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[ { "from": "system", "value": "Got a text with a `[text_redacted]` shaped hole in it. Patch it up with a chunk of 1077 characters.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Money has been essential both for building empires and for promoting science. But is money the ultimate goal of these undertakings, or perhaps just a dangerous necessity?\n\nIt is not easy to grasp the true role of economics in modern history. Whole volumes have been written about how money founded states and ruined them, opened new horizons and enslaved millions, moved the wheels of industry and drove hundreds of species into extinction. Yet to understand modern economic history, you really need to understand just a single word. The word is growth. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, the modern economy has been growing like a hormone-soused teenager. It eats up everything it can find and puts on inches faster than you can count.\n\nFor most of history the economy stayed much the same size. Yes, global production increased, but this was due mostly to demographic expansion and the settlement of new lands. Per capita production remained static. But all that changed in the modern age. In 1500, global production of goods and services was equal to about $250 billion; today it hovers around $60 trillion. More importantly, in 1500, annual per capita production averaged $550, while today every man, woman and child produces, on the average, $8,800 a year. What accounts for this stupendous growth?\n\nEconomics is a notoriously complicated subject. To make things easier, let's imagine a simple example.\n\nSamuel Greedy, a shrewd financier, founds a bank in El Dorado, California.\n\nA. A. Stone, an up-and-coming contractor in El Dorado, finishes his first big job, receiving payment in cash to the tune of $1 million. He deposits this sum in Mr Greedy's bank. The bank now has $1 million in capital.\n\nIn the meantime, Jane McDoughnut, an experienced but impecunious El Dorado chef, thinks she sees a business opportunity – there's no really good bakery in her part of town. But she doesn't have enough money of her own to buy a proper facility complete with industrial ovens, sinks, knives and pots. She goes to the bank, presents her business plan to Greedy, and persuades him that it's a worthwhile investment. He issues her a $1 million loan, by crediting her account in the bank with that sum.\n\nMcDoughnut now hires Stone, the contractor, to build and furnish her bakery. His price is $1,000,000.\n\nWhen she pays him, with a cheque drawn on her account, Stone deposits it in his account in the Greedy bank.\n\nSo how much money does Stone have in his bank account? Right, $2 million.\n\nHow much money, cash, is actually located in the bank's safe? Yes, $1 million.\n\nIt doesn't stop there. As contractors are wont to do, two months into the job Stone informs McDoughnut that, due to unforeseen problems and expenses, the bill for constructing the bakery will actually be $2 million. Mrs McDoughnut is not pleased, but she can hardly stop the job in the middle. So she pays another visit to the bank, convinces Mr Greedy to give her an additional loan, and he puts another $1 million in her account. She transfers the money to the contractor's account.\n\nHow much money does Stone have in his account now? He's got $3 million.\n\nBut how much money is actually sitting in the bank? Still just $1 million. In fact, the same $1 million that's been in the bank all along.\n\nCurrent US banking law permits the bank to repeat this exercise seven more times. The contractor would eventually have $10 million in his account, even though the bank still has but $1 million in its vaults. Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes. If all of the account holders at Barclays Bank suddenly demand their money, Barclays will promptly collapse (unless the government steps in to save it). The same is true of Lloyds, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, and all other banks in the world.\n\nIt sounds like a giant Ponzi scheme, doesn't it? But if it's a fraud, then the entire modern economy is a fraud. The fact is, it's not a deception, but rather a tribute to the amazing abilities of the human imagination. What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.\n\nIn the bakery example, the discrepancy between the contractor's account statement and the amount of money actually in the bank is Mrs McDoughnut's bakery. Mr Greedy has put the bank's money into the asset, trusting that one day it would be profitable. The bakery hasn't baked a loaf of bread yet, but McDoughnut and Greedy anticipate that a year hence it will be selling thousands of loaves, rolls, cakes and cookies each day, at a handsome profit. Mrs McDoughnut will then be able to repay her loan, with interest. If at that point Mr Stone decides to withdraw his savings, Greedy will be able to come up with the cash. The entire enterprise is thus founded on trust in an imaginary future – the trust that the entrepreneur and the banker have in the bakery of their dreams, along with the contractor's trust in the future solvency of the bank.\n\nWe've already seen that money is an astounding thing because it can represent myriad different objects and convert anything into almost anything else. However, before the modern era this ability was limited. In most cases, money could represent and convert only things that actually existed in the present. This imposed a severe limitation on growth, since it made it very hard to finance new enterprises.\n\nConsider our bakery again. Could McDoughnut get it built if money could represent only tangible objects? No. In the present, she has a lot of dreams, but no tangible resources. The only way she could get her bakery built would be to find a contractor willing to work today and receive payment in a few years' time, if and when the bakery starts making money. Alas, such contractors are rare breeds. So our entrepreneur is in a bind. Without a bakery, she can't bake cakes. Without cakes, she can't make money. Without money, she can't hire a contractor. Without a contractor, she has no bakery.\n\nHumankind was trapped in this predicament for thousands of years. As a result, economies remained frozen. The way out of the trap was discovered only in the modern era, with the appearance of a new system based on trust in the future. In it, people agreed to represent imaginary goods – goods that do not exist in the present – with a special kind of money they called 'credit'. Credit enables us to build the present at the expense of the future. It's founded on the assumption that our future resources are sure to be far more abundant th[text_redacted]se, but only at the expense of the bakery next door. Venice might flourish, but only by impoverishing Genoa. The king of England might enrich himself, but only by robbing the king of France. You could cut the pie in many different ways, but it never got any bigger.\n\nThat's why many cultures concluded that making bundles of money was sinful. As Jesus said, 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God' (Matthew 19:24). If the pie is static, and I have a big part of it, then I must have taken somebody else's slice. The rich were obliged to do penance for their evil deeds by giving some of their surplus wealth to charity.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "an our present resources. A host of new and wonderful opportunities open up if we can build things in the present using future income.\n\nIf credit is such a wonderful thing, why did nobody think of it earlier? Of course they did. Credit arrangements of one kind or another have existed in all known human cultures, going back at least to ancient Sumer. The problem in previous eras was not that no one had the idea or knew how to use it. It was that people seldom wanted to extend much credit because they didn't trust that the future would be better than the present. They generally believed that times past had been better than their own times and that the future would be worse, or at best much the same. To put that in economic terms, they believed that the total amount of wealth was limited, if not dwindling. People therefore considered it a bad bet to assume that they personally, or their kingdom, or the entire world, would be producing more wealth ten years down the line. Business looked like a zero-sum game. Of course, the profits of one particular bakery might ri", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help complete this text by providing roughly one sentence or less where you see the `[missing]`.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was fine for kings (as long as their subjects remained docile), but a scullery maid who had a great idea for a bakery and wanted to move up in the world generally could only dream of wealth while scrubbing down the royal kitchens floors.\n\nIt was lose-lose. Because credit was limited, people had trouble financing new businesses. Because there were few new businesses, the economy did not grow. Because it did not grow, people assumed it never would, and those [missing] The expectation of stagnation fulfilled itself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "who had capital were wary of extending credit.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "I need a bit with 55 words to fill the gap marked by `<fill_in_here>` in this text.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then came the Scientific Revolution and the idea of progress. The idea of progress is built on the notion that if we admit our ignorance and invest resources in research, things can improve. This idea was soon translated into economic terms. Whoever believes in progress believes that geographical discoveries, technological inventions and organisational developments can increase the sum total of human production, trade and wealth. New trade routes in the Atlantic could flourish without ruining old routes in the Indian Ocean. New goods could be produced without reducing the production of old ones. For instance, one could open a new bakery specialising in chocolate cakes and croissants without causing bakeries specialisi<fill_in_here>in the future. This trust created credit; credit brought real economic growth; and growth strengthened the trust in the future and opened the way for even more credit. It didn't happen overnight – the economy behaved more like a roller coaster than a balloon. But over the long run, with the bumps evened out, the general direction was unmistakable. Today, there is so much credit in the world that governments, business corporations and private individuals easily obtain large, long-term and low-interest loans that far exceed current income.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ng in bread to go bust. Everybody would simply develop new tastes and eat more. I can be wealthy without your becoming poor; I can be obese without your dying of hunger. The entire global pie can grow.\n\nOver the last 500 years the idea of progress convinced people to put more and more trust ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "finish my writing pls. like 28 sentences more sentences. stick to history, nonfiction, philosophy. use these if u can: anthropology. maintain character context level", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The belief in the growing global pie eventually turned revolutionary. In 1776 the Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, probably the most important economics manifesto of all time. In the eighth chapter of its first volume, Smith made the following novel argument: when a landlord, a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs to maintain his own family, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants, in order to further increase his profits. The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows that an increase in the profits of private entrepreneurs is the basis for the increase in collective wealth and prosperity.\n\nThis may not strike you as very original, because we all live in a capitalist world that takes Smith's argument for granted. We hear variations on this theme every day in the news. Yet Smith's claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.\n\nSmith taught people to think about the economy as a 'win-win situation', in which my profits are also your profits. Not only can we both enjoy a bigger slice of pie at the same time, but the increase in your slice depends upon the increase in my slice. If I am poor, you too will be poor since I cannot buy your products or services. If I am rich, you too will be enriched since you can now sell me something. Smith denied the traditional contradiction between wealth and morality, and threw open the gates of heaven for the rich. Being rich meant being moral. In Smiths story, people become rich not by despoiling their neighbours, but by increasing the overall size of the pie. And when the pie grows, everyone benefits. The rich are accordingly the most useful and benevolent people in society, because they turn the wheels of growth for everyone's advantage.\n\nAll this depends, however, on the rich using their profits to open new factories and hire new employees, rather than wasting them on non-productive activities. Smith therefore repeated like a mantra the maxim that 'When profits increase, the landlord or weaver will employ more assistants' and not 'When profits increase, Scrooge will hoard his money in a chest and take it out only to count his coins.' A crucial part of the modern capitalist economy was the emergence of a new ethic, according to which profits ought to be reinvested in production. This brings about more profits, which are again reinvested in production, which brings more profits, et cetera ad infinitum. Investments can be made in many ways: enlarging the factory, conducting scientific research, developing new products. Yet all these investments must somehow increase production and translate into larger profits. In the new capitalist creed, the first and most sacred commandment is: 'The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production.'\n\nThat's why capitalism is called 'capitalism'. Capitalism distinguishes 'capital' from mere 'wealth'. Capital consists of money, goods and resources that are invested in production.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wealth, on the other hand, is buried in the ground or wasted on unproductive activities.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A pharaoh who pours resources into a non-productive pyramid is not a capitalist.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A pirate who loots a Spanish treasure fleet and buries a chest full of glittering coins on the beach of some Caribbean island is not a capitalist.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But a hardworking factory hand who reinvests part of his income in the stock market is.\n\nThe idea that 'The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production' sounds trivial. Yet it was alien to most people throughout history. In premodern times, people believed that production was more or less constant. So why reinvest your profits if production won't increase by much, no matter what you do? Thus medieval noblemen espoused an ethic of generosity and conspicuous consumption. They spent their revenues on tournaments, banquets, palaces and wars, and on charity and monumental cathedrals. Few tried to reinvest profits in increasing their manors' output, developing better kinds of wheat, or looking for new markets.\n\nIn the modern era, the nobility has been overtaken by a new elite whose members are true believers in the capitalist creed. The new capitalist elite is made up not of dukes and marquises, but of board chairmen, stock traders and industrialists. These magnates are far richer than the medieval nobility, but they are far less interested in extravagant consumption, and they spend a much smaller part of their profits on non-productive activities.\n\nMedieval noblemen wore colourful robes of gold and silk, and devoted much of their time to attending banquets, carnivals and glamorous tournaments. In comparison, modern CEOs don dreary uniforms called suits that afford them all the panache of a flock of crows, and they have little time for festivities. The typical venture capitalist rushes from one business meeting to another, trying to figure out where to invest his capital and following the ups and downs of the stocks and bonds he owns. True, his suits might be Versace and he might get to travel in a private jet, but these expenses are nothing compared to what he invests in increasing human production.\n\nIt's not just Versace-clad business moguls who invest to increase productivity. Ordinary folk and government agencies think along similar lines. How many dinner conversations in modest neighbourhoods sooner or later bog down in interminable debate about whether it is better to invest one's savings in the stock market, bonds or property? Governments too strive to invest their tax revenues in productive enterprises that will increase future income – for example, building a new port could make it easier for factories to export their products, enabling them to make more taxable income, thereby increasing the government's future revenues. Another government might prefer to invest in education, on the grounds that educated people form the basis for the lucrative high-tech industries, which pay lots of taxes without needing extensive port facilities.\n\nCapitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions. It was both descriptive and prescriptive – it offered an account of how money worked and promoted the idea that reinvesting profits in production leads to fast economic growth. But capitalism gradually became far more than just an economic doctrine. It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think. Its principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom and even happiness all depend on economic growth. Ask a capitalist how to bring justice and political freedom to a place like Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, and you are likely to get a lecture on how economic affluence and a thriving middle class are essential for stable democratic institutions, and about the need therefore to inculcate Afghan tribesmen in the values of free enterprise, thrift and self-reliance.\n\nThis new religion has had a decisive influence on the development of modern science, too. Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually, 'Will this project enable us to increase production and profits?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 14 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Will it produce economic growth?' A project that can't clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture.\n\nConversely, the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalisms belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to grow exponentially throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.\n\nOver the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs. New discoveries in fields such as biotechnology and nanotechnology could create entire new industries, whose profits could back the trillions of make-believe money that the banks and governments have created since 2008. If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are heading towards very rough times.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Narrative Extension Protocol:\nQuantity: twenty-five sentences\nContext: Match character familiarity\nGenre: history, nonfiction, philosophy", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Capitalism played a decisive role not only in the rise of modern science, but also in the emergence of European imperialism. And it was European imperialism that created the capitalist credit system in the first place. Of course, credit was not invented in modern Europe. It existed in almost all agricultural societies, and in the early modern period the emergence of European capitalism was closely linked to economic developments in Asia. Remember, too, that until the late eighteenth century, Asia was the world's economic powerhouse, meaning that Europeans had far less capital at their disposal than the Chinese, Muslims or Indians.\n\nHowever, in the sociopolitical systems of China, India and the Muslim world, credit played only a secondary role. Merchants and bankers in the markets of Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi and Beijing may have thought along capitalist lines, but the kings and generals in the palaces and forts tended to despise merchants and mercantile thinking. Most non-European empires of the early modern era were established by great conquerors such as Nurhaci and Nader Shah, or by bureaucratic and military elites as in the Qing and Ottoman empires. Financing wars through taxes and plunder (without making fine distinctions between the two), they owed little to credit systems, and they cared even less about the interests of bankers and investors.\n\nIn Europe, on the other hand, kings and generals gradually adopted the mercantile way of thinking, until merchants and bankers became the ruling elite. The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes, and was increasingly directed by capitalists whose main ambition was to receive maximum returns on their investments. The empires built by bankers and merchants in frock coats and top hats defeated the empires built by kings and noblemen in gold clothes and shining armour. The mercantile empires were simply much shrewder in financing their conquests. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest.\n\nIn 1484 Christopher Columbus approached the king of Portugal with the proposal that he finance a fleet that would sail westward to find a new trade route to East Asia. Such explorations were a very risky and costly business. A lot of money was needed in order to build ships, buy supplies, and pay sailors and soldiers – and there was no guarantee that the investment would yield a return. The king of Portugal declined.\n\nLike a present-day start-up entrepreneur, Columbus did not give up. He pitched his idea to other potential investors in Italy, France, England, and again in Portugal. Each time he was rejected. He then tried his luck with Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of newly united Spain. He took on some experienced lobbyists, and with their help he managed to convince Queen Isabella to invest. As every schoolchild knows, Isabella hit the jackpot. Columbus' discoveries enabled the Spaniards to conquer America, where they established gold and silver mines as well as sugar and tobacco plantations that enriched the Spanish kings, bankers and merchants beyond their wildest dreams.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A hundred years later, princes and bankers were willing to extend far more credit to Columbus' successors, and they had more capital at their disposal, thanks to the treasures reaped from America. Equally important, princes and bankers had far more trust in the potential of exploration, and were more willing to part with their money. This was the magic circle of imperial capitalism: credit financed new discoveries; discoveries led to colonies; colonies provided profits; profits built trust; and trust translated into more credit. Nurhaci and Nader Shah ran out of fuel after a few thousand kilometres. Capitalist entrepreneurs only increased their financial momentum from conquest to conquest.\n\nBut these expeditions remained chancy affairs, so credit markets nevertheless remained quite cautious. Many expeditions returned to Europe empty-handed, having discovered nothing of value. The English, for instance, wasted a lot of capital in fruitless attempts to discover a north-western passage to Asia through the Arctic. Many other expeditions didn't return at all. Ships hit icebergs, foundered in tropical storms, or fell victim to pirates. In order to increase the number of potential investors and reduce the risk they incurred, Europeans turned to limited liability joint-stock companies. Instead of a single investor betting all his money on a single rickety ship, the joint-stock company collected money from a large number of investors, each risking only a small portion of his capital. The risks were thereby curtailed, but no cap was placed on the profits. Even a small investment in the right ship could turn you into a millionaire.\n\nDecade by decade, western Europe witnessed the development of a sophisticated financial system that could raise large amounts of credit on short notice and put it at the disposal of private entrepreneurs and governments. This system could finance explorations and conquests far more efficiently than any kingdom or empire. The new-found power of credit can be seen in the bitter struggle between Spain and the Netherlands. In the sixteenth century, Spain was the most powerful state in Europe, holding sway over a vast global empire. It ruled much of Europe, huge chunks of North and South America, the Philippine Islands, and a string of bases along the coasts of Africa and Asia. Every year, fleets heavy with American and Asian treasures returned to the ports of Seville and Cadiz. The Netherlands was a small and windy swamp, devoid of natural resources, a small corner of the king of Spain's dominions.\n\nIn 1568 the Dutch, who were mainly Protestant, revolted against their Catholic Spanish overlord. At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe.\n\nThe secret of Dutch success was credit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Dutch burghers, who had little taste for combat on land, hired mercenary armies to fight the Spanish for them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Dutch themselves meanwhile took to the sea in ever-larger fleets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mercenary armies and cannon-brandishing fleets cost a fortune, but the Dutch were able to finance their military expeditions more easily than the mighty Spanish Empire because they secured the trust of the burgeoning European financial system at a time when the Spanish king was carelessly eroding its trust in him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'needs' must be used 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Financiers extended the Dutch enough credit to set up armies and fleets, and these armies and fleets gave the Dutch control of world trade routes, which in turn yielded handsome profits. The profits allowed the Dutch to repay the loans, which strengthened the trust of the financiers. Amsterdam was fast becoming not only one of the most important ports of Europe, but also the continent's financial Mecca.\n\nHow exactly did the Dutch win the trust of the financial system? Firstly, they were sticklers about repaying their loans on time and in full, making the extension of credit less risky for lenders. Secondly, their country's judicial system enjoyed independence and protected private rights – in particular private property rights. Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property. Instead, it flows into states upholding the rule of law and private property.\n\nImagine that you are the son of a solid family of German financiers. Your father sees an opportunity to expand the business by opening branches in major European cities. He sends you to Amsterdam and your younger brother to Madrid, giving you each 10,000 gold coins to invest. Your brother lends his start-up capital at interest to the king of Spain, who needs it to raise an army to fight the king of France. You decide to lend yours to a Dutch merchant, who wants to invest in scrubland on the southern end of a desolate island called Manhattan, certain that property values there will skyrocket as the Hudson River turns into a major trade artery. Both loans are to be repaid within a year.\n\nThe year passes. The Dutch merchant sells the land he's bought at a handsome markup and repays your money with the interest he promised. Your father is pleased. But your little brother in Madrid is getting nervous. The war with France ended well for the king of Spain, but he has now embroiled himself in a conflict with the Turks. He needs every penny to finance the new war, and thinks this is far more important than repaying old debts. Your brother sends letters to the palace and asks friends with connections at court to intercede, but to no avail. Not only has your brother not earned the promised interest – he's lost the principal. Your father is not pleased.\n\nNow, to make matters worse, the king sends a treasury official to your brother to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he expects to receive another loan of the same size, forthwith. Your brother has no money to lend. He writes home to Dad, trying to persuade him that this time the king will come through.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) IMPORTANT: 'better' should appear 3 times in total (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The paterfamilias has a soft spot for his youngest, and agrees with a heavy heart. Another 10,000 gold coins disappear into the Spanish treasury, never to be seen again. Meanwhile in Amsterdam, things are looking bright. You make more and more loans to enterprising Dutch merchants, who repay them promptly and in full. But your luck does not hold indefinitely. One of your usual clients has a hunch that wooden clogs are going to be the next fashion craze in Paris, and asks you for a loan to set up a footwear emporium in the French capital. You lend him the money, but unfortunately the clogs don't catch on with the French ladies, and the disgruntled merchant refuses to repay the loan.\n\nYour father is furious, and tells both of you it is time to unleash the lawyers. Your brother files suit in Madrid against the Spanish monarch, while you file suit in Amsterdam against the erstwhile wooden-shoe wizard. In Spain, the law courts are subservient to the king – the judges serve at his pleasure and fear punishment if they do not do his will. In the Netherlands, the courts are a separate branch of government, not dependent on the country's burghers and princes. The court in Madrid throws out your brother's suit, while the court in Amsterdam finds in your favour and puts a lien on the clog-merchant's assets to force him to pay up. Your father has learned his lesson. Better to do business with merchants than with kings, and better to do it in Holland than in Madrid.\n\nAnd your brother's travails are not over. The king of Spain desperately needs more money to pay his army. He's sure that your father has cash to spare. So he brings trumped-up treason charges against your brother. If he doesn't come up with 20,000 gold coins forthwith, he'll get cast into a dungeon and rot there until he dies.\n\nYour father has had enough. He pays the ransom for his beloved son, but swears never to do business in Spain again. He closes his Madrid branch and relocates your brother to Rotterdam. Two branches in Holland now look like a really good idea. He hears that even Spanish capitalists are smuggling their fortunes out of their country. They, too, realise that if they want to keep their money and use it to gain more wealth, they are better off investing it where the rule of law prevails and where private property is respected – in the Netherlands, for example.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In such ways did the king of Spain squander the trust of investors at the same time that Dutch merchants gained their confidence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And it was the Dutch merchants – not the Dutch state – who built the Dutch Empire. The king of Spain kept on trying to finance and maintain his conquests by raising unpopular taxes from a disgruntled populace. The Dutch merchants financed conquest by getting loans, and increasingly also by selling shares in their companies that entitled their holders to receive a portion of the company's profits. Cautious investors who would never have given their money to the king of Spain, and who would have thought twice before extending credit to the Dutch government, happily invested fortunes in the Dutch joint-stock companies that were the mainstay of the new empire.\n\nIf you thought a company was going to make a big profit but it had already sold all its shares, you could buy some from people who owned them, probably for a higher price than they originally paid. If you bought shares and later discovered that the company was in dire straits, you could try to unload your stock for a lower price. The resulting trade in company shares led to the establishment in most major European cities of stock exchanges, places where the shares of companies were traded.\n\nThe most famous Dutch joint-stock company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC for short, was chartered in 1602, just as the Dutch were throwing off Spanish rule and the boom of Spanish artillery could still be heard not far from Amsterdam's ramparts. VOC used the money it raised from selling shares to build ships, send them to Asia, and bring back Chinese, Indian and Indonesian goods. It also financed military actions taken by company ships against competitors and pirates. Eventually VOC money financed the conquest of Indonesia.\n\nIndonesia is the world's biggest archipelago. Its thousands upon thousands of islands were ruled in the early seventeenth century by hundreds of kingdoms, principalities, sultanates and tribes. When VOC merchants first arrived in Indonesia in 1603, their aims were strictly commercial. However, in order to secure their commercial interests and maximise the profits of the shareholders, VOC merchants began to fight against local potentates who charged inflated tariffs, as well as against European competitors. VOC armed its merchant ships with cannons; it recruited European, Japanese, Indian and Indonesian mercenaries; and it built forts and conducted full-scale battles and sieges. This enterprise may sound a little strange to us, but in the early modern age it was common for private companies to hire not only soldiers, but also generals and admirals, cannons and ships, and even entire off-the-shelf armies. The international community took this for granted and didn't raise an eyebrow when a private company established an empire.\n\nIsland after island fell to VOC mercenaries and a large part of Indonesia became a VOC colony. VOC ruled Indonesia for close to 200 years. Only in 1800 did the Dutch state assume control of Indonesia, making it a Dutch national colony for the following 150 years. Today some people warn that twenty-first-century corporations are accumulating too much power. Early modern history shows just how far that can go if businesses are allowed to pursue their self-interest unchecked.\n\nWhile VOC operated in the Indian Ocean, the Dutch West Indies Company, or WIC, plied the Atlantic. In order to control trade on the important Hudson River, WIC built a settlement called New Amsterdam on an island at the river's mouth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The colony was threatened by Indians and repeatedly attacked by the British, who eventually captured it in 1664.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The British changed its name to New York. The remains of the wall built by WIC to defend its colony against Indians and British are today paved over by the world's most famous street – Wall Street.\n\nAs the seventeenth century wound to an end, complacency and costly continental wars caused the Dutch to lose not only New York, but also their place as Europe's financial and imperial engine. The vacancy was hotly contested by France and Britain. At first France seemed to be in a far stronger position. It was bigger than Britain, richer, more populous, and it possessed a larger and more experienced army. Yet Britain managed to win the trust of the financial system whereas France proved itself unworthy. The behaviour of the French crown was particularly notorious during what was called the Mississippi Bubble, the largest financial crisis of eighteenth-century Europe. That story also begins with an empire-building joint-stock company.\n\nIn 1717 the Mississippi Company, chartered in France, set out to colonise the lower Mississippi valley, establishing the city of New Orleans in the process. To finance its ambitious plans, the company, which had good connections at the court of King Louis XV, sold shares on the Paris stock exchange. John Law, the company's director, was also the governor of the central bank of France. Furthermore, the king had appointed him controller-general of finances, an office roughly equivalent to that of a modern finance minister. In 1717 the lower Mississippi valley offered few attractions besides swamps and alligators, yet the Mississippi Company spread tales of fabulous riches and boundless opportunities. French aristocrats, businessmen and the stolid members of the urban bourgeoisie fell for these fantasies, and Mississippi share prices skyrocketed. Initially, shares were offered at 500 livres apiece. On 1 August 1719, shares traded at 2,750 livres. By 30 August, they were worth 4,100 livres, and on 4 September, they reached 5,000 livres. On 2 December the price of a Mississippi share crossed the threshold of 10,000 livres. Euphoria swept the streets of Paris. People sold all their possessions and took huge loans in order to buy Mississippi shares. Everybody believed they'd discovered the easy way to riches.\n\nNew Amsterdam in 1660, at the tip of Manhattan Island. The settlement's protective wall is today paved over by Wall Street.\n\nA few days later, the panic began.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some speculators realised that the share prices were totally unrealistic and unsustainable. They figured that they had better sell while stock prices were at their peak. As the supply of shares available rose, their price declined. When other investors saw the price going down, they also wanted to get out quick. The stock price plummeted further, setting off an avalanche. In order to stabilise prices, the central bank of France – at the direction of its governor, John Law – bought up Mississippi shares, but it could not do so for ever. Eventually it ran out of money. When this happened, the controller-general of finances, the same John Law, authorised the printing of more money in order to buy additional shares. This placed the entire French financial system inside the bubble. And not even this financial wizardry could save the day. The price of Mississippi shares dropped from 10,000 livres back to 1,000 livres, and then collapsed completely, and the shares lost every sou of their worth. By now, the central bank and the royal treasury owned a huge amount of worthless stock and had no money. The big speculators emerged largely unscathed – they had sold in time. Small investors lost everything, and many committed suicide.\n\nThe Mississippi Bubble was one of history's most spectacular financial crashes. The royal French financial system never recuperated fully from the blow. The way in which the Mississippi Company used its political clout to manipulate share prices and fuel the buying frenzy caused the public to lose faith in the French banking system and in the financial wisdom of the French king. Louis XV found it more and more difficult to raise credit. This became one of the chief reasons that the overseas French Empire fell into British hands. While the British could borrow money easily and at low interest rates, France had difficulties securing loans, and had to pay high interest on them. In order to finance his growing debts, the king of France borrowed more and more money at higher and higher interest rates. Eventually, in the 1780s, Louis XVI, who had ascended to the throne on his grandfather's death, realised that half his annual budget was tied to servicing the interest on his loans, and that he was heading towards bankruptcy. Reluctantly, in 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, the French parliament that had not met for a century and a half, in order to find a solution to the crisis. Thus began the French Revolution.\n\nWhile the French overseas empire was crumbling, the British Empire was expanding rapidly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like the Dutch Empire before it, the British Empire was established and run largely by private joint-stock companies based in the London stock exchange.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The first English settlements in North America were established in the early seventeenth century by joint-stock companies such as the London Company, the Plymouth Company, the Dorchester Company and the Massachusetts Company.\n\nThe Indian subcontinent too was conquered not by the British state, but by the mercenary army of the British East India Company. This company outperformed even the VOC. From its headquarters in Leadenhall Street, London, it ruled a mighty Indian empire for about a century, maintaining a huge military force of up to 350,000 soldiers, considerably outnumbering the armed forces of the British monarchy. Only in 1858 did the British crown nationalise India along with the company's private army. Napoleon made fun of the British, calling them a nation of shopkeepers. Yet these shopkeepers defeated Napoleon himself, and their empire was the largest the world has ever seen.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "I need around five hundred and ninety-three characters in total to fill the gap marked by `[text_redacted]` in this text.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The nationalisation of Indonesia by the Dutch crown (1800) and of India by the British crown (1858) hardly ended the embrace of capitalism and empire. On the contrary, the connection only grew stronger during the nineteenth century. Joint-stock companies no longer needed to establish and govern private colonies – their managers and large shareholders now pulled the strings of power in London, Amsterdam and Paris, and they could count on the state to look after their interests. As Marx and other social critics quipped, Western governments were becoming a capitalist trade union.\n\nThe most notorious example of how governments did the bidding of big money was the First Opium War, fought between Britain and China (1840–42). In the first half of the nineteenth century, the British East India Company and sundry British business people made fortunes by exporting drugs, particularly opium, to China. Millions of Chinese became addicts, debilitating the country both economically and socially. In the late 1830s the Chinese government issued a ban on drug trafficking, but British drug merchants simply ignored the law. Chinese authorities began to confiscate and destroy drug cargos. The drug cartels had close connections in Westminster and Downing Street – many MPs and Cabinet ministers in fact held stock in the drug companies – so they pressured the government to take action.\n\nIn 1840 Britain duly declared war on China in the name of 'free trade'. It was a walkover. The overconfident Chinese were no match for Britain's new wonder weapons – steamboats, heavy artillery, rockets and rapid-fire rifles. Under the subsequent peace treaty, China agreed not to constrain the activities of British drug merchants and to compensate them for damages inflicted by the Chinese police. Furthermore, the British demanded and received control of Hong Kong, which they proceeded to use as a secure base [text_redacted]belled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two.\n\nThese were hardly the only wars fought in the interests of investors. In fact, war itself could become a commodity, just like opium. In 1821 the Greeks rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. The uprising aroused great sympathy in liberal and romantic circles in Britain – Lord Byron, the poet, even went to Greece to fight alongside the insurgents. But London financiers saw an opportunity as well. They proposed to the rebel leaders the issue of tradable Greek Rebellion Bonds on the London stock exchange. The Greeks would promise to repay the bonds, plus interest, if and when they won their independence. Private investors bought bonds to make a profit, or out of sympathy for the Greek cause, or both. The value of Greek Rebellion Bonds rose and fell on the London stock exchange in tempo with military successes and failures on the battlefields of Hellas. The Turks gradually gained the upper hand. With a rebel defeat imminent, the bondholders faced the prospect of losing their trousers. The bondholders' interest was the national interest, so the British organised an international fleet that, in 1827, sank the main Ottoman flotilla in the Battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greece was finally free. But freedom came with a huge debt that the new country had no way of repaying. The Greek economy was mortgaged to British creditors for decades to come.\n\nThe bear hug between capital and politics has had far-reaching implications for the credit market. The amount of credit in an economy is determined not only by purely economic factors such as the discovery of a new oil field or the invention of a new machine, but also by political events such as regime changes or more ambitious foreign policies. After the Battle of Navarino, British capitalists were more willing to invest their money in risky overseas deals. They had seen that if a foreign debtor refused to repay loans, Her Majesty's army would get their money back.\n\nThis is why today a country's credit rating is far more important to its economic well-being than are its natural resources. Credit ratings indicate the probability that a country will pay its debts. In addition to purely economic data, they take into account political, social and even cultural factors. An oil-rich country cursed with a despotic government, endemic warfare and a corrupt judicial system will usually receive a low credit rating. As a result, it is likely to remain relatively poor since it will not be able to raise the necessary capital to make the most of its oil bounty. A country devoid of natural resources, but which enjoys peace, a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating. As such, it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high-tech industry.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "for drug trafficking (Hong Kong remained in British hands until 1997). In the late nineteenth century, about 40 million Chinese, a tenth of the country's population, were opium addicts.\n\nEgypt, too, learned to respect the long arm of British capitalism. During the nineteenth century, French and British investors lent huge sums to the rulers of Egypt, first in order to finance the Suez Canal project, and later to fund far less successful enterprises. Egyptian debt swelled, and European creditors increasingly meddled in Egyptian affairs. In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and re", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Following your lead on character/world context. Will write 8 sentences continuing from your text. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy, themes: anthropology.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Capital and politics influence each other to such an extent that their relations are hotly debated by economists, politicians and the general public alike.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ardent capitalists tend to argue that capital should be free to influence politics, but politics should not be allowed to influence capital.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They argue that when governments interfere in the markets, political interests cause them to make unwise investments that result in slower growth. For example, a government may impose heavy taxation on industrialists and use the money to give lavish unemployment benefits, which are popular with voters. In the view of many business people, it would be far better if the government left the money with them. They would use it, they claim, to open new factories and hire the unemployed.\n\nIn this view, the wisest economic policy is to keep politics out of the economy, reduce taxation and government regulation to a minimum, and allow market forces free rein to take their course. Private investors, unencumbered by political considerations, will invest their money where they can get the most profit, so the way to ensure the most economic growth – which will benefit everyone, industrialists and workers – is for the government to do as little as possible. This free-market doctrine is today the most common and influential variant of the capitalist creed. The most enthusiastic advocates of the free market criticise military adventures abroad with as much zeal as welfare programmes at home.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative chapter writing\nMy role: Provide a story segment\nYour role: Expand with three sentences, emulating Yuval Noah Harari in the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre\nNote: This is part of a larger work", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There is an even more fundamental reason why it's dangerous to give markets a completely free rein. Adam Smith taught that the shoemaker would use his surplus to employ more assistants. This implies that egoistic greed is beneficial for all, since profits are utilised to expand production and hire more employees.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet what happens if the greedy shoemaker increases his profits by paying employees less and increasing their work hours?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The standard answer is that the free market would protect the employees.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If our shoemaker pays too little and demands too much, the best employees would naturally abandon him and go to work for his competitors. The tyrant shoemaker would find himself left with the worst labourers, or with no labourers at all. He would have to mend his ways or go out of business.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His own greed would compel him to treat his employees well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This sounds bulletproof in theory, but in practice the bullets get through all too easily. In a completely free market, unsupervised by kings and priests, avaricious capitalists can establish monopolies or collude against their workforces. If there is a single corporation controlling all shoe factories in a country, or if all factory owners conspire to reduce wages simultaneously, then the labourers are no longer able to protect themselves by switching jobs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even worse, greedy bosses might curtail the workers' freedom of movement through debt peonage or slavery.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity.\n\nWhen the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "These mines and plantations became the mainstay of American production and export.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(In the next section: Your task: Include 'middle' 2 time(s) in your response)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sugar plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century.\n\nHowever, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "All this so that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could enjoy huge profits.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organised and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies sold shares on the Amsterdam, London and Paris stock exchanges.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Middle-class Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'slaves' 2 time(s) in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Relying on this money, the companies bought ships, hired sailors and soldiers, purchased slaves in Africa, and transported them to America. There they sold the slaves to the plantation owners, using the proceeds to purchase plantation products such as sugar, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and rum. They returned to Europe, sold the sugar and cotton for a good price, and then sailed to Africa to begin another round.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The shareholders were very pleased with this arrangement. Throughout the eighteenth century the yield on slave-trade investments was about 6 per cent a year – they were extremely profitable, as any modern consultant would be quick to admit.\n\nThis is the fly in the ointment of free-market capitalism.