Thoughts on <DO HUMANKIND'S BEST DAYS LIE AHEAD>

Opening

These days, the topic everyone seems interested in is artificial intelligence. I'm no exception—and along with AI itself, I've found myself increasingly drawn to related ideas like "intellect," "intelligence," "the mind," and "the brain." Following that thread, I went looking for books on psychology and decided I ought to read something by Alain de Botton. When I searched his name in the library catalog, this book, The Future of Sapiens, came up in the results. And since it listed not only de Botton but also Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, and Matt Ridley—globally renowned opinion leaders whose names I knew well—I picked it up on the spot, even though it hadn't been on my list to borrow.

Reading the opening pages, I realized the book's focus wasn't actually "artificial intelligence." I'll admit to about one second of disappointment, but I quickly grew interested again once I saw that it was a dialogue among world-class thinkers on a more fundamental question: "Does humankind make progress?" In my own case, I think the Korean translated title, The Future of Sapiens, was a marketing success. The original title is Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead? Had the book carried a literal translation of that original title, I suspect I would have dismissed it as full of grandiose talk and never read it. Looking at things like this, I feel that a certain amount of chance adds flavor to life. :)

About the Book

Before reading further about this book, you might find the rest more engaging if you first decide—right now, off the top of your head—whether your answer to the question "Does humankind make progress?" is yes or no.

This book is a transcript of the Munk Debate held in Canada in November 2015, in which four participants were split into two sides—two in favor, two against—to debate the proposition "Does humankind make progress?" Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley argued for the proposition; Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell argued against it. The audience was polled both before the debate began and after it ended. To give away the result first: before the debate, 71% were in favor and 29% against; afterward, 73% were in favor and 27% against, so the "for" side won. Had I been in the audience, I think I would have chosen "yes" both at the start and at the end. But because a vote is binary, it can't capture the realizations and lessons that lie somewhere in between. So if you're truly interested in this topic, reading the book yourself would be a worthwhile way to spend two or three hours.

Since this is a debate that was transcribed and then translated into text, I imagine some of the precise meaning was diluted in the process of turning speech into writing and then translating it. For that reason, I think it's worth watching the video as well (https://youtu.be/eUmBWB54riE?si=vSdb-bYRHAjWiWWM); I've added it to my playlist to watch whenever I find the time.

There was one passage in the book where the clear difference in stance between the "for" and "against" sides really came through, so I'd like to borrow it here. It's an exchange on climate change between Steven Pinker (pro-progress) and Malcolm Gladwell (anti-progress):

• (Steven Pinker) "The problem of climate change is plainly a problem of economics. Every projection of what the worst-case weather scenario might look like depends on economists' estimates—for instance, calculations of how many people will burn how much fossil fuel."
• (Malcolm Gladwell) "It's true that this is a problem economists can effectively address. But that doesn't make climate change an economic problem. That's like saying that if an artist paints a still life of apples, then apples are the artist's problem. An apple is a fruit. It exists outside the artist's domain."
• (Steven Pinker) "Both analyzing climate change and finding possible solutions to it are economic problems. We know we can install solar panels, but the question is whether there are enough of them. We also know that if people consume less, we can mitigate climate change. But the question is whether people will actually do so. What incentives must we use to get them to? All of this is the business of economics."
• (Malcolm Gladwell) "In what you've just said, I can see something quite narrow—almost sacred, as if enshrined on an altar—in the way Mr. Pinker has chosen to view the world. Just because economists can effectively describe climate change does not make it an economic problem. Climate change is not an economic problem; it is a problem in itself. To deal with it successfully, many sectors of society must coordinate well across countless layers. To suggest that we can simply simplify the problem and reduce it to a matter of economic analysis is foolish."

There's also a passage I want to record here because I found the response personally shocking. The participants were asked what they made of the way the 2008 U.S. financial crisis spread across the entire world as the world grew more complex. Steven Pinker's answer to this was: "At the time, global GDP growth merely stalled for a single year, and it climbed back up the following year. And in Asia and Africa, the aftermath was barely felt." Reading this answer, I could actually sense what it is that anti-progress thinkers worry about in pro-progress thinkers. I believe that, regardless of which side one takes, we need to acknowledge that the financial crisis was an event that laid bare serious systemic flaws. If, along with that acknowledgment, one then offered concrete examples showing that the system was lacking at the time but has since built better defenses and made progress after going through such events—and continues to work at it—that would have been an excellent answer for the pro-progress side. But because Pinker's answer declined to explicitly acknowledge a problem that clearly existed, and instead amounted to "well, weren't some other figures just fine?", reading this passage let me empathize with exactly where the anti-progress side feels frustrated.

Closing

As I said earlier, if you asked me as an audience member whether I was for or against, I would still answer that humankind will make progress (yes). And yet, when I look at the passages I marked to remember, more of them come from the "against" side—Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell. I think this is because I agree with the view that I want humankind to progress, but that there is nothing to give me real certainty about whether it actually will, in the end. So it seems I marked more of those passages out of a wish to take the anti-progress side's view—that progress will be hard to achieve—as "advice" and to keep it in mind. In particular, the message Alain de Botton conveys throughout is, I think, a warning about human nature.

"Tonight's debate may look like an argument about science, but it is really an argument about wisdom and a philosophy of wisdom that you might wish to live by in your own lives. The other side's arguments, grounded in science and business, are not a philosophy worth leaning on to live. To possess humor, humanity, kindness, and the virtue of forgiveness, we must accept the fact that we carry a 'flawed nut' (the brain). We need to go a little easier on ourselves and be as humble as we possibly can. What I want to urge upon you is precisely this humility."

The fact that dialogues like this take place regularly is itself part of the "civilization that humans have invented to compensate for the flawed nut," as de Botton puts it—and it's one of the reasons we can view the future positively. And the reason I want to keep holding to the pro-progress position is, I think, that the way I personally am motivated and moved lies in positive affirmation. From the standpoint that we come to act according to what we believe, it's also a message to myself: to make choices and take actions that exert a positive influence on the world. I hope this piece serves as an occasion for each of us, amid these days so full of AI-driven FOMO, to consider what kind of future for humankind we ourselves hope for.