BOOK REVIEW
What Happens When Meaning Goes Away
A.I., biotechnology, the loss of meaning, and the future of the world
Humanity has made tremendous strides in reining in plague, famine and war in recent decades.
Take just one example: poverty. Since 1990, on average, with each passing day, there are 130,000 fewer people living in poverty. Two centuries ago, 90% of the population lived in extreme poverty. In 1950, 75% of the world was still living in extreme poverty. Today, those living in extreme poverty represent less than 10% of the world’s population.
As Yuval Harari writes,
For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from binging at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack.
