Homo Deus

Egypt had only two institutions sufficiently organised to rule the country: the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hence the revolution was hijacked first by the Brotherhood, and eventually by the army.

Cyber-wars, however, may last just a few minutes.

There is no doubt that Homo sapiens is the most powerful species in the world. Homo sapiens also likes to think that it enjoys a superior moral status, and that human life has much greater value than the lives of pigs, elephants or wolves. This is less obvious. Does might make right?

Hence a bolder techno-religion seeks to sever the humanist umbilical cord altogether. It foresees a world which does not revolve around the desires and experiences of any humanlike beings.

the principles always remain the same – and they are always capitalist. Your aim is to establish a city, a kingdom or maybe an entire civilisation.

A Dataist would argue that the entire exercise is misguided, because music should be evaluated according to the data it carries rather than according to the experience it creates. A Dataist may argue, for example, that the Fifth Symphony carries far more data than the pygmy initiation song, because it uses more chords and scales, and creates dialog

However, as we shall see in the following chapters, the whole edifice of modern politics and ethics is built upon subjective experiences, and few ethical dilemmas can be solved by referring strictly to brain activities. For example, what’s wrong with torture or rape?

they don’t know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a phenomenon.

The following year, 1695, famine struck Estonia, killing a fifth of the population. In 1696 it was the turn of Finland, where a quarter to a third of people