The Book Homo Deus and My Head-Spinning Moments

One of the big ideas in Homo Deus is that in the future we will be ammortal, meaning you can still die if your body is subjected to something like being run over by a steamroller, but age and disease are problems tech will solve. At least for some of us.

On page 167 Harari talks about The Web of Meaning and objective, subjective, and inter-subjective reality. Objective reality is of course things like physics, chemistry, and biology, which all exist even if humans don’t. Subjective reality are things that I personally believe, but aren’t objectively true. I wore my lucky green shirt three years ago on Friday the 13th and nothing bad happened, so if I always wear it every Friday the 13th this will always be the case.

Inter-subjective reality though was a new idea for me. Maybe not new in that I understood that things like the economy and religion were not objectively real even though enough people believed in them and acted upon those beliefs to effect the world in major ways. It’s more about what that potentially means. Yuval Noah Harari claims that a lot of very wealthy people in Silicon Valley believe that being ammortal or at least the near indefinite ability to increase longevity is right around the corner. In fact, a lot of them are dumping tons of money into the research and development of it. And many of them also seem to be okay with the idea of using technology to augment and enhance our brains and bodies.

The important point though here is how we interpret “our”.

It’s possible that greatly extended lifespans and enhancements to the brain and body via genetic tinkering or through tech might only be available to the very wealthy. Even though things like cosmetic surgery are fairly routine it still remains out of reach for the majority of people in the world unless they are willing to go into debt or risk disastrous results to get it done cheaper.

So, what’s a parent to do and think? I think about it a lot, but have no idea what to do. In 2012/2013 the Anarcho-Socialist in me was starting to believe that things were heading more in the direction of Social Democracy and that with a leader like Bernie in the White House maybe the impending loss of jobs might be at least somewhat mitigated by Universal Basic Income, but the political tide has shifted massively around much of the world at least for the next couple of years and possibly for many more years to come.

If it were just me I’m sure I could just buy an RV and live simple and cheap off whatever retirement I end up with and be perfectly happy. But the thought of such a seismic Inter-subjective reality shift happening during my life time makes me truly fear for my son’s future.