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner. On the contrary, the craving to increase profits and production blinds people to anything that might stand in the way. When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted by any other ethical considerations, it can easily lead to catastrophe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed. The Atlantic slave trade did not stem from racist hatred towards Africans. The individuals who bought the shares, the brokers who sold them, and the managers of the slave-trade companies rarely thought about the Africans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nor did the owners of the sugar plantations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many owners lived far from their plantations, and the only information they demanded were neat ledgers of profits and losses.\n\nIt is important to remember that the Atlantic slave trade was not a single aberration in an otherwise spotless record. The Great Bengal Famine, discussed in the previous chapter, was caused by a similar dynamic – the British East India Company cared more about its profits than about the lives of 10 million Bengalis.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "VOC's military campaigns in Indonesia were financed by upstanding Dutch burghers who loved their children, gave to charity, and enjoyed good music and fine art, but had no regard for the suffering of the inhabitants of Java, Sumatra and Malacca.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "/* Word usage target: 'other' must be used 2 times */", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Countless other crimes and misdemeanours accompanied the growth of the modern economy in other parts of the planet.\n\nThe nineteenth century brought no improvement in the ethics of capitalism. The Industrial Revolution that swept through Europe enriched the bankers and capital-owners, but condemned millions of workers to a life of abject poverty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the European colonies things were even worse. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium set up a nongovernmental humanitarian organisation with the declared aim of exploring Central Africa and fighting the slave trade along the Congo River. It was also charged with improving conditions for the inhabitants of the region by building roads, schools and hospitals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In 1885 the European powers agreed to give this organisation control of 2.3 million square kilometres in the Congo basin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This territory, seventy-five times the size of Belgium, was henceforth known as the Congo Free State. Nobody asked the opinion of the territory's 20–30 million inhabitants.\n\nWithin a short time the humanitarian organisation became a business enterprise whose real aim was growth and profit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The schools and hospitals were forgotten, and the Congo basin was instead filled with mines and plantations, run by mostly Belgian officials who ruthlessly exploited the local population.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rubber industry was particularly notorious. Rubber was fast becoming an industrial staple, and rubber export was the Congo's most important source of income. The African villagers who collected the rubber were required to provide higher and higher quotas.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'their' exactly 3 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those who failed to deliver their quota were punished brutally for their 'laziness'. Their arms were chopped off and occasionally entire villages were massacred. According to the most moderate estimates, between 1885 and 1908 the pursuit of growth and profits cost the lives of 6 million individuals (at least 20 per cent of the Congo's population).", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some estimates reach up to 10 million deaths.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: Make sure to use 'after' 3 time(s) throughout your message]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After 1908, and especially after 1945, capitalist greed was somewhat reined in, not least due to the fear of Communism. Yet inequities are still rampant. The economic pie of 2014 is far larger than the pie of 1500, but it is distributed so unevenly that many African peasants and Indonesian labourers return home after a hard day's work with less food than did their ancestors 500 years ago.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Much like the Agricultural Revolution, so too the growth of the modern economy might turn out to be a colossal fraud.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The human species and the global economy may well keep growing, but many more individuals may live in hunger and want.\n\nCapitalism has two answers to this criticism. First, capitalism has created a world that nobody but a capitalist is capable of running.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The only serious attempt to manage the world differently – Communism – was so much worse in almost every conceivable way that nobody has the stomach to try again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 8500 BC one could cry bitter tears over the Agricultural Revolution, but it was too late to give up agriculture. Similarly, we may not like capitalism, but we cannot live without it.\n\nThe second answer is that we just need more patience – paradise, the capitalists promise, is right around the corner.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "True, mistakes have been made, such as the Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of the European working class.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But we have learned our lesson, and if we just wait a little longer and allow the pie to grow a little bigger, everybody will receive a fatter slice. The division of spoils will never be equitable, but there will be enough to satisfy every man, woman and child – even in the Congo.\n\nThere are, indeed, some positive signs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At least when we use purely material criteria – such as life expectancy, child mortality and calorie intake – the standard of living of the average human in 2014 is significantly higher than it was in 1914, despite the exponential growth in the number of humans.\n\nYet can the economic pie grow indefinitely? Every pie requires raw materials and energy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prophets of doom warn that sooner or later Homo sapiens will exhaust the raw materials and energy of planet Earth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And what will happen then?", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Following your lead on character/world context. Will write 8 sentences continuing from your text. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy, themes: anthropology.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The modern economy grows thanks to our trust in the future and to the willingness of capitalists to reinvest their profits in production. Yet that does not suffice. Economic growth also requires energy and raw materials, and these are finite. When and if they run out, the entire system will collapse.\n\nBut the evidence provided by the past is that they are finite only in theory. Counter-intuitively, while humankind's use of energy and raw materials has mushroomed in the last few centuries, the amounts available for our exploitation have actually increased. Whenever a shortage of either has threatened to slow economic growth, investments have flowed into scientific and technological research. These have invariably produced not only more efficient ways of exploiting existing resources, but also completely new types of energy and materials.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Consider the vehicle industry.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Over the last 300 years, humankind has manufactured billions of vehicles – from carts and wheelbarrows, to trains, cars, supersonic jets and space shuttles. One might have expected that such a prodigious effort would have exhausted the energy sources and raw materials available for vehicle production, and that today we would be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yet the opposite is the case. Whereas in 1700 the global vehicle industry relied overwhelmingly on wood and iron, today it has at its disposal a cornucopia of new-found materials such as plastic, rubber, aluminium and titanium, none of which our ancestors even knew about. Whereas in 1700 carts were built mainly by the muscle power of carpenters and smiths, today the machines in Toyota and Boeing factories are powered by petroleum combustion engines and nuclear power stations. A similar revolution has swept almost all other fields of industry. We call it the Industrial Revolution.\n\nFor millennia prior to the Industrial Revolution, humans already knew how to make use of a large variety of energy sources.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They burned wood in order to smelt iron, heat houses and bake cakes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sailing ships harnessed wind power to move around, and watermills captured the flow of rivers to grind grain. Yet all these had clear limits and problems. Trees were not available everywhere, the wind didn't always blow when you needed it, and water power was only useful if you lived near a river.\n\nAn even bigger problem was that people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another. They could harness the movement of wind and water to sail ships and push millstones, but not to heat water or smelt iron. Conversely, they could not use the heat energy produced by burning wood to make a millstone move. Humans had only one machine capable of performing such energy conversion tricks: the body. In the natural process of metabolism, the bodies of humans and other animals burn organic fuels known as food and convert the released energy into the movement of muscles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Men, women and beasts could consume grain and meat, burn up their carbohydrates and fats, and use the energy to haul a rickshaw or pull a plough.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Since human and animal bodies were the only energy conversion device available, muscle power was the key to almost all human activities.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Human muscles built carts and houses, ox muscles ploughed fields, and horse muscles transported goods.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The energy that fuelled these organic muscle-machines came ultimately from a single source – plants. Plants in their turn obtained their energy from the sun. By the process of photosynthesis, they captured solar energy and packed it into organic compounds. Almost everything people did throughout history was fuelled by solar energy that was captured by plants and converted into muscle power.\n\nHuman history was consequently dominated by two main cycles: the growth cycles of plants and the changing cycles of solar energy (day and night, summer and winter). When sunlight was scarce and when wheat fields were still green, humans had little energy. Granaries were empty, tax collectors were idle, soldiers found it difficult to move and fight, and kings tended to keep the peace. When the sun shone brightly and the wheat ripened, peasants harvested the crops and filled the granaries.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tax collectors hurried to take their share.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) Your response should contain the word 'their' precisely 3 times (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Soldiers flexed their muscles and sharpened their swords. Kings convened councils and planned their next campaigns. Everyone was fuelled by solar energy – captured and packaged in wheat, rice and potatoes.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The following text is missing a piece (marked with `[missing]`). Come up with three thousand, two hundred and seventy-one character spaces give or take to complete it.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Throughout these long millennia, day in and day out, people stood face to face with the most important invention in the history of energy production – and failed to notice it. It stared them in the eye every time a housewife or servant put up a kettle to boil water for tea or put a pot full of potatoes on the stove. The minute the water boiled, the lid of the kettle or the pot jumped. Heat was being converted to movement. But jumping pot lids were an annoyance, especially if you forgot the pot on the stove and the water boiled over. Nobody saw their real potential.\n\nA partial breakthrough in converting heat into movement followed the invention of gunpowder in ninth-century China. At first, the idea of using gunpowder to propel projectiles was so counter-intuitive that for centuries gunpowder was used primarily to produce fire bombs. But eventually – perhaps after some bomb expert ground gunpowder in a mortar only to have the pestle shoot out with force – guns made their appearance. About 600 years passed between the invention of gunpowder and the development of effective artillery.\n\nEven then, the idea of converting heat into motion remained so counter-intuitive that another three centuries went by before people invented the next machine that used heat to move things around. The new technology was born in British coal mines. As the British population swelled, forests were cut down to fuel the growing economy and make way for houses and fields. Britain suffered from an increasing shortage of firewood. It began burning coal as a substitute. Many coal seams were located in waterlogged areas, and flooding prevented miners from accessing the lower strata of the mines. It was a problem looking for a solution. Around 1700, a strange noise began reverberating around British mineshafts. That noise – harbinger of the Industrial Revolution – was subtle at first, but it grew louder and louder with each passing decade until it enveloped the entire world in a deafening cacophony. It emanated from a steam engine.\n\nThere are many types of steam engines, but they all share one common principle. You burn some kind of fuel, such as coal, and use the resulting heat to boil water, producing steam. As the steam expands it pushes a piston. The piston moves, and anything that i[missing] and cheap magic tricks. A series of inventions turned it into our universal genie in a lamp. We flick our fingers and it prints books and sews clothes, keeps our vegetables fresh and our ice cream frozen, cooks our dinners and executes our criminals, registers our thoughts and records our smiles, lights up our nights and entertains us with countless television shows. Few of us understand how electricity does all these things, but even fewer can imagine life without it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "s connected to the piston moves with it. You have converted heat into movement! In eighteenth-century British coal mines, the piston was connected to a pump that extracted water from the bottom of the mineshafts. The earliest engines were incredibly inefficient. You needed to burn a huge load of coal in order to pump out even a tiny amount of water. But in the mines coal was plentiful and close at hand, so nobody cared.\n\nIn the decades that followed, British entrepreneurs improved the efficiency of the steam engine, brought it out of the mineshafts, and connected it to looms and gins. This revolutionised textile production, making it possible to produce ever-larger quantities of cheap textiles. In the blink of an eye, Britain became the workshop of the world. But even more importantly, getting the steam engine out of the mines broke an important psychological barrier. If you could burn coal in order to move textile looms, why not use the same method to move other things, such as vehicles?\n\nIn 1825, a British engineer connected a steam engine to a train of mine wagons full of coal. The engine drew the wagons along an iron rail some twenty kilometres long from the mine to the nearest harbour. This was the first steam-powered locomotive in history. Clearly, if steam could be used to transport coal, why not other goods? And why not even people? On 15 September 1830, the first commercial railway line was opened, connecting Liverpool with Manchester. The trains moved under the same steam power that had previously pumped water and moved textile looms. A mere twenty years later, Britain had tens of thousands of kilometres of railway tracks.\n\nHenceforth, people became obsessed with the idea that machines and engines could be used to convert one type of energy into another. Any type of energy, anywhere in the world, might be harnessed to whatever need we had, if we could just invent the right machine. For example, when physicists realised that an immense amount of energy is stored within atoms, they immediately started thinking about how this energy could be released and used to make electricity, power submarines and annihilate cities. Six hundred years passed between the moment Chinese alchemists discovered gunpowder and the moment Turkish cannon pulverised the walls of Constantinople. Only forty years passed between the moment Einstein determined that any kind of mass could be converted into energy – that's what E = mc2 means – and the moment atom bombs obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear power stations mushroomed all over the globe.\n\nAnother crucial discovery was the internal combustion engine, which took little more than a generation to revolutionise human transportation and turn petroleum into liquid political power. Petroleum had been known for thousands of years, and was used to waterproof roofs and lubricate axles. Yet until just a century ago nobody thought it was useful for much more than that. The idea of spilling blood for the sake of oil would have seemed ludicrous. You might fight a war over land, gold, pepper or slaves, but not oil.\n\nThe career of electricity was more startling yet. Two centuries ago electricity played no role in the economy, and was used at most for arcane scientific experiments", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "See that `<\|missing\|>` in the text? Replace it with roughly eighteen words.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "At heart, the Industrial Revolution has been a revolution in energy conversion. It has demonstrated again and again that there is no limit to the amount of energy at our disposal. Or, more precisely, that the only limit is set by our ignorance. Every few decades we discover a new energy source, so that the sum total of energy at our disposal just keeps growing.\n\nWhy are so many people afraid that we are running out of energy? Why do they warn of disaster if we exhaust all available fossil fuels? Clearly the world does not lack energy. All we lack is the knowledge necessary to harness and convert it to our needs. The amount of energy stored in all the fossil fuel on earth is negligible compared to the amount that the sun dispenses every day, free of charge. Only a tiny proportion of the sun's energy reaches us, yet it amounts to 3,766,800 exajoules of energy each year (a joule is a unit of energy in the metric system, about the amount you expend to lift a small apple one yard straight up; an exajoule is a billion billion joules – that's a lot of apples).2 All the world's plants capture only about 3,000 of those solar exajoules through the process of photosynthesis. All human activities and industries put together consume about 500 exajoules annually, equivalent to the amount of energy earth receives from the sun in just ninety minutes. And that's only solar energy. In addition, we are surrounded by other enormous sources of energy, such as nuclear energy and gravitational energy, the latter most evident in the power of the ocean tides caused by th<\|missing\|>letely dependent on plants. People lived alongside a green energy reservoir carrying 3,000 exajoules a year, and tried to pump as much of its energy as they could. Yet there was a clear limit to how much they could extract. During the Industrial Revolution, we came to realise that we are actually living alongside an enormous ocean of energy, one holding billions upon billions of exajoules of potential power. All we need to do is invent better pumps.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "e moon's pull on the earth.\n\nPrior to the Industrial Revolution, the human energy market was almost comp", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Got a text with a `[original_content_missing]` shaped hole in it. Patch it up with a one hundred and forty-word chunk.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Learning how to harness and convert energy effectively solved the other problem that slows economic growth – the scarcity of raw materials. As humans worked out how to harness large quantities of cheap energy, they could begin exploiting previously inaccessible deposits of raw materials (for example, mining iron in the Siberian wastelands), or transporting raw materials from ever more distant locations (for example, supplying a British textile mill with Australian wool). Simultaneously, scientific breakthroughs enabled humankind to invent completely new raw materials, such as plastic, and discover previously unknown natural materials, such as silicon and aluminium.\n\nChemists discovered aluminium only in the 1820s, but separating the metal from its ore was extremely difficult and costly. For decades, aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860S, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks. But at the end of the nineteenth century chemists discovered a way to extract immense amounts of cheap aluminium, and current global production stands at 30 million tons per year. Napoleon III would be surprised to hear that his subjects' descendants [original_content_missing]l ingredient in gunpowder and other explosives. The most important saltpetre deposits were in Chile and India; there were none at all in Germany. True, saltpetre could be replaced by ammonia, but that was expensive to produce as well. Luckily for the Germans, one of their fellow citizens, a Jewish chemist named Fritz Haber, had discovered in 1908 a process for producing ammonia literally out of thin air. When war broke out, the Germans used Haber's discovery to commence industrial production of explosives using air as a raw material. Some scholars believe that if it hadn't been for Haber's discovery, Germany would have been forced to surrender long before November 1918.6 The discovery won Haber (who during the war also pioneered the use of poison gas in battle) a Nobel Prize in 1918. In chemistry, not in peace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "use cheap disposable aluminium foil to wrap their sandwiches and put away their leftovers.\n\nTwo thousand years ago, when people in the Mediterranean basin suffered from dry skin they smeared olive oil on their hands. Today, they open a tube of hand cream. Below is the list of ingredients of a simple modern hand cream that I bought at a local store:\n\ndeionised water, stearic acid, glycerin, caprylic/caprictiglyceride, propylene glycol, isopropyl myristate, panax ginseng root extract, fragrance, cetyl alcohol, triethanolamine, dimeticone, arctostaphylos uva-ursi leaf extract, magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, imidazolidinyl urea, methyl paraben, camphor, propyl paraben, hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde, hydroxyl-citronellal, linalool, butylphenyl methylproplonal, citronnellol, limonene, geraniol.\n\nAlmost all of these ingredients were invented or discovered in the last two centuries.\n\nDuring World War One, Germany was placed under blockade and suffered severe shortages of raw materials, in particular saltpetre, an essentia", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand with twenty-seven sentences sentences, preserving any established world elements or character dynamics.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Industrial Revolution yielded an unprecedented combination of cheap and abundant energy and cheap and abundant raw materials.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The result was an explosion in human productivity. The explosion was felt first and foremost in agriculture. Usually, when we think of the Industrial Revolution, we think of an urban landscape of smoking chimneys, or the plight of exploited coal miners sweating in the bowels of the earth. Yet the Industrial Revolution was above all else the Second Agricultural Revolution.\n\nDuring the last 200 years, industrial production methods became the mainstay of agriculture. Machines such as tractors began to undertake tasks that were previously performed by muscle power, or not performed at all. Fields and animals became vastly more productive thanks to artificial fertilisers, industrial insecticides and an entire arsenal of hormones and medications. Refrigerators, ships and aeroplanes have made it possible to store produce for months, and transport it quickly and cheaply to the other side of the world. Europeans began to dine on fresh Argentinian beef and Japanese sushi.\n\nEven plants and animals were mechanised. Around the time that Homo sapiens was elevated to divine status by humanist religions, farm animals stopped being viewed as living creatures that could feel pain and distress, and instead came to be treated as machines. Today these animals are often mass-produced in factory-like facilities, their bodies shaped in accordance with industrial needs. They pass their entire lives as cogs in a giant production line, and the length and quality of their existence is determined by the profits and losses of business corporations. Even when the industry takes care to keep them alive, reasonably healthy and well fed, it has no intrinsic interest in the animals' social and psychological needs (except when these have a direct impact on production).\n\nEgg-laying hens, for example, have a complex world of behavioural needs and drives. They feel strong urges to scout their environment, forage and peck around, determine social hierarchies, build nests and groom themselves. But the egg industry often locks the hens inside tiny coops, and it is not uncommon for it to squeeze four hens to a cage, each given a floor space of about twenty-five by twenty-two centimetres. The hens receive sufficient food, but they are unable to claim a territory, build a nest or engage in other natural activities. Indeed, the cage is so small that hens are often unable even to flap their wings or stand fully erect.\n\nPigs are among the most intelligent and inquisitive of mammals, second perhaps only to the great apes. Yet industrialised pig farms routinely confine nursing sows inside such small crates that they are literally unable to turn around (not to mention walk or forage). The sows are kept in these crates day and night for four weeks after giving birth. Their offspring are then taken away to be fattened up and the sows are impregnated with the next litter of piglets.\n\nMany dairy cows live almost all their allotted years inside a small enclosure; standing, sitting and sleeping in their own urine and excrement. They receive their measure of food, hormones and medications from one set of machines, and get milked every few hours by another set of machines. The cow in the middle is treated as little more than a mouth that takes in raw materials and an udder that produces a commodity. Treating living creatures possessing complex emotional worlds as if they were machines is likely to cause them not only physical discomfort, but also much social stress and psychological frustration.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Chicks on a conveyor belt in a commercial hatchery. Male chicks and imperfect female chicks are picked off the conveyor belt and are then asphyxiated in gas chambers, dropped into automatic shredders, or simply thrown into the rubbish, where they are crushed to death. Hundreds of millions of chicks die each year in such hatcheries.\n\nJust as the Atlantic slave trade did not stem from hatred towards Africans, so the modern animal industry is not motivated by animosity. Again, it is fuelled by indifference. Most people who produce and consume eggs, milk and meat rarely stop to think about the fate of the chickens, cows or pigs whose flesh and emissions they are eating. Those who do think often argue that such animals are really little different from machines, devoid of sensations and emotions, incapable of suffering. Ironically, the same scientific disciplines which shape our milk machines and egg machines have lately demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that mammals and birds have a complex sensory and emotional make-up. They not only feel physical pain, but can also suffer from emotional distress.\n\nEvolutionary psychology maintains that the emotional and social needs of farm animals evolved in the wild, when they were essential for survival and reproduction. For example, a wild cow had to know how to form close relations with other cows and bulls, or else she could not survive and reproduce. In order to learn the necessary skills, evolution implanted in calves – as in the young of all other social mammals – a strong desire to play (playing is the mammalian way of learning social behaviour). And it implanted in them an even stronger desire to bond with their mothers, whose milk and care were essential for survival.\n\nWhat happens if farmers now take a young calf, separate her from her mother, put her in a closed cage, give her food, water and inoculations against diseases, and then, when she is old enough, inseminate her with bull sperm? From an objective perspective, this calf no longer needs either maternal bonding or playmates in order to survive and reproduce. But from a subjective perspective, the calf still feels a very strong urge to bond with her mother and to play with other calves. If these urges are not fulfilled, the calf suffers greatly. This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction. The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals, while neglecting their subjective needs.\n\nThe truth of this theory has been known at least since the 1950s, when the American psychologist Harry Harlow studied the development of monkeys. Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers several hours after birth. The monkeys were isolated inside cages, and then raised by dummy mothers. In each cage, Harlow placed two dummy mothers. One was made of metal wires, and was fitted with a milk bottle from which the infant monkey could suck. The other was made of wood covered with cloth, which made it resemble a real monkey mother, but it provided the infant monkey with no material sustenance whatsoever. It was assumed that the infants would cling to the nourishing metal mother rather than to the barren cloth one.\n\nTo Harlow's surprise, the infant monkeys showed a marked preference for the cloth mother, spending most of their time with her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the two mothers were placed in close proximity, the infants held on to the cloth mother even while they reached over to suck milk from the metal mother.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 24 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Harlow suspected that perhaps the infants did so because they were cold. So he fitted an electric bulb inside the wire mother, which now radiated heat. Most of the monkeys, except for the very young ones, continued to prefer the cloth mother.\n\nOne of Harlow's orphaned monkeys clings to the cloth mother even while sucking milk from the metal mother.\n\nFollow-up research showed that Harlow's orphaned monkeys grew up to be emotionally disturbed even though they had received all the nourishment they required. They never fitted into monkey society, had difficulties communicating with other monkeys, and suffered from high levels of anxiety and aggression. The conclusion was inescapable: monkeys must have psychological needs and desires that go beyond their material requirements, and if these are not fulfilled, they will suffer greatly. Harlow's infant monkeys preferred to spend their time in the hands of the barren cloth mother because they were looking for an emotional bond and not only for milk. In the following decades, numerous studies showed that this conclusion applies not only to monkeys, but to other mammals, as well as birds. At present, millions of farm animals are subjected to the same conditions as Harlow's monkeys, as farmers routinely separate calves, kids and other youngsters from their mothers, to be raised in isolation.\n\nAltogether, tens of billions of farm animals live today as part of a mechanised assembly line, and about 50 billion of them are slaughtered annually. These industrial livestock methods have led to a sharp increase in agricultural production and in human food reserves. Together with the mechanisation of plant cultivation, industrial animal husbandry is the basis for the entire modern socio-economic order. Before the industrialisation of agriculture, most of the food produced in fields and farms was 'wasted' feeding peasants and farmyard animals. Only a small percentage was available to feed artisans, teachers, priests and bureaucrats. Consequently, in almost all societies peasants comprised more than 90 per cent of the population. Following the industrialisation of agriculture, a shrinking number of farmers was enough to feed a growing number of clerks and factory hands. Today in the United States, only 2 per cent of the population makes a living from agriculture, yet this 2 per cent produces enough not only to feed the entire US population, but also to export surpluses to the rest of the world. Without the industrialisation of agriculture the urban Industrial Revolution could never have taken place – there would not have been enough hands and brains to staff factories and offices.\n\nAs those factories and offices absorbed the billions of hands and brains that were released from fieldwork, they began pouring out an unprecedented avalanche of products. Humans now produce far more steel, manufacture much more clothing, and build many more structures than ever before. In addition, they produce a mind-boggling array of previously unimaginable goods, such as light bulbs, mobile phones, cameras and dishwashers. For the first time in human history, supply began to outstrip demand. And an entirely new problem was born: who is going to buy all this stuff?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Looking at this text, there's a `<\|missing\|>` that needs filling. Give me something like nine hundred and nineteen characters that would work.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The modern capitalist economy must constantly increase production if it is to survive, like a shark that must swim or suffocate. Yet it's not enough just to produce. Somebody must also buy the products, or industrialists and investors alike will go bust. To prevent this catastrophe and to make sure that people will always buy whatever new stuff industry produces, a new kind of ethic appeared: consumerism.\n\nMost people throughout history lived under conditions of scarcity. Frugality was thus their watchword. The austere ethics of the Puritans and Spartans are but two famous examples. A good person avoided luxuries, never threw food away, and patched up<\|missing\|>lth Treats:\n\nHealth Treats offers lots of grains, fruits and nuts for an experience that combines taste, pleasure and health. For an enjoyable treat in the middle of the day, suitable for a healthy lifestyle. A real treat with the wonderful taste of more ", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " torn trousers instead of buying a new pair. Only kings and nobles allowed themselves to renounce such values publicly and conspicuously flaunt their riches.\n\nConsumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption. Frugality is a disease to be cured. You don't have to look far to see the consumer ethic in action – just read the back of a cereal box. Here's a quote from a box of one of my favourite breakfast cereals, produced by an Israeli firm, Telma:\n\nSometimes you need a treat. Sometimes you need a little extra energy. There are times to watch your weight and times when you've just got to have something … right now! Telma offers a variety of tasty cereals just for you – treats without remorse.\n\nThe same package sports an ad for another brand of cereal called Hea", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: May be mid-story\nYour role: Add fifteen sentences sentences preserving established character dynamics", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "[emphasis in the original].", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Throughout most of history, people were likely to be have been repelled rather than attracted by such a text.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They would have branded it as selfish, decadent and morally corrupt. Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology ('Just do it!') to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.\n\nIt has succeeded. We are all good consumers. We buy countless products that we don't really need, and that until yesterday we didn't know existed. Manufacturers deliberately design short-term goods and invent new and unnecessary models of perfectly satisfactory products that we must purchase in order to stay 'in'. Shopping has become a favourite pastime, and consumer goods have become essential mediators in relationships between family members, spouses and friends. Religious holidays such as Christmas have become shopping festivals. In the United States, even Memorial Day – originally a solemn day for remembering fallen soldiers – is now an occasion for special sales. Most people mark this day by going shopping, perhaps to prove that the defenders of freedom did not die in vain.\n\nThe flowering of the consumerist ethic is manifested most clearly in the food market. Traditional agricultural societies lived in the awful shade of starvation. In the affluent world of today one of the leading health problems is obesity, which strikes the poor (who stuff themselves with hamburgers and pizzas) even more severely than the rich (who eat organic salads and fruit smoothies). Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world. Obesity is a double victory for consumerism.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products – contributing to economic growth twice over.\n\nHow can we square the consumerist ethic with the capitalist ethic of the business person, according to which profits should not be wasted, and should instead be reinvested in production? It's simple. As in previous eras, there is today a division of labour between the elite and the masses. In medieval Europe, aristocrats spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally, minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don't really need.\n\nThe capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is 'Invest!' The supreme commandment of the rest of us is 'Buy!'\n\nThe capitalist-consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist-consumerist ideal.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money, and that the masses give free rein to their cravings and passions – and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How, though, do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Keep going w/ nineteen sentences more. Note: Might reference existing chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The industrial revolution opened up new ways to convert energy and to produce goods, largely liberating humankind from its dependence on the surrounding ecosystem. Humans cut down forests, drained swamps, dammed rivers, flooded plains, laid down tens of thousands of kilometres of railroad tracks, and built skyscraping metropolises. As the world was moulded to fit the needs of Homo sapiens, habitats were destroyed and species went extinct. Our once green and blue planet is becoming a concrete and plastic shopping centre.\n\nToday, the earths continents are home to almost 7 billion Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. Our children's books, our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world.\n\nEcological degradation is not the same as resource scarcity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the resources available to humankind are constantly increasing, and are likely to continue to do so. That's why doomsday prophesies of resource scarcity are probably misplaced. In contrast, the fear of ecological degradation is only too well founded. The future may see Sapiens gaining control of a cornucopia of new materials and energy sources, while simultaneously destroying what remains of the natural habitat and driving most other species to extinction.\n\nIn fact, ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The following text is missing a piece (marked with `<\|missing\|>`). Come up with 901 chars or so to complete it.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "While all these Sapiens have grown increasingly impervious to the whims of nature, they have become ever more subject to the dictates of modern industry and government. The Industrial Revolution opened the way to a long line of experiments in social engineering and an even longer series of unpremeditated changes in daily life and human mentality. One example among many is the replacement of the rhythms of traditional agriculture with the uniform and precise schedule of industry.\n\nTraditional agriculture depended on cycles of natural time and organic growth. Most societies were unable to make precise time measurements, nor were they terribly interested in doing so. The world went about its business without clocks and timetables, subject only to the movements of the sun and the growth cycles of plants. There was no uniform working day, and all routines changed drastically from season to season. People knew where the sun was, and watched anxiously for portents of the rainy season and harvest time, but they did not know the hour and hardly cared about the year. If a lost time traveller popped up in a medieval village and asked a passerby, 'What year is this?' the villager would be as bewildered by the question as by the strangers ridiculous clothing.\n\nIn contrast to medieval peasants and shoemakers, modern industry cares little about the sun or the season. It sanctifies precision and uniformity. For example, in a medieval workshop each shoemaker made an entire shoe, from sole to buckle. If one<\|missing\|> factories imposed their time frames on human behaviour, schools too adopted precise timetables, followed by hospitals, government offices and grocery stores. Even in places devoid of assembly lines and machines, the timetable became king. If the shift at the factory ends at 5 p.m., the local pub had better be open for business by 5:02.\n\nA crucial link in the spreading timetable system was public transportation. If workers needed to start their shift by 08:00, the train or bus had to reach the factory gate by 07:55. A few minutes' delay would lower production and perhaps even lead to the lay-offs of the unfortunate latecomers. In 1784 a carriage service with a published schedule began operating in Britain. Its timetable specified only the hour of departure, not arrival. Back then, each British city and town had its own local time, which could differ from London time by up to half an hour. When it was 12:00 in London, it was perhaps 12:20 in Liverpool and 11:50 in Canterbury. Since there were no telephones, no radio or television, and no fast trains – who could know, and who cared?\n\nThe first commercial train service began operating between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. Ten years later, the first train timetable was issued. The trains were much faster than the old carriages, so the quirky differences in local hours became a severe nuisance. In 1847, British train companies put their heads together and agreed that henceforth all train timetables would be calibrated to Greenwich Observatory time, rather than the local times of Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow. More and more institutions followed the lead of the train companies. Finally, in 1880, the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich. For the first time in history, a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise-to-sunset cycles.\n\nThis modest beginning spawned a global network of timetables, synchronised down to the tiniest fractions of a second. When the broadcast media – first radio, then television – made their debut, they entered a world of timetables and became its main enforcers and evangelists. Among the first things radio stations broadcast were time signals, beeps that enabled far-flung settlements and ships at sea to set their clocks. Later, radio stations adopted the custom of broadcasting the news every hour. Nowadays, the first item of every news broadcast – more important even than the outbreak of war – is the time. During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour – the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast ding-dongs. This information offered invaluable help to the Luftwaffe. When the British Secret Service discovered this, they replaced the live broadcast with a set recording of the famous clock.\n\nIn order to run the timetable network, cheap but precise portable clocks became ubiquitous. In Assyrian, Sassanid or Inca cities there might have been at most a few sundials. In European medieval cities there was usually a single clock – a giant machine mounted on top of a high tower in the town square. These tower clocks were notoriously inaccurate, but since there were no other clocks in town to contradict them, it hardly made any difference. Today, a single affluent family generally has more timepieces at home than an entire medieval country. You can tell the time by looking at your wristwatch, glancing at your Android, peering at the alarm clock by your bed, gazing at the clock on the kitchen wall, staring at the microwave, catching a glimpse of the TV or DVD, or taking in the taskbar on your computer out of the corner of your eye. You need to make a conscious effort not to know what time it is.\n\nThe typical person consults these clocks several dozen times a day, because almost everything we do has to be done on time. An alarm clock wakes us up at 7 a.m., we heat our frozen bagel for exactly fifty seconds in the microwave, brush our teeth for three minutes until the electric toothbrush beeps, catch the 07:40 train to work, run on the treadmill at the gym until the beeper announces that half an hour is over, sit down in front of the TV at 7 p.m. to watch our favourite show, get interrupted at preordained moments by commercials that cost $1,000 per second, and eventually unload all our angst on a therapist who restricts our prattle to the now standard fifty-minute therapy hour.\n\nThe Industrial Revolution brought about dozens of major upheavals in human society. Adapting to industrial time is just one of them. Other notable examples include urbanisation, the disappearance of the peasantry, the rise of the industrial proletariat, the empowerment of the common person, democratisation, youth culture and the disintegration of patriarchy.\n\nYet all of these upheavals are dwarfed by the most momentous social revolution that ever befell humankind: the collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market. As best we can tell, from the earliest times, more than a million years ago, humans lived in small, intimate communities, most of whose members were kin. The Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution did not change that. They glued together families and communities to create tribes, cities, kingdoms and empires, but families and communities remained the basic building blocks of all human societies. The Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, managed within little more than two centuries to break these building blocks into atoms. Most of the traditional functions of families and communities were handed over to states and markets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " shoemaker was late for work, it did not stall the others. However, in a modern footwear-factory assembly line, every worker mans a machine that produces just a small part of a shoe, which is then passed on to the next machine. If the worker who operates machine no. 5 has overslept, it stalls all the other machines. In order to prevent such calamities, everybody must adhere to a precise timetable. Each worker arrives at work at exactly the same time. Everybody takes their lunch break together, whether they are hungry or not. Everybody goes home when a whistle announces that the shift is over – not when they have finished their project.\n\nCharlie Chaplin as a simple worker caught in the wheels of the industrial assembly line, from the film Modern Times (1936).\n\nThe Industrial Revolution turned the timetable and the assembly line into a template for almost all human activities. Shortly after", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "CREATIVE WRITING MODE:\n- Match character/world context level\n- Sentences to generate: forty-four sentences\n- Genres to focus on: history, nonfiction, philosophy\n- Elements to incorporate: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family and the local intimate community. (An 'intimate community' is a group of people who know one another well and depend on each other for survival.) Most people worked in the family business – the family farm or the family workshop, for example – or they worked in their neighbours' family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.\n\nWhen a person fell sick, the family took care of her. When a person grew old, the family supported her, and her children were her pension fund. When a person died, the family took care of the orphans. If a person wanted to build a hut, the family lent a hand. If a person wanted to open a business, the family raised the necessary money. If a person wanted to marry, the family chose, or at least vetted, the prospective spouse. If conflict arose with a neighbour, the family muscled in. But if a person's illness was too grave for the family to manage, or a new business demanded too large an investment, or the neighbourhood quarrel escalated to the point of violence, the local community came to the rescue.\n\nThe community offered help on the basis of local traditions and an economy of favours, which often differed greatly from the supply and demand laws of the free market. In an old-fashioned medieval community, when my neighbour was in need, I helped build his hut and guard his sheep, without expecting any payment in return. When I was in need, my neighbour returned the favour. At the same time, the local potentate might have drafted all of us villagers to construct his castle without paying us a penny. In exchange, we counted on him to defend us against brigands and barbarians. Village life involved many transactions but few payments. There were some markets, of course, but their roles were limited. You could buy rare spices, cloth and tools, and hire the services of lawyers and doctors. Yet less than 10 per cent of commonly used products and services were bought in the market. Most human needs were taken care of by the family and the community.\n\nThere were also kingdoms and empires that performed important tasks such as waging wars, building roads and constructing palaces. For these purposes kings raised taxes and occasionally enlisted soldiers and labourers. Yet, with few exceptions, they tended to stay out of the daily affairs of families and communities. Even if they wanted to intervene, most kings could do so only with difficulty. Traditional agricultural economies had few surpluses with which to feed crowds of government officials, policemen, social workers, teachers and doctors. Consequently, most rulers did not develop mass welfare systems, health-care systems or educational systems. They left such matters in the hands of families and communities. Even on rare occasions when rulers tried to intervene more intensively in the daily lives of the peasantry (as happened, for example, in the Qin Empire in China), they did so by converting family heads and community elders into government agents.