yuval harari's "beyond homo sapiens": how should we deal with the era of information overload?
2024-10-03
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on september 10, citic publishing group simultaneously released the new work "beyond homo sapiens" by yuval harari, author of "a brief history of humankind" globally. as a new work after six years of precipitation, yuval harari tells in this book how information networks are reshaping our world. in an era of rapid development of artificial intelligence, our understanding of information networks will determine how far we can go. on the day the new book was released, the publisher invited two professors from east china normal university, liu qing and xu jilin, to have a wonderful dialogue based on yuval harari’s new book, and specially invited huang jingou, a lecturer in the department of philosophy of capital normal university, to host the conversation. this article is part of the conversation for the benefit of readers.
"beyond homo sapiens: a brief history of information networks from the stone age to the ai era"
written by yuval harari
translated by lin junhong
citic publishing group
huang jingou:as an individual, each of us is embedded in the so-called information network. we inevitably stand at such a node position and receive a large number of messages every day. i now feel that everyone is my leader, including the courier guy who said to send the order number as soon as possible. i also feel that he is giving some kind of orders to me, asking me to complete the link of information for each action. in such an internet age, how do we select information among the countless platform pushes we receive every day and make our lives relatively easy?
liu qing:teacher xu jilin is an old friend of mine, 6 years older than me, but he is always ahead of me in the use of new media. i have always been cautious about wechat and avoided it at first, but teacher xu told me that wechat is very useful. for example, you can make phone calls abroad without spending money. i learned from him and added wechat. therefore, my use of social platform technology is relatively conservative, even a little fearful. of course, now we can’t do without wechat. i also occasionally post in moments. there are many wechat groups, but i only insist on reading the information in a few groups. i basically don’t dare to speak, because once i speak and get involved in the discussion, i will spend a lot of time.
harari talks about different types of information networks in his new book, "beyond homo sapiens." but have you noticed that each of us is now embedded between different types of networks and multiple networks of the same type, so we have a particularly strong feeling of the burden of information overload. this burden prevents us from being able to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong.
some people say that having a choice is better than having no choice. having a choice means freedom. but because we have so much choice, and every choice is voluntary, we end up feeling less free. this is the problem we face now. it causes not only general problems, such as not having enough time to read information, but more fundamental problems, such as a sense of time confusion.
if you like watching dramas, movies, or even reading, it requires you to have a smooth linear sense of time; if you play games, you need immediate reactions, while at work you have to meet deadlines and face delivery boy, you need to solve the problem immediately. each information network carries its own specific sense of time, and when we are embedded in different networks, it becomes confusing.
after watching so many short videos and browsing on various social platforms, the day has passed, and as a result, i have a sense of emptiness. it seems that there are no stories worth remembering and telling. as a result, we are drowned in countless other people's stories, but lose our own stories.
what can be done? our world is already a vast ocean of information. there is also reflection on information and information overload in so much information, including harari’s book, including our ongoing dialogue, which has also become a kind of information. we can't really get out of the ocean. we can only learn to swim in it and learn to stop on the island for a while to catch our breath without being drowned by the sea water.
of course, information is not homogeneous. some waves can resist other waves. it depends on what kind of waves you want to use to resist. if you have the will to resist, but feel very weak and lack the energy to make such an effort, then there are some discussions like harari’s, this kind of reflective and critical voice on the current wave of information, which may help you to build your own islands, landing from time to time and resting there.
sometimes, if you turn off all electronic products and read a book, you will find that your state and mentality may be very good, and your entire sense of time and emotional state may change. i now try, for example, not to look at my phone for a day in a row, and only open my phone at a specific time in the evening to read some wechat messages, and i feel very good. if we believe in free will, we can still make a difference. in fact, there have always been theories, discussions and inspirational voices trying to get rid of information overload. this is also a gift in the ocean of information.
xu jilin:teacher liu provided his experience, and i talked about my feelings. in my opinion, the past was actually an era of information scarcity. in an era of information scarcity, people were looking for the truth. because information is too scarce and has been monopolized, you are passive and an object, the so-called audience. today is an era of information overload. with all kinds of information, it seems that you are no longer the audience. you have entered a world where you are not looking for the truth, but filtering the truth. faced with various conflicting and constantly reversing so-called truths, which one do you believe in the end? you have to filter and make your own independent judgment. so you see, these are two completely different eras. our age has completely experienced these two eras. maybe when you start to enter the information age, it is already the so-called era of screening the truth. teacher liu just said repeatedly that if you are out of this sea of information, if you are not careful, you will be overwhelmed by it and lose yourself, so he wants to escape to an isolated island, which is a kind of isolation wisdom. with his profound philosophy, think about it from a distance.
