The Myth of the Hackable Human

One of the most widely cited prophets of the transhumanist future is Yuval Noah Harari. His works have been enthusiastically recommended by Bill Gates, Emmanuel Macron, Barack Obama, and many other leading opinion makers. In a recent article in the Guardian (Harari, 2018), Dr. Harari tells us that after a fierce struggle with his innate liberalism he has concluded that continued belief in human free will has become too dangerous to entertain any longer. In my opinion, the piece is a masterful example of manipulative framing. Its purpose is to convince the reader to surrender his will, free or otherwise, to the inevitable triumph of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). This article seeks to unpack Harari’s rhetorical seductions and deconstruct the truths they contain. By the end, we will see that Harari’s prophecy has less to do with technology than with an anti-human ideology which he sees as the destined successor to the dying liberalism he celebrates and eulogizes.

He frames the fundamental dilemma in the first sentence: “Should scholars serve the truth, even at the cost of social harmony?” (Ibid.). Whenever the contest is framed by a scholar as “truth” versus “social harmony”, it is clear who the winner will be. Lying in order to preserve human harmony immediately situates one on the losing side of history. Each historical instance he cites to will make clear which side of the struggle seeks false harmony and which will inevitably triumph.

But first he must establish his liberal bona fides. He defines himself through his enemies, “It is a mark of illiberal regimes that they make free speech more difficult even outside their borders. Due to the spread of such regimes, it is becoming increasingly dangerous to think critically about the future of our species.” (Ibid.). As he flings his defiant words in the face of Islamic fascism, he stands in the long line of scholars who speak truth to power, delivering his chilling diagnoses and damning the consequences. The fact that these truths result in millions of dollars in sales for his books in no way diminishes the courage he displays.

In spite of the threat from “illiberal” forces, he has been forced to conclude that liberalism must question its own foundations. He invokes the memory of Paris in 1968 to demonstrate the enduring strength of liberal democracy. Through this and other examples, he tries to provide assurance that liberalism can survive even the most powerful external enemies such as fascism and communism. But he provides no assurance that liberal democracy can survive its willing abandonment of its own basic principles. The root of the word “liberal” is “liberty” which is founded on the belief in human free will. As Harari himself says, “Liberalism is founded on the belief in human liberty.” (Ibid.). It is not possible to find a more fundamental tenant of liberalism than the idea that human beings should be able to work out their destiny without compulsion. Without that, the entire democratic structure collapses and transforms into its opposite. Yet Harari manages to pretend that it can survive when its basic raison d’etre is removed.

His central thesis is “Unfortunately, ‘free will’ isn’t a scientific reality.” (Ibid.). The alert reader will notice that the entire previous section consists in Dr. Harari’s struggle to choose between “truth” and “social harmony” and he made his choice for “truth.” If he has no free will, this implies that he was forced to choose “truth” by powers outside his own will. If the choice was his own, then clearly he has the ability to make moral choices. Rather than acting as an instantiated algorithm that can be considerably improved by AI, Yuval Harari is making a conscious choice to surrender to an entity which awes us through its cognitive power.

Next, Harari redraws the lines of the battle. Previously, the battle was between liberal democracy and illiberal regimes of several varieties. Now the war is between those who believe in human liberty such as Christian theologians, the insidious originators of the notion of human freedom, and more progressive forces. He points to the medieval roots of the idea of free will, “Theologians developed the idea of ‘free will’ to explain why God is right to punish sinners for their bad choices and reward saints for their good choices … According to the theologians, it is reasonable for God to do so, because our choices reflect the free will of our eternal souls, which are independent of all physical and biological constraints.” (Ibid.). I will ignore for the moment this blatant falsification of the Christian concept of sin which takes physical and biological constraints very much into account. Instead, we should examine who are the two sides in his war. In the next few paragraphs, he lines up the theologians with the KKK, the KGB, the British colonists, the Nazis and the Inquisition. On the other side are those hard-pressed scientists who have been reluctantly forced to conclude that human free will does not exist, whoever they may be.