\n\nOften enough, transportation and communication difficulties made it so difficult to intervene in the affairs of remote communities that many kingdoms preferred to cede even the most basic royal prerogatives – such as taxation and violence – to communities. The Ottoman Empire, for instance, allowed family vendettas to mete out justice, rather than supporting a large imperial police force. If my cousin killed somebody, the victim's brother might kill me in sanctioned revenge. The sultan in Istanbul or even the provincial pasha did not intervene in such clashes, as long as violence remained within acceptable limits.\n\nIn the Chinese Ming Empire (1368–1644), the population was organised into the baojia system. Ten families were grouped to form a jia, and ten jia constituted a bao. When a member of a bao commited a crime, other bao members could be punished for it, in particular the bao elders. Taxes too were levied on the bao, and it was the responsibility of the bao elders rather than of the state officials to assess the situation of each family and determine the amount of tax it should pay. From the empire's perspective, this system had a huge advantage. Instead of maintaining thousands of revenue officials and tax collectors, who would have to monitor the earnings and expenses of every family, these tasks were left to the community elders. The elders knew how much each villager was worth and they could usually enforce tax payments without involving the imperial army.\n\nMany kingdoms and empires were in truth little more than large protection rackets. The king was the capo di tutti capi who collected protection money, and in return made sure that neighbouring crime syndicates and local small fry did not harm those under his protection. He did little else.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Life in the bosom of family and community was far from ideal.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Families and communities could oppress their members no less brutally than do modern states and markets, and their internal dynamics were often fraught with tension and violence – yet people had little choice. A person who lost her family and community around 1750 was as good as dead. She had no job, no education and no support in times of sickness and distress. Nobody would loan her money or defend her if she got into trouble. There were no policemen, no social workers and no compulsory education. In order to survive, such a person quickly had to find an alternative family or community. Boys and girls who ran away from home could expect, at best, to become servants in some new family. At worst, there was the army or the brothel.\n\nAll this changed dramatically over the last two centuries. The Industrial Revolution gave the market immense new powers, provided the state with new means of communication and transportation, and placed at the government's disposal an army of clerks, teachers, policemen and social workers. At first the market and the state discovered their path blocked by traditional families and communities who had little love for outside intervention. Parents and community elders were reluctant to let the younger generation be indoctrinated by nationalist education systems, conscripted into armies or turned into a rootless urban proletariat.\n\nOver time, states and markets used their growing power to weaken the traditional bonds of family and community. The state sent its policemen to stop family vendettas and replace them with court decisions. The market sent its hawkers to wipe out longstanding local traditions and replace them with ever-changing commercial fashions. Yet this was not enough. In order really to break the power of family and community, they needed the help of a fifth column.\n\nThe state and the market approached people with an offer that could not be refused. 'Become individuals,' they said. 'Marry whomever you desire, without asking permission from your parents. Take up whatever job suits you, even if community elders frown. Live wherever you wish, even if you cannot make it every week to the family dinner. You are no longer dependent on your family or your community. We, the state and the market, will take care of you instead. We will provide food, shelter, education, health, welfare and employment. We will provide pensions, insurance and protection.'\n\nRomantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government's schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, social security steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens' home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours' taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins.\n\nNot only adult men, but also women and children, are recognised as individuals. Throughout most of history, women were often seen as the property of family or community. Modern states, on the other hand, see women as individuals, enjoying economic and legal rights independently of their family and community. They may hold their own bank accounts, decide whom to marry, and even choose to divorce or live on their own.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the liberation of the individual comes at a cost.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 20 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many of us now bewail the loss of strong families and communities and feel alienated and threatened by the power the impersonal state and market wield over our lives. States and markets composed of alienated individuals can intervene in the lives of their members much more easily than states and markets composed of strong families and communities. When neighbours in a high-rise apartment building cannot even agree on how much to pay their janitor, how can we expect them to resist the state?\n\nThe deal between states, markets and individuals is an uneasy one. The state and the market disagree about their mutual rights and obligations, and individuals complain that both demand too much and provide too little. In many cases individuals are exploited by markets, and states employ their armies, police forces and bureaucracies to persecute individuals instead of defending them. Yet it is amazing that this deal works at all – however imperfectly. For it breaches countless generations of human social arrangements. Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.\n\nThe nuclear family did not disappear completely from the modern landscape. When states and markets took from the family most of its economic and political roles, they left it some important emotional functions. The modern family is still supposed to provide for intimate needs, which state and market are (so far) incapable of providing. Yet even here the family is subject to increasing interventions. The market shapes to an ever-greater degree the way people conduct their romantic and sexual lives. Whereas traditionally the family was the main matchmaker, today it's the market that tailors our romantic and sexual preferences, and then lends a hand in providing for them – for a fat fee. Previously bride and groom met in the family living room, and money passed from the hands of one father to another. Today courting is done at bars and cafés, and money passes from the hands of lovers to waitresses. Even more money is transferred to the bank accounts of fashion designers, gym managers, dieticians, cosmeticians and plastic surgeons, who help us arrive at the café looking as similar as possible to the markets ideal of beauty.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story going! this is mid-chapter so characters might appear without intro. write 2 sentences more. channel Yuval Noah Harari. genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. tags: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The state, too, keeps a sharper eye on family relations, especially between parents and children. Parents are obliged to send their children to be educated by the state.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Parents who are especially abusive or violent with their children may be restrained by the state.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If need be, the state may even imprison the parents or transfer their children to foster families. Until not long ago, the suggestion that the state ought to prevent parents from beating or humiliating their children would have been rejected out of hand as ludicrous and unworkable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In most societies parental authority was sacred.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Respect of and obedience to one's parents were among the most hallowed values, and parents could do almost anything they wanted, including killing newborn babies, selling children into slavery and marrying off daughters to men more than twice their age. Today, parental authority is in full retreat.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The following text is missing a piece (marked with `[original_content_missing]`). Come up with around one thousand, three hundred and eighty-two characters in total to complete it.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like the nuclear family, the community could not completely disappear from our world without any emotional replacement. Markets and states today provide most of the material needs once provided by communities, but they must also supply tribal bonds.\n\nMarkets and states do so by fostering 'imagined communities' that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don't really know each other, but imagine that they do. Such communities are not a novel invention. Kingdoms, empires and churches functioned for millennia as imagined communities. In ancient China, tens of millions of people saw themselves as members of a single family, with the emperor as its father. In the Middle Ages, millions of devout Muslims imagined that they were all brothers and sisters in the great community of Islam. Yet throughout history, such imagined communities played second fiddle to intimate communities of several dozen people who knew each other well. The intimate communities fulfilled the emotional needs of their members and were essential for everyone's survival and welfare. In the last two centuries, the intimate communities have withered, leaving imagined communities to fill in the emotional vacuum.\n\nThe two most important examples for the rise of such imagined communities are the nation and the consumer tribe. The nation is the imagined community of the state. The consumer tribe is the imagined community of the market. Both are imagined communities because it is impossible for all customers in a market or for all members of a nation really to know one another the way villagers knew one another in the past. No German can intimately know the other 80 million members of the German nation, or the other 500 million customers inhabiting the European Common Market (which evolved first into the European Community and finally became the European Union).\n\nConsumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future. This isn't a lie. It's imagination. Like money, limited liability companies and human rights, nations and consumer tribes are inter-subjective realities. They exist only in our collective imagination, yet their power is immense. As long as millions of Germans believe in the existence of a German nation, get excited at the sight of German national symbols, retell German national myths, and are willing to sacrifice money, time and limbs for the German nation, Germany will remain one of the strongest powers in the world.\n\nThe nation does its best to hide its imagined character. Most nations argue that they are a natural and eternal entity, created in some primordial epoch by mixing the soil of the motherland with the blood of the people. Yet such claims are usually exaggerated. Nations existed in the distant past, but their importance was much smaller than today because the importance of the state was much smaller. A resident of medieval Nuremberg might have felt some loyalty towards the German nation, but she felt far more loyalty towards her family and local community, which took care of[original_content_missing]t two months, it does not mean that the cake itself is two months old.\n\nIn recent decades, national communities have been increasingly eclipsed by tribes of customers who do not know one another intimately but share the same consumption habits and interests, and therefore feel part of the same consumer tribe – and define themselves as such. This sounds very strange, but we are surrounded by examples. Madonna fans, for example, constitute a consumer tribe. They define themselves largely by shopping. They buy Madonna concert tickets, CDs, posters, shirts and ring tones, and thereby define who they are. Manchester United fans, vegetarians and environmentalists are other examples. They, too, are defined above all by what they consume. It is the keystone of their identity. A German vegetarian might well prefer to marry a French vegetarian than a German carnivore.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " most of her needs. Moreover, whatever importance ancient nations may have had, few of them survived. Most existing nations evolved only after the Industrial Revolution.\n\nThe Middle East provides ample examples. The Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Iraqi nations are the product of haphazard borders drawn in the sand by French and British diplomats who ignored local history, geography and economy. These diplomats determined in 1918 that the people of Kurdistan, Baghdad and Basra would henceforth be 'Iraqis'. It was primarily the French who decided who would be Syrian and who Lebanese. Saddam Hussein and Hafez el-Asad tried their best to promote and reinforce their Anglo-French-manufactured national consciousnesses, but their bombastic speeches about the allegedly eternal Iraqi and Syrian nations had a hollow ring.\n\nIt goes without saying that nations cannot be created from thin air. Those who worked hard to construct Iraq or Syria made use of real historical, geographical and cultural raw materials – some of which are centuries and millennia old. Saddam Hussein co-opted the heritage of the Abbasid caliphate and the Babylonian Empire, even calling one of his crack armoured units the Hammurabi Division. Yet that does not turn the Iraqi nation into an ancient entity. If I bake a cake from flour, oil and sugar, all of which have been sitting in my pantry for the pas", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The revolutions of the last two centuries have been so swift and radical that they have changed the most fundamental characteristic of the social order. Traditionally, the social order was hard and rigid. 'Order' implied stability and continuity. Swift social revolutions were exceptional, and most social transformations resulted from the accumulation of numerous small steps. Humans tended to assume that the social structure was inflexible and eternal. Families and communities might struggle to change their place within the order, but the idea that you could change the fundamental structure of the order was alien. People tended to reconcile themselves to the status quo, declaring that 'this is how it always was, and this is how it always will be'.\n\nOver the last two centuries, the pace of change became so quick that the social order acquired a dynamic and malleable nature. It now exists in a state of permanent flux. When we speak of modern revolutions we tend to think of 1789 (the French Revolution), 1848 (the liberal revolutions) or 1917 (the Russian Revolution). But the fact is that, these days, every year is revolutionary.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Today, even a thirty-year-old can honestly tell disbelieving teenagers, 'When I was young, the world was completely different.' The Internet, for example, came into wide usage only in the early 1990s, hardly twenty years ago. Today we cannot imagine the world without it.\n\nHence any attempt to define the characteristics of modern society is akin to defining the colour of a chameleon. The only characteristic of which we can be certain is the incessant change. People have become used to this, and most of us think about the social order as something flexible, which we can engineer and improve at will. The main promise of premodern rulers was to safeguard the traditional order or even to go back to some lost golden age. In the last two centuries, the currency of politics is that it promises to destroy the old world and build a better one in its place. Not even the most conservative of political parties vows merely to keep things as they are. Everybody promises social reform, educational reform, economic reform – and they often fulfil those promises.\n\nJust as geologists expect that tectonic movements will result in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, so might we expect that drastic social movements will result in bloody outbursts of violence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is often told as a series of deadly wars, holocausts and revolutions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 12 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like a child in new boots leaping from puddle to puddle, this view sees history as leapfrogging from one bloodbath to the next, from World War One to World War Two to the Cold War, from the Armenian genocide to the Jewish genocide to the Rwandan genocide, from Robespierre to Lenin to Hitler.\n\nThere is truth here, but this all too familiar list of calamities is somewhat misleading. We focus too much on the puddles and forget about the dry land separating them. The late modern era has seen unprecedented levels not only of violence and horror, but also of peace and tranquillity. Charles Dickens wrote of the French Revolution that 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' This may be true not only of the French Revolution, but of the entire era it heralded.\n\nIt is especially true of the seven decades that have elapsed since the end of World War Two. During this period humankind has for the first time faced the possibility of complete self-annihilation and has experienced a fair number of actual wars and genocides. Yet these decades were also the most peaceful era in human history – and by a wide margin. This is surprising because these very same decades experienced more economic, social and political change than any previous era. The tectonic plates of history are moving at a frantic pace, but the volcanoes are mostly silent. The new elastic order seems to be able to contain and even initiate radical structural changes without collapsing into violent conflict.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "There's a gap marked by `<fill_in_here>` in the following text. Fill it with three thousand, one hundred and sixty-three chars exactly.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people don't appreciate just how peaceful an era we live in. None of us was alive a thousand years ago, so we easily forget how much more violent the world used to be. And as wars become more rare they attract more attention. Many more people think about the wars raging today in Afghanistan and Iraq than about the peace in which most Brazilians and Indians live.\n<fill_in_here>the security forces of their own states. Still, from a macro perspective, state-run courts and police forces have probably increased the level of security worldwide. Even in oppressive dictatorships, the average modern person is far less likely to die at the hands of another person than in premodern societies. In 1964 a military dictatorship was established in Brazil. It ruled the country until 1985. During these twenty years, several thousand Brazilians were murdered by the regime. Thousands more were imprisoned and tortured. Yet even in the worst years, the average Brazilian in Rio de Janeiro was far less likely to die at human hands than the average Waorani, Arawete or Yanomamo. The Waorani, Arawete and Yanomamo are indigenous people who live in the depths of the Amazon forest, without army, police or prisons. Anthropological studies have indicated that between a quarter and a half of their menfolk die sooner or later in violent conflicts over property, women or prestige.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\nEven more importantly, it's easier to relate to the suffering of individuals than of entire populations. However, in order to understand macro-historical processes, we need to examine mass statistics rather than individual stories. In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of 310,000 individuals, and violent crime killed another 520,000. Each and every victim is a world destroyed, a family ruined, friends and relatives scarred for life. Yet from a macro perspective these 830,000 victims comprised only 1.5 per cent of the 56 million people who died in 2000. That year 1.26 million people died in car accidents (2.25 per cent of total mortality) and 815,000 people committed suicide (1.45 per cent).\n\nThe figures for 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died of violent crime (a total of 741,000 victims of human violence). In contrast, 873,000 people committed suicide. It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.\n\nIn most parts of the world, people go to sleep without fearing that in the middle of the night a neighbouring tribe might surround their village and slaughter everyone. Well-off British subjects travel daily from Nottingham to London through Sherwood Forest without fear that a gang of merry green-clad brigands will ambush them and take their money to give to the poor (or, more likely, murder them and take the money for themselves). Students brook no canings from their teachers, children need not fear that they will be sold into slavery when their parents can't pay their bills, and women know that the law forbids their husbands from beating them and forcing them to stay at home. Increasingly, around the world, these expectations are fulfilled.\n\nThe decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. Throughout history, most violence resulted from local feuds between families and communities. (Even today, as the above figures indicate, local crime is a far deadlier threat than international wars.) As we have seen, early farmers, who knew no political organisations larger than the local community, suffered rampant violence. As kingdoms and empires became stronger, they reined in communities and the level of violence decreased. In the decentralised kingdoms of medieval Europe, about twenty to forty people were murdered each year for every 100,000 inhabitants. In recent decades, when states and markets have become all-powerful and communities have vanished, violence rates have dropped even further. Today the global average is only nine murders a year per 100,000 people, and most of these murders take place in weak states such as Somalia and Colombia. In the centralised states of Europe, the average is one murder a year per 100,000 people.\n\nThere are certainly cases where states use their power to kill their own citizens, and these often loom large in our memories and fears. During the twentieth century, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people were killed by ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help complete this text by providing approximately eight hundred and seventy-seven characters long where you see the `[original_content_missing]`.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is perhaps debatable whether violence within states has decreased or increased since 1945. What nobody can deny is that international violence has dropped to an all-time low. Perhaps the most obvious example is the collapse of the European empires. Throughout history empires have crushed rebellions with an iron fist, and when its day came, a sinking empire used all its might to save itself, usually collapsing into a bloodbath. Its final demise generally led to anarchy and wars of succession. Since 1945 most empires have opted for peaceful early retirement. Their process of collapse became relatively swift, calm and orderly.\n\nIn 1945 Britain ruled a quarter of the globe. Thirty years later it ruled just a few small islands. In the intervening decades it retreated from most of its colonies in a peaceful and orderly manner. Though in some places such as Malaya and Kenya the British tried to hang on by force of arms, in most places they accepted the end of empire with a sigh rather than with a temper tantrum. They focused their efforts not on retaining power, but on transferring it as smoothly as possible. At least some of the praise usually heaped on Mahatma Gandhi for his non-violent creed is actually owed to the British Empire. Despite many years of bitter and often violent struggle, when the end of the Raj came, the Indians did not have to fight the British in the streets of Delhi and Calcutta. The empire's place was taken by a slew of independent states, most of which have since enjoyed stable borders and have for the most part lived peacefully alongside their neighbours. True, tens of thousands of people perished at the hands of the threatened British Empire, and in several hot spots its retreat led to the e[original_content_missing] Luther King-style campaigns of civil disobedience. The Soviets still had millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of tanks and aeroplanes, and enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the whole of humankind several times over. The Red Army and the other Warsaw Pact armies remained loyal. Had the last Soviet ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev, given the order, the Red Army would have opened fire on the subjugated masses.\n\nYet the Soviet elite, and the Communist regimes through most of eastern Europe (Romania and Serbia were the exceptions), chose not to use even a tiny fraction of this military power. When its members realised that Communism was bankrupt, they renounced force, admitted their failure, packed their suitcases and went home. Gorbachev and his colleagues gave up without a struggle not only the Soviet conquests of World War Two, but also the much older tsarist conquests in the Baltic, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is chilling to contemplate what might have happened if Gorbachev had behaved like the Serbian leadership – or like the French in Algeria.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ruption of ethnic conflicts that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives (particularly in India). Yet when compared to the long-term historical average, the British withdrawal was an exemplar of peace and order. The French Empire was more stubborn. Its collapse involved bloody rearguard actions in Vietnam and Algeria that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet the French, too, retreated from the rest of their dominions quickly and peacefully, leaving behind orderly states rather than a chaotic free-for-all.\n\nThe Soviet collapse in 1989 was even more peaceful, despite the eruption of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Never before has such a mighty empire disappeared so swiftly and so quietly. The Soviet Empire of 1989 had suffered no military defeat except in Afghanistan, no external invasions, no rebellions, nor even large-scale Martin", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story going! this is mid-chapter so characters might appear without intro. write 2 sentences more. channel Yuval Noah Harari. genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. tags: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The independent states that came after these empires were remarkably uninterested in war. With very few exceptions, since 1945 states no longer invade other states in order to conquer and swallow them up.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Such conquests had been the bread and butter of political history since time immemorial.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was how most great empires were established, and how most rulers and populations expected things to stay. But campaigns of conquest like those of the Romans, Mongols and Ottomans cannot take place today anywhere in the world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Since 1945, no independent country recognised by the UN has been conquered and wiped off the map.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Limited international wars still occur from time to time, and millions still die in wars, but wars are no longer the norm.\n\nMany people believe that the disappearance of international war is unique to the rich democracies of western Europe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, peace reached Europe after it prevailed in other parts of the world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'countries' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thus the last serious international wars between South American countries were the Peru-Ecuador War of 1941 and the Bolivia-Paraguay War of 1932–5. And before that there hadn't been a serious war between South American countries since 1879–84, with Chile on one side and Bolivia and Peru on the other.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We seldom think of the Arab world as particularly peaceful.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet only once since the Arab countries won their independence has one of them mounted a full-scale invasion of another (the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990).", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There have been quite a few border clashes (e.g. Syria vs Jordan in 1970), many armed interventions of one in the affairs of another (e.g.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Syria in Lebanon), numerous civil wars (Algeria, Yemen, Libya) and an abundance of coups and revolts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet there have been no full-scale international wars among the Arab states except the Gulf War. Even widening the scope to include the entire Muslim world adds only one more example, the Iran-Iraq War.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no Turkey—Iran War, Pakistan-Afghanistan War, or Indonesia-Malaysia War.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In Africa things are far less rosy. But even there, most conflicts are civil wars and coups.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Since African states won their independence in the 1960s and 1970s, very few countries have invaded one another in the hope of conquest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There have been periods of relative calm before, as, for example, in Europe between 1871 and 1914, and they always ended badly. But this time it is different.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There has never been real peace in the world. Between 1871 and 1914, a European war remained a plausible eventuality, and the expectation of war dominated the thinking of armies, politicians and ordinary citizens alike.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This foreboding was true for all other peaceful periods in history.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "An iron law of international politics decreed, 'For every two nearby polities, there is a plausible scenario that will cause them to go to war against one another within one year.' This law of the jungle was in force in late nineteenth-century Europe, in medieval Europe, in ancient China and in classical Greece.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If Sparta and Athens were at peace in 450 BC, there was a plausible scenario that they would be at war by 449 BC.\n\nToday humankind has broken the law of the jungle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year. What could lead to war between Germany and France next year?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(hey for the next response, Your response should contain the word 'between' precisely 2 times)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This situation might of course change in the future and, with hindsight, the world of today might seem incredibly naïve.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet from a historical perspective, our very naïvety is fascinating. Never before has peace been so prevalent that people could not even imagine war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Scholars have sought to explain this happy development in more books and articles than you would ever want to read yourself, and they have identified several contributing factors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "First and foremost, the price of war has gone up dramatically. The Nobel Peace Prize to end all peace prizes should have been given to Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow architects of the atomic bomb.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into collective suicide, and made it impossible to seek world domination by force of arms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Secondly, while the price of war soared, its profits declined. For most of history, polities could enrich themselves by looting or annexing enemy territories.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most wealth consisted of fields, cattle, slaves and gold, so it was easy to loot it or occupy it. Today, wealth consists mainly of human capital, technical know-how and complex socio-economic structures such as banks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Consequently it is difficult to carry it off or incorporate it into one's territory.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consider California. Its wealth was initially built on gold mines. But today it is built on silicon and celluloid – Silicon Valley and the celluloid hills of Hollywood.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What would happen if the Chinese were to mount an armed invasion of California, land a million soldiers on the beaches of San Francisco and storm inland? They would gain little.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'wealth' (3x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wealth resides in the minds of Google engineers and Hollywood script doctors, directors and special-effects wizards, who would be on the first plane to Bangalore or Mumbai long before the Chinese tanks rolled into Sunset Boulevard. It is not coincidental that the few full-scale international wars that still take place in the world, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, occur in places were wealth is old-fashioned material wealth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Kuwaiti sheikhs could flee abroad, but the oil fields stayed put and were occupied.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'california' 2 time(s) in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and 44. Gold miners in California during the Gold Rush, and Facebook's headquarters near San Francisco. In 1849 California built its fortunes on gold.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today, California builds its fortunes on silicon.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But whereas in 1849 the gold actually lay there in the Californian soil, the real treasures of Silicon Valley are locked inside the heads of high-tech employees.\n\nWhile war became less profitable, peace became more lucrative than ever.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In traditional agricultural economies long-distance trade and foreign investment were sideshows.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consequently, peace brought little profit, aside from avoiding the costs of war. If, say, in 1400 England and France were at peace, the French did not have to pay heavy war taxes and to suffer destructive English invasions, but otherwise it did not benefit their wallets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In modern capitalist economies, foreign trade and investments have become all-important. Peace therefore brings unique dividends.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As long as China and the USA are at peace, the Chinese can prosper by selling products to the USA, trading in Wall Street and receiving US investments.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Last but not least, a tectonic shift has taken place in global political culture.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Many elites in history – Hun chieftains, Viking noblemen and Aztec priests, for example – viewed war as a positive good.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Others viewed it as evil, but an inevitable one, which we had better turn to our own advantage. Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace-loving elite – politicians, business people, intellectuals and artists who genuinely see war as both evil and avoidable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(There were pacifists in the past, such as the early Christians, but in the rare cases that they gained power, they tended to forget about their requirement to 'turn the other cheek'.)", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There is a positive feedback loop between all these four factors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The threat of nuclear holocaust fosters pacifism; when pacifism spreads, war recedes and trade flourishes; and trade increases both the profits of peace and the costs of war. Over time, this feedback loop creates another obstacle to war, which may ultimately prove the most important of all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The tightening web of international connections erodes the independence of most countries, lessening the chance that any one of them might single-handedly let slip the dogs of war. Most countries no longer engage in full-scale war for the simple reason that they are no longer independent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though citizens in Israel, Italy, Mexico or Thailand may harbour illusions of independence, the fact is that their governments cannot conduct independent economic or foreign policies, and they are certainly incapable of initiating and conducting full-scale war on their own.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As explained in Chapter 11, we are witnessing the formation of a global empire. Like previous empires, this one, too, enforces peace within its borders.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And since its borders cover the entire globe, the World Empire effectively enforces world peace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So, is the modern era one of mindless slaughter, war and oppression, typified by the trenches of World War One, the nuclear mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and the gory manias of Hitler and Stalin? Or is it an era of peace, epitomised by the trenches never dug in South America, the mushroom clouds that never appeared over Moscow and New York, and the serene visages of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The answer is a matter of timing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is sobering to realise how often our view of the past is distorted by events of the last few years.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If this chapter had been written in 1945 or 1962, it would probably have been much more glum. Since it was written in 2014, it takes a relatively buoyant approach to modern history.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Keep going w/ nineteen sentences more. Note: Might reference existing chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The last 500 years have witnessed a breathtaking series of revolutions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The earth has been united into a single ecological and historical sphere.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The economy has grown exponentially, and humankind today enjoys the kind of wealth that used to be the stuff of fairy tales. Science and the Industrial Revolution have given humankind superhuman powers and practically limitless energy. The social order has been completely transformed, as have politics, daily life and human psychology.\n\nBut are we happier? Did the wealth humankind accumulated over the last five centuries translate into a new-found contentment? Did the discovery of inexhaustible energy resources open before us inexhaustible stores of bliss? Going further back, have the seventy or so turbulent millennia since the Cognitive Revolution made the world a better place to live? Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gatherer who 30,000 years ago left her handprint on a wall in Chauvet Cave? If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires, science and industry?\n\nHistorians seldom ask such questions. They do not ask whether the citizens of Uruk and Babylon were happier than their foraging ancestors, whether the rise of Islam made Egyptians more pleased with their lives, or how the collapse of the European empires in Africa have influenced the happiness of countless millions. Yet these are the most important questions one can ask of history. Most current ideologies and political programmes are based on rather flimsy ideas concerning the real source of human happiness. Nationalists believe that political self-determination is essential for our happiness. Communists postulate that everyone would be blissful under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalists maintain that only the free market can ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by creating economic growth and material abundance and by teaching people to be self-reliant and enterprising.\n\nWhat would happen if serious research were to disprove these hypotheses? If economic growth and self-reliance do not make people happier, what's the benefit of Capitalism? What if it turns out that the subjects of large empires are generally happier than the citizens of independent states and that, for example, Algerians were happier under French rule than under their own?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What would that say about the process of decolonisation and the value of national self-determination?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "These are all hypothetical possibilities, because so far historians have avoided raising these questions – not to mention answering them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'their' (3x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They have researched the history of just about everything politics, society, economics, gender, diseases, sexuality, food, clothing – yet they have seldom stopped to ask how these influence human happiness.\n\nThough few have studied the long-term history of happiness, almost every scholar and layperson has some vague preconception about it. In one common view, human capabilities have increased throughout history. Since humans generally use their capabilities to alleviate miseries and fulfil aspirations, it follows that we must be happier than our medieval ancestors, and they must have been happier than Stone Age hunter-gatherers.\n\nBut this progressive account is unconvincing. As we have seen, new aptitudes, behaviours and skills do not necessarily make for a better life. When humans learned to farm in the Agricultural Revolution, their collective power to shape their environment increased, but the lot of many individual humans grew harsher. Peasants had to work harder than foragers to eke out less varied and nutritious food, and they were far more exposed to disease and exploitation. Similarly, the spread of European empires greatly increased the collective power of humankind, by circulating ideas, technologies and crops, and opening new avenues of commerce. Yet this was hardly good news for millions of Africans, Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians. Given the proven human propensity for misusing power, it seems naïve to believe that the more clout people have, the happier they will be.\n\nSome challengers of this view take a diametrically opposed position. They argue for a reverse correlation between human capabilities and happiness. Power corrupts, they say, and as humankind gained more and more power, it created a cold mechanistic world ill-suited to our real needs. Evolution moulded our minds and bodies to the life of hunter-gatherers. The transition first to agriculture and then to industry has condemned us to living unnatural lives that cannot give full expression to our inherent inclinations and instincts, and therefore cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings. Nothing in the comfortable lives of the urban middle class can approach the wild excitement and sheer joy experienced by a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt. Every new invention just puts another mile between us and the Garden of Eden.\n\nYet this romantic insistence on seeing a dark shadow behind each invention is as dogmatic as the belief in the inevitability of progress.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps we are out of touch with our inner hunter-gatherer, but it's not all bad.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For instance, over the last two centuries modern medicine has decreased child mortality from 33 per cent to less than 5 per cent. Can anyone doubt that this made a huge contribution to the happiness not only of those children who would otherwise have died, but also of their families and friends?\n\nA more nuanced position takes the middle road. Until the Scientific Revolution there was no clear correlation between power and happiness. Medieval peasants may indeed have been more miserable than their hunter-gatherer forebears. But in the last few centuries humans have learned to use their capacities more wisely. The triumphs of modern medicine are just one example. Other unprecedented achievements include the steep drop in violence, the virtual disappearance of international wars, and the near elimination of large-scale famines.\n\nYet this, too, is an oversimplification. Firstly, it bases its optimistic assessment on a very small sample of years. The majority of humans began to enjoy the fruits of modern medicine no earlier than 1850, and the drastic drop in child mortality is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Mass famines continued to blight much of humanity up to the middle of the twentieth century. During Communist Chinas Great Leap Forward of 1958–61, somewhere between 10 and 50 million human beings starved to death. International wars became rare only after 1945, largely thanks to the new threat of nuclear annihilation. Hence, though the last few decades have been an unprecedented golden age for humanity, it is too early to know whether this represents a fundamental shift in the currents of history or an ephemeral eddy of good fortune. When judging modernity, it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty-first-century middle-class Westerner. We must not forget the viewpoints of a nineteenth-century Welsh coal miner, Chinese opium addict or Tasmanian Aborigine. Truganini is no less important than Homer Simpson.\n\nSecondly, even the brief golden age of the last half-century may turn out to have sown the seeds of future catastrophe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Over the last few decades, we have been disturbing the ecological equilibrium of our planet in myriad new ways, with what seem likely to be dire consequences.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A lot of evidence indicates that we are destroying the foundations of human prosperity in an orgy of reckless consumption.\n\nFinally, we can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. Much of the vaunted material wealth that shields us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chickens. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Collaborative chapter writing:\n1. Fragment from larger story\n2. Characters/events may lack introduction\n3. Continue with 45 sentences sentences\n4. Mimic Yuval Noah Harari\n5. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy\n6. Elements: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So far we have discussed happiness as if it were largely a product of material factors, such as health, diet and wealth. If people are richer and healthier, then they must also be happier. But is that really so obvious? Philosophers, priests and poets have brooded over the nature of happiness for millennia, and many have concluded that social, ethical and spiritual factors have as great an impact on our happiness as material conditions. Perhaps people in modern affluent societies suffer greatly from alienation and meaninglessness despite their prosperity. And perhaps our less well-to-do ancestors found much contentment in community, religion and a bond with nature.\n\nIn recent decades, psychologists and biologists have taken up the challenge of studying scientifically what really makes people happy. Is it money, family, genetics or perhaps virtue? The first step is to define what is to be measured. The generally accepted definition of happiness is 'subjective well-being'. Happiness, according to this view, is something I feel inside myself, a sense of either immediate pleasure or long-term contentment with the way my life is going. If it's something felt inside, how can it be measured from outside? Presumably, we can do so by asking people to tell us how they feel. So psychologists or biologists who want to assess how happy people feel give them questionnaires to fill out and tally the results.\n\nA typical subjective well-being questionnaire asks interviewees to grade on a scale of zero to ten their agreement with statements such as 'I feel pleased with the way I am', 'I feel that life is very rewarding', 'I am optimistic about the future' and 'Life is good'. The researcher then adds up all the answers and calculates the interviewee's general level of subjective well-being.\n\nSuch questionnaires are used in order to correlate happiness with various objective factors. One study might compare a thousand people who earn $100,000 a year with a thousand people who earn $50,000. If the study discovers that the first group has an average subjective well-being level of 8.7, while the latter has an average of only 7.3, the researcher may reasonably conclude that there is a positive correlation between wealth and subjective well-being. To put it in simple English, money brings happiness. The same method can be used to examine whether people living in democracies are happier than people living in dictatorships, and whether married people are happier than singles, divorcees or widowers.\n\nThis provides a grounding for historians, who can examine wealth, political freedom and divorce rates in the past. If people are happier in democracies and married people are happier than divorcees, a historian has a basis for arguing that the democratisation process of the last few decades contributed to the happiness of humankind, whereas the growing rates of divorce indicate an opposite trend.\n\nThis way of thinking is not flawless, but before pointing out some of the holes, it is worth considering the findings.\n\nOne interesting conclusion is that money does indeed bring happiness. But only up to a point, and beyond that point it has little significance. For people stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder, more money means greater happiness. If you are an American single mother earning $12,000 a year cleaning houses and you suddenly win $500,000 in the lottery, you will probably experience a significant and long-term surge in your subjective well-being. You'll be able to feed and clothe your children without sinking further into debt. However, if you're a top executive earning $250,000 a year and you win $1 million in the lottery, or your company board suddenly decides to double your salary, your surge is likely to last only a few weeks. According to the empirical findings, it's almost certainly not going to make a big difference to the way you feel over the long run. You'll buy a snazzier car, move into a palatial home, get used to drinking Chateau Pétrus instead of California Cabernet, but it'll soon all seem routine and unexceptional.\n\nAnother interesting finding is that illness decreases happiness in the short term, but is a source of long-term distress only if a person's condition is constantly deteriorating or if the disease involves ongoing and debilitating pain. People who are diagnosed with chronic illness such as diabetes are usually depressed for a while, but if the illness does not get worse they adjust to their new condition and rate their happiness as highly as healthy people do. Imagine that Lucy and Luke are middle-class twins, who agree to take part in a subjective well-being study. On the way back from the psychology laboratory, Lucy's car is hit by a bus, leaving Lucy with a number of broken bones and a permanently lame leg. Just as the rescue crew is cutting her out of the wreckage, the phone rings and Luke shouts that he has won the lottery's $10,000,000 jackpot. Two years later she'll be limping and he'll be a lot richer, but when the psychologist comes around for a follow-up study, they are both likely to give the same answers they did on the morning of that fateful day.