very good news. But there is no assurance,
there is no guarantee that this will continue;
we have to safeguard this amazing achievement
in the coming decades. The reason that humankind
avoided nuclear war and that war in general
declined, it wasn't because some God came to our
help, it wasn't because of some divine miracles, it
was because of human wisdom; humans making wise and decisions. But there is not guarantee
that we'll continue to make wise decisions,
we, or at least some of us, and some of our leaders might start making very stupid decisions. You should never
underestimate human stupidity. (audience laughs) As an historian I can tell
you that human stupidity has been one of the most
powerful forces in history and it is still a very powerful force. So in order to ensure the
survival and prosperity of human civilization in
the 21st Century we need to continue privileging the
prevention of nuclear war over the interests of any
one particular nation. Zealous nationalists who
cry my country first, my country's the most important,
they should ask themselves how can your country by
itself, without the help of a robust system of
international cooperation, how can it protect itself and
the world from nuclear war? It cannot. The second big global challenge that we are facing is the ecological challenge. We are destabilizing the ecological system to such a degree that
we now face the danger of climate change and
of ecological collapse. For thousands of years
homo sapiens proved itself to be an ecological serial killer. We have been responsible
for the extinction of numerous animals, and
plants, and other organisms. Now we are putting in danger
the survival of our own specie as well as of much of life on
Earth, and whereas nuclear war is just a future potential,
it might happen, but not yet, it hadn't happened yet, climate change and ecological collapse
are a present reality. It is already happening all around us. And if things continue in the
present course in 50 years it might be impossible to live in Mumbai, either because the Indian Ocean will rise and swallow up much of the
city, or because it will be so hot that nobody could
live here, at least not in the hot season of
March, and April, and May. And this is something
that no single nation can prevent by itself, however powerful, because nations are not
ecologically suffering. India for example is a very
powerful nation but it is not an independent nation when
it comes to the ecology. Ecologically it is dependent on what other countries are doing. There are many things that
the Indian government can do to help slow down or
prevent climate change. It can raise taxes on carbon emissions. It can encourage the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It can invest in research and development in the relevant fields
but all these policies, good policies, if they are
adopted only by the government of India, and China,
and Russia, and the US and so forth continue
with business as usual then Mumbai will still be destroyed. To save itself from ecological disaster there is a need for global cooperation. But the biggest challenge
of all is probably the third challenge of
technological disruption. In the coming decades
artificial intelligence and bioengineering are
going to create enormous new opportunities as well
as enormous new problems. To give a few examples,
one prominent example is that the rise of artificial intelligence might completely disrupt
the global job market. As AI, and computers, and
robots outperform humans in more and more jobs,
in more and more tasks, billions of people might be pushed out of the job market and
we will see the creation of an enormous new
class, the useless class. Just as the industrial
revolution in the 19th Century created the older working
class, the automation revolution of the 21st Century might
create the useless class. Now useless, not from the
viewpoint of their mother, or husband, or children,
no human is ever useless from the viewpoint of their
loved ones, but useless from the viewpoint of the
economic and political system. We might have millions,
hundreds of millions of people who have no economic
value, and therefore also no political power and this
is extremely dangerous. There are all kinds of
ideas, what to about this. One popular idea is to have
universal basic income. The government will tax the
big corporations who will become very wealthy from all
these robots and computers and use these taxes to
provide unemployed workers with basic income or basic services. Now this is a very interesting
idea but to be effective it must be implemented on a global level, not on a national level, because
the automation revolution will have very different impact on different regions and nations. Some regions, like the
high-tech hubs of Silicon Valley will become fabulously wealthy, even much more wealthy
than they are today. But other regions, other
countries, that today depend on cheap manual labor
might completely collapse and then the question is do
you think that American voters and taxpayers will agree
that the US government will raise taxes on Apple,
and Google, and Microsoft in California and then send
the money to Bangladesh to pay unemployed
textile workers in Dhaka? This is extremely unlikely
but if we don't have a global solution to this problem then yes some nations might be very rich but other nations could
completely collapse and the resulting chaos, and violence, and immigration waves will
destabilize the entire world. Another global problem created
by the new technologies might be the development of
autonomous weapon systems, killer robots; this is
one of the most dangerous technological developments
but again no nation can prevent this from happening by itself because no nation has a monopoly
over science and technology and the research and
development in relevant fields. If one nation, let's
say the US, places a ban on the development of killer
robots, but other nations like China or Russia develop
such weapons then very soon the US itself will feel
compelled to break its own ban because it wouldn't like
to stay behind, especially in a xenophobic dog eats dog world. Even if one country chooses
a high-risk, high-gain technological path, nobody
could afford to remain behind. Everybody will be forced to follow. So if we want to avoid
such a race to the bottom that endangers all of humanity, we need some kind of global
