He writes: “An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.” The biochemical processes that give life to living things and keep them alive are the material instantiation of algorithms, themselves products of natural selection, which itself is a decision-making algorithm of sorts. As Harari tells the story, the great insight on which contemporary biological sciences are founded, the insight that has swept the field of all other understandings, is that living things are bundles of algorithms. While the book uses a future-oriented rhetoric, substantively it is actually less about the future than it is about arguing for a central thesis concerning the nature of life itself. It turns out that the title of the book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, is misleading. But it also illuminates the dilemmas posed by the particular forms of scientific materialism and the fact/value distinction that ground his argument. Throughout the book, on this topic and others, Harari’s ability to play tug of war with himself can be confusing.
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Yet it was Harari himself who set up the whole quest for immortality in such a way as to make it appear to be “inevitable” or to have “irresistible momentum.” Are we free to reject it, or not? But is he really predicting it? He resists this characterization, writing that his description of future projects is not a “prophecy,” but rather “a way of discussing our present choices.” Discussion makes sense if we have a choice about the future. It looks as if Harari is predicting an immortality project but withholding his approval.
Hence even if we don’t achieve immortality in our lifetime, the war against death is still likely to be the flagship project of the coming century.” He acknowledges that immortality could have dark sides and discusses a few of them, but given our fear of death or our belief in the sanctity of life, he concludes that the war against death will have “irresistible momentum” and “seems to be inevitable.” Yet almost immediately he notes, “The scientists who cry immortality are like the boy who cried wolf: sooner or later, the wolf actually comes. He admits, for example, that he is skeptical that the project for immortality will succeed any time soon. The reader quickly sees, however, that for better and for worse, that is not Harari’s intention. It sounds like we are about to be exposed to standard futurist fare, with bold predictions of an eye-popping future. Towards the beginning of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari discusses what he expects to be the three great projects for the human future: the quest for immortality, the quest to re-engineer human beings to be happy all the time, and the quest for god-like powers.
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