Navigating This Century — A Book About Everything

Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book, a collection of essays entitled “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” examines some of the most contentious issues of our time from a viewpoint firmly grounded in a deep understanding of history and philosophy. In this collection, Harari covers everything from an unpredictably changing job market, to the melding of artificial intelligence and biotech industries, to the role of nationalism in today’s international politics, to war and God.

The most intriguing chapters by far are the first few, on work, liberty, and equality. He discusses in detail why we should all be highly educated on and aware of the growth of artificial intelligence, and the relationship between AI and biotech. One of his gravest assertions is that while consciousness may forever remain a mystery to us, the authenticity of humanity may be a myth: All human behavior and characteristics, from passion to cruelty to pure stupidity can be explained by complex relationships among neurons that result in intricate algorithms. 

Humans are predictable, and our technology is getting more and more adept at figuring us out. These algorithms will one day be so sophisticated that they will be able to accurately predict, reflect, and manipulate human emotions; one day we might not be able to differentiate between art made by humans and AI. He argues these rapid changes to our digital society may soon result in a class of people with irrelevant skills, and we should begin preparing for that because it is even worse to be irrelevant than exploited. He also discusses some themes so central to our future that an exploration of the trajectory of our world would be incomplete without them, like nuclear war and climate change.

Some observations in the book are more flippant than they need to be — he asks at one point why we fear terrorism more than sugar, which technically kills more Americans overall and he also suggests that caring for children is unpaid labor that is undervalued, which isn’t actually a new idea. He suggests any movie about AI in which the robot is female and the scientist is male is about “feminism” more than AI; I would caution against his framing of unwitting gender bias as “feminism,” though his point stands. 

Some of the essays and lines of thought are out of place; the chapters on humility is moralizing and self-aggrandizing, and the essay on meditation feels like unasked for advice, both akin more to a worldly self-help book than an exploration of philosophical debates and their practical consequences. But much of the book is an expertly done geometrical proof; The layering of arguments leads neatly to his conclusions. He offers some examples of nuanced critical thinking, including a startling reinterpretation of the film “Inside Out,” and the importance of good science fiction in shaping public understanding and perception of artificial intelligence. 

This book won’t free you from your existential dread (actually, it made mine worse) nor will it give you any tools to free yourself or anyone else, but it does offer new interpretations of arguments within critical debates that are as accessible to laypeople as they are to academics, a useful addition to the canon of critical inquiry that’s quickly becoming an obsession, as political, economic, and ecological uncertainty looms.

“21 Lessons For The 21st Century” is published by Spiegel and Grau.