Quotes from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book

Since the 1990s the Internet has

Since the 1990s the Internet has changed the world probably more than any other factor, yet the Internet revolution was directed by engineers more than by political parties. Did you ever vote about the Internet? The democratic system is still struggling to understand what hit it, and is hardly equipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of AI and the blockchain revolution.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari

The dollar bill is universally venerated

The dollar bill is universally venerated across all political and religious divides. Though it has no intrinsic value - you cannot eat or drink a dollar bill - trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords and North Korean tyrants.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari

As a species, humans prefer power

As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it - and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it. Therefore, if you dream of a society in which truth reigns supreme and myths are ignored, you have little to expect from Homo sapiens. Better try your luck with chimps.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari

Many religions praise the value of

Many religions praise the value of humility - but then imagine themselves to be the most important thing in the universe. They mix calls for personal meekness with blatant collective arrogance. Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari

In the late twentieth century democracies

In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. [...] However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari

If we invest too much in

If we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans. We are unlikely to face a robot rebellion in the coming decades, but we might have to deal with hordes of bots who know how to press our emotional buttons better than our mother, and use this uncanny ability to try and sell us something - be it a car, a politician, or an entire ideology.

- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari