Why Humans Run the World - Yuval Noah Harari on TED

Summary

This video transcript features a talk by Yuval Noah Harari, who discusses humanity's rise from insignificant animals to the dominant species on Earth. He emphasizes that humans' success lies in their ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, unlike other animals. Harari explains that this cooperation is driven by shared beliefs in fictions, such as religion, money, and human rights. He highlights how these fictions shape societies and power structures. Harari also warns of potential future challenges, including class divisions due to technological advancements and the creation of a 'useless' human class.

Takeaways

• 📜 Humans were once insignificant animals with little impact on the world.
• 🤝 The unique ability of humans to cooperate flexibly in large numbers distinguishes us from other animals.
• 🐒 On an individual level, humans are not much different from chimpanzees and may not survive better in isolation.
• 📊 Large-scale cooperation among humans is the key to their control over the planet.
• 🧠 Human imagination allows us to create and believe in fictions, enabling mass cooperation.
• 💡 All major human achievements and societal structures are based on shared beliefs in these fictional realities.
• 🏛 Concepts like human rights, nations, and money are all fictional stories created by humans.
• 💰 Money is the most successful story humans have ever invented because it is universally believed.
• 🎭 Humans live in a dual reality: the objective world and the fictional constructs we create.
• 🔮 The speaker predicts that future technological advances may lead to new class divisions, potentially rendering large populations of humans obsolete.

Q & A

What is the primary reason humans control the planet, according to the speaker?

Humans control the planet because they are the only species that can cooperate both flexibly and in large numbers.

How does human cooperation differ from that of social insects like bees and ants?

While bees and ants can cooperate in large numbers, their cooperation is rigid and cannot adapt to new situations. Humans, however, can cooperate flexibly, allowing for adaptation to new challenges.

What is the difference between human and chimpanzee cooperation?

Chimpanzees can cooperate flexibly but only in small numbers, based on intimate knowledge of each other. Humans can cooperate in large groups without needing to know each other personally, thanks to shared beliefs and narratives.

Why does the speaker believe that individual humans are not inherently superior to other animals?

The speaker argues that on an individual level, humans are not much different from other animals like chimpanzees. Our advantage comes from our ability to cooperate on a collective level.

What role does imagination play in human cooperation?

Imagination allows humans to create and believe in fictional stories that enable large-scale cooperation. Shared beliefs in stories like religion, nations, or money help bind societies together.

Why does the speaker describe human rights as fictional stories?

The speaker argues that human rights, like gods and nations, are fictional stories humans have invented. They are not inherent in nature but are powerful because people collectively believe in them.

How does the speaker illustrate the fictional nature of money?

The speaker explains that money is a fictional entity. It only works because people collectively believe that a piece of paper (money) has value, enabling trade and cooperation.

What is the speaker's view on the potential future class struggles caused by technological advancements?

The speaker predicts that advances in technology could create a new class of 'useless people,' as computers outperform humans in many tasks. This could lead to significant economic inequality.

What does the speaker suggest might happen to humanity as technology advances?

The speaker suggests two possibilities: either a new class of useless people will emerge, or society may split into biological castes, with the rich being upgraded into 'virtual gods' and the poor being left behind.

How does the speaker describe the difference between human and chimpanzee communication?

The speaker notes that while chimpanzees can communicate about immediate realities (like the presence of a banana or a lion), humans use language to create and share fictional realities, enabling large-scale cooperation.

Outlines

00:00

🧬 The Evolutionary Leap of Homo Sapiens

This paragraph opens with a reflection on the unremarkable existence of early humans, comparing their impact on the world to that of insignificant animals like jellyfish or woodpeckers. However, today, humans have come to dominate the planet. The speaker explores how humans evolved from insignificant apes into rulers of Earth, emphasizing that the difference between humans and other animals lies not on the individual level, but on the collective level. While humans are similar to chimpanzees individually, their ability to cooperate flexibly and in large numbers sets them apart, allowing them to control the world.

05:02

🌍 Global Cooperation through Imagination

This paragraph highlights the ability of humans to cooperate on a massive scale, even with strangers, which sets them apart from other animals. The speaker contrasts this with the limitations of chimpanzees, who only cooperate with individuals they know personally. Humans, on the other hand, can cooperate with strangers through shared fictions, creating global systems of cooperation. This ability allows humans to achieve feats such as organizing large events, like this talk, or complex endeavors like flying to the moon. The speaker reflects on how this capability for flexible cooperation is a uniquely human trait.

10:02

💭 The Power of Fiction in Human Societies

Humans' unique ability to believe in fictions allows them to cooperate on a large scale. The speaker explains how, unlike animals who communicate to describe reality, humans use language to create new, fictional realities. These fictions, like religions or belief systems, enable humans to follow shared rules and values, allowing cooperation on a societal level. Examples such as money, human rights, and even nations are presented as fictional entities that humans collectively believe in, which in turn allows for structured societies and economic systems. This imaginative power is what gives humans their dominance.

15:03

💸 Fictional Entities and Global Power Structures

The paragraph further explores the idea that much of human society is built upon fictional entities. The speaker discusses legal systems, human rights, nations, and corporations as examples of powerful fictions. While humans may take these entities seriously, they are not grounded in objective reality. Money, for example, is described as a powerful fiction that has no inherent value but is accepted by everyone. The speaker also notes that while different groups may disagree on religion or politics, money remains a universally accepted fiction, enabling global cooperation and trade.

🧠 The Future of Humanity: Useless Classes and Biological Divisions

In this paragraph, the speaker shifts focus to the future and the potential societal impact of technological advances. As computers outperform humans in more fields, there is a possibility of creating a new class of 'useless people' who are no longer needed for many jobs. The speaker also explores the idea of humans being divided into biological casts, with the wealthy becoming enhanced or upgraded while the poor are left behind. This potential future poses significant political and economic challenges, with the speaker suggesting that keeping people happy with entertainment and drugs could be one way to manage this future.

Keywords

💡Cooperation

Cooperation is the ability of humans to work together, which distinguishes them from other animals. The video explains that while animals like bees or chimpanzees may cooperate, only humans can do so flexibly and in large numbers. This trait is central to how humans control the planet, as seen in examples like building the pyramids or organizing global exchanges of ideas.

💡Fiction

Fiction refers to the imagined stories and beliefs that humans create and share. The video explains that humans cooperate on a large scale because of their ability to believe in fictional entities, such as nations, money, and religions. These shared stories allow for organized cooperation, unlike other species that only respond to physical reality.

💡Collective Reality

Collective reality is the shared belief system that humans create, including concepts like nations, laws, and corporations. This fictional layer of reality enables humans to collaborate on a massive scale. The video highlights how entities like the United States or Google are part of this fictional reality, yet they govern significant aspects of human life.

💡Imagination

Imagination is the unique human ability to envision and believe in things that do not physically exist. This capacity allows humans to create and believe in shared fictions, such as human rights or corporations, which in turn enable large-scale cooperation. The video argues that this power is what separates humans from animals.

💡Human Rights

Human rights are described in the video as a fictional story that humans have created. Though not a biological reality, the belief in human rights influences laws and social norms. The video uses this example to illustrate how humans cooperate based on shared stories, not just physical realities.

💡Legal Fictions

Legal fictions are entities, such as corporations or states, that exist only because humans agree they do. The video discusses how corporations, like Google or Toyota, are powerful actors in the global economy, even though they are essentially stories created and maintained by human belief and legal systems.

💡Money

Money is portrayed as the most successful story humans have ever told. Although it has no intrinsic value, people universally agree on its worth, enabling global trade and cooperation. The video emphasizes that this belief in money is a fictional construct, yet it has become a cornerstone of human civilization.

💡Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees serve as a comparison to humans throughout the video. While humans and chimpanzees share similar individual capabilities, chimpanzees cannot cooperate on a large scale or create fictions like humans do. This difference is used to highlight why humans, not chimpanzees, dominate the planet.

💡Global Exchange of Ideas

The global exchange of ideas refers to how humans can share and spread knowledge across vast distances, among people who have never met. The video uses the example of a talk being broadcast worldwide to illustrate how humans cooperate in ways that no other species can, thanks to shared beliefs and technologies.

💡Mass-Scale Human Cooperation

Mass-scale human cooperation is the key factor that allows humans to dominate the world. Unlike other animals, humans can collaborate in large groups, which enables them to achieve significant feats, from building cities to organizing governments. The video explains that this is made possible by humans’ belief in shared fictions.

