Monthly Archives: February 2017

Famine, plague, and war. These have been the three scourges of human history. But today, people in most countries are more likely to die from eating too much rather than too little, more likely to die of old age than a great plague, and more likely to commit suicide than to die in war.

With famine, plague, and war in their twilightat least, for nowmankind will turn its focus to achieving immortality and permanent happiness, according to Yuval Hararis new book Homo Deus. In other words, to turning ourselves into gods.

Hararis previous work, Sapiens, was a swashbuckling history of the human species. His new book is another mind-altering adventure, blending philosophy, history, psychology, and futurism. We spoke recently about its most audacious predictions. This conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.

Derek Thompson: In Homo Deus you predict the end of work, the end of liberal individualism, and the end of humanity. Lets take these one by one.

First, work. You have a smart and scary way of looking at the political implications of mass automation. At the end of the 19th century, France, Germany, and Japan offered free health care to their citizens. Their aim was not strictly to make people happy, but to strengthen their army and industrial potential. In other words, welfare was necessary because people were necessary. But you ask the scary question: What happens to welfare in a future where government no longer needs people?

Yuval Harari: Its a very scary scenario. Its not science fiction. Its already happening.

The reason to build all these mass social service systems was to support strong armies and strong economies. Already the most advanced armies dont need [as many] people. The same might happen in the civilian economy. The problem is motivation: What if the government loses the motivation to help the masses?

In Scandinavia the tradition of the welfare state is so entrenched that perhaps theyll continue to provide welfare even for masses of useless people. But what about Nigeria, South Africa, and China? They have been encouraged to provide services mostly in the hope of advancing prosperity, [which requires] having a large basis of healthy and smart citizens. But take that away and you might be left with countries with elites who dont care about the population.

Thompson: The last point is interesting, because, in Europe and the United States, the opposite seems more true: The population doesnt care about, or think it needs, the elite. Thats a part of how we got Trump and Brexit. Now you see these radical-right backlashes against the establishment sweeping across Europe. Why is this happening now?

Harari: Thats the big question. I didnt foresee it coming. Its not my expertise to look at the political situation in the U.S. or in Europe. But if you look at the objective condition of health and so forth, most people in the U.S. and Western Europe have better conditions than they used to. But they feel like they are being pushed aside and losing power. And they fear their children will have a worse life than they do today. I think these fears may be justified. But I dont think the antidote will work. Trump will not help Alabama voters regain their power.

Thompson: Americans might be richer and better educated than they used to be a generation ago, with better health care and superior entertainment options. But the fact of progress doesnt seem to matter. The story is all that matters. And the victorious Trump story was that Americas cities were falling apart and I alone can fix it.

Harari: [White Americans without a college degree] are a declining class within a declining power. The U.S. is losing power compared to the rest of the world, and within the U.S., the Trump voters are losing their status. Even though they are experiencing better conditions, the narrative self which is dominant in most people tells a story of decline, which says that the future will be worse than the present. And most peoples happiness depends on their expectations, not their conditions.

Thompson: Lets say the future for most people is a universal basic income, wonderful psychedelic drugs, and virtual reality video games. People dont starve. They arent miserable. But they also stop striving. The Walt Disney virtueschallenge yourself! go on an adventure!are sacrificed to live permanently inside of Disney-style entertainment. Is that utopia or dystopia?

Harari: Most philosophers will say that your hypothetical is a dystopia. A far worse world.

But you could argue that people already spend most of their lives in virtual games. Most religions are virtual games superimposed on the reality of life. Do this, and theres a penalty. Do that, and you get extra points. There is nothing in reality that corresponds to these rules. But you have millions of people playing these virtual reality games. So what is the difference between a religion and a virtual reality game?

Recently I went with my nephew to hunt Pokmon. We were walking down the street and a bunch of kids approached us. They were also hunting Pokemon. My nephew and these children got into a bit of a fight because they were trying to capture the same invisible creatures. It seemed strange to me. But these Pokmon were very real to the children.

And then it hit me: This is just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! You have two sides fighting over something that I cannot see. I look at the stones of buildings in Jerusalem and I just see stones. But Christians, Jews, and Muslims who look at the same stones see a holy city. Its their imagination, but they are willing to kill for it. Thats virtual reality, too.

Your hypothetical also raises a deep philosophical question: What is the meaning of life? Historically philosophers investigated questions that were interesting to only half a percentage of humankind.

Thompson: Right. What is ideal way to seek happiness? isnt a useful inquiry when the entire countryside is dying of plague.

Harari: Yes, but once you are free from considerations of famine and plague, this becomes a much more practical question: What is the meaning of life? If you design a self-driving car, you must design ethical algorithms in the case that its about to hit a child. Do you risk injury to the pedestrian, or the passenger? That is suddenly a very practical question. Philosophy, once an archaic system, becomes central once we take care of widespread death and misery.