loyalty, and global identity. But maybe the most important
impact of the new technologies is that they will change
the very meaning of humanity and they will change the basic
rules of the game of life. For four billion years,
that's a very long time, four billion years, nothing fundamental changed in the basic rules of life. All of life for this immense
period was subject to the laws of natural selection and
of organic biochemistry. It doesn't matter if you were
an amoeba, or a dinosaur, a banana plant, or as homo
sapiens, you were made of organic compounds and you evolved
by natural selection. This did not change. But in the coming decades
it is going to change. Science is about to
replace natural selection with intelligent design as
the chief motor of evolution, not the intelligent design
of some God above the clouds, but our intelligent design,
and the intelligent design of our clouds, the IBM
Cloud, the Google Cloud, they will be the driving
forces of evolution. And at the same time life
is about to break out of the limited organic
realm and start spreading into the vastness of the inorganic realm. We are about to create the
first inorganic lifeforms after four billion years of evolution and in the process our own
specie, homo sapiens is likely to disappear, not because
we will destroy ourselves but because will change
and upgrade ourselves into something very different. In a century or two Earth
will probably be dominated by entities that are far
more different from us than we are different from
neanderthals or from chimpanzees. Today we still share with
neanderthals and chimpanzees most of our bodily structures, of our physical abilities,
and our mental faculties: our hands, our eyes, our
brains, our social relations, our emotions, they are very similar to those of other apes and other mammals. But within a century
or two, the combination of artificial intelligence
and bioengineering will create completely
new bodily, and physical, and mental traits that completely break from the hominoid and mammalian mold. Consciousness itself might be disconnected from any organic structure,
or alternatively, we might see the decoupling of intelligence
from consciousness. And Earth will be dominated by entities that are super-intelligent
but completely non-conscious: highly intelligent
computer programs that have no minds, no feelings, no emotions. So really humankind is
about to gain divine powers of creation; we are in the
process of becoming gods and the big question that
faces us in the coming decades is what to do with our new godlike powers? We need ethical guidelines
and goals, and nationalism just cannot provide us with
the necessary guidelines and goals because it thinks
on the completely wrong level. It thinks on a different level. Nationalism thinks on the
level of territorial conflicts between nations lasting
decades and centuries, like the conflict between
India and Pakistan, or between Israel and the Arab world. But here we are talking about cosmic processes lasting billions of years. We talk about the end
of one cosmic process, organic life evolving
by natural selection, and the beginning of a
completely new cosmic process, inorganic life shaped
by intelligent design. What has Israeli
nationalism to say about it? What has Indian, or French, or Russian nationalism to say about it? Nothing, because they are
thinking on the wrong level. To address these kind of questions we need a cosmic, not a nationalist perspective. To conclude then, the basic
idea of this talk is very simple that global problems need global solutions and nationalism just cannot provide us with the necessary solutions. It does not mean that
nationalism has no role to play in the 21st Century or that
we should abolish all nations and turn humankind into some
kind of homogenous gray goop. There is still plenty of room in the world for the good kind of patriotism that celebrates the
uniqueness of my nation and my special obligations towards it. But we shouldn't confuse being
unique with being supreme. Yes my nation is unique,
every nation is unique and I have special obligations
towards it but it doesn't make my nation supreme and
it doesn't deny the fact that I have obligations
towards other groups as well. In order to survive and
flourish in the 21st Century humankind, humans must complement
their national loyalties with an obligation, with a loyalty towards a global
community and a person can and should have loyalty
simultaneously to many groups, even today a person
can and should be loyal to her family, her profession, her neighborhood, and her nation. So why not add humankind and
planet Earth to this list? (crowd applauds) Now of course it's true that when you have multiple identities and multiple loyalties sometimes there are conflicts, but whoever told you that life was simple? Deal with it, it's difficult. In the past nations evolved
because humans had problems they couldn't solve on
the local, tribal level. In the 21st Century nations
are like the old tribes. They are no longer the right framework to address our most important problems. We are already living in a global word. We have a global ecology. We have a global economy
and we have global science. But we still have only
nationalist politics and this mismatch prevents
the political system from countering our main problems. To have effective politics
we need to do either of two things, either we
de-globalize the ecology, the economy, and the
science we make them local, or we globalize our politics. Now it is obviously, actually
impossible to de-globalize the ecology and the march of science. And it will be extremely costly
to de-globalize the economy. Therefore the only real solution is to globalize our politics, thank you. (audience applauds) - So you talked about
globalizing politics. I want to talk the first question on that. Is war really obsolete
and what do you have to say about all this
talk of my nuclear button is bigger than your nuclear button? - Well war is not obsolete in the sense that it can erupt any moment
and I come from the Middle East so I know perfectly well
that there are still some very violent parts
in the world today. War has been declining
over the last few decades but as I said it's not
because of some miracle, it's not because some law of nature, it's because of wise human decisions. And if humans start making
