We can suspend disbelief about Harry Potter, and we do the same thing with God, and we do the same thing with human rights, and we do the same thing with money.
Interpretation
The quote highlights our willingness to accept concepts without empirical evidence, such as fictional worlds, divine existence, ideals of human rights, and the value of money.
In this quote, Yuval Noah Harari emphasizes the human tendency to suspend disbelief when it comes to various constructs that shape our reality. Just as we may accept the fictional universe of Harry Potter, we often accept abstract ideas like God, human rights, and money without needing direct evidence of their existence. This suspension of disbelief allows societies to function and cooperate around shared beliefs and values, despite their subjective nature.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion on the nature of beliefs and their impact on society.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.
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