21 Lessons for the 21st Century / Yuval Noah Harari

• Clarity is power.
• Twin revolutions in Infortech & Biotech
• The world will not wait a thousand years for you to come up with an answer. you need a clear idea what life is all about.
• Liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse & technological disruption.
• The technological revolution might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and create a massive new 'useless class,' leading to social and political upheavals that no existing ideology knows how to handle.
• when you grow up, you might not have a job. - machine learning and robotics will change almost every line of work.
• Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.
• So if humans are needed neither as producers nor as consumers, what will safeguard their physical survival and their psychological well-being?
• we need to develop new social and economic models as soon as possible. these models should be guided by the principle of protecting humans rather than jobs. Many jobs are uninspiring drudgery and are not worth saving. No-body's life's dream is to be a cashier. We should focus instead on providing for people's basic needs and protecting their social status and self-worth.
• the real problem is in defining what universal and basic actually mean.
• A human being needs just 1,500-2,500 calories per day in order to survive. Anything more is a luxury.
• Engineers are currently developing software that can detect human emotions based on the movements of our eyes and facial muscles.
• As George Owell envisioned in 1984, the television might watch us while we are watching it.
• it could also enable them to make the most important decisions in life for us - such as what to study, where to work, and whom to marry.
• Already today, 'truth' is defined by the top results of the Google search. in the future we will be able to rely on Google to make such decisions for us.
• Digital Dictatorships: the real problem with robots is exactly the opposite. we should fear them because they will probably always obey their masters and never rebel.
• the real problem with robots is not their own artificial intelligence but rather the natural stupidity and cruelty of their human masters.
• Intelligence - the ability to solve problems
• Consciousness - the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger
• we are not their customers - we are their product.
• Humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected from the network.
• words are cheaper than actions.
• Identity is defined by conflicts and dilemmas more than by agreement.
• Terrorism is the weapon of a marginal and weak segment of humanity. how did it come to dominate global politics? Terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a china shop.
• we judge it by its emotional rather than material impact.
• A small coin in a big empty jar makes a lot of noise. This is why the theater of terrorism is so successful.
• power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it or what it is.
• Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. Fake News = Religion
• A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.
• $ is a green piece of paper with the picture of the dead white man, Actually, this is a worthless piece of paper, but because other people view it as valuable, I can make use of it.
• Suffering itself is still real.
• 4C
  Critical Thinking
  Communication
  Collaboration
  Creativity
• Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it.
  But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you.
• the algorithm, they monitor all your steps, all your breaths, all your heartbeats. they are relying on Big Data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. they can control and manipulate you, and you won't be able to do much about it. we do not control our desires, or even our reactions to these desires.
• The first thing you need to know about yourself is that you are not a story.
• Life has no meaning.
• people don't need to create any meaning.
• they just need to realize that there is no meaning.
• do nothing. absolutely nothing. the whole problem is that we constantly do something.
• Who am I?
• What should I do in life?
• What is the meaning of life?
• How do we stop suffering?

So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is. The answer isn't a story.

 

Meditation
serious mediation demands a tremendous amount of discipline. if you try to objectively observe your sensations, the first thing you'll notice is how wild and impatient the mind is, and how difficult it is to focus it even on a relatively distinct sensation such as breath.