stupid decisions war will-- - [Kalli] Global stupidity? - Hmm? - Global stupidity. - You don't need global
stupidity, when it comes to wisdom, you need global wisdom, when it comes to stupidity, one is enough. - [Kallii] We seem to have two. - I don't know how you are talking about-- - Okay, how do you think
politics can be globalized? Are you thinking of more empowered UN? What kind of models of global governance have you got in mind? - Well the key issue is
not to try and build some global government or to empower the UN, it's probably going to be
difficult if not impossible. The main issue is for
people in every country to start caring and
privileging global questions. You can have a political
party in Israel, or in India, or in the US, which
main part of its agenda is to address global
issues, especially out of the understanding that
this affects our nation too. This affects our country too. It's really a question of
what do you care about? What do you think about in the same way that you can have religious parties and you care very deeply
about religious questions, so you can care in the same
way about global warming, or about the danger of killer robots. - So how do you propose
in a world like today, when so many of us are
fighting over micro-identities even in our own country, I
mean you suffer it in Israel, we suffer it in India, how do you think we can encourage a loyalty to humankind? - Oh, there are so many things you can do. I mean, I'm an historian so
one of the things I can suggest is start teaching in school
the history of humankind and not just the history of your nation, or your culture, or your religion. I mean if I child from
an early age gets used to thinking about everything
in terms of what happened to my nation, how is
this affecting my nation, then it's not a big surprise
that when this child grows up he or she still thinks about the world all the time in terms of my nation. But if from early age you're
used to, you learn the story of humankind, as well as the story of your particular group,
this can change the way that people think also
about present problems. - Isn't this quite difficult? Because I don't know whether
you're facing it in Israel but we face this problem in India where history is constantly rewritten depending on which government is in power. So children are actually quite confused. (audience laughs and applauds) - Yeah it's a very common
problem, I think that in much of the world
what people call history is actually mythology and people
have a very difficult time distinguishing history from
mythology and in other fields of science the scientists
have important authority. If you want to build a nuclear bomb you go to nuclear physicists, you have respect to what these nuclear
physicists are telling you. But with history in most
countries nobody wants to listen to the historians
because they are the most problematic when it comes
to national history; they have a habit of
dispelling, of undermining your most favorite
stories and mythologies. - So is it true that you
think that some of the most favorite stories, like the Bible, is one of the precursors of fake news? - Yes, basically with all the talk today about fake news some
fake news lasts forever. (audience laughs) If a thousand people
believe it for one month it's fake news; if millions
of people believe it for a thousand years,
that's not fake news. That's the truth or that's the
religious truth, or whatever. Now I'm not saying that all
religions or all religious texts are fables, there is
sometimes a lot of truth, and a lot of very deep
wisdom in some of these texts and stories, but we need
to be able to distinguish more clearly reality from fiction, and this is something
that we do in physics, and this is something
that we do in medicine, but when it comes to history
a lot of people and especially a lot of politicians, they don't want to distinguish reality from fiction. - So I'm going to take you
down a very contentious issue. One of our most famous
mythologies is the Ramayan and it talks about a bridge
between India and Sri Lanka, and with the new God, Google has proven that this bridge actually
existed or does exist. So what would you say to
that, now that's mythology, and science, and fiction, everything kind of coming together so where's the--? - I think that the test is very simple. If you have evidence then
I'm willing to believe. If you don't have any
evidence then I'm skeptical. (audience applauds) - So the Ramayan is real guys. - One true fact doesn't mean
that everything is true. (audience laughs) I mean okay if I take
the Bible for example so there are many incidents
mentioned in the Bible that we have today very strong historical and archeological evidence
saying that this really happened. The Bible says that the
Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and
the temple in Jerusalem and we have very strong
evidence that this is true. But for events in the Garden
of Eden, who is the Eve and the Serpent and all
that, that's a bit-- - Exaggerated. - That's a bit more difficult. - How do religious leaders react to some of your conclusions? - Depending on whom, I mean
some are very open-minded and some are close-minded, I mean I think that you cannot
generalized about any group of people and that's true also about religious people or
about religious leaders. So I can't really make a generalization I have encountered some
very religious people in Israel who are extremely
open and also I've encountered some secular people who
are very closed minded. So it depends on the person,
not on the views of the world. - [Kalli] So do you believe in God? - [Yuval] No. - Okay, so you don't believe in God. - The word is problematic,
there are two kinds of gods in the world and people tend to mix them. There is one God, they mystery God about which we know nothing. The chief characteristic
of this God is that he is mysterious and humans can't understand and can't say anything about this God and like people asking me
who started the Big Bang, or how did life started, all the things that science doesn't know,
people say oh this is God. And this is the mysterious
God; the chief characteristic of the mysterious God is that
we know nothing about him, or her, or it, and I'm
perfectly happy with this God. Then there is a completely
opposite kind of God, the concrete law-giver
god, and about this god we know far too much, we
know exactly what this god thinks about female fashion,