liu qing:resting on the island and escaping are impossible.
xu jilin:this is one way of teacher liu, but i am afraid it is another way. i prefer to still embrace the sea and immerse myself in the sea water. most people, like me, talk about quitting mobile phones every day, just like quitting smoking, but they can never quit because it has become a part of your body and a part of your brain. it is actually not easy to cut off a part of your body. it's possible.
but in this context, people have a very lazy way. in fact, they are not forced, but actively enter an information cocoon. that is to say, when faced with various complex information, they believe the part of the information they want to believe and enter the part of the group chat i was willing to enter, slowly becoming more and more convinced that i was right. because of the sharing of information between each other and the shielding of all kinds of contrary and unfavorable information, you gradually enter a cocoon where you feel that you can obtain some kind of truth through simple cognitive methods, without even filtering, because this group of people the information people obtain is one-dimensional.
then a person slowly enters a "position cocoon" from the information cocoon, and even the standpoint is completely consistent. from the information cocoon to the position cocoon, people can live calmly. but once in contact with the outside world, people will fall into arguments and even abuse that are completely unconvincing to each other, because not only are the positions different, but the information supported by the positions is also different, and then they will all call the opposite information rumors and use their own to re-understand in a different way, to understand the meaning of this information in a different way.
therefore, information itself is not an objective existence. it must be subjectively understood to present its meaning. this meaning is what harari repeatedly said, when information is linked together, the meaning presented by different links, or there is a difference in speaking the so-called truth. but today, in an era of information overload, people are too tired and have so much time to sift through this information, so they can only hide in the information cocoon and gain a consistency of stance. only with the sameness can they survive. .
of course, i am a person who asks for trouble. instead of climbing to an isolated island, i would rather swim from the east china sea to the south china sea, identify different oceans of information, and even regard it as an intellectual game. i am a historian myself, and although i do not do research, in the field i study, the past information is either too narrow or lacking, so i need to identify it myself. this comparison and reference is the double evidence method, and then i make my independent judgment.
i prefer to have unique pursuits and a unique independent stance, which is the so-called bat-type personality. i am above all the melee, so i prefer to join different group chats and get the opposite information. because i hope to find the fulcrum of my position by embracing different seas, so as to get closer to the ultimate truth.
liu qing:harari criticizes a view in his new book called the "naive view of information." because there is a basic element in his book, that is, reality, truth and information are three different things. he believes that reality exists objectively, but reality has many aspects. there is no one way to find the real truth, so the truth we see is always partial.
he believes that the so-called free market theory of information must be broken, which means that the more information we get, the closer we are to the truth. because he said that especially in the current era of network algorithm push, the information it pushes to you is what you want most and can stimulate your strongest participation, because participation is an indicator that internet companies need. for example, if you incite hatred, you hear the hatred incited here and the hatred incited there. the sum of these two kinds of hatred does not equal the truth at all. so this constitutes a more complex approach.
the question that teacher xiao huang asked just now is that we are already overloaded with information. the solution provided by teacher xu is to get more and different information, so we need to have a particularly powerful information processor like teacher xu, and the cpu must be particularly good. i can't stand it. after swimming for a while, i need to rest on the island for a while and become an amphibian. sometimes i have to block information. but the island itself is not an isolated island. the island is a chain of islands formed by the information network of another printing era. it is an island chain. an older person like me would find peace and rest there, and have a cool head sift through it.
however, harari has a rather complex and paradoxical argument in his book. he said that in fact, you think you are making a free choice. even if you are willing to make a free choice after listening to different opinions very fairly, this will itself is still it is formed in the interactive network of various information, and is not your original intention. however, if we follow the logic of his point of view to the end, we can question whether harari’s willingness to think critically is also formed in the information network. is he just following what others say? i feel that there still needs to be a more adequate discussion of the relationship between information and truth. for example, he still believes that an information network model such as a scientific community is more advantageous in obtaining the truth, but he also admits that there is no foolproof method.
xu jilin:to clarify, the information i am talking about does not mean that the more the better. if it is homogeneous information, it will be invalid information. i said this information does not lie in the abundance, but in what? listening to both will lead to understanding, which means that you must be good at hearing different information, even conflicting information. you must first learn to identify what is junk information, and secondly, have the ability to reasonably analyze various contradictory information. this kind of judgment can be trained slowly. if you are able to listen and understand all kinds of information with reasonable analysis, then you can transcend these contradictory information, and you may be closer to god's vision, seeing the whole head. elephant.