Thompson: Alright, lets move from the end of work to the end of individualism.

You have a beautiful way of summarizing human beings relationship with authority. First, we believed that authority came from the gods. But that belief has yielded to modern liberalism, which tells us that authority comes from individuals. Democracy says power comes from the voters, not the divine. Capitalism says the consumer is always right, not the Bible. Marketers say beauty resides in the eye of the beholder, not in platonic forms.

But you have a ominous prediction that humans will merge with the computers, algorithms, and biochemical devices that make our lives better. We will yield our authority and identity to data and artificial intelligence. What invention or innovation in the world right now is the best example of this future?

Harari: I like to begin with the simple things. Look at GPS applications, like Waze and Google Maps. Five years ago, you went somewhere in your car or on foot. You navigated based on your own knowledge and intuition. But today everybody is blindly following what Waze is telling them. Theyve lost the basic ability to navigate by themselves. If something happens to the application, they are completely lost.

Thats not the most important example. But it is the direction were talking about. You reach a juncture on the road, and you trust the algorithm. Maybe the junction is your career. Maybe its the decision to get married. But you trust the algorithm rather than your own intuition.

The most important invention thats spreading now is biometric sensors. They may become ubiquitous. Humans will consult their biometric data to determine how to live. That is really interesting and scary stuff, because we will no longer be in charge of our identity. We will outsource our executive decisions to biometric readings of our neurochemical signals to decide how to live.

Thompson: Here is how I understand this idea. Its the future, and Im hungry on a Friday night. I think, Id like fried chicken. Then I consult my AI daemon, which can read by biochemical signals and predict my future emotions, and it says to me: Actually, Derek, a chicken salad will make you happier. So I eat salad.

On a case-by-case basis, this technology seems wonderful. Its making me so much healthier and happier. Technology is rescuing me from the natural errors of misreading my future wants and needs. But over time, I have disappeared, because I have outsourced my identity to a biochemical analyst.

Harari: Yes, exactly.

In this scenario, we will come to see that decisions dont come from a mystical soul but from biological processes in the brain. In the past we couldnt gather the data and analyze it. So you could imagine that there is a mystical, transcendental soul inside you making these decisions. From a practical perspective that was a good enough estimation. But once you combine a better understanding of the biochemical processes in the body with the computational power of big data then you have a real revolution, because this traditional notion of free will no longer make practical sense and you can have algorithm that make better decisions than an individual human.

Thompson: Thats fascinating, because I now think of these algorithms as bringing me closer to myself. If a fitness tracker encourages me to run more, or an entertainment algorithm discovers a song I love, Im happier. And I prefer myself happy.

But over time, my decisions have been reduced to brain signals and brain signal readers. I am not special, or sacred, or even individual. Im just a vessel for a bunch of signals that are best read by a computer. There is no room for me in that arrangement.

Harari: What really happens is that the self disintegrates. Its not that you understand your true self better, but you come to realize there is no true self. There is just a complicated connection of biochemical connections, without a core. There is no authentic voice that lives inside you.

Have you seen Inside Out? For me this was the tipping point in popular cultures understanding of the mind. For decades Disney sold us the liberal individualistic fantasy: Dont listen to your neighbors or government, just follow your own heart. But then in Inside Out, you go inside this little girl Riley, and you dont encounter a self or a core identity. What the movie shows to children and their parents is that Riley is a robot being manipulated by chemical processes inside her brain. The cataclysmic point in the story is your realize that none of the sources inside her are her true self. In the beginning you identify with Joy but the critical moment comes when you realize none of these emotions are Rileys true self. Its a balance between different sources.

And I think this is what will happen more and more on a general level. The very idea of an individual that exists, which has been so precious to us, is in danger.

Link:
The Post-Human World - The Atlantic

The recent case of three men accused of kidnapping a 19-year-old woman in Boynton Beach and trying to force her into prostitution is among a rapidly growing number of reported human trafficking incidents in Florida, state officials say.

The Florida Department of Children and Families counted nearly 1,900 reports of human trafficking statewide in 2016, a 54 percent increase from the previous year.

Advocates for victims have called human trafficking modern-day slavery. Under state and federal law, it is defined as soliciting, recruiting, harboring, transporting or otherwise obtaining another person to exploit him or her for labor, domestic servitude or sexual exploitation.

Human trafficking is something that can go on right before your eyes and you might not recognize it, said Sheila Gomez, the executive director of the Catholic Charities Diocese of Palm Beach, one of Palm Beach Countys largest family service nonprofits.

According to the Polaris Project a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that tracks the number of calls to the national trafficking hotline Florida had the third-highest number of reported cases in 2016, behind only California and Texas.

South Floridas popularity among tourists and its transient populations help make it a popular target for the crime, some authorities say.

