Yuval Harari on History

Yuval Harari interviewd by Russ Roberts on EconTalk, October 19, 2015

What happens is that we are born into a particular social structure, a particular political situation, which was shaped by historical processes. And these historical processes changed not only the society around us, but also our minds--our thoughts, our fears, our hopes. We think they are our own, but very often, our deepest desires and fears and expectations are shaped by history. And we don't know it. And this limits our ability to envision alternatives--to envision alternative futures, to see the full horizon of possibilities that is facing us both as individuals and as collective, as the human collective. And I think the main benefit of studying history is that when you start understanding how these historical processes shape my thoughts and my fears and my hopes, you get a certain degree of freedom to start thinking of other thoughts. To start hoping other things and also start fearing other things. To give just an example, being born into a capitalist world, it's extremely difficult for us to think outside the capitalist box about alternative human societies, alternative economic arrangements. Similarly, being born into a humanist world, again, it's very difficult for us to imagine a non-humanist or post-humanist future. And this limits our horizon of possibilities. And also our ability to deal with change. Because things keep changing. And now they change at a much faster rate than every before in history. And if we are stuck with the old ideas, it's very, very difficult to understand what's happening and to adjust to it. If you look today at the world, I think it's fair to say that nobody has the slightest idea how the world would like in 2050. Except that it would be very, very different from the world of today. If you take practical things, like the job market, many experts estimate that artifical intelligence will take maybe 50% of the jobs in the USA within 30 or 40 years. If you today go to college and you think, 'What should I study so that I will have some useful profession in 30, 40 years?' nobody really knows what you should study. It could well be that in 30, 40 years, we won't need most human doctors or lawyers because computers would be able to do it better than humans. And similarly, we don't really know what the family structure would be like. What our [?] would be like, with the advent of electrical engineering and brain computer interfaces, and neuro-technology and things like that. Nobody really knows how the human body will look like in 50 years. So, I think the main thing that history can give us is a broader perspective on the present and the future. Some people think that we'll study the good decisions and bad decisions from the past, and simply repeat the good decisions and avoid the bad decisions. But it never works like that.