Highlights

70,000 years ago, humans were insignificant animals with little impact on the world.

Humans' unique ability to cooperate both flexibly and in large numbers is the reason we dominate the planet.

Unlike other social animals, human cooperation isn't limited by rigid systems or intimate personal knowledge.

All large-scale human achievements, like building pyramids or going to the moon, are based on this ability to cooperate in large numbers.

Human cooperation is enabled by our capacity to create and believe in fictional stories, such as religions, nations, and money.

Other animals only use communication to describe reality, while humans use language to create new, shared realities.

Concepts like human rights, nations, and corporations are all fictional stories that allow humans to cooperate on a massive scale.

Money is the most successful fictional story ever created by humans because it is universally accepted.

Even people who disagree on politics, religion, or culture still believe in the value of money, showing its universal appeal.

Humans live in a dual reality: the objective reality of the physical world and a fictional reality created by stories and beliefs.

Our fictional reality has become more powerful over time, controlling the fate of natural elements like rivers, trees, and animals.

The Industrial Revolution created a new class of urban proletariat; similarly, future technological advances might create a class of 'useless people'.

As computers outperform humans in more tasks, society may face a significant challenge: What to do with a growing class of people who become redundant?

One potential future is to keep this 'useless class' content with drugs and computer games, highlighting a dystopian possibility.

There is a possibility of a biological divide, where the rich enhance themselves to the level of gods, while the poor are left behind.

Transcripts

(pinging)

(energizing music)

(applause)

- 70,000 years ago,

our ancestors were insignificant animals.

The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans

is that they were unimportant.

Their impact on the world was not much greater

than that of jellyfish or fireflies or woodpeckers.

Today in contrast, we control this planet.

And the question is how did we come from there to here?

How did we turn ourselves from insignificant apes

minding their own business in a corner of Africa,

into the rulers of planet Earth?

Usually, we look for the difference

between us and all the other animals

on the individual level.

We want to believe,

I want to believe that there is something special about me,

about my body, about my brain, that makes me so superior

to a dog, or a pig, or a chimpanzee.

But the truth is, that on the individual level,

I am embarrassingly similar to a chimpanzee.

And if you take me and a chimpanzee and put us together

on some lonely island and we had to struggle for survival

to see who survives better,

I would definitely place my bets on the chimpanzee.

(laughing)

Not on myself.

And this is not something wrong with me personally.

I guess if they took almost any one of you

and placed you alone with a chimpanzee on some island,

the chimpanzee would do much better.

The real difference between humans and all other animals

is not on the individual level,

it's on the collective level.

Humans control the planet

because they are the only animals that can cooperate

both flexibly and in very large numbers.

Now there are other animals like the social insect,

the bees, the ants, that can cooperate in large numbers,

but they don't do so flexibly.

Their cooperation is very rigid.

There is basically just one way

in which a beehive can function,

and if there is a new opportunity or a new danger,

the bees cannot reinvent the social system overnight.

They cannot, for example, execute the queen

and establish a republic of bees

or a communist dictatorship (laughing)

of worker bees.

Other animals, like the social mammals, the wolves,

the elephants, the dolphins, the chimpanzees,

they can cooperate much more flexibly.

But they do so only in small numbers,

because cooperation among chimpanzees

is based is on intimate knowledge, one of the other.

If I'm a chimpanzee and you're a chimpanzee,

and I want to cooperate with you,

I need to know you personally.

What kind of chimpanzee are you?

Are you a nice chimpanzee?

Are you an evil chimpanzee?

Are you trustworthy?

If I don't know you, how can I cooperate with you?

The only animals that can combine

the two abilities together,

and cooperate both flexibly

and still do so in very large numbers, is us, Homo sapiens.

One versus one, or even 10 versus 10,

chimpanzees might be better than us.

But if you pit 1,000 humans against 1,000 chimpanzees,

the humans will win easily

for the simple reason that a thousand chimpanzees

cannot cooperate at all.

And if you now try to cram 100,000 chimpanzees

into Oxford Street or into Wembley Stadium

or Tiananmen Square or the Vatican,

you will get chaos, complete chaos.