about human sexuality, about who you should vote
in elections, everything. (audience applauds) And it's like a magic trick,
if you have a magician that tries to fool you,
shows you one card and then you don't notice he changes
a card to some other card. So it's the same with God. When you ask people about God
they say it's a big mystery and we don't know and
science can't explain this and that, okay and then
somehow they then switch gods, and then because of this
women should put a hat on their head, and two men shouldn't have sex with one another, and you should vote for this party or that party. And this is the dangerous trick. And this is the God in
which I don't believe. I think that if there is a force-- (audience applauds) if there is a force responsible
for the great mystery of life, and the universe,
and the black holes, and the galaxies, I don't think he really cares about female dress code. (audience laughs and applauds) - Can we talk a little
bit more about this force. You are somebody who
practices the Vipassana, does that help you get
closer to the force? Is that where you get closer to the force? - No, I practice the Vipassana meditation to see reality more clearly,
to be able to see what is reality, what is really
happening right here, right now. I'm doing this as any
kind of religious exercise to get in touch with
this force or that force, with this story or that story, it's really for me then
the least dogmatic thing I ever encountered in life
is Vipassana meditation. It just tells you, just observe
what is really happening right now as it is without
trying to impose any story on it, without trying to change it any way. I remember the first
time I went to a course and the first instruction
I got from the teacher was observe your breath, not observe God, not observe the soul,
just observe your breath coming in and out of your nostrils and just accept the
breath, whatever it is. If it's strong, if it's weak,
if it comes from this nostril or that nostril it doesn't matter, just observe the reality as it is. And what amazed me was that I couldn't do it for more than 10 seconds. Immediately the mind ran away
to some story, some fantasy, some memory, if I can't observe
the reality of my own breath for 10 seconds how can I
hope to observe the reality of the global political system, of the global economic system? - So that's exactly the question. - Yes so I try, I try to do
both and I've been practicing for 18 years now and it's been very-- - More than 10 seconds now? - More than 10 seconds I try. Sometimes I succeed. This year I went to a 60
days course here in India. - 60 days? - 60 days, I didn't stay
focused for 60 days of course, the mind keeps running
away but I keep trying and I don't think I could
have written any of my books without the help of the
focus and the discipline and the clarity that this
kind of meditation gives. - So when you're deep in meditation, I'm dying to ask this question
and we have quite a lot of people from Bollywood here
today, so they've obviously seen some of these films,
does everything start looking like in algorithms and
codes like in Matrix? You know he evolves? - No you have a pain in your
stomach and your knee hurts and the mind runs away
to some memory that oh, I should have said this,
I should have said that and this is how you get to know yourself. I think many people make
a mistake about meditation that they think meditation is a tool to get all kinds of special experiences. Like I go to an amusement
park and this is another kind of amusement park, I'll use
meditation to have all kinds of special experiences,
and actually I think the most important part of
meditation is to get to know the most ordinary, daily, natural patterns of your mind and of your body, to get to know your anger,
your pain, your joy, your boredom, because this
is what you have to deal with in life; if meditation
is a kind of vacation like for a couple of days I
have these special experiences but then for most of the
year I still have to deal with my anger and my boredom
it doesn't really help me. - Is this the purpose of life? - Is this the purpose of life? - [Kalli] As you see it? - Well I think the key to
a good life is to be able to observe reality as
it is, to really know what is the truth about
myself and about the world without running away to
all kinds of fantasies, and stories, and fictions,
and I think if you can observe to some degree reality as
it is you're won't just be a much better person
but you'll probably be a much more peaceful and happy person because the deep source
of so much of our personal and collective problems
is in the fantasies that we create and then we
mistake them for reality, and then we try to impose them on reality and we get extremely upset
when it doesn't work, when reality doesn't conform
to our favorite fantasy. - But it's also part of the paradox 'cause what you're saying is
sit quietly in meditation, go in, and then we have
all this technology constantly calling out to us;
I mean everyone here I'm sure would agree with me that if
you phone is away from you for five minutes, you're
like where's my phone? You're checking your phone 80 times a day. - Exactly, so observe that
and what's happening to you when you're away from your phone? What's happening in your body? You will see that there are a
lot of unpleasant sensations in your body at the time,
what's happening in your mind? This is how you get to know yourself. You get to know yourself not
by observing some blissful, metaphysical, mystical experience,
you get to know yourself by observing what happens to
me when the phone is away, and once you witness how
much misery I am inflicting on myself by my own
habits this can help you in changing these harmful habits. - So one of the things you've said before is that suffering is a
sign of consciousness. If something suffers then
it's real and it's conscious, then is our purpose to suffer
rather than to be happy? - No, no, no, certainly
not, I am not saying that we are here to suffer,
we can liberate ourselves from suffering; what I said
in some of what I wrote is that the best test to know
whether an entity is real or whether it's a fiction
invented by politicians, and religious leaders, and so forth, is to ask can this entity suffer? A nation, for example,
is just a human creation. It's a fictional story created by humans. How do you know? Just ask yourself can a nation suffer? If you lose a war does the nation suffer? No. The nation has no mind, no
