How Humans Succeeded, and How They Could Fail
It was interesting to listen to Yuval Noah Harri's TED talk and the subsequent interview. The last thing first. He paints a picture where the human species may divide into two, with the rich and powerful forming a different species with designer babies and long lifespans, and others getting relegated to the existence of useless people. By no means, he is alone in this apocalyptic vision of the future. This is indeed a fairly logical view of the future, once one fuses the ideas of technological progress, economic inequality and political domination of the rich together. There is this rather fatalistic view - that future will be better because the past has been and the human beings found a way to better themselves - but this is not the only possibility. Best to watch his TED talk then with this perspective. His central argument that the human beings did better than the other species because of its ability to cooperate flexibly, in a large scale and with imagination needs to...