Just imagine Wembley Stadium

with a hundred thousand chimpanzees, complete madness.

In contrast, humans normally gather there

in tens of thousands and what we get is not chaos, usually.

What we get is extremely sophisticated

and effective networks of cooperation.

All the huge achievements of humankind throughout history,

whether it's building the pyramids or flying to the moon,

have been based not on individual abilities,

but on this ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers.

Think even about this very talk that I'm giving now.

I'm standing here in front of an audience

of about 300 or 400 people.

Most of you are complete strangers to me.

Similarly, I don't really know the people,

all the people, who have organized

and worked on this event.

I don't know the pilot and the crew members

of the plane that brought me over here yesterday to London.

I don't know the people who invented and manufactured

this microphone and these cameras

which are recording what I'm saying.

I don't know the people who wrote

all the books and articles that I've read

in preparation for this talk.

And I certainly don't know all the people

who might be watching this talk over the internet

somewhere in Buenos Aires or in New Delhi.

Nevertheless, even though we don't know each other,

we can work together to create

this global exchange of ideas.

This is something chimpanzees cannot do.

They communicate, of course.

But you will never catch a chimpanzee

traveling to some distant chimpanzee band

to give them a talk (laughing)

about bananas, or about elephants, or anything else

that might interest chimpanzees.

Now cooperation is, of course, not always nice.

All of the horrible things

humans have been doing throughout history,

and we have been doing some very horrible things,

all those things are also based on large-scale cooperation.

Prisons are a system of cooperation.

Slaughterhouses are a system of cooperation.

Concentration camps are a system of cooperation.

Chimpanzees don't have slaughterhouses

and prisons and concentration camps.

Now suppose I've managed to convince you, perhaps,

that yes, we control the world

because we can cooperate flexibly in large numbers.

The next question that immediately arises

in the mind of inquisitive listener,

is how exactly do we do it?

What enables us alone of all the animals,

to cooperate in such a way?

The answer is our imagination.

We can cooperate flexibly

with countless numbers of strangers,

because we alone, of all the animals on the planet,

can create and believe fictions, fictional stories.

And as long as everybody believes in the same fiction,

everybody obeys and follows the same rules,

the same norms, the same values.

All other animals use their communication system

only to describe reality.

A chimpanzee may say, "Look, there is a lion.

"Let's run away."

Or, "Look, there is a banana tree over there.

"Let's go and get bananas."

Humans, in contrast, use their language

not merely to describe reality,

but also to create new realities, fictional realities.

A human can say, "Look, there is a God above the clouds,

"and if you don't do what I tell you to do,

"after you die, God will punish you

"and send you to hell."

And if you all believe these stories that I've invented,

then you will follow the same norms and laws

and values, and you can cooperate.

This is something only humans can do.

You can never convince a chimpanzee

to give you a banana

by promising him that after you die,

you'll go to chimpanzee heaven,

(laughing)

and you'll receive lots and lots of bananas

for your good deeds.

So now give me this banana.

No chimpanzee will ever believe such a story.

Only humans believe such stories

which is why we control the world,

whereas the chimpanzees are locked up in zoos,

in research laboratories.

Now you may find it acceptable, that yes,

in the religious field, humans cooperate

by believing in the same fictions.

Millions of people come together to build a cathedral

or a mosque or fight on a crusade of a Jihad,

because they all believe in the same stories

about God and heaven and hell.

But what I want to emphasize

is that exactly the same mechanism

underlies all other forms of mass-scale human cooperation.

Not only in the religious field.

Take, for example, the legal field.

Most legal systems today in the world

are based on a belief in human rights.

But what are human rights?

Human rights, just like God and heaven,

are just a story that we've invented.

They are not an objective reality.

They are not some biological effect about Homo sapiens.

Take a human being, cut him open, look inside,

you will find the heart, the kidneys,

neurons, hormones, DNA.

But you won't find any rights.

The only place you find rights is in the stories

that we haven't invented and spread around

over the last few centuries.

They may be very positive stories,

very good stories, but they are still just fictional stories

that we've invented.

The same is true of the political field.

The most important factors in modern politics

are states and nations.

But what are states and nations?

They are not an objective reality.

A mountain is an objective reality.

You can see it, you can touch it,

you can even smell it.