feelings, no sensations; soldiers who die in war they suffer. Civilians who lose their
house or their loved ones in war they suffer, animals can suffer. But a nation cannot suffer. It's just a story we created. So this is the idea of
the test of suffering as a test to know whether
something is real or not. Similarly, if you have some
temple and somebody destroys the temple, the temple doesn't suffer. Only people suffer. The people who care about
this temple when they hear that it is destroyed they have
a very unpleasant sensation in the body; they have
very unpleasant emotions in the mind, they suffer, but the temple it's just stones, and bricks,
and wood, and so forth. - But it represents a
certain amount of emotions. Now there's a temple in
Israel which is connected to everything, we have
a temple here as well, which is kind of connected
to everything, so-- - Yeah but we invest the
temple with importance. We suffer when the temple is destroyed. We rejoice when the temple is built. It's really about us, not about the temple and I would say also to people
in Israel who care very much about Temple, that the deep
purpose of a place like a temple is to bring peace and
harmony to the world. I go to a temple to
experience peace and harmony. Now if a temple brings violence
and disharmony to the world it's a broken temple,
what do you need it for? - Thank you. (audience applauds) So I'm gonna switch tracts,
I'm going to ask you what does the next entity
that is not human look like? - By definition we cannot say. It maybe beyond our imagination. Anything that we today
can imagine and understand it's still on the same level as us. The next phase of evolution,
the next kind of entities, they are beyond our imagination. It's just like if you go
200,000 years to the past and you meet a bunch of
neanderthals, and you try to explain to them the modern world,
they won't understand you. You try to explain to them
the global economic system. We have corporations and they have shares, we exchange in the stock exchange and you can use money to buy these shares and become very wealthy, and
then the neanderthals will go, what, what are you talking about? We understand what a
mammoth and an elephant is, or what giraffe is, but
what is a corporation? They can't understand this. In a similar way we cannot
understand the type of entities and societies that will dominate the world in say two or three centuries. - So let's say it goes in stages. It doesn't just happen
overnight and you have access to biotech and intelligent
design, what are the few things you will augment in your self? - What to augment in my self? I think they key issue
is that, and this is also the big danger, we just
don't understand ourselves well enough in order to answer this question in a responsible way. I can have all kinds of
fantasies about changing my body and upgrading my brain
and my mind; we don't really understand what
the consequences will be, and this is again one of the big dangers that I didn't have time
to address in my talk, that in the past humans had
the ability to manipulate the world outside them,
but they didn't understand the complexity of the ecological system so all the changes we made in the world have caused ecological collapse, and we might do the same thing inside. We will gain the ability
to manipulate our bodies, our brains, our emotions, our
minds, but because we don't understand the complexity
of the human body and especially the human
mind all these changes might result in an internal
ecological collapse, in a mental collapse; so
my hope for myself is first to understand my inner world before I start manipulating and upgrading it. - Okay, that's fantastic. (audience applauds) So I wanna get a let bit
onto the biotech side. I wanna ask what do you mean when you say we'll be able to hack into a human? - Well the basic wisdom
today, the life science, says that humans have a
biochemical operating system. Our desires, our decisions,
our feelings, they are not the result of some free will,
or some metaphysical spirit, they are the result of biochemical processes in the body and in the brain. Until today we didn't have
enough knowledge and information to understand it so the human
body was like a black box. We don't know what's happening inside. But we are now gaining the
biological understanding and the computing power
necessary to hack human beings. People talk a lot about hacking
computers, and smartphones, and bank accounts, but actually
the really important thing that is now happening: we
are hacking human beings. We are deciphering how the body
works, how the brain works, how people make decisions,
and very soon, governments and corporations might be in the position that they understand what's happening inside us better than we understand and therefore they can manipulate us and control us and we
won't even realize it. Until today governments could control your external activities, they
could see where you go, what you read, what you
say, but it didn't really understand what was happening inside. Very soon they will be able to understand what is happening inside
and if we are not careful this will lead to the creation
of digital dictatorships, of total surveillance regimes, in which resistance is
absolutely impossible, because if you just think
about resisting they know. Just think about a place like
North Korea, in 20 years, or 50 years were everybody
have to wear a bracelet, a biometric bracelet which
monitors their blood pressure, their brain activity all
the time, and if you listen to a speech by Kim Jong-un
and the bracelet identifies the signs of anger, that's the end of you. (audience laughs) - So there has been a lot of
debate around biometric data in India because we have a
new ID card called Aadhaar, which takes your fingerprint
and it takes the iris scan, it's also linked to our mobile phone, to our bank account, to our voter card, to our bank card, etc,
etc, and it's mandatory. So most of us have had to succumb to it. Is this the first step
towards digital dictatorship? - Well maybe yes and maybe no. No technology is deterministic. Every technology has both
positive and negative potential and it would be foolish to
give up all the enormous positive potential of biotechnology just because of the negative scenarios. Just as it would've
