Above: IRWIN 2021

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow is not Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book. Still, since it develops the crucial concepts later presented in his 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, it is like The Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson to his later Rules for Life.

I don’t intend to review the book, but to point out a few initial and final points that are so wrong they need to be addressed.

Harari is more than an excellent writer. I wish I had his clarity of expression and the dramaturgy of his composition. His ideas are compelling, and it is no wonder he is so widely read worldwide. His prophecy about the future is bleak yet appealing. We take it as a drug, even though we know that positive experiences are short-lived and despair lurks nearby.

So, what is wrong with Homo Deus?

First and foremost, he sees human beings as algorithms, composed solely of a complex web of data.

The idea is partly correct, but only partly. Genes are indeed digital machines that can be analyzed down to the last digit, down to the last bite, but they are not only digital machines. It is well established that the algorithms they operate depend largely on the cytoplasm and other non-digital entities in humans and animals. The complex relationship between the digital and analog dimensions of living creatures cannot be reduced to an algorithm; it cannot be digitized.

Let me give an example Harari avoids, even though he often writes about music. He offers only examples that seem to prove that life is nothing but an algorithm. If he were to distinguish between the vinyl LP record and the digital CD record, he would have to admit that the digital record cannot, in principle, be compared with the analog LP record. A CD cannot reproduce sound as richly as an LP. The sound of digitized music is spotless but bleak. Life, on the other hand, is messy and rich.

The catch is the inherent nature of data.

Data is digital, or it is not data. The algorithms of the data world are digital. If you could transcribe analog signals into digital data, this would not only prove that nature is reducible but also make CD records and other digital media sound as if they were analog. Harari uncritically equates algorithms only with digital algorithms and then concludes that digital processors can take charge of human life and life as such.

No, they cannot.

But there is a second fallacy in his reasoning. He cannot distinguish between humans as multiple selves, a well-established concept in neuroscience, and the fact that humans are simultaneously agents. While multiple selves can contradict each other, a self unites around responsibility. It is responsible for its unified actions (agency) because it faces the threat of death.

Data is not information

Death changes everything and introduces another crucial concept that Harari avoids: risk assessment. Turing machines cannot assess risk; they can only calculate it because they do not fear death. They can only be impartial and logically correct because life risks are excluded from their equations. Life risks are, in fact, not data-driven but information-driven, and information is neither objective fact (data) nor subjective whim, but an intersubjective, memetic entity.

And this is the last point I want to make about Homo Deus. How come no one has noticed that Harari does not understand the difference between data and information? This is such a fundamental mistake that even graduates should not make. He stumbles around this issue all the time, but he must leave it open because he must present dataism as a viable future. In this future, algorithms take full control of our decisions, a 2.0 upgrade of Orwell’s 1984.

(By the way, John C. Lennox’s book, 2084 and the AI Revolution, while somewhat dated, also frequently devalues Harari.)

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for Harari, life is not (only) digital. The world he paints is pure fiction. Contemporary evolutionary biology, genetics, memetics, and even music production disprove his dystopia.