The hard evidence he presents is that since human free will cannot be proven through laboratory experiments, it can’t possibly exist. He presents this as a recently discovered fact, though he fails to cite any scientific study which led to this conclusion. Rather he suggests a thought experiment which anyone can do in the privacy of their cubicle to prove that they have no free will. As he puts it, “This is not abstract theory. You can witness this easily. Just observe the next thought that pops up in your mind. Where did it come from? Did you freely choose to think it? Obviously not. If you carefully observe your own mind, you come to realise that you have little control of what’s going on there, and you are not choosing freely what to think, what to feel, and what to want.” (Ibid.). Quod erat demonstrandum. While some of us vainly try to control the flow of thoughts in our own brain, this experiment conclusively proves that our efforts are just an illusion due no doubt to early theological training.

He makes frequent use of phrases such as “science now teaches us”, but the science he refers to seems to originate in the 18th century when the theories of Julien Offray de La Mettrie (died 1751) were all the rage. La Mettrie’s most famous work was Man a Machine in which he argued that human thought was the result of the complex organization of matter. Unfortunately for Harari, the machine model of humanity from the 18th century has been much updated recently. According to modern medical science, neuroplasticity is the “… capacity of neurons and neural networks in the brain to change their connections and behaviour in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage, or dysfunction. Although neural networks also exhibit modularity and carry out specific functions, they retain the capacity to deviate from their usual functions and to reorganize themselves. In fact, for many years, it was considered dogma in the neurosciences that certain functions were hard-wired in specific, localized regions of the brain and that any incidents of brain change or recovery were mere exceptions to the rule. However, since the 1970s and ’80s, neuroplasticity has gained wide acceptance throughout the scientific community as a complex, multifaceted, fundamental property of the brain.” (Rugnetta, 2018). The implications of neuroplasticity are only now being fully explored, but they seem to demonstrate that the brain changes its synapses when we learn something new. These changes are not the result of environmental alterations, but of a newly discovered faculty known as the “human will.” In other words, the medieval theologians might have been right – we can create new neural pathways through our own free will.

Mind-hacking by corporations and governments is the primary threat raised by Harari. His trademark statement is, “Governments and corporations will soon know you better than you know yourself.” The key advance of mind-hacking over previous forms of propaganda is that it can be tailored to the unique weaknesses of individual brains. Currently this is based on analyzing your online activities such as Amazon orders, web sites visited, online movies viewed, and geolocation and demographic data. Soon, however, “… biometric sensors could give hackers direct access to your inner world, and they could observe what’s going on inside your heart … The hackers could then correlate your heart rate with your credit card data, and your blood pressure with your search history.” (Ibid.). Such biometric bracelets would provide a degree of intimate control only dreamed of by the Inquisitors.

Strangely, the solution to this dilemma for Harari is not to strengthen our ability to rule our own minds and bodies, but to surrender the illusion of our own free will, “In order to survive and prosper in the 21st century, we need to leave behind the naive view of humans as free individuals … and come to terms with what humans really are: hackable animals.” (Ibid.). His proposition seems to be: If you believe you are free, then this unscientific fantasy will make you vulnerable to hackers. But if you know you are a robot utterly determined by your genetic makeup and neuro-chemical configuration, then you can protect yourself. In other words, cutting edge thinkers today believe that once we no longer believe in our own free will, we will be able to protect ourselves from those who would take it away from us. While many would agree mind-hacking is a real threat and that we must guard ourselves against manipulation, it is difficult to see how believing that we have no ability to control our own minds will be an effective safeguard. Naturally, we must shed any delusions we may have about our susceptibility to propaganda, but the sensible defense would be to strengthen the foundations of our freedom, not abandon them.