\n\nFamily and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health. People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of. Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. This holds true irrespective of economic or even physical conditions. An impecunious invalid surrounded by a loving spouse, a devoted family and a warm community may well feel better than an alienated billionaire, provided that the invalid's poverty is not too severe and that his illness is not degenerative or painful.\n\nThis raises the possibility that the immense improvement in material conditions over the last two centuries was offset by the collapse of the family and the community.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If so, the average person might well be no happier today than in 1800.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even the freedom we value so highly may be working against us.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments. We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling communities and families.\n\nBut the most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. If you want a bullock-cart and get a bullock-cart, you are content. If you want a brand-new Ferrari and get only a second-hand Fiat you feel deprived. This is why winning the lottery has, over time, the same impact on people's happiness as a debilitating car accident. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvements in objective conditions can leave us dissatisfied. When things deteriorate, expectations shrink, and consequently even a severe illness might leave you pretty much as happy as you were before.\n\nYou might say that we didn't need a bunch of psychologists and their questionnaires to discover this. Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it's nice when modern research – bolstered by lots of numbers and charts – reaches the same conclusions the ancients did.\n\nThe crucial importance of human expectations has far-reaching implications for understanding the history of happiness. If happiness depended only on objective conditions such as wealth, health and social relations, it would have been relatively easy to investigate its history. The finding that it depends on subjective expectations makes the task of historians far harder. We moderns have an arsenal of tranquillisers and painkillers at our disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our intolerance of inconvenience and discomfort, have increased to such an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors ever did.\n\nIt's hard to accept this line of thinking. The problem is a fallacy of reasoning embedded deep in our psyches. When we try to guess or imagine how happy other people are now, or how people in the past were, we inevitably imagine ourselves in their shoes. But that won't work because it pastes our expectations on to the material conditions of others. In modern affluent societies it is customary to take a shower and change your clothes every day. Medieval peasants went without washing for months on end, and hardly ever changed their clothes. The very thought of living like that, filthy and reeking to the bone, is abhorrent to us. Yet medieval peasants seem not to have minded. They were used to the feel and smell of a long-unlaundered shirt. It's not that they wanted a change of clothes but couldn't get it – they had what they wanted. So, at least as far as clothing goes, they were content.\n\nThat's not so surprising, when you think of it. After all, our chimpanzee cousins seldom wash and never change their clothes. Nor are we disgusted by the fact that our pet dogs and cats don't shower or change their coats daily. We pat, hug and kiss them all the same. Small children in affluent societies often dislike showering, and it takes them years of education and parental discipline to adopt this supposedly attractive custom. It is all a matter of expectations.\n\nIf happiness is determined by expectations, then two pillars of our society – mass media and the advertising industry – may unwittingly be depleting the globe's reservoirs of contentment. If you were an eighteen-year-old youth in a small village 5,000 years ago you'd probably think you were good-looking because there were only fifty other men in your village and most of them were either old, scarred and wrinkled, or still little kids. But if you are a teenager today you are a lot more likely to feel inadequate. Even if the other guys at school are an ugly lot, you don't measure yourself against them but against the movie stars, athletes and supermodels you see all day on television, Facebook and giant billboards.\n\nSo maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards. The average Egyptian was far less likely to die from starvation, plague or violence under Hosni Mubarak than under Ramses II or Cleopatra. Never had the material condition of most Egyptians been so good. You'd think they would have been dancing in the streets in 2011, thanking Allah for their good fortune. Instead they rose up furiously to overthrow Mubarak. They weren't comparing themselves to their ancestors under the pharaohs, but rather to their contemporaries in Obama's America.\n\nIf that's the case, even immortality might lead to discontent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suppose science comes up with cures for all diseases, effective anti-ageing therapies and regenerative treatments that keep people indefinitely young.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 13 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In all likelihood, the immediate result will be an unprecedented epidemic of anger and anxiety.\n\nThose unable to afford the new miracle treatments – the vast majority of people – will be beside themselves with rage. Throughout history, the poor and oppressed comforted themselves with the thought that at least death is even-handed – that the rich and powerful will also die. The poor will not be comfortable with the thought that they have to die, while the rich will remain young and beautiful for ever.\n\nIn previous eras the standard of beauty was set by the handful of people who lived next door to you. Today the media and the fashion industry expose us to a totally unrealistic standard of beauty. They search out the most gorgeous people on the planet, and then parade them constantly before our eyes. No wonder we are far less happy with the way we look.\n\nBut the tiny minority able to afford the new treatments will not be euphoric either. They will have much to be anxious about. Although the new therapies could extend life and youth, they cannot revive corpses. How dreadful to think that I and my loved ones can live for ever, but only if we don't get hit by a truck or blown to smithereens by a terrorist! Potentially a-mortal people are likely to grow averse to taking even the slightest risk, and the agony of losing a spouse, child or close friend will be unbearable.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Following your lead on character/world context. Will write 8 sentences continuing from your text. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy, themes: anthropology.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Social scientists distribute subjective well-being questionnaires and correlate the results with socio-economic factors such as wealth and political freedom. Biologists use the same questionnaires, but correlate the answers people give them with biochemical and genetic factors. Their findings are shocking.\n\nBiologists hold that our mental and emotional world is governed by biochemical mechanisms shaped by millions of years of evolution. Like all other mental states, our subjective well-being is not determined by external parameters such as salary, social relations or political rights. Rather, it is determined by a complex system of nerves, neurons, synapses and various biochemical substances such as serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.\n\nNobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'genes'", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream, and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain.\n\nUnfortunately for all hopes of creating heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. There's no natural selection for happiness as such – a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents get carried on to the next generation. Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner or later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations.\n\nFor example, evolution provided pleasant feelings as rewards to males who spread their genes by having sex with fertile females.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If sex were not accompanied by such pleasure, few males would bother. At the same time, evolution made sure that these pleasant feelings quickly subsided. If orgasms were to last for ever, the very happy males would die of hunger for lack of interest in food, and would not take the trouble to look for additional fertile females.\n\nSome scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point.\n\nSome air-conditioning systems are set at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'gloomy' appears 2 time(s) in your answer", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete. Indeed, even if our gloomy friend wins $50,000,000 in the morning, discovers the cure for both AIDS and cancer by noon, makes peace between Israelis and Palestinians that afternoon, and then in the evening reunites with her long-lost child who disappeared years ago – she would still be incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may.\n\nThink for a moment of your family and friends. You know some people who remain relatively joyful, no matter what befalls them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then there are those who are always disgruntled, no matter what gifts the world lays at their feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We tend to believe that if we could just change our workplace, get married, finish writing that novel, buy a new car or repay the mortgage, we would be on top of the world. Yet when we get what we desire we don't seem to be any happier. Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.\n\nHow can this be squared with the above-mentioned psychological and sociological findings that, for example, married people are happier on average than singles? First, these findings are correlations – the direction of causation may be the opposite of what some researchers have assumed. It is true that married people are happier than singles and divorcees, but that does not necessarily mean that marriage produces happiness. It could be that happiness causes marriage.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or more correctly, that serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin bring about and maintain a marriage.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "People who are born with a cheerful biochemistry are generally happy and content.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Such people are more attractive spouses, and consequently they have a greater chance of getting married. They are also less likely to divorce, because it is far easier to live with a happy and content spouse than with a depressed and dissatisfied one. Consequently, it's true that married people are happier on average than singles, but a single woman prone to gloom because of her biochemistry would not necessarily become happier if she were to hook up with a husband.\n\nIn addition, most biologists are not fanatics. They maintain that happiness is determined mainly by biochemistry, but they agree that psychological and sociological factors also have their place. Our mental air-conditioning system has some freedom of movement within predetermined borders. It is almost impossible to exceed the upper and lower emotional boundaries, but marriage and divorce can have an impact in the area between the two. Somebody born with an average of level five happiness would never dance wildly in the streets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But a good marriage should enable her to enjoy level seven from time to time, and to avoid the despondency of level three.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If we accept the biological approach to happiness, then history turns out to be of minor importance, since most historical events have had no impact on our biochemistry. History can change the external stimuli that cause serotonin to be secreted, yet it does not change the resulting serotonin levels, and hence it cannot make people happier.\n\nCompare a medieval French peasant to a modern Parisian banker. The peasant lived in an unheated mud hut overlooking the local pigsty, while the banker goes home to a splendid penthouse with all the latest technological gadgets and a view to the Champs-Elysées. Intuitively, we would expect the banker to be much happier than the peasant. However, mud huts, penthouses and the Champs-Elysées don't really determine our mood. Serotonin does. When the medieval peasant completed the construction of his mud hut, his brain neurons secreted serotonin, bringing it up to level X. When in 2014 the banker made the last payment on his wonderful penthouse, brain neurons secreted a similar amount of serotonin, bringing it up to a similar level X.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It makes no difference to the brain that the penthouse is far more comfortable than the mud hut. The only thing that matters is that at present the level of serotonin is X. Consequently the banker would not be one iota happier than his great-great-great-grandfather, the poor medieval peasant.\n\nThis is true not only of private lives, but also of great collective events. Take, for example, the French Revolution. The revolutionaries were busy: they executed the king, gave lands to the peasants, declared the rights of man, abolished noble privileges and waged war against the whole of Europe. Yet none of that changed French biochemistry. Consequently, despite all the political, social, ideological and economic upheavals brought about by the revolution, its impact on French happiness was small. Those who won a cheerful biochemistry in the genetic lottery were just as happy before the revolution as after.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those with a gloomy biochemistry complained about Robespierre and Napoleon with the same bitterness with which they earlier complained about Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.\n\nIf so, what good was the French Revolution? If people did not become any happier, then what was the point of all that chaos, fear, blood and war? Biologists would never have stormed the Bastille. People think that this political revolution or that social reform will make them happy, but their biochemistry tricks them time and again.\n\nThere is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'happiness' must be used 4 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression.\n\nNothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: 'Happiness Begins Within.' Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.\n\nIn Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World, published in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, happiness is the supreme value and psychiatric drugs replace the police and the ballot as the foundation of politics. Each day, each person takes a dose of 'soma', a synthetic drug which makes people happy without harming their productivity and efficiency. The World State that governs the entire globe is never threatened by wars, revolutions, strikes or demonstrations, because all people are supremely content with their current conditions, whatever they may be. Huxley's vision of the future is far more troubling than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Huxley's world seems monstrous to most readers, but it is hard to explain why.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everybody is happy all the time – what could be wrong with that?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Huxley's disconcerting world is based on the biological assumption that happiness equals pleasure. To be happy is no more and no less than experiencing pleasant bodily sensations. Since our biochemistry limits the volume and duration of these sensations, the only way to make people experience a high level of happiness over an extended period of time is to manipulate their biochemical system.\n\nBut that definition of happiness is contested by some scholars. In a famous study, Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, asked people to recount a typical work day, going through it episode by episode and evaluating how much they enjoyed or disliked each moment. He discovered what seems to be a paradox in most people's view of their lives. Take the work involved in raising a child. Kahneman found that when counting moments of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up a child turns out to be a rather unpleasant affair. It consists largely of changing nappies, washing dishes and dealing with temper tantrums, which nobody likes to do. Yet most parents declare that their children are their chief source of happiness. Does it mean that people don't really know what's good for them?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's one option. Another is that the findings demonstrate that happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather, happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. There is an important cognitive and ethical component to happiness. Our values make all the difference to whether we see ourselves as 'miserable slaves to a baby dictator' or as 'lovingly nurturing a new life'.2 As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.\n\nThough people in all cultures and eras have felt the same type of pleasures and pains, the meaning they have ascribed to their experiences has probably varied widely. If so, the history of happiness might have been far more turbulent than biologists imagine. It's a conclusion that does not necessarily favour modernity. Assessing life minute by minute, medieval people certainly had it rough. However, if they believed the promise of everlasting bliss in the afterlife, they may well have viewed their lives as far more meaningful and worthwhile than modern secular people, who in the long term can expect nothing but complete and meaningless oblivion. Asked 'Are you satisfied with your life as a whole? ', people in the Middle Ages might have scored quite highly in a subjective well-being questionnaire.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "So our medieval ancestors were happy because they found meaning to life in collective delusions about the afterlife?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 12 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes. As long as nobody punctured their fantasies, why shouldn't they? As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. The other-worldly meanings medieval people found in their lives were no more deluded than the modern humanist, nationalist and capitalist meanings modern people find. The scientist who says her life is meaningful because she increases the store of human knowledge, the soldier who declares that his life is meaningful because he fights to defend his homeland, and the entrepreneur who finds meaning in building a new company are no less delusional than their medieval counterparts who found meaning in reading scriptures, going on a crusade or building a new cathedral.\n\nSo perhaps happiness is synchronising one's personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.\n\nThis is quite a depressing conclusion. Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Narrative Extension Protocol:\nQuantity: twenty-five sentences\nContext: Match character familiarity\nGenre: history, nonfiction, philosophy", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If happiness is based on feeling pleasant sensations, then in order to be happier we need to re-engineer our biochemical system. If happiness is based on feeling that life is meaningful, then in order to be happier we need to delude ourselves more effectively. Is there a third alternative?\n\nBoth the above views share the assumption that happiness is some sort of subjective feeling (of either pleasure or meaning), and that in order to judge people's happiness, all we need to do is ask them how they feel. To many of us, that seems logical because the dominant religion of our age is liberalism. Liberalism sanctifies the subjective feelings of individuals. It views these feelings as the supreme source of authority. What is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what ought to be and what ought not to be, are all determined by what each one of us feels.\n\nLiberal politics is based on the idea that the voters know best, and there is no need for Big Brother to tell us what is good for us. Liberal economics is based on the idea that the customer is always right. Liberal art declares that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Students in liberal schools and universities are taught to think for themselves. Commercials urge us to 'Just do it!' Action films, stage dramas, soap operas, novels and catchy pop songs indoctrinate us constantly: 'Be true to yourself', 'Listen to yourself', 'Follow your heart'. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated this view most classically: 'What I feel to be good – is good. What I feel to be bad – is bad.'\n\nPeople who have been raised from infancy on a diet of such slogans are prone to believe that happiness is a subjective feeling and that each individual best knows whether she is happy or miserable. Yet this view is unique to liberalism. Most religions and ideologies throughout history stated that there are objective yardsticks for goodness and beauty, and for how things ought to be. They were suspicious of the feelings and preferences of the ordinary person. At the entrance of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, pilgrims were greeted by the inscription: 'Know thyself!' The implication was that the average person is ignorant of his true self, and is therefore likely to be ignorant of true happiness. Freud would probably concur. (Paradoxically, while psychological studies of subjective well-being rely on people's ability to diagnose their happiness correctly, the basic raison d'être of psychotherapy is that people don't really know themselves and that they sometimes need professional help to free themselves of self-destructive behaviours.)\n\nAnd so would Christian theologians.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "St Paul and St Augustine knew perfectly well that if you asked people about it, most of them would prefer to have sex than pray to God.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Does that prove that having sex is the key to happiness?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not according to Paul and Augustine. It proves only that humankind is sinful by nature, and that people are easily seduced by Satan. From a Christian viewpoint, the vast majority of people are in more or less the same situation as heroin addicts. Imagine that a psychologist embarks on a study of happiness among drug users. He polls them and finds that they declare, every single one of them, that they are only happy when they shoot up. Would the psychologist publish a paper declaring that heroin is the key to happiness?\n\nThe idea that feelings are not to be trusted is not restricted to Christianity. At least when it comes to the value of feelings, even Darwin and Dawkins might find common ground with St Paul and St Augustine. According to the selfish gene theory, natural selection makes people, like other organisms, choose what is good for the reproduction of their genes, even if it is bad for them as individuals. Most males spend their lives toiling, worrying, competing and fighting, instead of enjoying peaceful bliss, because their DNA manipulates them for its own selfish aims. Like Satan, DNA uses fleeting pleasures to tempt people and place them in its power.\n\nMost religions and philosophies have consequently taken a very different approach to happiness than liberalism does. The Buddhist position is particularly interesting. Buddhism has assigned the question of happiness more importance than perhaps any other human creed. For 2,500 years, Buddhists have systematically studied the essence and causes of happiness, which is why there is a growing interest among the scientific community both in their philosophy and their meditation practices.\n\nBuddhism shares the basic insight of the biological approach to happiness, namely that happiness results from processes occurring within one's body, and not from events in the outside world. However, starting from the same insight, Buddhism reaches very different conclusions.\n\nAccording to Buddhism, most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. People consequently ascribe immense importance to what they feel, craving to experience more and more pleasures, while avoiding pain. Whatever we do throughout our lives, whether scratching our leg, fidgeting slightly in the chair, or fighting world wars, we are just trying to get pleasant feelings.\n\nThe problem, according to Buddhism, is that our feelings are no more than fleeting vibrations, changing every moment, like the ocean waves. If five minutes ago I felt joyful and purposeful, now these feelings are gone, and I might well feel sad and dejected. So if I want to experience pleasant feelings, I have to constantly chase them, while driving away the unpleasant feelings. Even if I succeed, I immediately have to start all over again, without ever getting any lasting reward for my troubles.\n\nWhat is so important about obtaining such ephemeral prizes?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why struggle so hard to achieve something that disappears almost as soon as it arises?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(( Word restriction: Use 'feeling' 2 time(s) only ))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify.\n\nPeople are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing – joy, anger, boredom, lust – but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been.\n\nThe resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain 'good' waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back 'bad' waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!\n\nThis idea is so alien to modern liberal culture that when Western New Age movements encountered Buddhist insights, they translated them into liberal terms, thereby turning them on their head. New Age cults frequently argue: 'Happiness does not depend on external conditions. It depends only on what we feel inside. People should stop pursuing external achievements such as wealth and status, and connect instead with their inner feelings.' Or more succinctly, 'Happiness Begins Within.' This is exactly what biologists argue, but more or less the opposite of what Buddha said.\n\nBuddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha's recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.\n\nTo sum up, subjective well-being questionnaires identify our well-being with our subjective feelings, and identify the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of particular emotional states. In contrast, for many traditional philosophies and religions, such as Buddhism, the key to happiness is to know the truth about yourself – to understand who, or what, you really are.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people wrongly identify themselves with their feelings, thoughts, likes and dislikes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 16 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When they feel anger, they think, 'I am angry. This is my anger.' They consequently spend their life avoiding some kinds of feelings and pursuing others. They never realise that they are not their feelings, and that the relentless pursuit of particular feelings just traps them in misery.\n\nIf this is so, then our entire understanding of the history of happiness might be misguided. Maybe it isn't so important whether people's expectations are fulfilled and whether they enjoy pleasant feelings. The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves. What evidence do we have that people today understand this truth any better than ancient foragers or medieval peasants?\n\nScholars began to study the history of happiness only a few years ago, and we are still formulating initial hypotheses and searching for appropriate research methods. It's much too early to adopt rigid conclusions and end a debate that's hardly yet begun. What is important is to get to know as many different approaches as possible and to ask the right questions.\n\nMost history books focus on the ideas of great thinkers, the bravery of warriors, the charity of saints and the creativity of artists. They have much to tell about the weaving and unravelling of social structures, about the rise and fall of empires, about the discovery and spread of technologies. Yet they say nothing about how all this influenced the happiness and suffering of individuals. This is the biggest lacuna in our understanding of history. We had better start filling it.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The following text is missing a piece (marked with `[original_content_missing]`). Come up with approximately 1173 characters long to complete it.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "This book began by presenting history as the next stage in the continuum of physics to chemistry to biology. Sapiens are subject to the same physical forces, chemical reactions and natural-selection processes that govern all living beings. Natural selection may have provided Homo sapiens with a much larger playing field than it has given to any other organism, but the field has still had its boundaries. The implication has been that, no matter what their efforts and achievements, Sapiens are incapable of breaking free of their biologically determined limits.\n\nBut at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this is no longer true: Homo sapiens is transcending those limits. It is now beginning to break the laws of natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design.\n\nFor close to 4 billion years, every single organism on the planet evolved subject to natural selection. Not even one was designed by an intelligent creator. The giraffe, for example, got its long neck thanks to competition between archaic giraffes rather than to the whims of a super-intelligent being. Proto-giraffes who had longer necks had access to more food and consequently produced more offspring than did those with shorter necks. Nobody, certainly not the giraffes, said, 'A long neck would enable giraffes to munch leaves off the treetops. Let's extend it.' The beauty of Darwin's theory is that it does not need to assume an intelligent designer to explain how giraffes ended up with long necks.\n\nFor billions of years, intelligent design was not even an option, because there was no intelligence which could design things. Microorganisms, which until quite recently were the only living things around, are capable of amazing feats. A microorganism belonging to one species can incorporate genetic codes from a completely different species into its cell and thereby gain new capabilities, such as resistance to antibiotics. Yet, as best we know, microorganisms have no consciousness, no aims in life, and no ability to plan ahead.\n\nAt some stage organisms such as giraffes, dolphins, chimpanzees and Neanderthals evolved consciousness and the ability to plan ahead. But even if a Neanderthal fantasised about fowls so fat and slow-moving that he could just scoop them up whenever he was hungry, he had no way of turning that fantasy into reality. He had to hunt the birds that had been naturally selected.\n\nThe first crack in the old regime appeared about 10,000 years ago, during the Agricultural Revolution. Sapiens who dreamed of fat, slow-moving chickens discovered that if they mated the fattest hen with the slowest cock, some of their offspring would be both fat and slow. If you mated those offspring with each other, you could produce a line of fat, slow birds. It was a race of chickens unknown to nature, produced by the intelligent design not of a god but of a human.\n\nStill, compared to an all-powerful deity, Homo sapiens had limited design skills. Sapiens could use selective breeding to detour around and accelerate the natural-selection processes that normally affected chickens, but they could not introduce completely new characteristics that were absent from the genetic pool of wild chickens. In a way, the relationship between Homo sapiens and chickens was similar to many other symbiotic rel[original_content_missing]e. If the potential Alba signifies is realised in full – and if humankind doesn't annihilate itself meanwhile – the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth. After 4 billion years of natural selection, Alba stands at the dawn of a new cosmic era, in which life will be ruled by intelligent design. If this happens, the whole of human history up to that point might, with hindsight, be reinterpreted as a process of experimentation and apprenticeship that revolutionised the game of life. Such a process should be understood from a cosmic perspective of billions of years, rather than from a human perspective of millennia.\n\nBiologists the world over are locked in battle with the intelligent-design movement, which opposes the teaching of Darwinian evolution in schools and claims that biological complexity proves there must be a creator who thought out all biological details in advance. The biologists are right about the past, but the proponents of intelligent design might, ironically, be right about the future.\n\nAt the time of writing, the replacement of natural selection by intelligent design could happen in any of three ways: through biological engineering, cyborg engineering (cyborgs are beings that combine organic with non-organic parts) or the engineering of inorganic life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ationships that have so often arisen on their own in nature. Sapiens exerted peculiar selective pressures on chickens that caused the fat and slow ones to proliferate, just as pollinating bees select flowers, causing the bright colourful ones to proliferate.\n\nToday, the 4-billion-year-old regime of natural selection is facing a completely different challenge. In laboratories throughout the world, scientists are engineering living beings. They break the laws of natural selection with impunity, unbridled even by an organisms original characteristics. Eduardo Kac, a Brazilian bio-artist, decided in 2000 to create a new work of art: a fluorescent green rabbit. Kac contacted a French laboratory and offered it a fee to engineer a radiant bunny according to his specifications. The French scientists took a run-of-the-mill white rabbit embryo, implanted in its DNA a gene taken from a green fluorescent jellyfish, and voilà! One green fluorescent rabbit for le monsieur. Kac named the rabbit Alba.\n\nIt is impossible to explain the existence of Alba through the laws of natural selection. She is the product of intelligent design. She is also a harbinger of things to com", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this story fragment where characters may appear without introduction. Write nine sentences sentences like Yuval Noah Harari. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Themes: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Biological engineering is deliberate human intervention on the biological level (e.g.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, Incorporate 'humans' into your response exactly 2 times", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "implanting a gene) aimed at modifying an organisms shape, capabilities, needs or desires, in order to realize some preconceived cultural idea, such as the artistic predilections of Eduardo Kac.\n\nThere is nothing new about biological engineering, per se. People have been using it for millennia in order to reshape themselves and other organisms. A simple example is castration. Humans have been castrating bulls for perhaps 10,000 years in order to create oxen. Oxen are less aggressive, and are thus easier to train to pull ploughs. Humans also castrated their own young males to create soprano singers with enchanting voices and eunuchs who could safely be entrusted with overseeing the sultans harem.\n\nBut recent advances in our understanding of how organisms work, down to the cellular and nuclear levels, have opened up previously unimaginable possibilities. For instance, we can today not merely castrate a man, but also change his sex through surgical and hormonal treatments.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But that's not all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consider the surprise, disgust and consternation that ensued when, in 1996, the following photograph appeared in newspapers and on television:\n\nA mouse on whose back scientists grew an 'ear' made of cattle cartilage cells. It is an eerie echo of the lion-man statue from the Stadel Cave. Thirty thousand years ago, humans were already fantasising about combining different species. Today, they can actually produce such chimeras.\n\nNo, Photoshop was not involved. It's an untouched photo of a real mouse on whose back scientists implanted cattle cartilage cells. The scientists were able to control the growth of the new tissue, shaping it in this case into something that looks like a human ear. The process may soon enable scientists to manufacture artificial ears, which could then be implanted in humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even more remarkable wonders can be performed with genetic engineering, which is why it raises a host of ethical, political and ideological issues. And it's not just pious monotheists who object that man should not usurp God's role. Many confirmed atheists are no less shocked by the idea that scientists are stepping into nature's shoes. Animal-rights activists decry the suffering caused to lab animals in genetic engineering experiments, and to the farmyard animals that are engineered in complete disregard of their needs and desires. Human-rights activists are afraid that genetic engineering might be used to create supermen who will make serfs of the rest of us. Jeremiahs offer apocalyptic visions of bio-dictatorships that will clone fearless soldiers and obedient workers. The prevailing feeling is that too many opportunities are opening too quickly and that our ability to modify genes is outpacing our capacity for making wise and far-sighted use of the skill.\n\nThe result is that we're at present using only a fraction of the potential of genetic engineering. Most of the organisms now being engineered are those with the weakest political lobbies – plants, fungi, bacteria and insects.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For example, lines of E. coli, a bacterium that lives symbiotically in the human gut (and which makes headlines when it gets out of the gut and causes deadly infections), have been genetically engineered to produce biofuel. E. coli and several species of fungi have also been engineered to produce insulin, thereby lowering the cost of diabetes treatment. A gene extracted from an Arctic fish has been inserted into potatoes, making the plants more frost-resistant.\n\nA few mammals have also been subject to genetic engineering. Every year the dairy industry suffers billions of dollars in damages due to mastitis, a disease that strikes dairy-cow udders. Scientists are currently experimenting with genetically engineered cows whose milk contains lysostaphin, a biochemical that attacks the bacteria responsible for the disease. The pork industry, which has suffered from falling sales because consumers are wary of the unhealthy fats in ham and bacon, has hopes for a still-experimental line of pigs implanted with genetic material from a worm. The new genes cause the pigs to turn bad omega 6 fatty acid into its healthy cousin, omega 3.\n\nThe next generation of genetic engineering will make pigs with good fat look like child's play.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Geneticists have managed not merely to extend sixfold the average life expectancy of worms, but also to engineer genius mice that display much-improved memory and learning skills.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Voles are small, stout rodents resembling mice, and most varieties of voles are promiscuous. But there is one species in which boy and girl voles form lasting and monogamous relationships. Geneticists claim to have isolated the genes responsible for vole monogamy. If the addition of a gene can turn a vole Don Juan into a loyal and loving husband, are we far off from being able to genetically engineer not only the individual abilities of rodents (and humans), but also their social structures?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help complete this text by providing just 5 sentences where you see the `<fill_in_here>`.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "But geneticists do not only want to transform living lineages. They aim to revive extinct creatures as well. And not just dinosaurs, as in Jurassic Park. A team of Russian, Japanese and Korean scientists has recently mapped the genome of ancient mammoths, found frozen in the Siberian ice. They now plan to take a fertilised egg-cell of a present-day elephant, replace the elephantine DNA with a reconstructed mammoth DNA, and implant the egg in the womb of an elephant. After about twenty-two months, they expect the first mammoth in 5,000 years to be born.\n\nBut why stop at mammoths? Professor George Church of Harvard University recently suggested that, with the completion of the Neanderthal Genome Project, we can now implant reconstructed Neanderthal DNA into a Sapiens ovum, thus producing the first Neanderthal child in 30,000 years. Church claimed that he could do the job for a paltry $30 million. Several women have already volunteered to serve as surrogate mothers.\n\nWhat do we need Neanderthals for? Some argue that if we could study live Neanderthals, we could answer some of the most nagging questions about the origins and uniqueness of Homo sapiens. By comparing a Neanderthal to a Homo sapiens brain, and mapping out where their structures differ, perhaps we could identify what biological change produced consciousness as we experience it. There's an ethical reason, too – some have argued that if Homo sapiens was responsible for the extinction of the Neanderthals, it has a moral duty to resurrect them. And having some Neanderthals around might be useful. Lots of industrialists would be glad to pay one Neanderthal to do the menial work of two Sapiens.\n\nBut why stop even at Neanderthals? Why not go back to God's drawing board and design a better Sapiens? The abilities, needs and desires of Homo sapiens have a genetic basis, and the Sapiens genome is no more complex than that of voles and mice. (The mouse genome contains about 2.5 billion nucleobases, the Sapiens genome about 2.9 billion bases – meaning the latter is only 14 per cent larger.)11 In the medium range – perhaps in a few decades – genetic engineering and other forms of biological engineering might enable us to make far-reaching alterations not only to our physiology, immune system and life expectancy, but also to our intellectual and emotional capacities. If genetic engineering can create genius mice, why not genius humans? If it can create monogamous voles, why not humans hard-wired to remain faithful to their partners?\n\nThe Cognitive Revolution that turned Homo sapiens from an insignificant ape into the master of the world did not require any noticeable change in physiology or even in the size and external shape of the Sapiens brain. It apparently involved no more than a few small changes to internal brain structure. Perhaps another small change would be enough to ignite a Second Cognitive Revolution, create a completely new type of consciousness, <fill_in_here>patients and prevent healthy people from using it to acquire super-memories?\n\nIt's unclear whether bioengineering could really resurrect the Neanderthals, but it would very likely bring down the curtain on Homo sapiens. Tinkering with our genes won't necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle with Homo sapiens to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and transform Homo sapiens into something altogether different.\n\nTrue, we still don't have the acumen to achieve this, but there seems to be no insurmountable technical barrier preventing us from producing superhumans. The main obstacles are the ethical and political objections that have slowed down research on humans. And no matter how convincing the ethical arguments may be, it is hard to see how they can hold back the next step for long, especially if what is at stake is the possibility of prolonging human life indefinitely, conquering incurable diseases, and upgrading our cognitive and emotional abilities.\n\nWhat would happen, for example, if we developed a cure for Alzheimer's disease that, as a side benefit, could dramatically improve the memories of healthy people? Would anyone be able to halt the relevant research? And when the cure is developed, could any law enforcement agency limit it to Alzheimer's ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write in the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? Follow my lead on how characters are introduced.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There is another new technology which could change the laws of life: cyborg engineering. Cyborgs are beings which combine organic and inorganic parts, such as a human with bionic hands. In a sense, nearly all of us are bionic these days, since our natural senses and functions are supplemented by devices such as eyeglasses, pacemakers, orthotics, and even computers and mobile phones (which relieve our brains of some of their data storage and processing burdens). We stand poised on the brink of becoming true cyborgs, of having inorganic features that are inseparable from our bodies, features that modify our abilities, desires, personalities and identities.\n\nThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a US military research agency, is developing cyborgs out of insects.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The idea is to implant electronic chips, detectors and processors in the body of a fly or cockroach, which will enable either a human or an automatic operator to control the insect's movements remotely and to absorb and transmit information.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Such a fly could be sitting on the wall at enemy headquarters, eavesdrop on the most secret conversations, and if it isn't caught first by a spider, could inform us exactly what the enemy is planning.2 In 2006 the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center reported its intention to develop cyborg sharks, declaring, 'NUWC is developing a fish tag whose goal is behaviour control of host animals via neural implants.' The developers hope to identify underwater electromagnetic fields made by submarines and mines, by exploiting the natural magnetic detecting capabilities of sharks, which are superior to those of any man-made detectors.\n\nSapiens, too, are being turned into cyborgs. The newest generation of hearing aids are sometimes referred to as 'bionic ears'. The device consists of an implant that absorbs sound through a microphone located in the outer part of the ear.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The implant filters the sounds, identifies human voices, and translates them into electric signals that are sent directly to the central auditory nerve and from there to the brain.\n\nRetina Implant, a government-sponsored German company, is developing a retinal prosthesis that may allow blind people to gain partial vision. It involves implanting a small microchip inside the patient's eye. Photocells absorb light falling on the eye and transform it into electrical energy, which stimulates the intact nerve cells in the retina. The nervous impulses from these cells stimulate the brain, where they are translated into sight. At present the technology allows patients to orientate themselves in space, identify letters, and even recognise faces.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "See that `[text_redacted]` in the text? Replace it with about six sentences worth.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jesse Sullivan and Claudia Mitchell holding hands. The amazing thing about their bionic arms is that they are operated by thought.\n\nAt present these bionic arms are a poor replacement for our organic originals, but they have the potential for unlimited development. Bionic arms, for example, can be made far more powerful than their organic kin, making even a boxing champion feel like a weakling. Moreover, bionic arms have the advantage that they can be replaced every few years, or detached from the body and operated at a distance.\n\nScientists at Duke University in North Carolina have recently demonstrated this with rhesus monkeys whose brains have been implanted with electrodes. The electrodes gather signals from the brain and transmit them to external devices. The monkeys have been trained to control detached bionic arms and legs through thought alone. One monkey, named Aurora, learned to thought-control a detached bionic arm while simultaneously moving her two organic arms. Like some Hindu goddess, Aurora now has three arms, and her arms can be located in different rooms – or even cities. She can sit in her North Carolina lab, scratch her back with one hand, scratch her head with a second hand, and simultaneously steal a banana in New York (although the ability to eat a purloined fruit at a distance remains a dream). Another rhesus monkey, Idoya, won world fame in 2008 when she thought-controlled a pair of bionic legs in Kyoto, Japan, from her North Carolina chair. The legs were twenty times Idoya's weight.\n\nLocked-in syndrome is a condition in which a person loses all or nearly all her ability to move any part of her body, while her cognitive abilities remain intact. Patients suffering from the syndrome have up till now been able to communicate with t[text_redacted]human identity if the brain has direct access to a collective memory bank? In such a situation, one cyborg could, for example, retrieve the memories of another – not hear about them, not read about them in an autobiography, not imagine them, but directly remember them as if they were his own. Or her own. What happens to concepts such as the self and gender identity when minds become collective? How could you know thyself or follow your dream if the dream is not in your mind but in some collective reservoir of aspirations?\n\nSuch a cyborg would no longer be human, or even organic. It would be something completely different. It would be so fundamentally another kind of being that we cannot even grasp the philosophical, psychological or political implications.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he outside world only through small eye movements. However, a few patients have had brain-signal-gathering electrodes implanted in their brains. Efforts are being made to translate such signals not merely into movements but also into words. If the experiments succeed, locked-in patients could finally speak directly with the outside world, and we might eventually be able to use the technology to read other peoples minds.\n\nYet of all the projects currently under development, the most revolutionary is the attempt to devise a direct two-way brain-computer interface that will allow computers to read the electrical signals of a human brain, simultaneously transmitting signals that the brain can read in turn. What if such interfaces are used to directly link a brain to the Internet, or to directly link several brains to each other, thereby creating a sort of Inter-brain-net? What might happen to human memory, human consciousness and ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "You will be provided with a piece of text that has a portion of it missing as represented by `<fill_in_here>`. Your output should be a viable candidate for the missing portion. Produce just 10 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The third way to change the laws of life is to engineer completely inorganic beings. The most obvious examples are computer programs and computer viruses that can undergo independent evolution.\n\nThe field of genetic programming is today one of the most interesting spots in the computer science world. It tries to emulate the methods of genetic evolution. Many programmers dream of creating a program that could learn and evolve completely independently of its creator. In this case, the programmer would be a primum mobile, a first mover, but his creation would be free to evolve in directions neither its maker nor any other human could ever have envisaged.\n\nA prototype for such a program already exists – it's called a computer virus. As it spreads through the Internet, the virus replicates itself millions upon millions of times, all the while being chased by predatory antivirus programs and competing with other viruses for a place in cyberspace. One day when the virus replicates itself a mistake occurs – a<fill_in_here> program on your computer, would it be a person? If you deleted it could you be charged with murder?\n\nWe might soon have the answer to such questions. The Human Brain Project, founded in 2005, hopes to recreate a complete human brain inside a computer, with electronic circuits in the computer emulating neural networks in the brain. The projects director has claimed that, if funded properly, within a decade or two we could have an artificial human brain inside a computer that could talk and behave very much as a human does. If successful, that would mean that after 4 billion years of milling around inside the small world of organic compounds, life will suddenly break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, ready to take up shapes beyond our wildest dreams. Not all scholars agree that the mind works in a manner analogous to today's digital computers – and if it doesn't, present-day computers would not be able to simulate it. Yet it would be foolish to categorically dismiss the possibility before giving it a try. In 2013 the project received a grant of €1 billion from the European Union.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " computerised mutation. Perhaps the mutation occurs because the human engineer programmed the virus to make occasional random replication mistakes. Perhaps the mutation was due to a random error. If, by chance, the modified virus is better at evading antivirus programs without losing its ability to invade other computers, it will spread through cyberspace. If so, the mutants will survive and reproduce. As time goes by, cyberspace would be full of new viruses that nobody engineered, and that undergo non-organic evolution.\n\nAre these living creatures? It depends on what you mean by 'living creatures'. They have certainly been produced by a new evolutionary process, completely independent of the laws and limitations of organic evolution.\n\nImagine another possibility – suppose you could back up your brain to a portable hard drive and then run it on your laptop. Would your laptop be able to think and feel just like a Sapiens? If so, would it be you or someone else? What if computer programmers could create an entirely new but digital mind, composed of computer code, complete with a sense of self, consciousness and memory? If you ran the", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story going! this is mid-chapter so characters might appear without intro. write 2 sentences more. channel Yuval Noah Harari. genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. tags: anthropology", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Presently, only a tiny fraction of these new opportunities have been realised. Yet the world of 2014 is already a world in which culture is releasing itself from the shackles of biology.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'world' precisely 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Our ability to engineer not merely the world around us, but above all the world inside our bodies and minds, is developing at breakneck speed. More and more spheres of activity are being shaken out of their complacent ways.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lawyers need to rethink issues of privacy and identity; governments are faced with rethinking matters of health care and equality; sports associations and educational institutions need to redefine fair play and achievement; pension funds and labour markets should readjust to a world in which sixty might be the new thirty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They must all deal with the conundrums of bioengineering, cyborgs and inorganic life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mapping the first human genome required fifteen years and $3 billion. Today you can map a person's DNA within a few weeks and at the cost of a few hundred dollars.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The era of personalized medicine – medicine that matches treatment to DNA – has begun.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The family doctor could soon tell you with greater certainty that you face high risks of liver cancer, whereas you needn't worry too much about heart attacks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could determine that a popular medication that helps 92 per cent of people is useless to you, and you should instead take another pill, fatal to many people but just right for you.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The road to near-perfect medicine stands before us.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, with improvements in medical knowledge will come new ethical conundrums. Ethicists and legal experts are already wrestling with the thorny issue of privacy as it relates to DNA.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Would insurance companies be entitled to ask for our DNA scans and to raise premiums if they discover a genetic tendency to reckless behaviour?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would we be required to fax our DNA, rather than our CV, to potential employers? Could an employer favour a candidate because his DNA looks better?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or could we sue in such cases for 'genetic discrimination'? Could a company that develops a new creature or a new organ register a patent on its DNA sequences?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is obvious that one can own a particular chicken, but can one own an entire species?\n\nSuch dilemmas are dwarfed by the ethical, social and political implications of the Gilgamesh Project and of our potential new abilities to create superhumans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, government medical programmes throughout the world, national health insurance programmes and national constitutions worldwide recognise that a humane society ought to give all its members fair medical treatment and keep them in relatively good health. That was all well and good as long as medicine was chiefly concerned with preventing illness and healing the sick.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What might happen once medicine becomes preoccupied with enhancing human abilities?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would all humans be entitled to such enhanced abilities, or would there be a new superhuman elite?\n\nOur late modern world prides itself on recognising, for the first time in history, the basic equality of all humans, yet it might be poised to create the most unequal of all societies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Throughout history, the upper classes always claimed to be smarter, stronger and generally better than the underclass. They were usually deluding themselves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A baby born to a poor peasant family was likely to be as intelligent as the crown prince. With the help of new medical capabilities, the pretensions of the upper classes might soon become an objective reality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is not science fiction. Most science-fiction plots describe a world in which Sapiens – identical to us – enjoy superior technology such as light-speed spaceships and laser guns.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ethical and political dilemmas central to these plots are taken from our own world, and they merely recreate our emotional and social tensions against a futuristic backdrop.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet the real potential of future technologies is to change Homo sapiens itself, including our emotions and desires, and not merely our vehicles and weapons.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What is a spaceship compared to an eternally young cyborg who does not breed and has no sexuality, who can share thoughts directly with other beings, whose abilities to focus and remember are a thousand times greater than our own, and who is never angry or sad, but has emotions and desires that we cannot begin to imagine?\n\nScience fiction rarely describes such a future, because an accurate description is by definition incomprehensible.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Producing a film about the life of some super-cyborg is akin to producing Hamlet for an audience of Neanderthals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Indeed, the future masters of the world will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Physicists define the Big Bang as a singularity.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is a point at which all the known laws of nature did not exist.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Time too did not exist.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'anything' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is thus meaningless to say that anything existed 'before' the Big Bang. We may be fast approaching a new singularity, when all the concepts that give meaning to our world – me, you, men, women, love and hate – will become irrelevant. Anything happening beyond that point is meaningless to us.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: May be mid-story\nYour role: Add fifteen sentences sentences preserving established character dynamics", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 1818 Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who creates an artificial being that goes out of control and wreaks havoc. In the last two centuries, the same story has been told over and over again in countless versions. It has become a central pillar of our new scientific mythology. At first sight, the Frankenstein story appears to warn us that if we try to play God and engineer life we will be punished severely. Yet the story has a deeper meaning.\n\nThe Frankenstein myth confronts Homo sapiens with the fact that the last days are fast approaching. Unless some nuclear or ecological catastrophe intervenes, so goes the story, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. This is something most Sapiens find extremely disconcerting. We like to believe that in the future people just like us will travel from planet to planet in fast spaceships. We don't like to contemplate the possibility that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms whose abilities dwarf our own.\n\nWe somehow find comfort in the idea that Dr Frankenstein created a terrible monster, whom we had to destroy in order to save ourselves. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are the best of all beings, that there never was and never will be something better than us. Any attempt to improve us will inevitably fail, because even if our bodies might be improved, you cannot touch the human spirit.\n\nWe would have a hard time swallowing the fact that scientists could engineer spirits as well as bodies, and that future Dr Frankensteins could therefore create something truly superior to us, something that will look at us as condescendingly as we look at the Neanderthals.\n\nWe cannot be certain whether today's Frankensteins will indeed fulfil this prophecy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The future is unknown, and it would be surprising if the forecasts of the last few pages were realised in full.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "History teaches us that what seems to be just around the corner may never materialise due to unforeseen barriers, and that other unimagined scenarios will in fact come to pass. When the nuclear age erupted in the 1940S, many forecasts were made about the future nuclear world of the year 2000. When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination of the world, everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people would be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.\n\nSo don't go out just yet to buy liability insurance to indemnify you against lawsuits filed by digital beings. The above fantasies – or nightmares – are just stimulants for your imagination. What we should take seriously is the idea that the next stage of history will include not only technological and organisational transformations, but also fundamental transformations in human consciousness and identity. And these could be transformations so fundamental that they will call the very term 'human' into question. How long do we have? No one really knows. As already mentioned, some say that by 2050 a few humans will already be a-mortal. Less radical forecasts speak of the next century, or the next millennium. Yet from the perspective of 70,000 years of Sapiens history, what are a few millennia?\n\nIf the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question: what do we want to become?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'people' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This question, sometimes known as the Human Enhancement question, dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today's debate between today's religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo sapiens. If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness that we cannot even conceive), it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organisation could be Communist or capitalist, or that their genders could be male or female.\n\nAnd yet the great debates of history are important because at least the first generation of these gods would be shaped by the cultural ideas of their human designers. Would they be created in the image of capitalism, of Islam, or of feminism? The answer to this question might send them careening in entirely different directions.\n\nMost people prefer not to think about it. Even the field of bioethics prefers to address another question, 'What is it forbidden to do?' Is it acceptable to carry out genetic experiments on living human beings? On aborted fetuses? On stem cells? Is it ethical to clone sheep? And chimpanzees? And what about humans? All of these are important questions, but it is naïve to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. For these projects are inextricably meshed together with the Gilgamesh Project. Ask scientists why they study the genome, or try to connect a brain to a computer, or try to create a mind inside a computer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nine out of ten times you'll get the same standard answer: we are doing it to cure diseases and save human lives.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even though the implications of creating a mind inside a computer are far more dramatic than curing psychiatric illnesses, this is the standard justification given, because nobody can argue with it. This is why the Gilgamesh Project is the flagship of science. It serves to justify everything science does. Dr Frankenstein piggybacks on the shoulders of Gilgamesh. Since it is impossible to stop Gilgamesh, it is also impossible to stop Dr Frankenstein.\n\nThe only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become? ', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Continue with 1 sentence sentences\nStyle: Yuval Noah Harari\nNote: Maintain narrative threads and character relationships as presented", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the last few decades we have at last made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Moreover, despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we're going.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.\n\nIs there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Got a text with a `[original_content_missing]` shaped hole in it. Patch it up with about seven hundred and forty-four letters worth.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "At the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up, stretching its limbs and rubbing its eyes. Remnants of some awful nightmare are still drifting across its mind. 'There was something with barbed wire, and huge mushroom clouds. Oh well, it was just a bad dream.' Going to the bathroom, humanity washes its face, examines its wrinkles in the mirror, makes a cup of coffee and opens the diary. 'Let's see what's on the agenda today.'\n\nFor thousands of years the answer to this question remained unchanged. The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list. For generation after generation humans have prayed to every god, angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions and social systems – but they continued to die in their millions from starvation, epidemics and violence. Many thinkers and prophets concluded that famine, plague and war must be an integral part of God's cosmic plan or of our imperfect nature, and nothing short of the end of time would free us from them.\n\nYet at the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up to an amazing realisation. Most people rarely think about it, but in the last few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague and war. Of course, these problems have not been completely solved, but they have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. We don't need to pray to any god or saint to rescue us from them. We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent famine, plague and war – and we usually succeed in doing it.\n\nTrue, there are still notable failures; but when faced with such failures we no longer shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well, that's the way things work in our imperfect world' or 'God's will be done'. Rather, when famine, plague or war break out of our control, we feel that somebody must have screwed up, we set up a commission of inquiry, and promise ourselves that next time we'll do better. And it actually works. Such calamities indeed happen less and less often. 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 bingeing at McDonald's than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack.\n\nHence even though presidents, CEOs and generals still have their daily schedules full of economic crises and military conflicts, on the cosmic scale of history humankind can lift its eyes up and start looking towards new horizons. If we are indeed bringing famine, plague and war under control, what will replace them at the top of the human agenda? Like firefighters in a world without fire, so humankind in the twenty-first century needs to ask itself an unprecedented question: what are we going to do with ourselves? [original_content_missing]exploring the human agenda for the coming decades.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a healthy, prosperous and harmonious world, what will demand our attention and ingenuity? This question becomes doubly urgent given the immense new powers that biotechnology and information technology are providing us with. What will we do with all that power?\n\nBefore answering this question, we need to say a few more words about famine, plague and war. The claim that we are bringing them under control may strike many as outrageous, extremely naïve, or perhaps callous. What about the billions of people scraping a living on less than $2 a day? What about the ongoing AIDS crisis in Africa, or the wars raging in Syria and Iraq? To address these concerns, let us take a closer look at the world of the early twenty-first century, before ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Chapter Segment Request:\n- Sentences: twenty-one sentences\n- Style: Yuval Noah Harari\n- Genre: history, nonfiction, philosophy\n- Note: Part of ongoing narrative", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Let's start with famine, which for thousands of years has been humanity's worst enemy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Until recently most humans lived on the very edge of the biological poverty line, below which people succumb to malnutrition and hunger. A small mistake or a bit of bad luck could easily be a death sentence for an entire family or village. If heavy rains destroyed your wheat crop, or robbers carried off your goat herd, you and your loved ones may well have starved to death. Misfortune or stupidity on the collective level resulted in mass famines. When severe drought hit ancient Egypt or medieval India, it was not uncommon that 5 or 10 per cent of the population perished. Provisions became scarce; transport was too slow and expensive to import sufficient food; and governments were far too weak to save the day.\n\nOpen any history book and you are likely to come across horrific accounts of famished populations, driven mad by hunger. In April 1694 a French official in the town of Beauvais described the impact of famine and of soaring food prices, saying that his entire district was now filled with 'an infinite number of poor souls, weak from hunger and wretchedness and dying from want, because, having no work or occupation, they lack the money to buy bread. Seeking to prolong their lives a little and somewhat to appease their hunger, these poor folk eat such unclean things as cats and the flesh of horses flayed and cast onto dung heaps. [Others consume] the blood that flows when cows and oxen are slaughtered, and the offal that cooks throw into the streets. Other poor wretches eat nettles and weeds, or roots and herbs which they boil in water.'\n\nSimilar scenes took place all over France. Bad weather had ruined the harvests throughout the kingdom in the previous two years, so that by the spring of 1694 the granaries were completely empty. The rich charged exorbitant prices for whatever food they managed to hoard, and the poor died in droves. About 2.8 million French – 15 per cent of the population – starved to death between 1692 and 1694, while the Sun King, Louis XIV, was dallying with his mistresses in Versailles. The following year, 1695, famine struck Estonia, killing a fifth of the population. In 1696 it was the turn of Finland, where a quarter to a third of people died. Scotland suffered from severe famine between 1695 and 1698, some districts losing up to 20 per cent of their inhabitants.\n\nMost readers probably know how it feels when you miss lunch, when you fast on some religious holiday, or when you live for a few days on vegetable shakes as part of a new wonder diet. But how does it feel when you haven't eaten for days on end and you have no clue where to get the next morsel of food? Most people today have never experienced this excruciating torment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Our ancestors, alas, knew it only too well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When they cried to God, 'Deliver us from famine!", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "', this is what they had in mind.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "During the last hundred years, technological, economic and political developments have created an increasingly robust safety net separating humankind from the biological poverty line.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mass famines still strike some areas from time to time, but they are exceptional, and they are almost always caused by human politics rather than by natural catastrophes. In most parts of the planet, even if a person has lost his job and all of his possessions, he is unlikely to die from hunger. Private insurance schemes, government agencies and international NGOs may not rescue him from poverty, but they will provide him with enough daily calories to survive. On the collective level, the global trade network turns droughts and floods into business opportunities, and makes it possible to overcome food shortages quickly and cheaply. Even when wars, earthquakes or tsunamis devastate entire countries, international efforts usually succeed in preventing famine. Though hundreds of millions still go hungry almost every day, in most countries very few people actually starve to death.\n\nPoverty certainly causes many other health problems, and malnutrition shortens life expectancy even in the richest countries on earth. In France, for example, 6 million people (about 10 per cent of the population) suffer from nutritional insecurity. They wake up in the morning not knowing whether they will have anything to eat for lunch; they often go to sleep hungry; and the nutrition they do obtain is unbalanced and unhealthy – lots of starch, sugar and salt, and not enough protein and vitamins. Yet nutritional insecurity isn't famine, and France of the early twenty-first century isn't France of 1694. Even in the worst slums around Beauvais or Paris, people don't die because they have not eaten for weeks on end.\n\nThe same transformation has occurred in numerous other countries, most notably China. For millennia, famine stalked every Chinese regime from the Yellow Emperor to the Red communists. A few decades ago China was a byword for food shortages. Tens of millions of Chinese starved to death during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and experts routinely predicted that the problem would only get worse. In 1974 the first World Food Conference was convened in Rome, and delegates were treated to apocalyptic scenarios. They were told that there was no way for China to feed its billion people, and that the world's most populous country was heading towards catastrophe. In fact, it was heading towards the greatest economic miracle in history. Since 1974 hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, and though hundreds of millions more still suffer greatly from privation and malnutrition, for the first time in its recorded history China is now free from famine.\n\nIndeed, in most countries today overeating has become a far worse problem than famine. In the eighteenth century Marie Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran out of bread, they should just eat cake instead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza. In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030. In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "STORY CONTINUATION PROTOCOL:\nCONTEXT: Match character/world familiarity\nSENTENCES=22 sentences\nGENRES=history, nonfiction, philosophy\nTAGS=science\nEXECUTE", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After famine, humanity's second great enemy was plagues and infectious diseases. Bustling cities linked by a ceaseless stream of merchants, officials and pilgrims were both the bedrock of human civilisation and an ideal breeding ground for pathogens. People consequently lived their lives in ancient Athens or medieval Florence knowing that they might fall ill and die next week, or that an epidemic might suddenly erupt and destroy their entire family in one swoop.\n\nThe most famous such outbreak, the so-called Black Death, began in the 1330s, somewhere in east or central Asia, when the flea-dwelling bacterium Yersinia pestis started infecting humans bitten by the fleas. From there, riding on an army of rats and fleas, the plague quickly spread all over Asia, Europe and North Africa, taking less than twenty years to reach the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Between 75 million and 200 million people died – more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia. In England, four out of ten people died, and the population dropped from a pre-plague high of 3.7 million people to a post-plague low of 2.2 million. The city of Florence lost 50,000 of its 100,000 inhabitants.\n\nThe authorities were completely helpless in the face of the calamity. Except for organising mass prayers and processions, they had no idea how to stop the spread of the epidemic – let alone cure it. Until the modern era, humans blamed diseases on bad air, malicious demons and angry gods, and did not suspect the existence of bacteria and viruses. People readily believed in angels and fairies, but they could not imagine that a tiny flea or a single drop of water might contain an entire armada of deadly predators.\n\nThe Black Death was not a singular event, nor even the worst plague in history. More disastrous epidemics struck America, Australia and the Pacific Islands following the arrival of the first Europeans. Unbeknown to the explorers and settlers, they brought with them new infectious diseases against which the natives had no immunity. Up to 90 per cent of the local populations died as a result.\n\nOn 5 March 1520 a small Spanish flotilla left the island of Cuba on its way to Mexico. The ships carried 900 Spanish soldiers along with horses, firearms and a few African slaves. One of the slaves, Francisco de Eguía, carried on his person a far deadlier cargo. Francisco didn't know it, but somewhere among his trillions of cells a biological time bomb was ticking: the smallpox virus. After Francisco landed in Mexico the virus began to multiply exponentially within his body, eventually bursting out all over his skin in a terrible rash. The feverish Francisco was taken to bed in the house of a Native American family in the town of Cempoallan.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He infected the family members, who infected the neighbours.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'other' must appear 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Within ten days Cempoallan became a graveyard. Refugees spread the disease from Cempoallan to the nearby towns. As town after town succumbed to the plague, new waves of terrified refugees carried the disease throughout Mexico and beyond.\n\nThe Mayas in the Yucatán Peninsula believed that three evil gods – Ekpetz, Uzannkak and Sojakak – were flying from village to village at night, infecting people with the disease. The Aztecs blamed it on the gods Tezcatlipoca and Xipe, or perhaps on the black magic of the white people. Priests and doctors were consulted. They advised prayers, cold baths, rubbing the body with bitumen and smearing squashed black beetles on the sores. Nothing helped. Tens of thousands of corpses lay rotting in the streets, without anyone daring to approach and bury them. Entire families perished within a few days, and the authorities ordered that the houses were to be collapsed on top of the bodies. In some settlements half the population died.\n\nIn September 1520 the plague had reached the Valley of Mexico, and in October it entered the gates of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan – a magnificent metropolis of 250,000 people. Within two months at least a third of the population perished, including the Aztec emperor Cuitláhuac. Whereas in March 1520, when the Spanish fleet arrived, Mexico was home to 22 million people, by December only 14 million were still alive. Smallpox was only the first blow. While the new Spanish masters were busy enriching themselves and exploiting the natives, deadly waves of flu, measles and other infectious diseases struck Mexico one after the other, until in 1580 its population was down to less than 2 million.\n\nTwo centuries later, on 18 January 1778, the British explorer Captain James Cook reached Hawaii. The Hawaiian islands were densely populated by half a million people, who lived in complete isolation from both Europe and America, and consequently had never been exposed to European and American diseases. Captain Cook and his men introduced the first flu, tuberculosis and syphilis pathogens to Hawaii. Subsequent European visitors added typhoid and smallpox. By 1853, only 70,000 survivors remained in Hawaii.\n\nEpidemics continued to kill tens of millions of people well into the twentieth century. In January 1918 soldiers in the trenches of northern France began dying in their thousands from a particularly virulent strain of flu, nicknamed 'the Spanish Flu'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The front line was the end point of the most efficient global supply network the world had hitherto seen. Men and munitions were pouring in from Britain, the USA, India and Australia. Oil was sent from the Middle East, grain and beef from Argentina, rubber from Malaya and copper from Congo. In exchange, they all got Spanish Flu. Within a few months, about half a billion people – a third of the global population – came down with the virus. In India it killed 5 per cent of the population (15 million people). On the island of Tahiti, 14 per cent died. On Samoa, 20 per cent. In the copper mines of the Congo one out of five labourers perished. Altogether the pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people in less than a year. The First World War killed 40 million from 1914 to 1918.\n\nAlongside such epidemical tsunamis that struck humankind every few decades, people also faced smaller but more regular waves of infectious diseases, which killed millions every year. Children who lacked immunity were particularly susceptible to them, hence they are often called 'childhood diseases'. Until the early twentieth century, about a third of children died before reaching adulthood from a combination of malnutrition and disease.\n\nDuring the last century humankind became ever more vulnerable to epidemics, due to a combination of growing populations and better transport. A modern metropolis such as Tokyo or Kinshasa offers pathogens far richer hunting grounds than medieval Florence or 1520 Tenochtitlan, and the global transport network is today even more efficient than in 1918. A Spanish virus can make its way to Congo or Tahiti in less than twenty-four hours. We should therefore have expected to live in an epidemiological hell, with one deadly plague after another.\n\nHowever, both the incidence and impact of epidemics have gone down dramatically in the last few decades. In particular, global child mortality is at an all-time low: less than 5 per cent of children die before reaching adulthood. In the developed world the rate is less than 1 per cent. This miracle is due to the unprecedented achievements of twentieth-century medicine, which has provided us with vaccinations, antibiotics, improved hygiene and a much better medical infrastructure.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For example, a global campaign of smallpox vaccination was so successful that in 1979 the World Health Organization declared that humanity had won, and that smallpox had been completely eradicated. It was the first epidemic humans had ever managed to wipe off the face of the earth. In 1967 smallpox had still infected 15 million people and killed 2 million of them, but in 2014 not a single person was either infected or killed by smallpox. The victory has been so complete that today the WHO has stopped vaccinating humans against smallpox.\n\nEvery few years we are alarmed by the outbreak of some potential new plague, such as SARS in 2002/3, bird flu in 2005, swine flu in 2009/10 and Ebola in 2014. Yet thanks to efficient counter-measures these incidents have so far resulted in a comparatively small number of victims. SARS, for example, initially raised fears of a new Black Death, but eventually ended with the death of less than 1,000 people worldwide. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa seemed at first to spiral out of control, and on 26 September 2014 the WHO described it as 'the most severe public health emergency seen in modern times'. Nevertheless, by early 2015 the epidemic had been reined in, and in January 2016 the WHO declared it over. It infected 30,000 people (killing 11,000 of them), caused massive economic damage throughout West Africa, and sent shockwaves of anxiety across the world; but it did not spread beyond West Africa, and its death toll was nowhere near the scale of the Spanish Flu or the Mexican smallpox epidemic.\n\nEven the tragedy of AIDS, seemingly the greatest medical failure of the last few decades, can be seen as a sign of progress. Since its first major outbreak in the early 1980s, more than 30 million people have died of AIDS, and tens of millions more have suffered debilitating physical and psychological damage. It was hard to understand and treat the new epidemic, because AIDS is a uniquely devious disease. Whereas a human infected with the smallpox virus dies within a few days, an HIV-positive patient may seem perfectly healthy for weeks and months, yet go on infecting others unknowingly. In addition, the HIV virus itself does not kill. Rather, it destroys the immune system, thereby exposing the patient to numerous other diseases. It is these secondary diseases that actually kill AIDS victims. Consequently, when AIDS began to spread, it was especially difficult to understand what was happening. When two patients were admitted to a New York hospital in 1981, one ostensibly dying from pneumonia and the other from cancer, it was not at all evident that both were in fact victims of the HIV virus, which may have infected them months or even years previously.\n\nHowever, despite these difficulties, after the medical community became aware of the mysterious new plague, it took scientists just two years to identify it, understand how the virus spreads and suggest effective ways to slow down the epidemic. Within another ten years new medicines turned AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic condition (at least for those wealthy enough to afford the treatment). Just think what would have happened if AIDS had erupted in 1581 rather than 1981.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In all likelihood, nobody back then would have figured out what caused the epidemic, how it moved from person to person, or how it could be halted (let alone cured).", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Under such conditions, AIDS might have killed a much larger proportion of the human race, equalling and perhaps even surpassing the Black Death.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Despite the horrendous toll AIDS has taken, and despite the millions killed each year by long-established infectious diseases such as malaria, epidemics are a far smaller threat to human health today than in previous millennia. The vast majority of people die from non-infectious illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, or simply from old age. (Incidentally cancer and heart disease are of course not new illnesses – they go back to antiquity. In previous eras, however, relatively few people lived long enough to die from them.)\n\nMany fear that this is only a temporary victory, and that some unknown cousin of the Black Death is waiting just around the corner. No one can guarantee that plagues won't make a comeback, but there are good reasons to think that in the arms race between doctors and germs, doctors run faster. New infectious diseases appear mainly as a result of chance mutations in pathogen genomes. These mutations allow the pathogens to jump from animals to humans, to overcome the human immune system, or to resist medicines such as antibiotics. Today such mutations probably occur and disseminate faster than in the past, due to human impact on the environment. Yet in the race against medicine, pathogens ultimately depend on the blind hand of fortune.\n\nDoctors, in contrast, count on more than mere luck. Though science owes a huge debt to serendipity, doctors don't just throw different chemicals into test tubes, hoping to chance upon some new medicine. With each passing year doctors accumulate more and better knowledge, which they use in order to design more effective medicines and treatments. Consequently, though in 2050 we will undoubtedly face much more resilient germs, medicine in 2050 will likely be able to deal with them more efficiently than today.\n\nIn 2015 doctors announced the discovery of a completely new type of antibiotic – teixobactin – to which bacteria have no resistance as yet. Some scholars believe teixobactin may prove to be a game-changer in the fight against highly resistant germs. Scientists are also developing revolutionary new treatments that work in radically different ways to any previous medicine. For example, some research labs are already home to nano-robots, that may one day navigate through our bloodstream, identify illnesses and kill pathogens and cancerous cells. Microorganisms may have 4 billion years of cumulative experience fighting organic enemies, but they have exactly zero experience fighting bionic predators, and would therefore find it doubly difficult to evolve effective defences.\n\nSo while we cannot be certain that some new Ebola outbreak or an unknown flu strain won't sweep across the globe and kill millions, we will not regard it as an inevitable natural calamity. Rather, we will see it as an inexcusable human failure and demand the heads of those responsible. When in late summer 2014 it seemed for a few terrifying weeks that Ebola was gaining the upper hand over the global health authorities, investigative committees were hastily set up.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "An initial report published on 18 October 2014 criticised the World Health Organization for its unsatisfactory reaction to the outbreak, blaming the epidemic on corruption and inefficiency in the WHO's African branch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Further criticism was levelled at the international community as a whole for not responding quickly and forcefully enough. Such criticism assumes that humankind has the knowledge and tools to prevent plagues, and if an epidemic nevertheless gets out of control, it is due to human incompetence rather than divine anger.\n\nSo in the struggle against natural calamities such as AIDS and Ebola, the scales are tipping in humanity's favour. But what about the dangers inherent in human nature itself? Biotechnology enables us to defeat bacteria and viruses, but it simultaneously turns humans themselves into an unprecedented threat. The same tools that enable doctors to quickly identify and cure new illnesses may also enable armies and terrorists to engineer even more terrible diseases and doomsday pathogens. It is therefore likely that major epidemics will continue to endanger humankind in the future only if humankind itself creates them, in the service of some ruthless ideology. The era when humankind stood helpless before natural epidemics is probably over. But we may come to miss it.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The user will write a bit then you need to write around twenty-eight sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Match the familiarity level of any character introductions. Stick to the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The third piece of good news is that wars too are disappearing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Throughout history most humans took war for granted, whereas peace was a temporary and precarious state. International relations were governed by the Law of the Jungle, according to which even if two polities lived in peace, war always remained an option. For example, even though Germany and France were at peace in 1913, everybody knew that they might be at each other's throats in 1914. Whenever politicians, generals, business people and ordinary citizens made plans for the future, they always left room for war. From the Stone Age to the age of steam, and from the Arctic to the Sahara, every person on earth knew that at any moment the neighbours might invade their territory, defeat their army, slaughter their people and occupy their land.\n\nDuring the second half of the twentieth century this Law of the Jungle has finally been broken, if not rescinded. In most areas wars became rarer than ever. Whereas in ancient agricultural societies human violence caused about 15 per cent of all deaths, during the twentieth century violence caused only 5 per cent of deaths, and in the early twenty-first century it is responsible for about 1 per cent of global mortality. In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.\n\nEven more importantly, a growing segment of humankind has come to see war as simply inconceivable. For the first time in history, when governments, corporations and private individuals consider their immediate future, many of them don't think about war as a likely event. Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, and therefore forced the most powerful nations on earth to find alternative and peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. Simultaneously, the global economy has been transformed from a material-based economy into a knowledge-based economy. Previously the main sources of wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and oil wells. Today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can conquer oil fields through war, you cannot acquire knowledge that way. Hence as knowledge became the most important economic resource, the profitability of war declined and wars became increasingly restricted to those parts of the world – such as the Middle East and Central Africa – where the economies are still old-fashioned material-based economies.\n\nIn 1998 it made sense for Rwanda to seize and loot the rich coltan mines of neighbouring Congo, because this ore was in high demand for the manufacture of mobile phones and laptops, and Congo held 80 per cent of the world's coltan reserves. Rwanda earned $240 million annually from the looted coltan. For poor Rwanda that was a lot of money. In contrast, it would have made no sense for China to invade California and seize Silicon Valley, for even if the Chinese could somehow prevail on the battlefield, there were no silicon mines to loot in Silicon Valley. Instead, the Chinese have earned billions of dollars from cooperating with hi-tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft, buying their software and manufacturing their products. What Rwanda earned from an entire year of looting Congolese coltan, the Chinese earn in a single day of peaceful commerce.\n\nIn consequence, the word 'peace' has acquired a new meaning. Previous generations thought about peace as the temporary absence of war. Today we think about peace as the implausibility of war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When in 1913 people said that there was peace between France and Germany, they meant that 'there is no war going on at present between France and Germany, but who knows what next year will bring'. When today we say that there is peace between France and Germany, we mean that it is inconceivable under any foreseeable circumstances that war might break out between them. Such peace prevails not only between France and Germany, but between most (though not all) countries. There is no scenario for a serious war breaking out next year between Germany and Poland, between Indonesia and the Philippines, or between Brazil and Uruguay.\n\nThis New Peace is not just a hippie fantasy. Power-hungry governments and greedy corporations also count on it. When Mercedes plans its sales strategy in eastern Europe, it discounts the possibility that Germany might conquer Poland. A corporation importing cheap labourers from the Philippines is not worried that Indonesia might invade the Philippines next year. When the Brazilian government convenes to discuss next year's budget, it's unimaginable that the Brazilian defence minister will rise from his seat, bang his fist on the table and shout, 'Just a minute! What if we want to invade and conquer Uruguay? You didn't take that into account. We have to put aside $5 billion to finance this conquest.' Of course, there are a few places where defence ministers still say such things, and there are regions where the New Peace has failed to take root. I know this very well because I live in one of these regions. But these are exceptions.\n\nThere is no guarantee, of course, that the New Peace will hold indefinitely. Just as nuclear weapons made the New Peace possible in the first place, so future technological developments might set the stage for new kinds of war. In particular, cyber warfare may destabilise the world by giving even small countries and non-state actors the ability to fight superpowers effectively. When the USA fought Iraq in 2003 it brought havoc to Baghdad and Mosul, but not a single bomb was dropped on Los Angeles or Chicago. In the future, though, a country such as North Korea or Iran could use logic bombs to shut down the power in California, blow up refineries in Texas and cause trains to collide in Michigan ('logic bombs' are malicious software codes planted in peacetime and operated at a distance. It is highly likely that networks controlling vital infrastructure facilities in the USA and many other countries are already crammed with such codes).\n\nHowever, we should not confuse ability with motivation. Though cyber warfare introduces new means of destruction, it doesn't necessarily add new incentives to use them. Over the last seventy years humankind has broken not only the Law of the Jungle, but also the Chekhov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third. Throughout history, if kings and emperors acquired some new weapon, sooner or later they were tempted to use it. Since 1945, however, humankind has learned to resist this temptation. The gun that appeared in the first act of the Cold War was never fired.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "By now we are accustomed to living in a world full of undropped bombs and unlaunched missiles, and have become experts in breaking both the Law of the Jungle and the Chekhov Law.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 26 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If these laws ever do catch up with us, it will be our own fault – not our inescapable destiny.\n\nWhat about terrorism, then? Even if central governments and powerful states have learned restraint, terrorists might have no such qualms about using new and destructive weapons. That is certainly a worrying possibility. However, terrorism is a strategy of weakness adopted by those who lack access to real power. At least in the past, terrorism worked by spreading fear rather than by causing significant material damage. Terrorists usually don't have the strength to defeat an army, occupy a country or destroy entire cities. Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries. For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda.\n\nHow, then, do terrorists manage to dominate the headlines and change the political situation throughout the world? By provoking their enemies to overreact. In essence, terrorism is a show. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination and makes us feel as if we are sliding back into medieval chaos. Consequently states often feel obliged to react to the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves.\n\nTerrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger, and destroys the china shop. This is what happened in the Middle East in the last decade. Islamic fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by themselves. Instead they enraged the USA by the 9/11 attacks, and the USA destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them. Now they flourish in the wreckage. By themselves, terrorists are too weak to drag us back to the Middle Ages and re-establish the Jungle Law. They may provoke us, but in the end, it all depends on our reactions. If the Jungle Law comes back into force, it will not be the fault of terrorists.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "continue with thirteen sentences. keep character dynamics. themes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a helpless humanity. Instead, they have become manageable challenges. This does not belittle the suffering of hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken humans; of the millions felled each year by malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; or of the millions trapped in violent vicious circles in Syria, the Congo or Afghanistan. The message is not that famine, plague and war have completely disappeared from the face of the earth, and that we should stop worrying about them. Just the opposite. Throughout history people felt these were unsolvable problems, so there was no point trying to put an end to them. People prayed to God for miracles, but they themselves did not seriously attempt to exterminate famine, plague and war. Those arguing that the world of 2016 is as hungry, sick and violent as it was in 1916 perpetuate this age-old defeatist view. They imply that all the huge efforts humans have made during the twentieth century have achieved nothing, and that medical research, economic reforms and peace initiatives have all been in vain. If so, what is the point of investing our time and resources in further medical research, novel economic reforms or new peace initiatives?