Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, has written an extensive op-ed in promotion for his new book. The article is about free will - and how it doesn’t exist in this day and age.
He also poses some interesting questions about what problems we should be focused on.
How does liberal democracy function in an era when governments and corporations can hack humans? What’s left of the beliefs that “the voter knows best” and “the customer is always right”? How do you live when you realise that you are a hackable animal, that your heart might be a government agent, that your amygdala might be working for Putin, and that the next thought that emerges in your mind might well be the result of some algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself? These are the most interesting questions humanity now faces.
It’s an interesting take on a number of topics, and definitely worth a read.