Yuval invokes “scientists” who “… opened up the Sapiens black box, [and] discovered there neither soul, nor free will, nor ‘self’ – but only genes, hormones and neurons that obey the same physical and chemical laws governing the rest of reality.” (Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 2017). But this finding seems to depend mainly on which black box you poke your nose into. One of the major efforts of modern medical science was the Human Genome Project whose goal was to map all human genes, both physically and functionally. Once this was complete, the assumption was that medical scientists would be able to locate the specific genes that determine human traits including disease genes, behavior genes and other human characteristics. However, when the project ended, instead of finding the expected 140,000 genes that would account for the 150,000 proteins in the human body, they found only 20,500 genes. Then they discovered that “ … one gene, using epigenetic control, can make 30,000 proteins! Epigenetic control is control coming from outside the nucleus and its DNA.” (Perlas, 2018, p. loc. 2938). This epigenetic control can come from the environment and includes both physical and non-physical signals, “ … including thoughts, feelings, and trauma.” (Ibid.). Rather than finding the genetic roots of most illnesses, the Human Genome Project helped demonstrate that only 5% of human illness is due to genetic effects. The other 95% is due to epigenetic factors. Rather than a dogmatic causal chain from DNA to our capabilities and our diseases, the flow seems rather in the opposite direction. Our consciousness seems to create the conditions that determine what our DNA will manufacture.

According to Harari’s 18th century insights, “Every choice depends on a lot of biological, social and personal conditions that you cannot determine for yourself.” (Harari, The Myth of Freedom, 2018). True as far as it goes, but daily human experience indicates that we constantly struggle with our innate tendencies and desires, sometimes with great inner will power and even a certain degree of success. This inner contention, similar to the one he describes in himself at the beginning of the article, implies that our actions cannot be predicted no matter how much biological data and computing power are available. Current medical science suggests that our behavior is the result of conscious achievement which biology supports, but does not determine. Our desires are not given to us in the way wings are given to a bat. They are inner realities that we strive to refine in order to expand the freedom of our will, a potential currently only partially realized in most people.

Harari rightly suggests that we can protect ourselves by knowing ourselves as well as possible. He further advises that the same technology that threatens our illusory free will could be used like a mental anti-virus, “Just as your computer has an antivirus program that screens for malware, maybe we need an antivirus for the brain. Your AI sidekick will learn by experience that you have a particular weakness – whether for funny cat videos or for infuriating Trump stories – and would block them on your behalf.” So your AI sidekick would protect your freedom by shielding you from your own weaknesses that might diminish your free will. And it will prevent you from exercising your own free will by blocking the stimuli that weaken that will. But if human freedom is an illusion, then what exactly is your sidekick protecting?

What does a liberal democracy that gives up the idea of freedom look like? Harari invokes the vision of a world where the illusion of human freedom has been overcome. He begins with a lament that currently we wrongly identify our freedom with fulfilling our desires, which leads to isolating egotism, wars and ecological devastation. He then presents the alternative, “But if we understood that our desires are not the outcome of free choice, we would hopefully be less preoccupied with them, and would also feel more connected to the rest of the world.” (Ibid.). Apparently, by abandoning our own desires, we can merge indistinguishably with the rest of the world. But has the rest of the world given up its desires? Once human freedom has been evacuated of its content, we are left with the satisfactions of those who are no longer master of their own wills. At that point, we will not even theoretically be able to think and act for ourselves. In compensation, we will be given the dream of super health, super strength, super intelligence and immortality, assuming we can upload our consciousness into an unconscious machine.

Harari seems to be fundamentally confused about the nature of free will. Rather than making the natural connection between self-control and freedom, he equates free will with chasing untamed desires, “Previously, we identified very strongly with our desires, and sought the freedom to realise them. Whenever any thought appeared in the mind, we rushed to do its bidding. We spent our days running around like crazy, carried by a furious roller-coaster of thoughts, feelings and desires, which we mistakenly believed represented our free will.” (Ibid.). While apparently unknown to Harari, some of us do not make this mistake. Instead, we seek to control our desires and tame them so that they do not overwhelm our judgement and lead us into behaviors that will diminish our power of self-control, otherwise known as “free will.” Letting go of mad desires is not equivalent to abandoning our will, but rather is the foundation of its strength.

