Ignorance is not too dangerous. If you combine it with power, then this is a toxic mix.
Interpretation
Ignorance by itself is manageable, but when paired with power, it can lead to harmful consequences.
This quote by Yuval Noah Harari emphasizes the dangerous implications of ignorance when it is combined with power. While being ignorant may not pose significant risks on its own, the presence of power can amplify its effects, leading to a harmful and toxic situation. The quote serves as a warning about the responsibility that comes with power and the importance of knowledge and awareness in preventing misuse.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, one might say, 'As Yuval Noah Harari puts it, ignorance combined with power creates a toxic mix; we must empower ourselves through knowledge.'
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.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.
When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'
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