Any place where there are young adults, said Becky Dymond, the founder of Hepzibah House, a safe house in Palm Beach County for women who have been victims of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Traffickers, theyll go to bus stops, halfway houses, sober houses, strip clubs, bars.

Today, Catholic Charities is expected to announce the receipt of a grant and the start of a partnership with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office to combat human trafficking.

The Boynton Beach incident took place in the early morning hours of Feb. 9. The men entered a home on Northwest Fourth Street, two of them with guns drawn. One pointed a revolver at the 19-year-olds stomach, grabbed her by the back of her head and forced her to leave the house, police say.

An ad for the woman later appeared on the Backpage.com website advertising sexual relationships. An undercover detective arranged to meet her at a Boynton Beach motel, offering to pay $200, before the men were arrested. One of the men allegedly told officers they had gone to the Boynton Beach home to pimp the woman out.

Officials say violent acts such as this one are less common than scenarios where persuasion and kindness are used by a would-be trafficker to gain their targets trust.

Perhaps that person, they are really down on their luck or it could be a number of vulnerabilities, said Tanya Meade, president of the Human Trafficking Coalition of the Palm Beaches. At the end of the day, somebody uses elses vulnerability to make a profit.

Dymond estimates about 2,100 women in Palm Beach County are being commercially sexually exploited, not including those who are trafficked online. Women and men in drug recovery are particularly vulnerable to being manipulated by traffickers, she said.

All they have to do is go Hey, you can have as much coke as you want, Dymond said. Thats one of the tools they use to manipulate and maintain control.

Anti-trafficking organizations already are targeting at least one tool the Boynton Beach suspects are alleged to have used. This month, an unnamed Florida woman who says she was the victim of trafficking through Backpage and an anti-human trafficking organization filed a lawsuit in federal court in Orlando against the owners of Backpage.com

The online exploitation of teen girls is the biggest human rights violation of our time, said Carol Robles-Roman, the president and CEO of Legal Momentum, a New York-based womens rights organization that helped prepare the lawsuit. Backpage.com knowingly facilitated this evil and must be held accountable to the harmed girls and to the organizations that provide them services so they can heal and recover.

This past month, the site closed its adult advertisement section, citing government pressure, according to multiple published reports.

Statistics show the majority of reported human trafficking cases involve women, but it can also happen to men and boys, officials say.

There is no such thing as a typical victim, Meade said. They can be young people. They can be older. They can be male. It happens really across the socioeconomic (spectrum).

In many cases, calls to the trafficking hotline are made by a community member who observed something out of the ordinary, she said. According to the Polaris Project, signs of human trafficking include a person being unable to leave as he or she wishes, lacking control over his or her finances, and lacking control over his or her identificiation.

The biggest thing we always encourage people to do is just educate themselves about the issue, Meade said. If they see something that doesnt look right or feel right, call the hotline.

SEE ANYTHING

SUSPICIOUS?

Call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.

Read the rest here:
NEW: Human trafficking reports rise in Florida; young adults targeted - Palm Beach Post

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson professed in his Senate confirmation testimony that our values are our interests when it comes to human rights. Yet one of his State Departments first acts may be to abandon that stance with the tiny but strategic Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.

Concerns in Congress and the human rights community are high that the Trump team is planning to approve a multibillion-dollar sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes to Bahrain without any conditions, reversing an Obama administration decision to demand the government take small reform steps in exchange for the jets.

Im hoping the Bahrain deal is going to roll out without the restrictions, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said last month. I think it could happen soon.

If approved by State, the sale would reward a Sunni monarchy that has been cracking down on its majority-Shiite population and flouting U.S. requests for restraint.

Corker objected to the fact that the Obama administration attached human rights conditions to a congressional notification about the F-16 sales sent to Capitol Hill in September. Congress is given a chance to object to an arms sale before it goes through, but typically there are no conditions attached by that stage in the process.

This type of conditionality would be unprecedented and counterproductive to maintaining security cooperation and ultimately addressing human rights issues, Corker told me. There are more effective ways to seek changes in partner policies.

But other lawmakers view the question differently. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to President Trump last week to argue against the sale.

Some people argue that our close ties with Bahrain are reason for America to avert its gaze and ignore the worsening human rights abuses, Wyden wrote. I and many others categorically reject this argument and believe instead that America is obligated to push her friends and partners to uphold basic human rights and the rule of law.

Wyden wants to know if the White House or State Department leadership consulted the departments Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor about the human rights situation in Bahrain and also how the sale contributes to U.S. national security. A department spokesman declined to comment, while the White House did not respond to my query.

Tom Malinowski, who served as the head of the bureau at the end of the Obama administration, said that the Bahrain case will show whether Congress will stand up for human rights if the Trump administration will not.

Heres the first test for Republicans who have been saying that we are going to continue to insist on human rights around the world, he said. Is this going to be a press release or are they going to do something about it?