Freedom from uncontrolled desires and other forms of egotism can indeed make us more open to others and the world. Once we become the rulers of our own minds, our slavery to lust, greed, pride, and anger diminishes and this empowers us for service beyond ourselves. But this is a far different realization from the one in which we say as Harari does, “’Hi, this isn’t me. This is just some changing biochemical phenomenon!’” Obviously a biochemical phenomenon does not have “free will.” But he also discovers something else: “... then you realise you have no idea who – or what – you actually are. This can be the beginning of the most exciting journey of discovery any human can undertake.” (Ibid.). But the being who begins this journey also has to have the capacity to choose his/her own path or else there would be no journey to take, just another roll-coaster ride planned and executed by an intelligence that knows us better than we know ourselves. This “exciting journey” seems to be based on our ignorance of what a human being is, though we are assured that the machine understands us perfectly.

Despite this, Harari makes several cogent points that we would do well to pay attention to. We are indeed subject to mind manipulation several orders of magnitude more effective that the crude propaganda techniques of the past. We can protect ourselves only by knowing how manageable our minds are. It is crucial that we understand how technology can be used to mold our desires and subject us to corporate control without our awareness. It is also important that we know that our freedom can be undermined if we surrender to weaknesses which can be exploited through studying our behavior patterns. But it is through consciousness of those weaknesses that we become capable of following our own will.

One hundred years ago, a similar argument would have used scientists as emblems of free human thought in the fight against religious despotism. Harari’s twist to the old argument is that the fight for truth is a struggle to abandon freedom. While I admire Harari for warning us about the dangers of mind-hacking, ceasing to believe in free will is not a tactic that can protect us from bondage to the corporate agenda. If you have no free will, then there is no “you” to protect. Identity implies a personal will which may flow with the rest of reality but adds its own unique contribution. If you can no longer distinguish yourself from the world, the words individuality and uniqueness have lost their meaning.

He ends with the following myth, “Greek mythology tells that Zeus and Poseidon, two of the greatest gods, competed for the hand of the goddess Thetis. But when they heard the prophecy that Thetis would bear a son more powerful than his father, both withdrew in alarm. Since gods plan on sticking around for ever, they don’t want a more powerful offspring to compete with them. So Thetis married a mortal, King Peleus, and gave birth to Achilles. Mortals do like their children to outshine them.” (Ibid.). His message seems to be that we mortals must surrender to a consciousness destined to supersede humanity. However, our ability to make choices without coercion is fundamental to that humanity, an ability which computers do not share no matter what projections we are trained to make.

One of seminal thinkers who recognized the value of human liberty was John Stuart Mill, whose words have much relevance to the current debate about artificial intelligence, “It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery—by automatons in human form—it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilised parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” (Mill, 1859). Harari’s work is of great importance when it forces us to ask a basic question: “What is the value which human beings contribute to the world?” and its corollary: “Is freedom necessary to realize that value?” Human beings may indeed seem a lower form of life when the only standard permitted is the extent of their contribution to data processing. But who has dictated this measure for judging life’s worth? Let us not allow ourselves to be stampeded by Harari and his elite supporters into abandoning the struggle for a living humanity, whose “inward forces” may hold unsuspected treasures which can only be realized by free human beings.

Works Cited

• Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. HarperCollins.
• Harari, Y. N. (2018, 09 14). The Myth of Freedom. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy
• Mill, J. S. (1859). On Liberty. Harvard University.
• Perlas, N. (2018). Humanity's Last Stand. Forest Row, England: Temple Lodge.
• Rugnetta, M. (2018, May 30). Neuroplasticity. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Brittanica: https://www.britannica.com/science/neuroplasticity