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Thompson: Let’s say the future for most people is a universal basic income, wonderful psychedelic drugs, and virtual reality video games. People don’t starve. They aren’t miserable. But they also stop striving. The Walt Disney virtues—challenge yourself! go on an adventure!—are sacrificed to live permanently inside of Disney-style entertainment. Is that utopia or dystopia?

Harari: Most philosophers will say that your hypothetical is a dystopia. A far worse world.

But you could argue that people already spend most of their lives in virtual games. Most religions are virtual games superimposed on the reality of life. Do this, and there’s a penalty. Do that, and you get extra points. There is nothing in reality that corresponds to these rules. But you have millions of people playing these virtual reality games. So what is the difference between a religion and a virtual reality game?



Your hypothetical also raises a deep philosophical question: What is the meaning of life? Historically philosophers investigated questions that were interesting to only half a percentage of humankind.

Thompson: Right. “What is ideal way to seek happiness?” isn’t a useful inquiry when the entire countryside is dying of plague.

Harari: Yes, but once you are free from considerations of famine and plague, this becomes a much more practical question: What is the meaning of life? If you design a self-driving car, you must design ethical algorithms in the case that it’s about to hit a child. Do you risk injury to the pedestrian, or the passenger? That is suddenly a very practical question. Philosophy, once an archaic system, becomes central once we take care of widespread death and misery.

Thompson: Alright, let’s move from the end of work to the end of individualism.

You have a beautiful way of summarizing human beings’ relationship with authority. First, we believed that authority came from the gods. But that belief has yielded to modern liberalism, which tells us that authority comes from individuals. Democracy says power comes from the voters, not the divine. Capitalism says the consumer is always right, not the Bible. Marketers say beauty resides in the eye of the beholder, not in platonic forms.

But you have a ominous prediction that humans will merge with the computers, algorithms, and biochemical devices that make our lives better. We will yield our authority and identity to data and artificial intelligence. What invention or innovation in the world right now is the best example of this future?




Thompson: Here is how I understand this idea. It’s the future, and I’m hungry on a Friday night. I think, “I’d like fried chicken.” Then I consult my AI daemon, which can read by biochemical signals and predict my future emotions, and it says to me: “Actually, Derek, a chicken salad will make you happier.” So I eat salad.

On a case-by-case basis, this technology seems wonderful. It’s making me so much healthier and happier. Technology is rescuing me from the natural errors of misreading my future wants and needs. But over time, “I” have disappeared, because I have outsourced my identity to a biochemical analyst.

Harari: Yes, exactly.

In this scenario, we will come to see that decisions don’t come from a mystical soul but from biological processes in the brain. In the past we couldn’t gather the data and analyze it. So you could imagine that there is a mystical, transcendental soul inside you making these decisions. From a practical perspective that was a good enough estimation. But once you combine a better understanding of the biochemical processes in the body with the computational power of big data then you have a real revolution, because this traditional notion of free will no longer make practical sense and you can have algorithm that make better decisions than an individual human.

Thompson: That’s fascinating, because I now think of these algorithms as bringing me closer to myself. If a fitness tracker encourages me to run more, or an entertainment algorithm discovers a song I love, I’m happier. And I prefer myself happy.

But over time, my decisions have been reduced to brain signals and brain signal readers. “I” am not special, or sacred, or even individual. I’m just a vessel for a bunch of signals that are best read by a computer. There is no room for “me” in that arrangement.


Have you seen Inside Out? For me this was the tipping point in popular culture’s understanding of the mind. For decades Disney sold us the liberal individualistic fantasy: Don’t listen to your neighbors or government, just follow your own heart. But then in Inside Out, you go inside this little girl Riley, and you don’t encounter a self or a core identity. What the movie shows to children and their parents is that Riley is a robot being manipulated by chemical processes inside her brain. The cataclysmic point in the story is your realize that none of the sources inside her are her true self. In the beginning you identify with Joy but the critical moment comes when you realize none of these emotions are Riley’s true self. It’s a balance between different sources.

And I think this is what will happen more and more on a general level. The very idea of an individual that exists, which has been so precious to us, is in danger.

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