Options for Congress are limited. In addition to Wyden, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has been outspoken about the need for reform in Bahrain. They could bring up a congressional resolution to oppose the F-16 sales, but similar efforts have not succeeded in the past. Last year, the Senate failed to advance a resolution put forward by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) that opposed U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia over alleged human rights abuses in the war in Yemen.

Without congressional action, private bilateral pressures on the Bahraini government are unlikely to work. In 2015, the Obama administration lifted a four-year ban on arms sales to Bahrain after extensive negotiations. Per their agreement, the government of Bahrain released opposition leader Ibrahim Sharif. He was rearrestedon new charges only a few weeks later.

This wasnt just about human rights, this was about a country going back on its word at the highest levels, one senior Obama administration official said. It was about how the United States was treated.

The conditions Obama attached to the F-16 deal in September, which were never made public, were meant to be easy for the government to fulfill. They included the release of human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who faces years in prison for tweeting and writing an op-ed in the New York Times, and allowing some organization by the regimes political opposition following the forced dissolution of the opposition al-Wefaq party.

None of those actions were taken, and the Bahraini government is now in the midst of a full-scale crackdown, said Cole Bockenfeld, deputy director for policy at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

If the Trump administration releases the sales now, that completely validates the Bahraini hard-liners view that they dont need to even pretend to be improving on human rights anymore, he said.

As Bahrain is a major non-NATO ally and host of the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet, its stability and security are in the United States national security interest. But if the Bahrain government doesnt allow for political dissent and basic human rights, both of those goals will be undermined over the long term, along with U.S. values and interests in the region.

Read more from Josh Rogins archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

See the article here:
The Trump team's deal with Bahrain could ignore its human rights ... - Washington Post

Bread is served at a soup kitchen in central Israel. (photo credit:REUTERS)

The State of Israel likes to describe itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, which it is. Indeed, we Israelis have several reasons to take pride in our lively and vital democracy, whose citizens benefit from freedom of expression and other liberties despite multiple challenges and obstacles. Nonetheless, I would like to use the apt opportunity of the World Day of Social Justice, which is celebrated on February 20, to pose a question or two about the democratic and Jewish character of the State of Israel.

The concept of democracy is based on several core values without which no democracy can define itself as such. Human dignity is one of these core values. Being such an important tenet, it was even granted a basic law with a unique status in Israels law compendium: Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.

There is nothing new about human dignity as a central social issue. In fact, ancient Judaism repeatedly emphasizes that man was created in the image of God. Hence, harming a human being is the same as harming God. That said, let us stop and ask ourselves, to what extent does our current reality in Israel honor this fundamental principle?

Social exclusion and injustice are issues that impact a vast number of people in Israel of 2017. The figures point to a sad reality of nearly 2.5 million people living in poverty. The poor of Israel, comprised mainly of the weakest and most excluded groups of society the residents of slums and development towns, new immigrants, the Arab minority, foreign workers and more are grappling with a bleak reality characterized by inadequate educational and healthcare services, lack of basic material needs, food insecurity and more.

The entire scope of their personal resources are often channeled to physical and emotional survival. This live or die situation deprives the poor of the freedom or capability to exercise their various civil and political rights even though they live in a democratic country. Moreover, living in poverty seriously hampers their autonomous self-fulfillment as human beings.

I would like to argue that the non-fulfillment of basic needs inevitably leads to compromising human dignity, with basic needs referring not only to minimal nutrition but also to adequate educational and healthcare services and a safe environment. This is because the absence of these basic needs leads to wretched ignorance and compromised health, two things which have nothing to do with human dignity.

It is a sad fact that in todays Israel, a person can only benefit from her legal, political and other human rights if her basic existence is secured. Put differently, people deprived of fundamental conditions for existence are also dispossessed of their human dignity. By extension, I would argue that other social and economic rights, which are considered as being more than minimal basic needs, are in fact fundamental human rights because they provide human beings with the prerequisites for self-realization.

The natural conclusion of this may be simple to understand but are harder to implement. If we want to live in a country which is committed to human dignity, one that fulfills the ancient Jewish commandment of Beloved is the person created in Gods image (Pirkei Avot), then it is the states responsibility to ensure adequate (not just basic) living conditions to all of its citizens. In other words, Israel should adopt an accommodative social policy which provides each and every citizen and resident the conditions for realizing their human existence. Let us not forget that only a society committed to the flourishing of each and every individual will become a prosperous society.

It is time we revisit the vision of the founding fathers of Zionism, from all across the political spectrum from Jabotinsky through Herzl to Berl Katznelson and work toward a country committed to social justice and human dignity.

The writer is the director of the Community Division of BINA the Jewish Movement for Social Change.

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The recorded deed to Jerusalem

Link:
On human dignity in Israel - Jerusalem Post Israel News