been foolish to give up the inventions of previous
ages, just because they could support a dictatorship. If you think about radio,
so in Nazi Germany radio was the main propaganda tool
of the regime, like everyday Hitler, or Goebbels, or
somebody would go on the radio and give speeches to millions of Germans, and this is how they are brainwashed. Does this mean that radio is bad and we should destroy our radio sets? No. You can use radio also for a lot a good and it's the same with the biotechnology. I don't want people to become
scared of the technology and to just think they
can stop it or abolish it. It won't happen. The key is to understand
that we have options. We have political options
regarding each technology and we should be aware
of all the possibilities and hopefully make the right choice. - Thank you, I'd like
throw some questions out to the audience, is
there a question, okay. - So my question is not
about artificial intelligence but about natural stability
which you touched upon several times, so on the one
hand you say human beings have this incredible capacity to be stupid and change the course
of the world at times, on the other hand you just
mentioned that we're nothing but a biochemically driven organism and no such thing as free
will exists, and in fact neuroscience has shown
that in the brain actually you can report potentials half a second before we are even aware of our decisions, so everything's coming
from the subconscious, how do you reconcile the
two and in the future, should criminals be punished if there's no such thing as free will? - Well I think that science
is now proving beyond reasonable doubt that the
old concept of free will is a myth; that at least in the old sense of what free will means,
that you have some soul or spirit inside that can make
decisions completely freely this has no meaning and
no scientific validity, and I think that it will
require that we change our legal system from a
legal system that is based on the idea of
responsibility and punishment to deterrence, prevention, and correction. Even if there is no free will
it's still a very good idea to put a murderer in prison,
especially if there is no free will and somebody has
proven that he has a tendency to murder then it's very
important to protect society against that and at the
same time if that person is not ultimately responsible
for his gene, for his neurons, for his brain, then what
we should strive towards is curing, or helping this
person rather than punishing. So it still means that this
person needs to be isolated from society and there is
still also room for deterrence because part of the input that goes into this very complex system is I know that if I do this I will be put in prison and this still affects my decisions. So even if you don't
accept the traditional view of free will there is still
much room for a legal system just based on a different
principle, but I think the really deeper understanding
with regard to free will is how we relate to
our desires and wishes. Until now because of
the belief in free will people tended to give enormous
importance to their desires and wishes, this is like
the most important thing in the world is what I desire. This is a reflection of
my metaphysical free will and people fly to the
moon and wage World War because of their desires and if we realize that these desires are
actually the product of processes beyond our control often, and they don't represent
anything mystical, they really represent all
kinds of biochemical processes in our body maybe we
will be less obsessive about our desires and wishes,
which I think will help us to be more responsible and to live a more harmonious and more peaceful life. - The lady in the green
in the table in the first. - Going back to the subject
of Raman and the mention of the bridge between
ancient Ceylon and India, and then Google validating it, would you say that a lot of mythology is based on ancient tribal memory? - Well some mythology certainly
preserves ancient facts, ancient events, now again
from all over the world, historians and archeologists
have many examples of all kinds of mythologies that preserve such real events, factual events. But again we need to be very careful. Every event, every claim needs to be examined on its own merits. If as in the example I
gave before, if I have strong evidence that
one thing in the Bible, the Babylonian Conquest of
Jerusalem really happened, this doesn't prove that
another thing in the Bible, let's say the events
in the Garden of Eden, or the Exodus, or some miracle,
that they are also true. People very often mix together
real events with fictions in order to create myth
and I guess this is true of the Ramayana, in Mahabharata, and all other mythologies
around the world as well. - So a question right to
the other side of the room. Only if you can catch it. - Yeah, yeah, I caught it. Okay my question is do
you ever see a scenario where a political party's
views would resonate across different geographies
and different countries, and whether there will ever
be a situation where one party would rule multiple countries
and multiple geographies? - Sorry, Raji can you repeat the question. - There as an echo so, oh yeah, yeah, I understand, okay. So the question was
about a political party-- - I'm saying do you ever see
a scenario where the views or ideologies of a political
party would resonate across multiple countries
and multiple geographies and producing a scenario
where a political party would rule multiple
countries or geographies? - Yes, I mean we have examples
from this on the past. Not all of them are very encouraging but we examples like the Communist Party which was a global party and
had branches all over the world and you can also view
the universal religions as kind of global movements,
global ideological and political movements,
and so this is certainly not impossible, and we've
also seen how liberal ideas of human rights, and the
rule of law, and democracy they also spread between
many countries, many nations. So it can happen. But when I talked earlier
about globalizing politics, so it doesn't necessarily mean
that you have the same party ruling many different countries. It means that all
parties are becoming more and more aware of the
importance of global issues and of the necessity of addressing global and not just local and national problems. In the same way that in the
past, like in the Middle Ages, rulers did not think that
the economy or health care was their business; they
focused on diplomacy, war, things like that, not on health care, and gradually the modern
age, it became part of accepted wisdom in the political system that health care is a political issue and every party should have
some policy regarding healthcare whether you have a
national healthcare system, or you have some other kind of system, you have a healthcare
policy and in recent years we've seen that the ecology has become again a new political issue;
so what I try say earlier that globalizing politics
means that it becomes obvious for everybody in the political system that they must address
global problems and not just national problems because
the most important problems that affect our nation
are global problems, which our nation just
cannot solve by itself. - Which is so difficult
to do in a democracy. I mean we see it in our own country where you have politicians
not just working, forget about globe, they're not
even working for the country they're working for their
state, or their constituency. So isn't this just asking for too much? - I don't think it's
asking for too much because in the end their state, their
city, their constituency will be impacted by
global warming affects, not just the bears in the North Pole, it will also affect Mumbai and
Delhi and all parts of India. So it's not a problem
there, it's a problem here and really it's just a
question of the stories that people tell and the
stories that people think about. It's just changing the kind of
stories we are engaging with. Again we have a lot of
examples like I mentioned the temples earlier, so you
can take a temple in one city and talk about it a lot,
and suddenly people all over the country, it becomes
a burning issue for them. What will happen with this temple? So in the same way if we
care so much about one temple we should care about all the
ice world in the North Pole. We should care about it,
I just heard somebody says that if you destroy one
wall in the Middle East you'll have a World War about it, but humans can destroy the
Great Australian Reef Barrier, thousands of kilometers
of a unique habitat with countless species,
we are destroying it. It's the first habitat that
is likely to be completely destroyed is the Great
Australian Reef Barrier, thousands of kilometers
long, we can destroy it and nobody would give a damn,
and this is just because the kind of stories that we
tell ourselves and we tell our kids and we become used to listening, and to worrying about these stories. - Ah, gentleman here. - Do you think in time to
come everything to do with the mind, the machine, or the
computer will do, and humans will do just things which
have to do with the heart? - Humans are only do things
that are do with the heart and everything else will be
done by computers and machines? He just wants to fall in love. - There are two ways to look at it. On the one hand there is
nothing special about the heart and about the human emotional system. It is also in the end a biochemical system that computers will be able
to hack and to understand, and to predict, and to manipulate, just like any other
thing, and it is already happening right now;
computers are becoming better than humans in identifying human emotions. If you want to know how
another human is feeling then you basically analyze data. You look at the face, at
the facial expressions, you listen to the tone of voice, you listen to the content of the words, and you know from experience
that if you see this kind of an expression and this tone of voice, the person is angry, or
the person is frightened. This is just part of recognition
and this is something that now computers are
becoming better than humans. So we have computers that
are able to identify, to recognize emotions better than humans. So down the road we might
have computer psychologists, we might have computer
artists that are able to inspire and manipulate human emotions better than any human
singer, or poet, or actor because they know the
instrument they are playing on. In the end musicians don't
play on a piano or on a guitar, musicians always play on
the human biochemical system and computers will be able
to know this instrument, how to press its buttons better
than almost any musician. So this is one side of the issue. The other side is that
computers are unlikely to have any emotions or feelings of their own. In science fiction movies
very often the plot revolves around a robot or a computer
that gains consciousness, starts having emotions and feelings, and then either the human
scientist falls in love with the robot or the robot
tries to kill all the humans, or both things happen at the same time. Now this is extremely
unlikely because even though there is an immense development
in computer intelligence so far there has been
absolutely been no development whatsoever in computer consciousness. Computers don't have
minds, don't have emotions, they work in a completely
different way than humans and we have no evidence,
no indication that they are on the way to developing consciousness. All these movies about the
scientist falling in love with the robot, then tries
to kill him and so forth they are not about robots at all. If you notice in most of
these movies the scientist is a man and the robot is a woman and these movies are not
about humans being afraid of intelligent robots, they are about men being afraid
of intelligent women. (audience laughs) - The gentleman under
the jib, under the jib. The gentleman under the jib. - Thank you. You come from one of the
most interesting projects if I may say so in recent human history, which is the last 2000
years where your people were persecuted and then
dispersed all over the world, and then persecuted again
back, and created a nation, and a nation initially
that was faced with enemies but today it is perceived as
being one that is oppressing its not really its neighbors
but those who live there. Is there a conversation
happening in the way that you are talking about oppressing
others and this whole concept of nationalism that you're talking about or is that sort of debate
not happening at all? - In Israel there is not
a serious conversation about what Israelis are
doing to Palestinians. Again this is the power of the story. The Israelis are so