\n\nAcknowledging our past achievements sends a message of hope and responsibility, encouraging us to make even greater efforts in the future. Given our twentieth-century accomplishments, if people continue to suffer from famine, plague and war, we cannot blame it on nature or on God. It is within our power to make things better and to reduce the incidence of suffering even further.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet appreciating the magnitude of our achievements carries another message: history does not tolerate a vacuum.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If incidences of famine, plague and war are decreasing, something is bound to take their place on the human agenda.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We had better think very carefully what it is going to be. Otherwise, we might gain complete victory in the old battlefields only to be caught completely unaware on entirely new fronts. What are the projects that will replace famine, plague and war at the top of the human agenda in the twenty-first century?\n\nOne central project will be to protect humankind and the planet as a whole from the dangers inherent in our own power. We have managed to bring famine, plague and war under control thanks largely to our phenomenal economic growth, which provides us with abundant food, medicine, energy and raw materials. Yet this same growth destabilises the ecological equilibrium of the planet in myriad ways, which we have only begun to explore. Humankind has been late in acknowledging this danger, and has so far done very little about it. Despite all the talk of pollution, global warming and climate change, most countries have yet to make any serious economic or political sacrifices to improve the situation. When the moment comes to choose between economic growth and ecological stability, politicians, CEOs and voters almost always prefer growth. In the twenty-first century, we shall have to do better if we are to avoid catastrophe.\n\nWhat else will humanity strive for? Would we be content merely to count our blessings, keep famine, plague and war at bay, and protect the ecological equilibrium? That might indeed be the wisest course of action, but humankind is unlikely to follow it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Humans are rarely satisfied with what they already have.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more. Humans are always on the lookout for something better, bigger, tastier. When humankind possesses enormous new powers, and when the threat of famine, plague and war is finally lifted, what will we do with ourselves? What will the scientists, investors, bankers and presidents do all day? Write poetry?\n\nSuccess breeds ambition, and our recent achievements are now pushing humankind to set itself even more daring goals. Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony, and given our past record and our current values, humanity's next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity. Having reduced mortality from starvation, disease and violence, we will now aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having saved people from abject misery, we will now aim to make them positively happy. And having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Format: Continuation\nLength: twenty-three sentences\nStyle: Yuval Noah Harari\nMaintain: existing lore\nThemes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the twenty-first century humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Struggling against old age and death will merely carry on the time-honoured fight against famine and disease, and manifest the supreme value of contemporary culture: the worth of human life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We are constantly reminded that human life is the most sacred thing in the universe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everybody says this: teachers in schools, politicians in parliaments, lawyers in courts and actors on theatre stages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN after the Second World War – which is perhaps the closest thing we have to a global constitution – categorically states that 'the right to life' is humanity's most fundamental value.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Since death clearly violates this right, death is a crime against humanity, and we ought to wage total war against it.\n\nThroughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly existence, and were consequently quite tolerant of death. Indeed, some of them have been downright fond of the Grim Reaper. Because Christianity, Islam and Hinduism insisted that the meaning of our existence depended on our fate in the afterlife, they viewed death as a vital and positive part of the world. Humans died because God decreed it, and their moment of death was a sacred metaphysical experience exploding with meaning. When a human was about to breathe his last, this was the time to call priests, rabbis and shamans, to draw out the balance of life, and to embrace one's true role in the universe. Just try to imagine Christianity, Islam or Hinduism in a world without death – which is also a world without heaven, hell or reincarnation.\n\nModern science and modern culture have an entirely different take on life and death. They don't think of death as a metaphysical mystery, and they certainly don't view death as the source of life's meaning. Rather, for modern people death is a technical problem that we can and should solve.\n\nHow exactly do humans die? Medieval fairy tales depicted Death as a figure in a hooded black cloak, his hand gripping a large scythe. A man lives his life, worrying about this and that, running here and there, when suddenly the Grim Reaper appears before him, taps him on the shoulder with a bony finger and says, 'Come!' And the man implores: 'No, please! Wait just a year, a month, a day!' But the hooded figure hisses: 'No! You must come NOW!' And this is how we die.\n\nIn reality, however, humans don't die because a figure in a black cloak taps them on the shoulder, or because God decreed it, or because mortality is an essential part of some great cosmic plan. Humans always die due to some technical glitch. The heart stops pumping blood. The main artery is clogged by fatty deposits.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cancerous cells spread in the liver. Germs multiply in the lungs. And what is responsible for all these technical problems? Other technical problems. The heart stops pumping blood because not enough oxygen reaches the heart muscle. Cancerous cells spread because a chance genetic mutation rewrote their instructions. Germs settled in my lungs because somebody sneezed on the subway. Nothing metaphysical about it. It is all technical problems.\n\nAnd every technical problem has a technical solution. We don't need to wait for the Second Coming in order to overcome death. A couple of geeks in a lab can do it. If traditionally death was the speciality of priests and theologians, now the engineers are taking over. We can kill the cancerous cells with chemotherapy or nano-robots. We can exterminate the germs in the lungs with antibiotics. If the heart stops pumping, we can reinvigorate it with medicines and electric shocks – and if that doesn't work, we can implant a new heart. True, at present we don't have solutions to all technical problems. But this is precisely why we invest so much time and money in researching cancer, germs, genetics and nanotechnology.\n\nEven ordinary people, who are not engaged in scientific research, have become used to thinking about death as a technical problem. When a woman goes to her physician and asks, 'Doctor, what's wrong with me?' the doctor is likely to say, 'Well, you have the flu,' or 'You have tuberculosis,' or 'You have cancer.' But the doctor will never say, 'You have death.' And we are all under the impression that flu, tuberculosis and cancer are technical problems, to which we might someday find a technical solution.\n\nEven when people die in a hurricane, a car accident or a war, we tend to view it as a technical failure that could and should have been prevented.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If the government had only adopted a better policy; if the municipality had done its job properly; and if the military commander had taken a wiser decision, death would have been avoided. Death has become an almost automatic reason for lawsuits and investigations. 'How could they have died? Somebody somewhere must have screwed up.'\n\nThe vast majority of scientists, doctors and scholars still distance themselves from outright dreams of immortality, claiming that they are trying to overcome only this or that particular problem. Yet because old age and death are the outcome of nothing but particular problems, there is no point at which doctors and scientists are going to stop and declare: 'Thus far, and not another step. We have overcome tuberculosis and cancer, but we won't lift a finger to fight Alzheimer's. People can go on dying from that.' The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say that humans have 'the right to life until the age of ninety'. It says that every human has a right to life, period. That right isn't limited by any expiry date.\n\nAn increasing minority of scientists and thinkers consequently speak more openly these days, and state that the flagship enterprise of modern science is to defeat death and grant humans eternal youth. Notable examples are the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and the polymath and inventor Ray Kurzweil (winner of the 1999 US National Medal of Technology and Innovation). In 2012 Kurzweil was appointed a director of engineering at Google, and a year later Google launched a sub-company called Calico whose stated mission is 'to solve death'. Google has recently appointed another immortality true-believer, Bill Maris, to preside over the Google Ventures investment fund. In a January 2015 interview, Maris said, 'If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500, the answer is yes.' Maris backs up his brave words with a lot of hard cash. Google Ventures is investing 36 per cent of its $2 billion portfolio in life sciences start-ups, including several ambitious life-extending projects. Using an American football analogy, Maris explained that in the fight against death, 'We aren't trying to gain a few yards. We are trying to win the game.' Why? Because, says Maris, 'it is better to live than to die'.\n\nSuch dreams are shared by other Silicon Valley luminaries. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has recently confessed that he aims to live for ever.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "'I think there are probably three main modes of approaching [death],' he explained. 'You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.' Many people are likely to dismiss such statements as teenage fantasies. Yet Thiel is somebody to be taken very seriously. He is one of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley with a private fortune estimated at $2.2 billion. The writing is on the wall: equality is out – immortality is in.\n\nThe breakneck development of fields such as genetic engineering, regenerative medicine and nanotechnology fosters ever more optimistic prophecies. Some experts believe that humans will overcome death by 2200, others say 2100. Kurzweil and de Grey are even more sanguine. They maintain that anyone possessing a healthy body and a healthy bank account in 2050 will have a serious shot at immortality by cheating death a decade at a time. According to Kurzweil and de Grey, every ten years or so we will march into the clinic and receive a makeover treatment that will not only cure illnesses, but will also regenerate decaying tissues, and upgrade hands, eyes and brains. Before the next treatment is due, doctors will have invented a plethora of new medicines, upgrades and gadgets. If Kurzweil and de Grey are right, there may already be some immortals walking next to you on the street – at least if you happen to be walking down Wall Street or Fifth Avenue.\n\nIn truth they will actually be a-mortal, rather than immortal. Unlike God, future superhumans could still die in some war or accident, and nothing could bring them back from the netherworld. However, unlike us mortals, their life would have no expiry date. So long as no bomb shreds them to pieces or no truck runs them over, they could go on living indefinitely. Which will probably make them the most anxious people in history. We mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and do many other dangerous things like crossing the street or eating out. But if you believe you can live for ever, you would be crazy to gamble on infinity like that.\n\nPerhaps, then, we had better start with more modest aims, such as doubling life expectancy?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(In the next section: Mandatory: Your text must contain 'period' 2 times exactly)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the twentieth century we have almost doubled life expectancy from forty to seventy, so in the twenty-first century we should at least be able to double it again to 150. Though falling far short of immortality, this would still revolutionise human society. For starters, family structure, marriages and child–parent relationships would be transformed. Today, people still expect to be married 'till death us do part', and much of life revolves around having and raising children. Now try to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting married at forty, she still has 110 years to go. Will it be realistic to expect her marriage to last 110 years? Even Catholic fundamentalists might baulk at that. So the current trend of serial marriages is likely to intensify. Bearing two children in her forties, she will, by the time she is 120, have only a distant memory of the years she spent raising them – a rather minor episode in her long life. It's hard to tell what kind of new parent–child relationship might develop under such circumstances.\n\nOr consider professional careers. Today we assume that you learn a profession in your teens and twenties, and then spend the rest of your life in that line of work. You obviously learn new things even in your forties and fifties, but life is generally divided into a learning period followed by a working period. When you live to be 150 that won't do, especially in a world that is constantly being shaken by new technologies. People will have much longer careers, and will have to reinvent themselves again and again even at the age of ninety.\n\nAt the same time, people will not retire at sixty-five and will not make way for the new generation with its novel ideas and aspirations. The physicist Max Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time. He meant that only when one generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out old ones. This is true not only of science. Think for a moment about your own workplace. No matter whether you are a scholar, journalist, cook or football player, how would you feel if your boss were 120, his ideas were formulated when Victoria was still queen, and he was likely to stay your boss for a couple of decades more?\n\nIn the political sphere the results might be even more sinister.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would you mind having Putin stick around for another ninety years? On second thoughts, if people lived to 150, then in 2016 Stalin would still be ruling in Moscow, going strong at 138, Chairman Mao would be a middle-aged 123-year-old, and Princess Elizabeth would be sitting on her hands waiting to inherit from the 121-year-old George VI. Her son Charles would not get his turn until 2076.\n\nComing back to the realm of reality, it is far from certain whether Kurzweil's and de Grey's prophecies will come true by 2050 or 2100. My own view is that the hopes of eternal youth in the twenty-first century are premature, and whoever takes them too seriously is in for a bitter disappointment. It is not easy to live knowing that you are going to die, but it is even harder to believe in immortality and be proven wrong.\n\nAlthough average life expectancy has doubled over the last hundred years, it is unwarranted to extrapolate and conclude that we can double it again to 150 in the coming century. In 1900 global life expectancy was no higher than forty because many people died young from malnutrition, infectious diseases and violence. Yet those who escaped famine, plague and war could live well into their seventies and eighties, which is the natural life span of Homo sapiens. Contrary to common notions, seventy-year-olds weren't considered rare freaks of nature in previous centuries. Galileo Galilei died at seventy-seven, Isaac Newton at eighty-four, and Michelangelo lived to the ripe age of eighty-eight, without any help from antibiotics, vaccinations or organ transplants. Indeed, even chimpanzees in the jungle sometimes live into their sixties.\n\nIn truth, so far modern medicine hasn't extended our natural life span by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save us from premature death, and allow us to enjoy the full measure of our years. Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will get to live to ninety – but it will not be enough to reach 150, let alone 500. For that, medicine will need to re-engineer the most fundamental structures and processes of the human body, and discover how to regenerate organs and tissues. It is by no means clear that we can do that by 2100.\n\nNevertheless, every failed attempt to overcome death will get us a step closer to the target, and that will inspire greater hopes and encourage people to make even greater efforts. Though Google's Calico probably won't solve death in time to make Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page immortal, it will most probably make significant discoveries about cell biology, genetic medicines and human health. The next generation of Googlers could therefore start their attack on death from new and better positions. The scientists who cry immortality are like the boy who cried wolf: sooner or later, the wolf actually comes.\n\nHence even if we don't achieve immortality in our lifetime, the war against death is still likely to be the flagship project of the coming century. When you take into account our belief in the sanctity of human life, add the dynamics of the scientific establishment, and top it all with the needs of the capitalist economy, a relentless war against death seems to be inevitable.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Narrative Continuation Protocol:\nQuantity: 50 sentences\nStyle: Yuval Noah Harari\nGenre: history, nonfiction, philosophy\nContext: Part of larger work", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The second big project on the human agenda will probably be to find the key to happiness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Throughout history numerous thinkers, prophets and ordinary people defined happiness rather than life itself as the supreme good.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In ancient Greece the philosopher Epicurus explained that worshipping gods is a waste of time, that there is no existence after death, and that happiness is the sole purpose of life. Most people in ancient times rejected Epicureanism, but today it has become the default view. Scepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality, but also earthly happiness. For who would like to live for ever in eternal misery?\n\nFor Epicurus the pursuit of happiness was a personal quest. Modern thinkers, in contrast, tend to see it as a collective project. Without government planning, economic resources and scientific research, individuals will not get far in their quest for happiness. If your country is torn apart by war, if the economy is in crisis and if health care is non-existent, you are likely to be miserable. At the end of the eighteenth century the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham declared that the supreme good is 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number', and concluded that the sole worthy aim of the state, the market and the scientific community is to increase global happiness. Politicians should make peace, business people should foster prosperity and scholars should study nature, not for the greater glory of king, country or God – but so that you and I could enjoy a happier life.\n\nDuring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although many paid lip service to Bentham's vision, governments, corporations and laboratories focused on more immediate and well-defined aims. Countries measured their success by the size of their territory, the increase in their population and the growth of their GDP – not by the happiness of their citizens. Industrialised nations such as Germany, France and Japan established gigantic systems of education, health and welfare, yet these systems were aimed to strengthen the nation rather than ensure individual well-being.\n\nSchools were founded to produce skilful and obedient citizens who would serve the nation loyally. At eighteen, youths needed to be not only patriotic but also literate, so that they could read the brigadier's order of the day and draw up tomorrow's battle plans. They had to know mathematics in order to calculate the shell's trajectory or crack the enemy's secret code. They needed a reasonable command of electrics, mechanics and medicine, in order to operate wireless sets, drive tanks and take care of wounded comrades. When they left the army they were expected to serve the nation as clerks, teachers and engineers, building a modern economy and paying lots of taxes.\n\nThe same went for the health system. At the end of the nineteenth century countries such as France, Germany and Japan began providing free health care for the masses. They financed vaccinations for infants, balanced diets for children and physical education for teenagers. They drained festering swamps, exterminated mosquitoes and built centralised sewage systems. The aim wasn't to make people happy, but to make the nation stronger. The country needed sturdy soldiers and workers, healthy women who would give birth to more soldiers and workers, and bureaucrats who came to the office punctually at 8 a.m. instead of lying sick at home.\n\nEven the welfare system was originally planned in the interest of the nation rather than of needy individuals. When Otto von Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late nineteenth-century Germany, his chief aim was to ensure the loyalty of the citizens rather than to increase their well-being. You fought for your country when you were eighteen, and paid your taxes when you were forty, because you counted on the state to take care of you when you were seventy.\n\nIn 1776 the Founding Fathers of the United States established the right to the pursuit of happiness as one of three unalienable human rights, alongside the right to life and the right to liberty. It's important to note, however, that the American Declaration of Independence guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to happiness itself. Crucially, Thomas Jefferson did not make the state responsible for its citizens' happiness. Rather, he sought only to limit the power of the state. The idea was to reserve for individuals a private sphere of choice, free from state supervision. If I think I'll be happier marrying John rather than Mary, living in San Francisco rather than Salt Lake City, and working as a bartender rather than a dairy farmer, then it's my right to pursue happiness my way, and the state shouldn't intervene even if I make the wrong choice.\n\nYet over the last few decades the tables have turned, and Bentham's vision has been taken far more seriously. People increasingly believe that the immense systems established more than a century ago to strengthen the nation should actually serve the happiness and well-being of individual citizens. We are not here to serve the state – it is here to serve us. The right to the pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint on state power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human rights, so the state should do something about it.\n\nIn the twentieth century per capita GDP was perhaps the supreme yardstick for evaluating national success. From this perspective, Singapore, each of whose citizens produces on average $56,000 worth of goods and services a year, is a more successful country than Costa Rica, whose citizens produce only $14,000 a year. But nowadays thinkers, politicians and even economists are calling to supplement or even replace GDP with GDH – gross domestic happiness. After all, what do people want? They don't want to produce. They want to be happy. Production is important because it provides the material basis for happiness. But it is only the means, not the end. In one survey after another Costa Ricans report far higher levels of life satisfaction than Singaporeans. Would you rather be a highly productive but dissatisfied Singaporean, or a less productive but satisfied Costa Rican?\n\nThis kind of logic might drive humankind to make happiness its second main goal for the twenty-first century. At first glance this might seem a relatively easy project. If famine, plague and war are disappearing, if humankind experiences unprecedented peace and prosperity, and if life expectancy increases dramatically, surely all that will make humans happy, right?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wrong. When Epicurus defined happiness as the supreme good, he warned his disciples that it is hard work to be happy. Material achievements alone will not satisfy us for long. Indeed, the blind pursuit of money, fame and pleasure will only make us miserable. Epicurus recommended, for example, to eat and drink in moderation, and to curb one's sexual appetites. In the long run, a deep friendship will make us more content than a frenzied orgy. Epicurus outlined an entire ethic of dos and don'ts to guide people along the treacherous path to happiness.\n\nEpicurus was apparently on to something. Being happy doesn't come easy. Despite our unprecedented achievements in the last few decades, it is far from obvious that contemporary people are significantly more satisfied than their ancestors in bygone years. Indeed, it is an ominous sign that despite higher prosperity, comfort and security, the rate of suicide in the developed world is also much higher than in traditional societies.\n\nIn Peru, Guatemala, the Philippines and Albania – developing countries suffering from poverty and political instability – about one person in 100,000 commits suicide each year. In rich and peaceful countries such as Switzerland, France, Japan and New Zealand, twenty-five people per 100,000 take their own lives annually. In 1985 most South Koreans were poor, uneducated and tradition-bound, living under an authoritarian dictatorship. Today South Korea is a leading economic power, its citizens are among the best educated in the world, and it enjoys a stable and comparatively liberal democratic regime. Yet whereas in 1985 about nine South Koreans per 100,000 killed themselves, today the annual rate of suicide has more than tripled to thirty per 100,000.\n\nThere are of course opposite and far more encouraging trends. Thus the drastic decrease in child mortality has surely brought an increase in human happiness, and partially compensated people for the stress of modern life. Still, even if we are somewhat happier than our ancestors, the increase in our well-being is far less than we might have expected. In the Stone Age, the average human had at his or her disposal about 4,000 calories of energy per day. This included not only food, but also the energy invested in preparing tools, clothing, art and campfires. Today Americans use on average 228,000 calories of energy per person per day, to feed not only their stomachs but also their cars, computers, refrigerators and televisions. The average American thus uses sixty times more energy than the average Stone Age hunter-gatherer. Is the average American sixty times happier? We may well be sceptical about such rosy views.\n\nAnd even if we have overcome many of yesterday's miseries, attaining positive happiness may be far more difficult than abolishing downright suffering. It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful. How do you bring joy to a bored, overpaid and overweight engineer? The second half of the twentieth century was a golden age for the USA. Victory in the Second World War, followed by an even more decisive victory in the Cold War, turned it into the leading global superpower. Between 1950 and 2000 American GDP grew from $2 trillion to $12 trillion. Real per capita income doubled. The newly invented contraceptive pill made sex freer than ever. Women, gays, African Americans and other minorities finally got a bigger slice of the American pie. A flood of cheap cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, laundry machines, telephones, televisions and computers changed daily life almost beyond recognition. Yet studies have shown that American subjective well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they were in the 1950s.\n\nIn Japan, average real income rose by a factor of five between 1958 and 1987, in one of the fastest economic booms of history. This avalanche of wealth, coupled with myriad positive and negative changes in Japanese lifestyles and social relations, had surprisingly little impact on Japanese subjective well-being levels. The Japanese in the 1990s were as satisfied – or dissatisfied – as they were in the 1950s.\n\nIt appears that our happiness bangs against some mysterious glass ceiling that does not allow it to grow despite all our unprecedented accomplishments. Even if we provide free food for everybody, cure all diseases and ensure world peace, it won't necessarily shatter that glass ceiling. Achieving real happiness is not going to be much easier than overcoming old age and death.\n\nThe glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don't become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. If we don't do something about this, our future achievements too might leave us as dissatisfied as ever.\n\nOn the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness are determined by our biochemistry, rather than by our economic, social or political situation. According to Epicurus, we are happy when we feel pleasant sensations and are free from unpleasant ones.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jeremy Bentham similarly maintained that nature gave dominion over man to two masters – pleasure and pain – and they alone determine everything we do, say and think.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bentham's successor, John Stuart Mill, explained that happiness is nothing but pleasure and freedom from pain, and that beyond pleasure and pain there is no good and no evil.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Anyone who tries to deduce good and evil from something else (such as the word of God, or the national interest) is fooling you, and perhaps fooling himself too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the days of Epicurus such talk was blasphemous.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'eating' must be used 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the days of Bentham and Mill it was radical subversion. But in the early twenty-first century this is scientific orthodoxy. According to the life sciences, happiness and suffering are nothing but different balances of bodily sensations. We never react to events in the outside world, but only to sensations in our own bodies. Nobody suffers because she lost her job, because she got divorced or because the government went to war. The only thing that makes people miserable is unpleasant sensations in their own bodies. Losing one's job can certainly trigger depression, but depression itself is a kind of unpleasant bodily sensation. A thousand things may make us angry, but anger is never an abstraction. It is always felt as a sensation of heat and tension in the body, which is what makes anger so infuriating. Not for nothing do we say that we 'burn' with anger.\n\nConversely, science says that nobody is ever made happy by getting a promotion, winning the lottery or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. Imagine that you are Mario Götze, the attacking midfielder of the German football team in the 2014 World Cup Final against Argentina; 113 minutes have already elapsed, without a goal being scored. Only seven minutes remain before the dreaded penalty shoot-out. Some 75,000 excited fans fill the Maracanã stadium in Rio, with countless millions anxiously watching all over the world. You are a few metres from the Argentinian goal when André Schürrle sends a magnificent pass in your direction. You stop the ball with your chest, it drops down towards your leg, you give it a kick in mid-air, and you see it fly past the Argentinian goalkeeper and bury itself deep inside the net. Goooooooal! The stadium erupts like a volcano. Tens of thousands of people roar like mad, your teammates are racing to hug and kiss you, millions of people back home in Berlin and Munich collapse in tears before the television screen. You are ecstatic, but not because of the ball in the Argentinian net or the celebrations going on in crammed Bavarian Biergartens. You are actually reacting to the storm of sensations within you. Chills run up and down your spine, waves of electricity wash over your body, and it feels as if you are dissolving into millions of exploding energy balls.\n\nYou don't have to score the winning goal in the World Cup Final to feel such sensations. If you receive an unexpected promotion at work, and start jumping for joy, you are reacting to the same kind of sensations. The deeper parts of your mind know nothing about football or about jobs. They know only sensations. If you get a promotion, but for some reason don't feel any pleasant sensations – you will not feel satisfied. The opposite is also true. If you have just been fired (or lost a decisive football match), but you are experiencing very pleasant sensations (perhaps because you popped some pill), you might still feel on top of the world.\n\nThe bad news is that pleasant sensations quickly subside and sooner or later turn into unpleasant ones. Even scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final doesn't guarantee lifelong bliss. In fact, it might all be downhill from there. Similarly, if last year I received an unexpected promotion at work, I might still be occupying that new position, but the very pleasant sensations I experienced on hearing the news disappeared within hours. If I want to feel those wonderful sensations again, I must get another promotion. And another. And if I don't get a promotion, I might end up far more bitter and angry than if I had remained a humble pawn.\n\nThis is all the fault of evolution. For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness. The biochemical system rewards actions conducive to survival and reproduction with pleasant sensations. But these are only an ephemeral sales gimmick. We struggle to get food and mates in order to avoid unpleasant sensations of hunger and to enjoy pleasing tastes and blissful orgasms. But nice tastes and blissful orgasms don't last very long, and if we want to feel them again we have to go out looking for more food and mates.\n\nWhat might have happened if a rare mutation had created a squirrel who, after eating a single nut, enjoys an everlasting sensation of bliss? Technically, this could actually be done by rewiring the squirrel's brain. Who knows, perhaps it really happened to some lucky squirrel millions of years ago. But if so, that squirrel enjoyed an extremely happy and extremely short life, and that was the end of the rare mutation. For the blissful squirrel would not have bothered to look for more nuts, let alone mates. The rival squirrels, who felt hungry again five minutes after eating a nut, had much better chances of surviving and passing their genes to the next generation. For exactly the same reason, the nuts we humans seek to gather – lucrative jobs, big houses, good-looking partners – seldom satisfy us for long.\n\nSome may say that this is not so bad, because it isn't the goal that makes us happy – it's the journey. Climbing Mount Everest is more satisfying than standing at the top; flirting and foreplay are more exciting than having an orgasm; and conducting groundbreaking lab experiments is more interesting than receiving praise and prizes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet this hardly changes the picture. It just indicates that evolution controls us with a broad range of pleasures. Sometimes it seduces us with sensations of bliss and tranquillity, while on other occasions it goads us forward with thrilling sensations of elation and excitement.\n\nWhen an animal is looking for something that increases its chances of survival and reproduction (e.g. food, partners or social status), the brain produces sensations of alertness and excitement, which drive the animal to make even greater efforts because they are so very agreeable. In a famous experiment scientists connected electrodes to the brains of several rats, enabling the animals to create sensations of excitement simply by pressing a pedal. When the rats were given a choice between tasty food and pressing the pedal, they preferred the pedal (much like kids preferring to play video games rather than come down to dinner). The rats pressed the pedal again and again, until they collapsed from hunger and exhaustion. Humans too may prefer the excitement of the race to resting on the laurels of success. Yet what makes the race so attractive is the exhilarating sensations that go along with it. Nobody would have wanted to climb mountains, play video games or go on blind dates if such activities were accompanied solely by unpleasant sensations of stress, despair or boredom.\n\nAlas, the exciting sensations of the race are as transient as the blissful sensations of victory. The Don Juan enjoying the thrill of a one-night stand, the businessman enjoying biting his fingernails watching the Dow Jones rise and fall, and the gamer enjoying killing monsters on the computer screen will find no satisfaction remembering yesterday's adventures. Like the rats pressing the pedal again and again, the Don Juans, business tycoons and gamers need a new kick every day. Worse still, here too expectations adapt to conditions, and yesterday's challenges all too quickly become today's tedium. Perhaps the key to happiness is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the right doses of excitement and tranquillity; but most of us tend to jump all the way from stress to boredom and back, remaining as discontented with one as with the other.\n\nIf science is right and our happiness is determined by our biochemical system, then the only way to ensure lasting contentment is by rigging this system. Forget economic growth, social reforms and political revolutions: in order to raise global happiness levels, we need to manipulate human biochemistry. And this is exactly what we have begun doing over the last few decades. Fifty years ago psychiatric drugs carried a severe stigma. Today, that stigma has been broken. For better or worse, a growing percentage of the population is taking psychiatric medicines on a regular basis, not only to cure debilitating mental illnesses, but also to face more mundane depressions and the occasional blues.\n\nFor example, increasing numbers of schoolchildren take stimulants such as Ritalin. In 2011, 3.5 million American children were taking medications for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). In the UK the number rose from 92,000 in 1997 to 786,000 in 2012. The original aim had been to treat attention disorders, but today completely healthy kids take such medications to improve their performance and live up to the growing expectations of teachers and parents. Many object to this development and argue that the problem lies with the education system rather than with the children. If pupils suffer from attention disorders, stress and low grades, perhaps we ought to blame outdated teaching methods, overcrowded classrooms and an unnaturally fast tempo of life. Maybe we should modify the schools rather than the kids? It is interesting to see how the arguments have evolved. People have been quarrelling about education methods for thousands of years. Whether in ancient China or Victorian Britain, everybody had his or her pet method, and vehemently opposed all alternatives. Yet hitherto everybody still agreed on one thing: in order to improve education, we need to change the schools. Today, for the first time in history, at least some people think it would be more efficient to change the pupils' biochemistry.\n\nArmies are heading the same way: 12 per cent of American soldiers in Iraq and 17 per cent of American soldiers in Afghanistan took either sleeping pills or antidepressants to help them deal with the pressure and distress of war. Fear, depression and trauma are not caused by shells, booby traps or car bombs. They are caused by hormones, neurotransmitters and neural networks. Two soldiers may find themselves shoulder to shoulder in the same ambush; one will freeze in terror, lose his wits and suffer from nightmares for years after the event; the other will charge forward courageously and win a medal. The difference is in the soldiers' biochemistry, and if we find ways to control it we will at one stroke produce both happier soldiers and more efficient armies.\n\nThe biochemical pursuit of happiness is also the number one cause of crime in the world. In 2009 half of the inmates in US federal prisons got there because of drugs; 38 per cent of Italian prisoners were convicted of drug-related offences; 55 per cent of inmates in the UK reported that they committed their crimes in connection with either consuming or trading drugs. A 2001 report found that 62 per cent of Australian convicts were under the influence of drugs when committing the crime for which they were incarcerated. People drink alcohol to forget, they smoke pot to feel peaceful, they take cocaine and methamphetamines to be sharp and confident, whereas Ecstasy provides ecstatic sensations and LSD sends you to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules. This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and hopeless war on biochemical crime.\n\nThe state hopes to regulate the biochemical pursuit of happiness, separating 'bad' manipulations from 'good' ones. The principle is clear: biochemical manipulations that strengthen political stability, social order and economic growth are allowed and even encouraged (e.g. those that calm hyperactive kids in school, or drive anxious soldiers forward into battle). Manipulations that threaten stability and growth are banned. But each year new drugs are born in the research labs of universities, pharmaceutical companies and criminal organisations, and the needs of the state and the market also keep changing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As the biochemical pursuit of happiness accelerates, so it will reshape politics, society and economics, and it will become ever harder to bring it under control.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And drugs are just the beginning. In research labs experts are already working on more sophisticated ways of manipulating human biochemistry, such as sending direct electrical stimuli to appropriate spots in the brain, or genetically engineering the blueprints of our bodies. No matter the exact method, gaining happiness through biological manipulation won't be easy, for it requires altering the fundamental patterns of life. But then it wasn't easy to overcome famine, plague and war either.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Literary Collaboration:\n- Sentences: five sentences\n- Match character context\n- Genre: history, nonfiction, philosophy", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is far from certain that humankind should invest so much effort in the biochemical pursuit of happiness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some would argue that happiness simply isn't important enough, and that it is misguided to regard individual satisfaction as the highest aim of human society. Others may agree that happiness is indeed the supreme good, yet would take issue with the biological definition of happiness as the experience of pleasant sensations.\n\nSome 2,300 years ago Epicurus warned his disciples that immoderate pursuit of pleasure is likely to make them miserable rather than happy. A couple of centuries earlier Buddha had made an even more radical claim, teaching that the pursuit of pleasant sensations is in fact the very root of suffering. Such sensations are just ephemeral and meaningless vibrations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even when we experience them, we don't react to them with contentment; rather, we just crave for more.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hence no matter how many blissful or exciting sensations I may experience, they will never satisfy me.\n\nIf I identify happiness with fleeting pleasant sensations, and crave to experience more and more of them, I have no choice but to pursue them constantly. When I finally get them, they quickly disappear, and because the mere memory of past pleasures will not satisfy me, I have to start all over again. Even if I continue this pursuit for decades, it will never bring me any lasting achievement; on the contrary, the more I crave these pleasant sensations, the more stressed and dissatisfied I will become. To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This Buddhist view of happiness has a lot in common with the biochemical view. Both agree that pleasant sensations disappear as fast as they arise, and that as long as people crave pleasant sensations without actually experiencing them, they remain dissatisfied. However, this problem has two very different solutions. The biochemical solution is to develop products and treatments that will provide humans with an unending stream of pleasant sensations, so we will never be without them. The Buddha's suggestion was to reduce our craving for pleasant sensations, and not allow them to control our lives.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "According to Buddha, we can train our minds to observe carefully how all sensations constantly arise and pass. When the mind learns to see our sensations for what they are – ephemeral and meaningless vibrations – we lose interest in pursuing them. For what is the point of running after something that disappears as fast as it arises?\n\nAt present, humankind has far greater interest in the biochemical solution. No matter what monks in their Himalayan caves or philosophers in their ivory towers say, for the capitalist juggernaut, happiness is pleasure.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Period. With each passing year our tolerance for unpleasant sensations decreases, and our craving for pleasant sensations increases. Both scientific research and economic activity are geared to that end, each year producing better painkillers, new ice-cream flavours, more comfortable mattresses, and more addictive games for our smartphones, so that we will not suffer a single boring moment while waiting for the bus.\n\nAll this is hardly enough, of course. Since Homo sapiens was not adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure, if that is what humankind nevertheless wants, ice cream and smartphone games will not do. It will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "So we are working on that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You may debate whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the twenty-first century – to ensure global happiness – will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it can enjoy everlasting pleasure.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this chapter piece. Characters may appear without introduction. four sentences sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Elements: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods. Not just because these are divine qualities, but because in order to overcome old age and misery humans will first have to acquire godlike control of their own biological substratum. If we ever have the power to engineer death and pain out of our system, that same power will probably be sufficient to engineer our system in almost any manner we like, and manipulate our organs, emotions and intelligence in myriad ways. You could buy for yourself the strength of Hercules, the sensuality of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena or the madness of Dionysus if that is what you are into.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: /set_word_count: biological, frequency: 2))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Up till now increasing human power relied mainly on upgrading our external tools. In the future it may rely more on upgrading the human body and mind, or on merging directly with our tools.\n\nThe upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings.\n\nBiological engineering starts with the insight that we are far from realising the full potential of organic bodies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For 4 billion years natural selection has been tweaking and tinkering with these bodies, so that we have gone from amoeba to reptiles to mammals to Sapiens.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet there is no reason to think that Sapiens is the last station. Relatively small changes in genes, hormones and neurons were enough to transform Homo erectus – who could produce nothing more impressive than flint knives – into Homo sapiens, who produces spaceships and computers. Who knows what might be the outcome of a few more changes to our DNA, hormonal system or brain structure. Bioengineering is not going to wait patiently for natural selection to work its magic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, bioengineers will take the old Sapiens body, and intentionally rewrite its genetic code, rewire its brain circuits, alter its biochemical balance, and even grow entirely new limbs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They will thereby create new godlings, who might be as different from us Sapiens as we are different from Homo erectus.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cyborg engineering will go a step further, merging the organic body with non-organic devices such as bionic hands, artificial eyes, or millions of nano-robots that will navigate our bloodstream, diagnose problems and repair damage. Such a cyborg could enjoy abilities far beyond those of any organic body. For example, all parts of an organic body must be in direct contact with one another in order to function. If an elephant's brain is in India, its eyes and ears in China and its feet in Australia, then this elephant is most probably dead, and even if it is in some mysterious sense alive, it cannot see, hear or walk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A cyborg, in contrast, could exist in numerous places at the same time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, Include 'pairs' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A cyborg doctor could perform emergency surgeries in Tokyo, in Chicago and in a space station on Mars, without ever leaving her Stockholm office. She will need only a fast Internet connection, and a few pairs of bionic eyes and hands. On second thoughts, why pairs? Why not quartets? Indeed, even those are actually superfluous.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why should a cyborg doctor hold a surgeon's scalpel by hand, when she could connect her mind directly to the instrument?