But a nation or a state like Israel or Iran

or France or Germany, this is just a story

that we've invented and became extremely attached to.

The same is true of the economic field.

The most important actors today

in the global economy, are companies and corporations.

Many of you, perhaps, work for a corporation

like Google or Toyota or McDonald's.

What exactly are these things?

They are, what lawyers call, legal fictions.

They are stories invented and maintained

by the powerful wizards we call lawyers.

(laughing)

And what do corporations do all day?

Mostly, they try to make money.

Yet what is money?

Again, money is not an objective reality,

it has no objective value.

Take this green piece of paper, the dollar bill,

look at it, it has no value.

You cannot eat it, you cannot drink it,

you cannot wear it.

But then come along these master storytellers.

The big bankers, the finance ministers,

the prime ministers, and they tell us

a very convincing story.

"Look, you see this green piece of paper?

"It is actually worth 10 bananas."

And if I believe it and you believe it

and everybody believes it, it actually works.

I can take this worthless piece of paper,

go to the supermarket, give it to a complete stranger

whom I've never met before,

and get in exchange real bananas which I can actually eat.

This is something amazing.

You can never do it with chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees trade, of course.

Yes, you give me a coconut, I'll give you a banana.

That can work.

But you give me a worthless piece of paper

and you expect me to give you a banana?

No way, what do you thing I am, a human?

(laughing)

Money, in fact, is the most successful story

ever invented and told by humans

because it is the only story everybody believes.

Not everybody believes in God,

not everybody believes in human rights,

not everybody believes in nationalism,

but everybody believes in money and in the dollar bill.

Take even Osama bin Laden, he hated American politics,

and American religion, and American culture,

but he had no objection to American dollars.

He was quite fond of them actually.

(laughing)

To conclude then, we humans control the world

because we live in a dual reality.

All other animals live in an objective reality.

Their reality consists of objective entities,

like rivers and trees and lions and elephants.

We humans, we also live in an objective reality.

In our world too, there are rivers and trees

and lions and elephants.

But over the centuries, we have constructed

on top of this objective reality,

a second layer of fictional reality.

A reality made of fictional entities,

like nations, like gods, like money, like corporations.

And what is amazing, that as history unfolded,

this fictional reality became more and more powerful.

So that today, the most powerful forces in the world,

are these fictional entities.

Today, the very survival of rivers and trees

and lions and elephants depends on the decisions and wishes

of fictional entities,

like the United States, like Google, like the World Bank.

Entities that exist only in our own imagination.

Thank you.

(applause)

- Thank you, wow.

You have a new book out.

After Sapiens, you wrote another one

and it's out in Hebrew but not yet translated into English.

- I'm working on the translation, as we speak.

- Okay and you, in the book, if I understand it correctly,

you argue that actually the amazing breakthrough

that we are experiencing right now,

not only, will potentially make our life better,

but they will create, and I quote you,

"New classes and new class struggles

"just as the Industrial Revolution did."

Can you elaborate for us?

- Yes, in the Industrial Revolution,

we saw the creation of a new class,

of the urban proletariat,

and much of the political and social history

of the last 200 years,

involved what to do with this class

and the new problems and opportunities.

Now, we see the creation of a new massive class

of useless people.

(laughing)

As computers become better and better

in more and more fields,

which is a distinct possibility,

that computers will outperform us

in most tasks and will make humans redundant,

and then the big political and economic question

of the 21st Century will be

what do we need humans for?

Or at least, what do we need so many humans for?

- [Interviewer] Do you have an answer in the book?

- At present, the best guess we have

is keep them happy with drugs and computer games,

(laughing)

but this doesn't sound like a very appealing future.

- Okay, so you basically say in the book

and now, that for all the discussion about, you know,

the growing evidence of significant economic inequality,

we are just kind of at the beginning of the process?

- Again, it's not a processing.

It's seeing all kinds of possibilities before us.

One possibility is this creation

of a new massive class of useless people.

Another possibility is the division of humankind

into different biological casts

with the rich being upgraded into virtual gods

and the poor being degraded to this level of useless people.

- I feel there is another Ted Talk coming up

in a year or two.

Thank you, Yuval. - Maybe.

- For making the trip, thank you.

- [Yuval] Thanks. (applause)

(powerful music)