captivated by their own story that it's very, very difficult for them to really appreciate and sympathize with contradictory stories and
this is a very big problem, and not just for Israelis, I mean it's a universal human problem. When you become very
attached to your story one of the negative consequences is that it becomes very difficult for you to see things from a
different perspective. You can talk with extremely intelligent and open-minded people
about distant galaxies and they will be very
interested and very open, and everything, and then you mention the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and something happens in the brain, like you press a button and a part of the brain shuts down and you can't have a really
honest and serious conversation. And I think again in
almost all human societies if you yourself enjoy some
kind of hierarchical relations, if you yourself benefit,
you have privileges from some kind of a hierarchical situation then it's very difficult
for you to see the reality as it is because it puts
in danger your privileges, your position, I'm not
saying it's impossible, not in Israel and not in other places, some people are able to do
it, but it is very difficult. - One question at the back,
I think we've been ignoring the back, this gentleman
can you see him at the back. At the back, right at the back. - I would like to thank
you for the opportunity. You in conclusion you try to explain to us that global, political
influencing leadership, can give nearer solution,
and another inside us, within human being, just
observing, I'm quoting the question not just observing our breath as it is, as as a truth of present
moment, and in connection with this too, one ancient
astrologer Nostradamus, in 1600, in center of France, predicted that one leader from India, whole global, good
horse, with a good horse. - Be careful. So you said unite the global
into one ideal specialty. So can your throw light on this? - Well I wouldn't trust
Nostradamus about anything. (audience laughs) I'm a medievalist but my
early expertise was not about artificial intelligence and cyborgs. It was about medieval history and early modern European history so I know the background of
the writings of Nostradamus and really it's not a very good source for understanding the present world and I don't think that the
world needs a single leader that will unite the world
and a kind of Messiah. I think that whenever
politicians start talking in messianic terms we
should sound the alarm. (audience applauds) There are several key words
that when you hear a politician uses any of these words, be very careful. These words are as I said like Messianism, like I will save the
world, I am the savior, very dangerous, also when
politicians start using words like eternal, like
redemption, like purity, these are the three big no-nos: eternal, redemption, and purity. If you hear a politician
says this or that will redeem the purity of our eternal
nation, head for the exit. - So last question here, right in front. - Thank you professor for
an educational evening. So in Sapiens there's a
lovely line that you wrote which says that we did
not domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us. I'd love for you to amplify
a bit more about that but more importantly professor, what do you think will
domesticate us next? - Yes I mean the idea
that wheat domesticated us is that you just need to
switch the perspective, think where wheat was 10000
years ago and where it is today. 10000 years ago wheat was an
insignificant weed growing in some small patches of the Middle East. Today you can go for hundreds
and thousands of kilometers in North America, and Australia, and places where no wheat
grew and you encounter nothing but wheat,
enormous fields of wheat. It's one of the most successful plants in the history of this planet. How did wheat do it? By enslaving a poor ape,
homo sapiens that got trapped and wheat kind of convinced
this ape to invest all time and effort in just taking
care of this plant. You had millions of people
from morning 'til sunset doing nothing except taking
care of wheat plants. Now how did wheat manipulate
or enslave this poor ape? By promising that if you
take care of me and spread me all over the world your
life will be much better. You will have much more food. And this was a trick because
for most people it didn't work. Most people when they
became farmers, they worked much harder than before,
but all the surpluses, all the grains that were produced were monopolized by a small elite of kings, and priests, and aristocrats. They had a good life but
the peasants who actually toiled in the fields all day, they had a much worse life than before. And this can happen again. Again we have not just to harvest wheat. - [Kalli] Because people
are going gluten-free. - Well we can't look past that. Now we're in the same
situation then you have the new technologies,
like the AI, and again there is this promise if you
invest in me and spread me your life will be much better, and this might be true for a small elite, but if we are not careful
billions of people will actually lose their
power and we will create the most unequal societies
that ever existed. So we should try and learn
the lesson from what happened with wheat and try not to
repeat it in the 21st Century. (crowd applauds) - Thank you, thank you
Professor Yuval Harari. It's been amazing. I wanted to leave you
with one last question. Since everything is about stories. How true is your story and
rate it on your own scale? - How true is my story? - Yes, the books with
their stories as well. - Well my main recommendation to people is don't take any book including my own as kind of the truth about
history or about humankind. I see my own books more as an invitation to further research, they're more about the questions than the answers. My hope is that they will inspire people to question, to have discussions,
to investigate further and not just to say okay,
this is the truth, now we know everything we don't need to
continue with the investigation and certainly I don't
for myself personally, I'm very afraid of being
placed in the position of a kind of a guru that knows everything because the danger is that
I might start believe that. You know it goes up to the head and this is the greatest stupidity of all. - So let's test him with
a very, very loud hand, where he can believe he is a guru. Thank you very much. (audience applauds)