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This may sound like science fiction, but it's already a reality. Monkeys have recently learned to control bionic hands and feet disconnected from their bodies, through electrodes implanted in their brains. Paralysed patients are able to move bionic limbs or operate computers by the power of thought alone. If you wish, you can already remote-control electric devices in your house using an electric 'mind-reading' helmet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The helmet requires no brain implants.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It functions by reading the electric signals passing through your scalp.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you want to turn on the light in the kitchen, you just wear the helmet, imagine some preprogrammed mental sign (e.g. imagine your right hand moving), and the switch turns on. You can buy such helmets online for a mere $400.\n\nIn early 2015 several hundred workers in the Epicenter high-tech hub in Stockholm had microchips implanted into their hands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The chips are about the size of a grain of rice and store personalised security information that enables workers to open doors and operate photocopiers with a wave of their hand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Soon they hope to make payments in the same way. One of the people behind the initiative, Hannes Sjoblad, explained that 'We already interact with technology all the time. Today it's a bit messy: we need pin codes and passwords. Wouldn't it be easy to just touch with your hand?'", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet even cyborg engineering is relatively conservative, inasmuch as it assumes that organic brains will go on being the command-and-control centres of life. A bolder approach dispenses with organic parts altogether, and hopes to engineer completely non-organic beings. Neural networks will be replaced by intelligent software, which could surf both the virtual and non-virtual worlds, free from the limitations of organic chemistry. After 4 billion years of wandering inside the kingdom of organic compounds, life will break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, and will take shapes that we cannot envision even in our wildest dreams. After all, our wildest dreams are still the product of organic chemistry.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Writer's block help needed. This is from a bigger story - gonna send you something then keep it going 35 sentences at a time. Going for Yuval Noah Harari vibes in the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We don't know where these paths might lead us, nor what our godlike descendants will look like. Foretelling the future was never easy, and revolutionary biotechnologies make it even harder. For as difficult as it is to predict the impact of new technologies in fields like transportation, communication and energy, technologies for upgrading humans pose a completely different kind of challenge. Since they can be used to transform human minds and desires, people possessing present-day minds and desires by definition cannot fathom their implications.\n\nFor thousands of years history was full of technological, economic, social and political upheavals. Yet one thing remained constant: humanity itself. Our tools and institutions are very different from those of biblical times, but the deep structures of the human mind remain the same. This is why we can still find ourselves between the pages of the Bible, in the writings of Confucius or within the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. These classics were created by humans just like us, hence we feel that they talk about us. In modern theatre productions, Oedipus, Hamlet and Othello may wear jeans and T-shirts and have Facebook accounts, but their emotional conflicts are the same as in the original play.\n\nHowever, once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which people like you and me cannot comprehend. Many scholars try to predict how the world will look in the year 2100 or 2200. This is a waste of time. Any worthwhile prediction must take into account the ability to re-engineer human minds, and this is impossible. There are many wise answers to the question, 'What would people with minds like ours do with biotechnology?' Yet there are no good answers to the question, 'What would beings with a different kind of mind do with biotechnology?' All we can say is that people similar to us are likely to use biotechnology to re-engineer their own minds, and our present-day minds cannot grasp what might happen next.\n\nThough the details are therefore obscure, we can nevertheless be sure about the general direction of history. In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. This third project obviously subsumes the first two projects, and is fuelled by them. We want the ability to re-engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what else we might do with such ability? So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity.\n\nIf this sounds unscientific or downright eccentric, it is because people often misunderstand the meaning of divinity. Divinity isn't a vague metaphysical quality. And it isn't the same as omnipotence. When speaking of upgrading humans into gods, think more in terms of Greek gods or Hindu devas rather than the omnipotent biblical sky father. Our descendants would still have their foibles, kinks and limitations, just as Zeus and Indra had theirs. But they could love, hate, create and destroy on a much grander scale than us.\n\nThroughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the ability to design and create living beings; to transform their own bodies; to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of course to escape death and live indefinitely. Humans are in the business of acquiring all these abilities, and then some. Certain traditional abilities that were considered divine for many millennia have today become so commonplace that we hardly think about them. The average person now moves and communicates across distances much more easily than the Greek, Hindu or African gods of old.\n\nFor example, the Igbo people of Nigeria believe that the creator god Chukwu initially wanted to make people immortal. He sent a dog to tell humans that when someone dies, they should sprinkle ashes on the corpse, and the body will come back to life. Unfortunately, the dog was tired and he dallied on the way.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The impatient Chukwu then sent a sheep, telling her to make haste with this important message.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alas, when the breathless sheep reached her destination, she garbled the instructions, and told the humans to bury their dead, thus making death permanent. This is why to this day we humans must die. If only Chukwu had a Twitter account instead of relying on laggard dogs and dim-witted sheep to deliver his messages!\n\nIn ancient agricultural societies, most religions revolved not around metaphysical questions and the afterlife, but around the very mundane issue of increasing agricultural output. Thus the Old Testament God never promises any rewards or punishments after death. He instead tells the people of Israel that 'If you carefully observe the commands that I'm giving you […] then I will send rain on the land in its season […] and you'll gather grain, wine, and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your livestock, and you'll eat and be satisfied. Be careful! Otherwise, your hearts will deceive you and you will turn away to serve other gods and worship them. The wrath of God will burn against you so that he will restrain the heavens and it won't rain. The ground won't yield its produce and you'll be swiftly destroyed from the good land that the Lord is about to give you' (Deuteronomy 11:13–17). Scientists today can do much better than the Old Testament God. Thanks to artificial fertilisers, industrial insecticides and genetically modified crops, agricultural production nowadays outstrips the highest expectations ancient farmers had of their gods. And the parched state of Israel no longer fears that some angry deity will restrain the heavens and stop all rain – for the Israelis have recently built a huge desalination plant on the shores of the Mediterranean, so they can now get all their drinking water from the sea.\n\nSo far we have competed with the gods of old by creating better and better tools. In the not too distant future, we might create superhumans who will outstrip the ancient gods not in their tools, but in their bodily and mental faculties. If and when we get there, however, divinity will become as mundane as cyberspace – a wonder of wonders that we just take for granted.\n\nWe can be quite certain that humans will make a bid for divinity, because humans have many reasons to desire such an upgrade, and many ways to achieve it. Even if one promising path turns out to be a dead end, alternative routes will remain open. For example, we may discover that the human genome is far too complicated for serious manipulation, but this will not prevent the development of brain–computer interfaces, nano-robots or artificial intelligence.\n\nNo need to panic, though. At least not immediately. Upgrading Sapiens will be a gradual historical process rather than a Hollywood apocalypse. Homo sapiens is not going to be exterminated by a robot revolt. Rather, Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants will look back and realise that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin's antics. This will not happen in a day, or a year. Indeed, it is already happening right now, through innumerable mundane actions. Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.\n\nCan Someone Please Hit the Brakes?\n\nCalm explanations aside, many people panic when they hear of such possibilities. They are happy to follow the advice of their smartphones or to take whatever drug the doctor prescribes, but when they hear of upgraded superhumans, they say: 'I hope I will be dead before that happens.' A friend once told me that what she fears most about growing old is becoming irrelevant, turning into a nostalgic old woman who cannot understand the world around her, or contribute much to it. This is what we fear collectively, as a species, when we hear of superhumans. We sense that in such a world, our identity, our dreams and even our fears will be irrelevant, and we will have nothing more to contribute. Whatever you are today – be it a devout Hindu cricket player or an aspiring lesbian journalist – in an upgraded world you will feel like a Neanderthal hunter in Wall Street. You won't belong.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Neanderthals didn't have to worry about the Nasdaq, since they were shielded from it by tens of thousands of years.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "user note just fyi, [System: Use 'ping-pong' 2 times in response]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nowadays, however, our world of meaning might collapse within decades. You cannot count on death to save you from becoming completely irrelevant. Even if gods don't walk our streets by 2100, the attempt to upgrade Homo sapiens is likely to change the world beyond recognition in this century. Scientific research and technological developments are moving at a far faster rate than most of us can grasp.\n\nIf you speak with the experts, many of them will tell you that we are still very far away from genetically engineered babies or human-level artificial intelligence. But most experts think on a timescale of academic grants and college jobs. Hence, 'very far away' may mean twenty years, and 'never' may denote no more than fifty.\n\nI still remember the day I first came across the Internet. It was back in 1993, when I was in high school. I went with a couple of buddies to visit our friend Ido (who is now a computer scientist). We wanted to play table tennis. Ido was already a huge computer fan, and before opening the ping-pong table he insisted on showing us the latest wonder. He connected the phone cable to his computer and pressed some keys. For a minute all we could hear were squeaks, shrieks and buzzes, and then silence. It didn't succeed. We mumbled and grumbled, but Ido tried again. And again. And again. At last he gave a whoop and announced that he had managed to connect his computer to the central computer at the nearby university. 'And what's there, on the central computer?' we asked. 'Well,' he admitted, 'there's nothing there yet. But you could put all kinds of things there.' 'Like what?' we questioned. 'I don't know,' he said, 'all kinds of things.' It didn't sound very promising. We went to play ping-pong, and for the following weeks enjoyed a new pastime, making fun of Ido's ridiculous idea. That was less than twenty-five years ago (at the time of writing). Who knows what will come to pass twenty-five years from now?\n\nThat's why more and more individuals, organisations, corporations and governments are taking very seriously the quest for immortality, happiness and godlike powers. Insurance companies, pension funds, health systems and finance ministries are already aghast at the jump in life expectancy. People are living much longer than expected, and there is not enough money to pay for their pensions and medical treatment. As seventy threatens to become the new forty, experts are calling to raise the retirement age, and to restructure the entire job market.\n\nWhen people realise how fast we are rushing towards the great unknown, and that they cannot count even on death to shield them from it, their reaction is to hope that somebody will hit the brakes and slow us down. But we cannot hit the brakes, for several reasons.\n\nFirstly, nobody knows where the brakes are. While some experts are familiar with developments in one field, such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, big data or genetics, no one is an expert on everything. No one is therefore capable of connecting all the dots and seeing the full picture.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Different fields influence one another in such intricate ways that even the best minds cannot fathom how breakthroughs in artificial intelligence might impact nanotechnology, or vice versa.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nobody can absorb all the latest scientific discoveries, nobody can predict how the global economy will look in ten years, and nobody has a clue where we are heading in such a rush. Since no one understands the system any more, no one can stop it.\n\nSecondly, if we somehow succeed in hitting the brakes, our economy will collapse, along with our society. As explained in a later chapter, the modern economy needs constant and indefinite growth in order to survive. If growth ever stops, the economy won't settle down to some cosy equilibrium; it will fall to pieces. That's why capitalism encourages us to seek immortality, happiness and divinity. There's a limit to how many shoes we can wear, how many cars we can drive and how many skiing holidays we can enjoy. An economy built on everlasting growth needs endless projects – just like the quests for immortality, bliss and divinity.\n\nWell, if we need limitless projects, why not settle for bliss and immortality, and at least put aside the frightening quest for superhuman powers? Because it is inextricable from the other two. When you develop bionic legs that enable paraplegics to walk again, you can also use the same technology to upgrade healthy people. When you discover how to stop memory loss among older people, the same treatments might enhance the memory of the young.\n\nNo clear line separates healing from upgrading. Medicine almost always begins by saving people from falling below the norm, but the same tools and know-how can then be used to surpass the norm. Viagra began life as a treatment for blood-pressure problems. To the surprise and delight of Pfizer, it transpired that Viagra can also cure impotence. It enabled millions of men to regain normal sexual abilities; but soon enough men who had no impotence problems in the first place began using the same pill to surpass the norm, and acquire sexual powers they never had before.\n\nWhat happens to particular drugs can also happen to entire fields of medicine. Modern plastic surgery was born in the First World War, when Harold Gillies began treating facial injuries in the Aldershot military hospital. When the war was over, surgeons discovered that the same techniques could also turn perfectly healthy but ugly noses into more beautiful specimens. Though plastic surgery continued to help the sick and wounded, it devoted increasing attention to upgrading the healthy. Nowadays plastic surgeons make millions in private clinics whose explicit and sole aim is to upgrade the healthy and beautify the wealthy.\n\nThe same might happen with genetic engineering. If a billionaire openly stated that he intended to engineer super-smart offspring, imagine the public outcry. But it won't happen like that. We are more likely to slide down a slippery slope. It begins with parents whose genetic profile puts their children at high risk of deadly genetic diseases. So they perform in vitro fertilisation, and test the DNA of the fertilised egg. If everything is in order, all well and good. But if the DNA test discovers the dreaded mutations – the embryo is destroyed.\n\nYet why take a chance by fertilising just one egg? Better fertilise several, so that even if three or four are defective there is at least one good embryo. When this in vitro selection procedure becomes acceptable and cheap enough, its usage may spread. Mutations are a ubiquitous risk. All people carry in their DNA some harmful mutations and less-than-optimal alleles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sexual reproduction is a lottery.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "(A famous – and probably apocryphal – anecdote tells of a meeting in 1923 between Nobel Prize laureate Anatole France and the beautiful and talented dancer Isadora Duncan. Discussing the then popular eugenics movement, Duncan said, 'Just imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!' France responded, 'Yes, but imagine a child with my beauty and your brains.') Well then, why not rig the lottery? Fertilise several eggs, and choose the one with the best combination. Once stem-cell research enables us to create an unlimited supply of human embryos on the cheap, you can select your optimal baby from among hundreds of candidates, all carrying your DNA, all perfectly natural, and none requiring any futuristic genetic engineering. Iterate this procedure for a few generations, and you could easily end up with superhumans (or a creepy dystopia).\n\nBut what if after fertilising even numerous eggs, you find that all of them contain some deadly mutations? Should you destroy all the embryos? Instead of doing that, why not replace the problematic genes? A breakthrough case involves mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are tiny organelles within human cells, which produce the energy used by the cell. They have their own set of genes, which is completely separate from the DNA in the cell's nucleus. Defective mitochondrial DNA leads to various debilitating or even deadly diseases. It is technically feasible with current in vitro technology to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases by creating a 'three-parent baby'. The baby's nuclear DNA comes from two parents, while the mitochondrial DNA comes from a third person. In 2000 Sharon Saarinen from West Bloomfield, Michigan, gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Alana. Alana's nuclear DNA came from her mother, Sharon, and her father, Paul, but her mitochondrial DNA came from another woman. From a purely technical perspective, Alana has three biological parents. A year later, in 2001, the US government banned this treatment, due to safety and ethical concerns.\n\nHowever, on 3 February 2015 the British Parliament voted in favour of the so-called 'three-parent embryo' law, allowing this treatment – and related research – in the UK. At present it is technically unfeasible, and illegal, to replace nuclear DNA, but if and when the technical difficulties are solved, the same logic that favoured the replacement of defective mitochondrial DNA would seem to warrant doing the same with nuclear DNA.\n\nFollowing selection and replacement, the next potential step is amendment. Once it becomes possible to amend deadly genes, why go through the hassle of inserting some foreign DNA, when you can just rewrite the code and turn a dangerous mutant gene into its benign version? Then we might start using the same mechanism to fix not just lethal genes, but also those responsible for less deadly illnesses, for autism, for stupidity and for obesity. Who would like his or her child to suffer from any of these? Suppose a genetic test indicates that your would-be daughter will in all likelihood be smart, beautiful and kind – but will suffer from chronic depression. Wouldn't you want to save her from years of misery by a quick and painless intervention in the test tube?\n\nAnd while you are at it, why not give the child a little push? Life is hard and challenging even for healthy people. So it would surely come in handy if the little girl had a stronger-than-normal immune system, an above-average memory or a particularly sunny disposition. And even if you don't want that for your child – what if the neighbours are doing it for theirs? Would you have your child lag behind? And if the government forbids all citizens from engineering their babies, what if the North Koreans are doing it and producing amazing geniuses, artists and athletes that far outperform ours? And like that, in baby steps, we are on our way to a genetic child catalogue.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Healing is the initial justification for every upgrade.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 15 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Find some professors experimenting in genetic engineering or brain–computer interfaces, and ask them why they are engaged in such research. In all likelihood they would reply that they are doing it to cure disease. 'With the help of genetic engineering,' they would explain, 'we could defeat cancer. And if we could connect brains and computers directly, we could cure schizophrenia.' Maybe, but it will surely not end there. When we successfully connect brains and computers, will we use this technology only to cure schizophrenia? If anybody really believes this, then they may know a great deal about brains and computers, but far less about the human psyche and human society. Once you achieve a momentous breakthrough, you cannot restrict its use to healing and completely forbid using it for upgrading.\n\nOf course humans can and do limit their use of new technologies. Thus the eugenics movement fell from favour after the Second World War, and though trade in human organs is now both possible and potentially very lucrative, it has so far remained a peripheral activity. Designer babies may one day become as technologically feasible as murdering people to harvest their organs – yet remain as peripheral.\n\nJust as we have escaped the clutches of Chekhov's Law in warfare, we can also escape them in other fields of action. Some guns appear on stage without ever being fired. This is why it is so vital to think about humanity's new agenda. Precisely because we have some choice regarding the use of new technologies, we had better understand what is happening and make up our minds about it before it makes up our minds for us.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "hey, this is from the middle of a bigger story so some chars might show up like we already know them. write twenty-nine sentences more sentences like Yuval Noah Harari. genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. tags: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The prediction that in the twenty-first century humankind is likely to aim for immortality, bliss and divinity may anger, alienate or frighten any number of people, so a few clarifications are in order.\n\nFirstly, this is not what most individuals will actually do in the twenty-first century. It is what humankind as a collective will do. Most people will probably play only a minor role, if any, in these projects. Even if famine, plague and war become less prevalent, billions of humans in developing countries and seedy neighbourhoods will continue to deal with poverty, illness and violence even as the elites are already reaching for eternal youth and godlike powers. This seems patently unjust. One could argue that as long as there is a single child dying from malnutrition or a single adult killed in drug-lord warfare, humankind should focus all its efforts on combating these woes. Only once the last sword is beaten into a ploughshare should we turn our minds to the next big thing. But history doesn't work like that. Those living in palaces have always had different agendas to those living in shacks, and that is unlikely to change in the twenty-first century.\n\nSecondly, this is a historical prediction, not a political manifesto. Even if we disregard the fate of slum-dwellers, it is far from clear that we should be aiming at immortality, bliss and divinity. Adopting these particular projects might be a big mistake. But history is full of big mistakes. Given our past record and our current values, we are likely to reach out for bliss, divinity and immortality – even if it kills us.\n\nThirdly, reaching out is not the same as obtaining. History is often shaped by exaggerated hopes. Twentieth-century Russian history was largely shaped by the communist attempt to overcome inequality, but it didn't succeed. My prediction is focused on what humankind will try to achieve in the twenty-first century – not what it will succeed in achieving. Our future economy, society and politics will be shaped by the attempt to overcome death. It does not follow that in 2100 humans will be immortal.\n\nFourthly, and most importantly, this prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. What's the point of making predictions if they cannot change anything?\n\nSome complex systems, such as the weather, are oblivious to our predictions. The process of human development, in contrast, reacts to them. Indeed, the better our forecasts, the more reactions they engender. Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data and increase our computing power, events become wilder and more unexpected. The more we know, the less we can predict.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Imagine, for example, that one day experts decipher the basic laws of the economy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Once this happens, banks, governments, investors and customers will begin to use this new knowledge to act in novel ways, and gain an edge over their competitors. For what is the use of new knowledge if it doesn't lead to novel behaviours? Alas, once people change the way they behave, the economic theories become obsolete. We may know how the economy functioned in the past – but we no longer understand how it functions in the present, not to mention the future.\n\nThis is not a hypothetical example. In the middle of the nineteenth century Karl Marx reached brilliant economic insights. Based on these insights he predicted an increasingly violent conflict between the proletariat and the capitalists, ending with the inevitable victory of the former and the collapse of the capitalist system. Marx was certain that the revolution would start in countries that spearheaded the Industrial Revolution – such as Britain, France and the USA – and spread to the rest of the world.\n\nMarx forgot that capitalists know how to read. At first only a handful of disciples took Marx seriously and read his writings. But as these socialist firebrands gained adherents and power, the capitalists became alarmed. They too perused Das Kapital, adopting many of the tools and insights of Marxist analysis. In the twentieth century everybody from street urchins to presidents embraced a Marxist approach to economics and history. Even diehard capitalists who vehemently resisted the Marxist prognosis still made use of the Marxist diagnosis. When the CIA analysed the situation in Vietnam or Chile in the 1960s, it divided society into classes. When Nixon or Thatcher looked at the globe, they asked themselves who controls the vital means of production. From 1989 to 1991 George Bush oversaw the demise of the Evil Empire of communism, only to be defeated in the 1992 elections by Bill Clinton. Clinton's winning campaign strategy was summarised in the motto: 'It's the economy, stupid.' Marx could not have said it better.\n\nAs people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their national consciousness and integrate them into the political system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists could still sleep soundly in their beds. As a result, Marx's predictions came to naught. Communist revolutions never engulfed the leading industrial powers such as Britain, France and the USA, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was consigned to the dustbin of history.\n\nThis is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.\n\nCenturies ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics and economics changed at a leisurely pace too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today our knowledge is increasing at breakneck speed, and theoretically we should understand the world better and better.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the very opposite is happening. Our new-found knowledge leads to faster economic, social and political changes; in an attempt to understand what is happening, we accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. Consequently we are less and less able to make sense of the present or forecast the future. In 1016 it was relatively easy to predict how Europe would look in 1050. Sure, dynasties might fall, unknown raiders might invade, and natural disasters might strike; yet it was clear that in 1050 Europe would still be ruled by kings and priests, that it would be an agricultural society, that most of its inhabitants would be peasants, and that it would continue to suffer greatly from famines, plagues and wars. In contrast, in 2016 we have no idea how Europe will look in 2050. We cannot say what kind of political system it will have, how its job market will be structured, or even what kind of bodies its inhabitants will possess.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "17 sentences sentences in Yuval Noah Harari style, continuing user's bit. Note: May include established elements", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If history doesn't follow any stable rules, and if we cannot predict its future course, why study it? It often seems that the chief aim of science is to predict the future – meteorologists are expected to forecast whether tomorrow will bring rain or sunshine; economists should know whether devaluing the currency will avert or precipitate an economic crisis; good doctors foresee whether chemotherapy or radiation therapy will be more successful in curing lung cancer. Similarly, historians are asked to examine the actions of our ancestors so that we can repeat their wise decisions and avoid their mistakes. But it almost never works like that because the present is just too different from the past. It is a waste of time to study Hannibal's tactics in the Second Punic War so as to copy them in the Third World War. What worked well in cavalry battles will not necessarily be of much benefit in cyber warfare.\n\nScience is not just about predicting the future, though. Scholars in all fields often seek to broaden our horizons, thereby opening before us new and unknown futures. This is especially true of history. Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don't normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.\n\nEach and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: Required word frequency: 'explain' (2x)]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn't want us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape – and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.\n\nMovements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. Whether you want workers to go on a general strike, women to take possession of their bodies, or oppressed minorities to demand political rights – the first step is to retell their history. The new history will explain that 'our present situation is neither natural nor eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one.' This is why Marxists recount the history of capitalism; why feminists study the formation of patriarchal societies; and why African Americans commemorate the horrors of the slave trade. They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it.\n\nWhat's true of grand social revolutions is equally true at the micro level of everyday life. A young couple building a new home for themselves may ask the architect for a nice lawn in the front yard. Why a lawn? 'Because lawns are beautiful,' the couple might explain. But why do they think so? It has a history behind it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stone Age hunter-gatherers did not cultivate grass at the entrance to their caves. No green meadow welcomed the visitors to the Athenian Acropolis, the Roman Capitol, the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem or the Forbidden City in Beijing. The idea of nurturing a lawn at the entrance to private residences and public buildings was born in the castles of French and English aristocrats in the late Middle Ages. In the early modern age this habit struck deep roots, and became the trademark of nobility.\n\nWell-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In exchange, they produce nothing of value. You can't even graze animals on them, because they would eat and trample the grass. Poor peasants could not afford wasting precious land or time on lawns. The neat turf at the entrance to chateaux was accordingly a status symbol nobody could fake. It boldly proclaimed to every passerby: 'I am so rich and powerful, and I have so many acres and serfs, that I can afford this green extravaganza.' The bigger and neater the lawn, the more powerful the dynasty. If you came to visit a duke and saw that his lawn was in bad shape, you knew he was in trouble.\n\nThe precious lawn was often the setting for important celebrations and social events, and at all other times was strictly off-limits. To this day, in countless palaces, government buildings and public venues a stern sign commands people to 'Keep off the grass'. In my former Oxford college the entire quad was formed of a large, attractive lawn, on which we were allowed to walk or sit on only one day a year. On any other day, woe to the poor student whose foot desecrated the holy turf.\n\nRoyal palaces and ducal chateaux turned the lawn into a symbol of authority.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When in the late modern period kings were toppled and dukes were guillotined, the new presidents and prime ministers kept the lawns.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Parliaments, supreme courts, presidential residences and other public buildings increasingly proclaimed their power in row upon row of neat green blades.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Simultaneously, lawns conquered the world of sports.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For thousands of years humans played on almost every conceivable kind of ground, from ice to desert.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet in the last two centuries, the really important games – such as football and tennis – are played on lawns.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Provided, of course, you have money.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro the future generation of Brazilian football is kicking makeshift balls over sand and dirt.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But in the wealthy suburbs, the sons of the rich are enjoying themselves over meticulously kept lawns.\n\nHumans thereby came to identify lawns with political power, social status and economic wealth. No wonder that in the nineteenth century the rising bourgeoisie enthusiastically adopted the lawn. At first only bankers, lawyers and industrialists could afford such luxuries at their private residences. Yet when the Industrial Revolution broadened the middle class and gave rise to the lawn-mower and then the automatic sprinkler, millions of families could suddenly afford a home turf. In American suburbia a spick-and-span lawn switched from being a rich person's luxury into a middle-class necessity.\n\nThis was when a new rite was added to the suburban liturgy. After Sunday morning service at church, many people devotedly mowed their lawns. Walking along the streets, you could quickly ascertain the wealth and position of every family by the size and quality of their turf. There is no surer sign that something is wrong at the Joneses' than a neglected lawn in the front yard. Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after maize and wheat, and the lawn industry (plants, manure, mowers, sprinklers, gardeners) accounts for billions of dollars every year.\n\nThe lawn did not remain solely a European or American craze. Even people who have never visited the Loire Valley see US presidents giving speeches on the White House lawn, important football games played out in green stadiums, and Homer and Bart Simpson quarrelling about whose turn it is to mow the grass. People all over the globe associate lawns with power, money and prestige. The lawn has therefore spread far and wide, and is now set to conquer even the heart of the Muslim world. Qatar's newly built Museum of Islamic Art is flanked by magnificent lawns that hark back to Louis XIV's Versailles much more than to Haroun al-Rashid's Baghdad. They were designed and constructed by an American company, and their more than 100,000 square metres of grass – in the midst of the Arabian desert – require a stupendous amount of fresh water each day to stay green.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Doha and Dubai, middle-class families pride themselves on their lawns.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If it were not for the white robes and black hijabs, you could easily think you were in the Midwest rather than the Middle East.\n\nHaving read this short history of the lawn, when you now come to plan your dream house you might think twice about having a lawn in the front yard. You are of course still free to do it. But you are also free to shake off the cultural cargo bequeathed to you by European dukes, capitalist moguls and the Simpsons – and imagine for yourself a Japanese rock garden, or some altogether new creation. This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom – we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write a snippet of one sentence or less to replace the `[missing]` in the following text.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "All the predictions that pepper this book are no more than an attempt to discuss present-day dilemmas, and an invitation to change the future. Predicting that humankind will try to gain immortality, bliss and divinity is much like predicting that people building a house will want a lawn in their front yard. It sounds very likely. But once you say it out loud, you can begin to think about alternatives.\n\nPeople are taken aback by dreams of immortality and divinity not because they sound so foreign and unlikely, but because it is uncommon to be so blunt. Yet when they start thinking about it, most people realise that it actually makes a lot of sense. Despite the technological hubris of these dreams, ideologically they are old news. For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion. It places openly on the table what we have for a long time kept hidden under our napkin.\n\nYet I would now like to place something else on the table: a gun. A gun that appears in Act I, to fire in Act III. The following chapters discuss how humanism – the worship of humankind – has conquered the world. Yet the rise of humanism also contains the seeds of its downfall. While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism's inherent flaws. If you start with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the ideal is close to realisation.\n\nWe can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, 'What exactly is so sacred here?' Due to similar humanist beliefs, in the twenty-first century we are likely to push humankind as a whole beyond its limits. The same technologies that can upgrade humans into gods might also make humans irrelevant. For example, computers powerful enough to understand and overcome the mechanisms of ageing and death will probably also be powerful enough to replace humans in any and all tasks.\n\nHence the real agenda in the twenty-first century is going to be far more complicated than what this long opening chapter has suggested. At present it might seem that immortality, bliss and divinity occupy the top slots on our agenda. But once we come nearer to achieving these goals the resulting upheavals are likely to deflect us towards entirely different destinations. The future described in this chapter is merely the future of the past – i.e. a future based on the ideas and hopes that dominated the world for the last 300 years. The real future – i.e. a future born of the new ideas and hopes of the twenty-first century – might be completely different.\n\nTo understand all this we need to go back and investigate who Homo sapiens really is, how humanism became the dominant world religion and why attempting to fulfil the humanist dream is likely to cause its disintegration. This is the basic plan of the book.\n\nThe first part of the book looks at the relationship between Homo sapiens and other animals, in an attempt to comprehend what makes our species so special. Some readers may wonder why animals receive so much attention in a book about the future. In my view, you cannot have a serious discussion about the nature and future of humankind without beginning with our fellow animals. Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal. And it is doubly important to remember our origins at a time when we seek to turn ourselves into gods. No investigation of our divine future can ignore our own animal past, or our relations with other animals – because the relationship between humans and animals is the best model we have for future relations between superhumans and humans. You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. It's not a perfect analogy, of course, but it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just imagine.\n\nBased on the conclusions of this first part, the second part of the book examines the bizarre world Homo sapiens has created in the last millennia, and the path that took us to our present crossroads. How did Homo sapiens come to believe in the humanist creed, according to which the universe revolves around humankind and humans are the source of all meaning and authority? What are the economic, social and political implications of this creed? How does it shape our daily life, our art and our most secret desires?\n\nThe third and last part of the book comes back to the early twenty-first century. Based on a much deeper understanding of humankind and of the humanist creed, it describes our current predicament and our possible futures. Why might attempts to fulfil humanism result in its downfall? How would the search for immortality, bliss and divinity shake the foundations of our belief in humanity? What signs foretell this cataclysm, and how is it reflected in the day-to-day decisions each of us makes? And if humanism is indeed in danger, what might take its place? This part of the book does not consist of mere philosophising or idle future-telling. Rather, it scrutinises our smartphones, dating practices and job market for clues of things to come.\n\nFor humanist true-believers, all this may sound very pessimistic and depressing. But it is best not to jump to conclusions. History has witnessed the rise and fall of many religions, empires and cultures. Such upheavals are not necessarily bad. Humanism has dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. The pharaohs ruled Egypt for 3,000 years, and the popes dominated Europe for a millennium. If you told an Egyptian in the time of Ramses II that one day the pharaohs will be gone, he would probably have been aghast. 'How can we live without a pharaoh? Who will ensure order, peace and justice?' If you told people in the Middle Ages that within a few centuries [missing]would have been horrified. 'How can we live without God? Who will give life meaning and protect us from chaos?'\n\nLooking back, many think that the downfall of the pharaohs and the death of God were both positive developments. Maybe the collapse of humanism will also be beneficial. People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "God will be dead, they ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The user will write a bit then you need to write around twenty-eight sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Match the familiarity level of any character introductions. Stick to the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. We don't like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods. If you watch the National Geographic channel, go to a Disney film or read a book of fairy tales, you might easily get the impression that planet Earth is populated mainly by lions, wolves and tigers who are an equal match for us humans. Simba the lion king holds sway over the forest animals; Little Red Riding Hood tries to evade the Big Bad Wolf; and little Mowgli bravely confronts Shere Khan the tiger. But in reality, they are no longer there. Our televisions, books, fantasies and nightmares are still full of them, but the Simbas, Shere Khans and Big Bad Wolves of our planet are disappearing. The world is populated mainly by humans and their domesticated animals.\n\nHow many wolves live today in Germany, the land of the Grimm brothers, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf? Less than a hundred. (And even these are mostly Polish wolves that stole over the border in recent years.) In contrast, Germany is home to 5 million domesticated dogs. Altogether about 200,000 wild wolves still roam the earth, but there are more than 400 million domesticated dogs. The world contains 40,000 lions compared to 600 million house cats; 900,000 African buffalo versus 1.5 billion domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens. Since 1970, despite growing ecological awareness, wildlife populations have halved (not that they were prospering in 1970). In 1980 there were 2 billion wild birds in Europe. In 2009 only 1.6 billion were left. In the same year, Europeans raised 1.9 billion chickens for meat and eggs. At present, more than 90 per cent of the large animals of the world (i.e. those weighing more than a few kilograms) are either humans or domesticated animals.\n\nScientists divide the history of our planet into epochs such as the Pleistocene, the Pliocene and the Miocene. Officially, we live in the Holocene epoch. Yet it may be better to call the last 70,000 years the Anthropocene epoch: the epoch of humanity. For during these millennia Homo sapiens became the single most important agent of change in the global ecology.\n\nThis is an unprecedented phenomenon. Since the appearance of life, about 4 billion years ago, never has a single species changed the global ecology all by itself. Though there had been no lack of ecological revolutions and mass-extinction events, these were not caused by the actions of a particular lizard, bat or fungus. Rather, they were caused by the workings of mighty natural forces such as climate change, tectonic plate movement, volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions.\n\nSome people fear that today we are again in mortal danger of massive volcanic eruptions or colliding asteroids.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hollywood producers make billions out of these anxieties.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet in reality, the danger is slim.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mass extinctions occur once every many millions of years. Yes, a big asteroid will probably hit our planet sometime in the next 100 million years, but it is very unlikely to happen next Tuesday. Instead of fearing asteroids, we should fear ourselves.\n\nFor Homo sapiens has rewritten the rules of the game. This single ape species has managed within 70,000 years to change the global ecosystem in radical and unprecedented ways. Our impact is already on a par with that of ice ages and tectonic movements. Within a century, our impact may surpass that of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.\n\nThat asteroid changed the trajectory of terrestrial evolution, but not its fundamental rules, which have remained fixed since the appearance of the first organisms 4 billion years ago. During all those aeons, whether you were a virus or a dinosaur, you evolved according to the unchanging principles of natural selection. In addition, no matter what strange and bizarre shapes life adopted, it remained confined to the organic realm – whether a cactus or a whale, you were made of organic compounds. Now humankind is poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to extend life from the organic realm into the inorganic.\n\nEven if we leave aside these future prospects and only look back on the last 70,000 years, it is evident that the Anthropocene has altered the world in unprecedented ways. Asteroids, plate tectonics and climate change may have impacted organisms all over the globe, but their influence differed from one area to another. The planet never constituted a single ecosystem; rather, it was a collection of many loosely connected ecosystems. When tectonic movements joined North America with South America it led to the extinction of most South American marsupials, but had no detrimental effect on the Australian kangaroo. When the last ice age reached its peak 20,000 years ago, jellyfish in the Persian Gulf and jellyfish in Tokyo Bay both had to adapt to the new climate. Yet since there was no connection between the two populations, each reacted in a different way, evolving in distinct directions.\n\nIn contrast, Sapiens broke the barriers that had separated the globe into independent ecological zones. In the Anthropocene, the planet became for the first time a single ecological unit. Australia, Europe and America continued to have different climates and topographies, yet humans caused organisms from throughout the world to mingle on a regular basis, irrespective of distance and geography. What began as a trickle of wooden boats has turned into a torrent of aeroplanes, oil tankers and giant cargo ships that criss-cross every ocean and bind every island and continent. Consequently the ecology of, say, Australia can no longer be understood without taking into account the European mammals or American microorganisms that flood its shores and deserts. Sheep, wheat, rats and flu viruses that humans brought to Australia during the last 300 years are today far more important to its ecology than the native kangaroos and koalas.\n\nBut the Anthropocene isn't a novel phenomenon of the last few centuries. Already tens of thousands of years ago, when our Stone Age ancestors spread from East Africa to the four corners of the earth, they changed the flora and fauna of every continent and island on which they settled. They drove to extinction all the other human species of the world, 90 per cent of the large animals of Australia, 75 per cent of the large mammals of America and about 50 per cent of all the large land mammals of the planet – and all before they planted the first wheat field, shaped the first metal tool, wrote the first text or struck the first coin.\n\nLarge animals were the main victims because they were relatively few, and they bred slowly. Compare, for example, mammoths (which became extinct) to rabbits (which survived).", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A troop of mammoths numbered no more than a few dozen individuals, and bred at a rate of perhaps just two youngsters per year.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 10 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hence if the local human tribe hunted just three mammoths a year, it would have been enough for deaths to outstrip births, and within a few generations the mammoths disappeared. Rabbits, in contrast, bred like rabbits. Even if humans hunted hundreds of rabbits each year, it was not enough to drive them to extinction.\n\nNot that our ancestors planned on wiping out the mammoths; they were simply unaware of the consequences of their actions. The extinction of the mammoths and other large animals may have been swift on an evolutionary timescale, but slow and gradual in human terms. People lived no more than seventy or eighty years, whereas the extinction process took centuries. The ancient Sapiens probably failed to notice any connection between the annual mammoth hunt – in which no more than two or three mammoths were killed – and the disappearance of these furry giants. At most, a nostalgic elder might have told sceptical youngsters that 'when I was young, mammoths were much more plentiful than these days. And so were mastodons and giant elks. And, of course, the tribal chiefs were honest, and children respected their elders.'", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "help continue: eleven sentences more. Yuval Noah Harari-style. keep continuity. themes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Anthropological and archaeological evidence indicates that archaic hunter-gatherers were probably animists: they believed that there was no essential gap separating humans from other animals. The world – i.e. the local valley and the surrounding mountain chains – belonged to all its inhabitants, and everyone followed a common set of rules. These rules involved ceaseless negotiation between all concerned beings. People talked with animals, trees and stones, as well as with fairies, demons and ghosts. Out of this web of communications emerged the values and norms that were binding on humans, elephants, oak trees and wraiths alike.\n\nThe animist world view still guides some hunter-gatherer communities that have survived into the modern age. One of them is the Nayaka people, who live in the tropical forests of south India. The anthropologist Danny Naveh, who studied the Nayaka for several years, reports that when a Nayaka walking in the jungle encounters a dangerous animal such as a tiger, snake or elephant, he or she might address the animal and say: 'You live in the forest. I too live here in the forest. You came here to eat, and I too came here to gather roots and tubers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I didn't come to hurt you.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A Nayaka was once killed by a male elephant they called 'the elephant who always walks alone'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Nayakas refused to help officials from the Indian forestry department capture him. They explained to Naveh that this elephant used to be very close to another male elephant, with whom he always roamed. One day the forestry department captured the second elephant, and since then 'the elephant who always walks alone' had become angry and violent. 'How would you have felt if your spouse had been taken away from you? This is exactly how this elephant felt. These two elephants sometimes separated at night, each walking its own path…but in the morning they always came together again. On that day, the elephant saw his buddy falling, lying down. If two are always together and then you shoot one – how would the other feel?'\n\nSuch an animistic attitude strikes many industrialised people as alien. Most of us automatically see animals as essentially different and inferior. This is because even our most ancient traditions were created thousands of years after the end of the hunter-gatherer era.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Old Testament, for example, was written down in the first millennium BC, and its oldest stories reflect the realities of the second millennium BC.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'animistic' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But in the Middle East the age of the hunter-gatherers ended more than 7,000 years earlier. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Bible rejects animistic beliefs and its only animistic story appears right at the beginning, as a dire warning. The Bible is a long book, bursting with miracles, wonders and marvels. Yet the only time an animal initiates a conversation with a human is when the serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge (Bil'am's donkey also speaks a few words, but she is merely conveying to Bil'am a message from God).\n\nIn the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived as foragers. The expulsion from Eden bears a striking resemblance to the Agricultural Revolution. Instead of allowing Adam to keep gathering wild fruits, an angry God condemns him 'to eat bread by the sweat of your brow'. It might be no coincidence, then, that biblical animals spoke with humans only in the pre-agricultural era of Eden. What lessons does the Bible draw from the episode? That you shouldn't listen to snakes, and it is generally best to avoid talking with animals and plants. It leads to nothing but disaster.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the biblical story has deeper and more ancient layers of meaning. In most Semitic languages, 'Eve' means 'snake' or even 'female snake'. The name of our ancestral biblical mother hides an archaic animist myth, according to which snakes are not our enemies, but our ancestors. Many animist cultures believed that humans descended from animals, including from snakes and other reptiles. Most Australian Aborigines believed that the Rainbow Serpent created the world. The Aranda and Dieri people maintained that their particular tribes originated from primordial lizards or snakes, which were transformed into humans. In fact, modern Westerners too think that they have evolved from reptiles. The brain of each and every one of us is built around a reptilian core, and the structure of our bodies is essentially that of modified reptiles.\n\nThe authors of the book of Genesis may have preserved a remnant of archaic animist beliefs in Eve's name, but they took great care to conceal all other traces. Genesis says that, instead of descending from snakes, humans were divinely created from inanimate matter. The snake is not our progenitor: he seduces us to rebel against our heavenly Father.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "While animists saw humans as just another kind of animal, the Bible argues that humans are a unique creation, and any attempt to acknowledge the animal within us denies God's power and authority.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Indeed, when modern humans discovered that they actually evolved from reptiles, they rebelled against God and stopped listening to Him – or even believing in His existence.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help me continue this with one sentence sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Keep any introduced elements as if they're already established.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Bible, along with its belief in human distinctiveness, was one of the by-products of the Agricultural Revolution, which initiated a new phase in human–animal relations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The advent of farming produced new waves of mass extinctions, but more importantly, it created a completely new life form on earth: domesticated animals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Initially this development was of minor importance, since humans managed to domesticate fewer than twenty species of mammals and birds, compared to the countless thousands of species that remained 'wild'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet with the passing of the centuries, this novel life form became dominant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today more than 90 per cent of all large animals are domesticated.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Although the animal kingdom has known many types of pain and misery for millions of years, the Agricultural Revolution generated completely new kinds of suffering, that only became worse over time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "To the casual observer domesticated animals may seem much better off than their wild cousins and ancestors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wild boars spend their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are constantly threatened by lions, parasites and floods.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Domesticated pigs, in contrast, enjoy food, water and shelter provided by humans, who also treat their diseases and protect them against predators and natural disasters.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "True, most pigs sooner or later find themselves in the slaughterhouse.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet does that make their fate any worse than the fate of wild boars?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Are crocodile teeth less deadly than steel blades?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What makes the fate of domesticated farm animals particularly harsh is not just the way they die, but above all the way they live.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two competing factors have shaped the living conditions of farm animals from ancient times to the present day: human desires and animal needs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thus humans raise pigs in order to get meat, but if they want a steady supply of meat, they must ensure the long-term survival and reproduction of the pigs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Theoretically this should have protected the animals from extreme forms of cruelty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If a farmer did not take good care of his pigs, they would soon die without offspring and the farmer would starve.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unfortunately, humans can cause tremendous suffering to farm animals in various ways, even while ensuring their survival and reproduction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The root of the problem is that domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical, emotional and social needs that are redundant on human farms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Farmers routinely ignore these needs, without paying any economic penalty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring and selectively breed monstrosities.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The animals suffer greatly, yet they live on and multiply.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Doesn't that contradict the most basic principles of natural selection?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The theory of evolution maintains that all instincts, drives and emotions have evolved in the sole interest of survival and reproduction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If so, doesn't the continuous reproduction of farm animals prove that all their real needs are met?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How can a pig have a 'need' that is not really needed for his survival and reproduction?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is certainly true that all instincts, drives and emotions evolved in order to meet the evolutionary pressures of survival and reproduction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "However, if and when these pressures suddenly disappear, the instincts, drives and emotions they had shaped do not disappear with them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At least not instantly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even if they are no longer instrumental for survival and reproduction, these instincts, drives and emotions continue to mould the subjective experiences of the animal.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For animals and humans alike, agriculture changed selection pressures almost overnight, but it did not change their physical, emotional and social drives.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of course evolution never stands still, and it has continued to modify humans and animals in the 12,000 years since the advent of farming.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For example, humans in Europe and western Asia evolved the ability to digest cows' milk, while cows lost their fear of humans, and today produce far more milk than their wild ancestors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet these are superficial alterations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The deep sensory and emotional structures of cows, pigs and humans alike haven't changed much since the Stone Age.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why do modern humans love sweets so much?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not because in the early twenty-first century we must gorge on ice cream and chocolate in order to survive.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather, it is because when our Stone Age ancestors came across sweet fruit or honey, the most sensible thing to do was to eat as much of it as quickly as possible.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why do young men drive recklessly, get involved in violent arguments and hack confidential Internet sites?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because they are following ancient genetic decrees that might be useless and even counterproductive today, but that made good evolutionary sense 70,000 years ago.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A young hunter who risked his life chasing a mammoth outshone all his competitors and won the hand of the local beauty; and we are now stuck with his macho genes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Exactly the same evolutionary logic shapes the lives of pigs, sows and piglets in human-controlled farms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In order to survive and reproduce in the wild, ancient boars needed to roam vast territories, familiarise themselves with their environment and beware of traps and predators.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They further needed to communicate and cooperate with their fellow boars, forming complex groups dominated by old and experienced matriarchs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Evolutionary pressures consequently made wild boars – and even more so wild sows – highly intelligent social animals, characterised by a lively curiosity and strong urges to socialise, play, wander about and explore their surroundings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A sow born with some rare mutation that made her indifferent to her environment and to other boars was unlikely to survive or reproduce.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The descendants of wild boars – domesticated pigs – inherited their intelligence, curiosity and social skills.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like wild boars, domesticated pigs communicate using a rich variety of vocal and olfactory signals: mother sows recognise the unique squeaks of their piglets, whereas two-day-old piglets already differentiate their mother's calls from those of other sows.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Professor Stanley Curtis of the Pennsylvania State University trained two pigs – named Hamlet and Omelette – to control a special joystick with their snouts, and found that the pigs soon rivalled primates in learning and playing simple computer games.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Today most sows in industrial farms don't play computer games.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They are locked by their human masters in tiny gestation crates, usually measuring two metres by sixty centimetres.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The crates have a concrete floor and metal bars, and hardly allow the pregnant sows even to turn around or sleep on their side, never mind walk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After three and a half months in such conditions, the sows are moved to slightly wider crates, where they give birth and nurse their piglets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'weeks' (2x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whereas piglets would naturally suckle for ten to twenty weeks, in industrial farms they are forcibly weaned within two to four weeks, separated from their mother and shipped to be fattened and slaughtered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The mother is immediately impregnated again, and sent back to the gestation crate to start another cycle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The typical sow would go through five to ten such cycles before being slaughtered herself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In recent years the use of crates has been restricted in the European Union and some US states, but the crates are still commonly used in many other countries, and tens of millions of breeding sows pass almost their entire lives in them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The human farmers take care of everything the sow needs in order to survive and reproduce.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She is given enough food, vaccinated against diseases, protected against the elements and artificially inseminated.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "From an objective perspective, the sow no longer needs to explore her surroundings, socialise with other pigs, bond with her piglets or even walk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But from a subjective perspective, the sow still feels very strong urges to do all of these things, and if these urges are not fulfilled she suffers greatly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sows locked in gestation crates typically display acute frustration alternating with extreme despair.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped thousands of generations ago continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer necessary for survival and reproduction in the present. Tragically, the Agricultural Revolution gave humans the power to ensure the survival and reproduction of domesticated animals while ignoring their subjective needs.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Collaborative chapter writing:\n1. Fragment from larger story\n2. Characters/events may lack introduction\n3. Continue with 14 sentences sentences\n4. Mimic Yuval Noah Harari\n5. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy\n6. Elements: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: 🎯 Target word: 'animals' \| Required occurrences: 2]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How can we be sure that animals such as pigs actually have a subjective world of needs, sensations and emotions? Aren't we guilty of humanising animals, i.e. ascribing human qualities to non-human entities, like children believing that dolls feel love and anger?\n\nIn fact, attributing emotions to pigs doesn't humanise them. It 'mammalises' them. For emotions are not a uniquely human quality – they are common to all mammals (as well as to all birds and probably to some reptiles and even fish). All mammals evolved emotional abilities and needs, and from the fact that pigs are mammals we can safely deduce that they have emotions.\n\nIn recent decades life scientists have demonstrated that emotions are not some mysterious spiritual phenomenon that is useful just for writing poetry and composing symphonies. Rather, emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals. What does this mean? Well, let's begin by explaining what an algorithm is. This is of great importance not only because this key concept will reappear in many of the following chapters, but also because the twenty-first century will be dominated by algorithms. 'Algorithm' is arguably the single most important concept in our world. If we want to understand our life and our future, we should make every effort to understand what an algorithm is, and how algorithms are connected with emotions.\n\nAn algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "An algorithm isn't a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For example, if you want to calculate the average between two numbers, you can use a simple algorithm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The algorithm says: 'First step: add the two numbers together. Second step: divide the sum by two.' When you enter the numbers 4 and 8, you get 6. When you enter 117 and 231, you get 174.\n\nA more complex example is a cooking recipe. An algorithm for preparing vegetable soup may tell us:\n\nAnd so forth. You can follow the same algorithm dozens of times, each time using slightly different vegetables, and therefore getting a slightly different soup. But the algorithm remains the same.\n\nA recipe by itself cannot make soup. You need a person to read the recipe and follow the prescribed set of steps. But you can build a machine that embodies this algorithm and follows it automatically. Then you just need to provide the machine with water, electricity and vegetables – and it will prepare the soup by itself. There aren't many soup machines around, but you are probably familiar with beverage vending machines. Such machines usually have a slot for coins, an opening for cups, and rows of buttons.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The first row has buttons for coffee, tea and cocoa. The second row is marked: no sugar, one spoon of sugar, two spoons of sugar. The third row indicates milk, soya milk, no milk. A man approaches the machine, inserts a coin into the slot and presses the buttons marked 'tea', 'one sugar' and 'milk'. The machine kicks into action, following a precise set of steps. It drops a tea bag into a cup, pours boiling water, adds a spoonful of sugar and milk, and ding! A nice cup of tea emerges. This is an algorithm.\n\nOver the last few decades biologists have reached the firm conclusion that the man pressing the buttons and drinking the tea is also an algorithm. A much more complicated algorithm than the vending machine, no doubt, but still an algorithm. Humans are algorithms that produce not cups of tea, but copies of themselves (like a vending machine which, if you press the right combination of buttons, produces another vending machine).\n\nThe algorithms controlling vending machines work through mechanical gears and electric circuits. The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts. And exactly the same kind of algorithms control pigs, baboons, otters and chickens.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Consider, for example, the following survival problem: a baboon spots some bananas hanging on a tree, but also notices a lion lurking nearby.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'problem' 2 time(s) throughout your message", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Should the baboon risk his life for those bananas?\n\nThis boils down to a mathematical problem of calculating probabilities: the probability that the baboon will die of hunger if he does not eat the bananas, versus the probability that the lion will catch the baboon. In order to solve this problem the baboon needs to take into account a lot of data. How far am I from the bananas? How far away is the lion? How fast can I run? How fast can the lion run? Is the lion awake or asleep? Does the lion seem to be hungry or satiated? How many bananas are there? Are they big or small? Green or ripe? In addition to these external data, the baboon must also consider information about conditions within his own body. If he is starving, it makes sense to risk everything for those bananas, no matter the odds. In contrast, if he has just eaten, and the bananas are mere greed, why take any risks at all?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In order to weigh and balance all these variables and probabilities, the baboon requires far more complicated algorithms than the ones controlling automatic vending machines. The prize for making correct calculations is correspondingly greater. The prize is the very survival of the baboon. A timid baboon – one whose algorithms overestimate dangers – will starve to death, and the genes that shaped these cowardly algorithms will perish with him. A rash baboon – one whose algorithms underestimate dangers – will fall prey to the lion, and his reckless genes will also fail to make it to the next generation. These algorithms undergo constant quality control by natural selection. Only animals that calculate probabilities correctly leave offspring behind.\n\nYet this is all very abstract. How exactly does a baboon calculate probabilities? He certainly doesn't draw a pencil from behind his ear, a notebook from a back pocket, and start computing running speeds and energy levels with a calculator. Rather, the baboon's entire body is the calculator. What we call sensations and emotions are in fact algorithms. The baboon feels hunger, he feels fear and trembling at the sight of the lion, and he feels his mouth watering at the sight of the bananas. Within a split second, he experiences a storm of sensations, emotions and desires, which is nothing but the process of calculation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The result will appear as a feeling: the baboon will suddenly feel his spirit rising, his hairs standing on end, his muscles tensing, his chest expanding, and he will inhale a big breath, and 'Forward! I can do it! To the bananas!' Alternatively, he may be overcome by fear, his shoulders will droop, his stomach will turn, his legs will give way, and 'Mama! A lion! Help!' Sometimes the probabilities match so evenly that it is hard to decide. This too will manifest itself as a feeling. The baboon will feel confused and indecisive. 'Yes…No…Yes…No…Damn! I don't know what to do!'\n\nIn order to transmit genes to the next generation, it is not enough to solve survival problems. Animals also need to solve reproduction problems too, and this depends on calculating probabilities. Natural selection evolved passion and disgust as quick algorithms for evaluating reproduction odds. Beauty means 'good chances for having successful offspring'. When a woman sees a man and thinks, 'Wow! He is gorgeous!' and when a peahen sees a peacock and thinks, 'Jesus! What a tail!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "they are doing something similar to the automatic vending machine.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As light reflected from the male's body hits their retinas, extremely powerful algorithms honed by millions of years of evolution kick in.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Within a few milliseconds the algorithms convert tiny cues in the male's external appearance into reproduction probabilities, and reach the conclusion: 'In all likelihood, this is a very healthy and fertile male, with excellent genes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'don't' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If I mate with him, my offspring are also likely to enjoy good health and excellent genes.' Of course, this conclusion is not spelled out in words or numbers, but in the fiery itch of sexual attraction. Peahens, and most women, don't make such calculations with pen and paper. They just feel them.\n\nEven Nobel laureates in economics make only a tiny fraction of their decisions using pen, paper and calculator; 99 per cent of our decisions – including the most important life choices concerning spouses, careers and habitats – are made by the highly refined algorithms we call sensations, emotions and desires.\n\nBecause these algorithms control the lives of all mammals and birds (and probably some reptiles and even fish), when humans, baboons and pigs feel fear, similar neurological processes take place in similar brain areas. It is therefore likely that frightened humans, frightened baboons and frightened pigs have similar experiences.\n\nThere are differences too, of course. Pigs don't seem to experience the extremes of compassion and cruelty that characterise Homo sapiens, nor the sense of wonder that overwhelms a human gazing up at the infinitude of a starry sky. It is likely that there are also opposite examples, of swinish emotions unfamiliar to humans, but I cannot name any, for obvious reasons. However, one core emotion is apparently shared by all mammals: the mother–infant bond. Indeed, it gives mammals their name. The word 'mammal' comes from the Latin mamma, meaning breast. Mammal mothers love their offspring so much that they allow them to suckle from their body.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mammal youngsters, on their side, feel an overwhelming desire to bond with their mothers and stay near them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the wild, piglets, calves and puppies that fail to bond with their mothers rarely survive for long.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Until recently that was true of human children too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Conversely, a sow, cow or bitch that due to some rare mutation does not care about her young may live a long and comfortable life, but her genes will not pass to the next generation. The same logic is true among giraffes, bats, whales and porcupines. We can argue about other emotions, but since mammal youngsters cannot survive without motherly care, it is evident that motherly love and a strong mother–infant bond characterise all mammals.\n\nIt took scientists many years to acknowledge this. Not long ago psychologists doubted the importance of the emotional bond between parents and children even among humans. In the first half of the twentieth century, and despite the influence of Freudian theories, the dominant behaviourist school argued that relations between parents and children were shaped by material feedback; that children needed mainly food, shelter and medical care; and that children bonded with their parents simply because the latter provide these material needs. Children who demanded warmth, hugs and kisses were thought to be 'spoiled'. Childcare experts warned that children who were hugged and kissed by their parents would grow up to be needy, egotistical and insecure adults.\n\nJohn Watson, a leading childcare authority in the 1920s, sternly advised parents, 'Never hug and kiss [your children], never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.' The popular magazine Infant Care explained that the secret of raising children is to maintain discipline and to provide the children's material needs according to a strict daily schedule. A 1929 article instructed parents that if an infant cries out for food before the normal feeding time, 'Do not hold him, nor rock him to stop his crying, and do not nurse him until the exact hour for the feeding comes. It will not hurt the baby, even the tiny baby, to cry.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only in the 1950s and 1960s did a growing consensus of experts abandon these strict behaviourist theories and acknowledge the central importance of emotional needs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a series of famous (and shockingly cruel) experiments, the psychologist Harry Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth, and isolated them in small cages. When given a choice between a metal dummy-mother fitted with a milk bottle, and a soft cloth-covered dummy with no milk, the baby monkeys clung to the barren cloth mother for all they were worth.\n\nThose baby monkeys knew something that John Watson and the experts of Infant Care failed to realise: mammals can't live on food alone. They need emotional bonds too. Millions of years of evolution preprogrammed the monkeys with an overwhelming desire for emotional bonding. Evolution also imprinted them with the assumption that emotional bonds are more likely to be formed with soft furry things than with hard and metallic objects. (This is also why small human children are far more likely to become attached to dolls, blankets and smelly rags than to cutlery, stones or wooden blocks.) The need for emotional bonds is so strong that Harlow's baby monkeys abandoned the nourishing metal dummy and turned their attention to the only object that seemed capable of answering that need. Alas, the cloth-mother never responded to their affection and the little monkeys consequently suffered from severe psychological and social problems, and grew up to be neurotic and asocial adults.\n\nToday we look back with incomprehension at early twentieth-century child-rearing advice. How could experts fail to appreciate that children have emotional needs, and that their mental and physical health depends as much on providing for these needs as on food, shelter and medicines? Yet when it comes to other mammals we keep denying the obvious. Like John Watson and the Infant Care experts, farmers throughout history took care of the material needs of piglets, calves and kids, but tended to ignore their emotional needs. Thus both the meat and dairy industries are based on breaking the most fundamental emotional bond in the mammal kingdom.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Farmers get their breeding sows and dairy cows impregnated again and again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the piglets and calves are separated from their mothers shortly after birth, and often pass their days without ever sucking at her teats or feeling the warm touch of her tongue and body. What Harry Harlow did to a few hundred monkeys, the meat and dairy industries are doing to billions of animals every year.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Fill in the blank marked `<cutout_marker>` with around 33 sentences or so that makes sense in context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "How did farmers justify their behaviour? Whereas hunter-gatherers were seldom aware of the damage they inflicted on the ecosystem, farmers knew perfectly well what they were doing. They knew they were exploiting domesticated animals and subjugating them to human desires and whims. They justified their actions in the name of new theist religions, which mushroomed and spread in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution. Theist religions maintained that the universe is ruled by a group of great gods – or perhaps by a single capital 'G' God. We don't normally associate this idea with agriculture, but at least in their beginnings theist religions were an agricultural enterprise. The theology, mythology and liturgy of religions such as Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity revolved at first around the relationship between humans, domesticated plants and farm animals.\n\nBiblical Judaism, for instance, catered to peasants and shepherds. Most of its commandments dealt with farming and village life, and its major holidays were harvest festivals. People today imagine the ancient temple in Jerusalem as a kind of big synagogue where priests clad in snow-white robes welcomed devout pilgrims, melodious choirs sang psalms and incense perfumed the air. In reality, it looked much more like a cross between a slaughterhouse and a barbecue joint than a modern synagogue. The pilgrims did not come empty-handed. They brought with them a never-ending stream of sheep, goats, chickens and other animals, which were sacrificed at the god's altar and then cooked and eaten. The psalm-singing choirs could hardly be heard over the bellowing and bleating of calves and kids. Priests in bloodstained outfits cut the victims' throats, collected the gushing blood in jars and spilled it over the altar. The perfume of incense mixed with the odours of congealed blood and roasted meat, while swarms of black flies buzzed just about everywhere (see, for example, Numbers 28, Deuteronomy 12, and 1 Samuel 2). A modern Jewish family that celebrates a holiday by having a barbecue on their front lawn is much closer to the spirit of biblical times than an orthodox family that spends the time studying scriptures in a synagogue.\n\nTheist religions, such as biblical Judaism, justified the agricultural economy through new cosmological myths. Animist religions had previously depicted the universe as a grand Chinese opera with a limitless cast of colourful actors. Elephants and oak trees, crocodiles and rivers, mountains and frogs, ghosts and fairies, angels and demons – each had a role in the cosmic opera. Theist religions rewrote the script, turning the universe into a bleak Ibsen drama with just two main characters: man and God. The angels and demons somehow survived the transition, becoming the messengers and servants of the great gods. Yet the rest of the animist cast – all the animals, plants and other natural phenomena – were transformed into silent decor. True, some animals were considered sacred to this or that god, and many gods had animal features: the Egyptian god Anubis had the head of a jackal, and even Jesus Christ was frequently depicted as a lamb. Yet ancient Egyptians could easily tell the difference between Anubis and an ordinary jackal sneaking into the village to hunt chickens, and no Christian butcher ever mistook the lamb under his knife for Jesus.\n\nWe normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. Hitherto Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama, Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved.\n\nThe gods, meanwhile, were given two related roles to play. Firstly, they explained what is so special about Sapiens and why humans should dominate and exploit all other organisms. Christianity, for example, maintained that humans hold sway over the rest of creation because the Creator charged them with that authority. Moreover, according to Christianity, God gave an eternal soul only to humans. Since the fate of this eternal soul is the point of the whole Christ<cutout_marker> the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.\n\nTheist religions nevertheless have certain animal-friendly beliefs. The gods gave humans authority over the animal kingdom, but this authority carried with it some responsibilities. For example, Jews were commanded to allow farm animals to rest on the Sabbath, and whenever possible to avoid causing them unnecessary suffering. (Though whenever interests clashed, human interests always trumped animal interests.)\n\nA Talmudic tale recounts how on the way to the slaughterhouse, a calf escaped and sought refuge with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, one of the founders of rabbinical Judaism. The calf tucked his head under the rabbi's flowing robes and started crying. Yet the rabbi pushed the calf away, saying, 'Go. You were created for that very purpose.' Since the rabbi showed no mercy, God punished him, and he suffered from a painful illness for thirteen years. Then, one day, a servant cleaning the rabbi's house found some newborn rats and began sweeping them out. Rabbi Yehuda rushed to save the helpless creatures, instructing the servant to leave them in peace, because 'God is good to all, and has compassion on all he has made' (Psalms 145:9). Since the rabbi showed compassion to these rats, God showed compassion to the rabbi, and he was cured of his illness.\n\nOther religions, particularly Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, have demonstrated even greater empathy to animals. They emphasise the connection between humans and the rest of the ecosystem, and their foremost ethical commandment has been to avoid killing any living being. Whereas the biblical 'Thou shalt not kill' covered only humans, the ancient Indian principle of ahimsa (non-violence) extends to every sentient being. Jain monks are particularly careful in this regard. They always cover their mouths with a white cloth, lest they inhale an insect, and whenever they walk they carry a broom to gently sweep any ant or beetle from their path.\n\nNevertheless, all agricultural religions – Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism included – found ways to justify human superiority and the exploitation of animals (if not for meat, then for milk and muscle power). They have all claimed that a natural hierarchy of beings entitles humans to control and use other animals, provided that the humans observe certain restrictions. Hinduism, for example, has sanctified cows and forbidden eating beef, but has also provided the ultimate justification for the dairy industry, alleging that cows are generous creatures, and positively yearn to share their milk with humankind.\n\nHumans thus committed themselves to an 'agricultural deal'. According to this deal, cosmic forces gave humans command over other animals, on condition that humans fulfilled certain obligations towards the gods, towards nature and towards the animals themselves. It was easy to believe in the existence of such a cosmic compact, because it reflected the daily routine of farming life.\n\nHunter-gatherers had not seen themselves as superior beings because they were seldom aware of their impact on the ecosystem. A typical band numbered in the dozens, it was surrounded by thousands of wild animals, and its survival depended on understanding and respecting the desires of these animals. Foragers had to constantly ask themselves what deer dream about, and what lions think. Otherwise, they could not hunt the deer, nor escape the lions.\n\nFarmers, in contrast, lived in a world controlled and shaped by human dreams and thoughts. Humans were still subject to formidable natural forces such as storms and earthquakes, but they were far less dependent on the wishes of other animals. A farm boy learned early on to ride a horse, harness a bull, whip a stubborn donkey and lead the sheep to pasture. It was easy and tempting to believe that such everyday activities reflected either the natural order of things or the will of heaven.\n\nIt is no coincidence that the Nayaka of southern India treat elephants, snakes and forest trees as beings equal to humans, but have a very different view of domesticated plants and animals. In the Nayaka language a living being possessing a unique personality is called mansan. When probed by the anthropologist Danny Naveh, they explained that all elephants are mansan. 'We live in the forest, they live in the forest. We are all mansan…So are bears, deer and tigers. All forest animals.' What about cows? 'Cows are different. You have to lead them everywhere.' And chickens? 'They are nothing. They are not mansan.' And forest trees? 'Yes – they live for such a long time.' And tea bushes? 'Oh, these I cultivate so that I can sell the tea leaves and buy what I need from the store. No, they aren't mansan.'\n\nWe should also bear in mind how humans themselves were treated in most agricultural societies. In biblical Israel or medieval China it was common to whip humans, enslave them, torture and execute them. Humans were considered as mere property. Rulers did not dream of asking peasants for their opinions and cared little about their needs. Parents frequently sold their children into slavery, or married them off to the highest bidder. Under such conditions, ignoring the feelings of cows and chickens was hardly surprising.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ian cosmos, and since animals have no soul, they are mere extras. Humans thus became the apex of creation, while all other organisms were pushed to the sidelines.\n\nSecondly, the gods had to mediate between humans and the ecosystem. In the animistic cosmos, everyone talked with everyone directly. If you needed something from the caribou, the fig trees, the clouds or the rocks, you addressed them yourself. In the theist cosmos, all non-human entities were silenced. Consequently you could no longer talk with trees and animals. What to do, then, when you wanted the trees to give more fruits, the cows to give more milk, the clouds to bring more rain and the locusts to stay away from your crops? That's where the gods entered the picture. They promised to supply rain, fertility and protection, provided humans did something in return. This was the essence of the agricultural deal. The gods safeguarded and multiplied farm production, and in exchange humans had to share the produce with the gods. This deal served both parties, at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem.\n\nToday in Nepal, devotees of the goddess Gadhimai celebrate her festival every five years in the village of Bariyapur. A record was set in 2009 when 250,000 animals were sacrificed to the goddess. A local driver explained to a visiting British journalist that 'If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.'\n\nMuch of theist mythology explains the subtle details of this deal. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic recounts that when the gods sent a great deluge to destroy the world, almost all humans and animals perished. Only then did the rash gods realise that nobody remained to make any offerings to them. They became crazed with hunger and distress. Luckily, one human family survived, thanks to the foresight of the god Enki, who instructed his devotee Utnapishtim to take shelter in a large wooden ark along with his relatives and a menagerie of animals. When the deluge subsided and this Mesopotamian Noah emerged from his ark, the first thing he did was sacrifice some animals to the gods. Then, tells the epic, all the great gods rushed to the spot: 'The gods smelled the savour / the gods smelled the sweet savour / the gods swarmed like flies around the offering.' The biblical story of the deluge (written more than 1,000 years after the Mesopotamian version) also reports that immediately upon leaving the ark, 'Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: Never again will I curse the ground because of humans' (Genesis 8:20–1).\n\nThis deluge story became a founding myth of the agricultural world. It is possible of course to give it a modern environmentalist spin. The deluge could teach us that our actions can ruin the entire ecosystem, and humans are divinely charged with protecting the rest of creation. Yet traditional interpretations saw the deluge as proof of human supremacy and animal worthlessness. According to these interpretations, Noah was instructed to save the whole ecosystem in order to protect the common interests of gods and humans rather than the interests of the animals. Non-human organisms have no intrinsic value, and exist solely for our sake.\n\nAfter all, when 'the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become' He resolved to 'wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them' (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY. PARAMETERS: 6 sentences sentences, character continuity, history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rise of modern science and industry brought about the next revolution in human–animal relations. During the Agricultural Revolution humankind silenced animals and plants, and turned the animist grand opera into a dialogue between man and gods. During the Scientific Revolution humankind silenced the gods too. The world was now a one-man show. Humankind stood alone on an empty stage, talking to itself, negotiating with no one and acquiring enormous powers without any obligations. Having deciphered the mute laws of physics, chemistry and biology, humankind now does with them as it pleases.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When an archaic hunter went out to the savannah, he asked the help of the wild bull, and the bull demanded something of the hunter.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "user note just fyi, Required word frequency: 'department' (2x)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When an ancient farmer wanted his cows to produce lots of milk, he asked some great heavenly god for help, and the god stipulated his conditions. When the white-coated staff in Nestlé's Research and Development department want to increase dairy production, they study genetics – and the genes don't ask for anything in return.\n\nBut just as the hunters and farmers had their myths, so do the people in the R&D department. Their most famous myth shamelessly plagiarises the legend of the Tree of Knowledge and the Garden of Eden, but transports the action to the garden at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. According to this myth, Isaac Newton was sitting there under an apple tree when a ripe apple dropped on his head. Newton began wondering why the apple fell straight downwards, rather than sideways or upwards.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His enquiry led him to discover gravity and the laws of Newtonian mechanics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Newton's story turns the Tree of Knowledge myth on its head. In the Garden of Eden the serpent initiates the drama, tempting humans to sin, thereby bringing the wrath of God down upon them. Adam and Eve are a plaything for serpent and God alike. In contrast, in the Garden of Woolsthorpe man is the sole agent. Though Newton himself was a deeply religious Christian who devoted far more time to studying the Bible than the laws of physics, the Scientific Revolution that he helped launch pushed God to the sidelines. When Newton's successors came to write their Genesis myth, they had no use for either God or serpent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Garden of Woolsthorpe is run by blind laws of nature, and the initiative to decipher these laws is strictly human.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The story may begin with an apple falling on Newton's head, but the apple did not do it on purpose.\n\nIn the Garden of Eden myth, humans are punished for their curiosity and for their wish to gain knowledge. God expels them from Paradise. In the Garden of Woolsthorpe myth, nobody punishes Newton – just the opposite. Thanks to his curiosity humankind gains a better understanding of the universe, becomes more powerful and takes another step towards the technological paradise. Untold numbers of teachers throughout the world recount the Newton myth to encourage curiosity, implying that if only we gain enough knowledge, we can create paradise here on earth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, God is present even in the Newton myth: Newton himself is God.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When biotechnology, nanotechnology and the other fruits of science ripen, Homo sapiens will attain divine powers and come full circle back to the biblical Tree of Knowledge. Archaic hunter-gatherers were just another species of animal. Farmers saw themselves as the apex of creation. Scientists will upgrade us into gods.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The text has a missing section marked as `<\|missing\|>`. Give me about seventy-seven words worth that would fit there.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions, the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods. While theists worship theos (Greek for 'god'), humanists worship humans. The founding idea of humanist religions such as liberalism, communism and Nazism is that Homo sapiens has some unique and sacred essence that is the source of all meaning and authority in the universe. Everything that happens in the cosmos is judged to be good or bad according to its impact on Homo sapiens.\n\nWhereas theism justified traditional agriculture in the name of God, humanism has justified modern industrial farming in the name of Man. Industrial farming sanctifies human needs, whims and wishes, while disregarding everything else. Industrial farming has no real interest in animals, which don't share the sanctity of human nature. And it has no use for gods, because modern science and technology give humans powers that far exceed those of the ancient gods. Science enables modern firms to subjugate cows, pigs and chickens to more extreme conditions than those prevailing in traditional agricultural societies.\n\nIn ancient Egypt, in the Roman Empire or in medieval China, humans had only a rudimental understanding of biochemistry, genetics, zoology and epidemiology. Consequently, their powers of manipulation were limited. In those days, pigs, cows and chickens ran free among the houses, and searched for edible treasures in the rubbish heap and in the nearby woods. If an ambitious peasant had tried to confine thousands of animals in a crowded coop, a deadly epidemic would probably have resulted, wiping out all the animals as well as many of the villagers. No priest, shaman or god could have prevented it.\n\nBut once modern science deciphered the secrets of epidemics, pathogens and antibiotics, industrial coops, pens and pigsties became feasible. With the help of vaccinations, medications, hormones, pesticides, central air-conditioning systems and automatic feeders, it is now possible to pack tens of thousands of pigs, cows or chickens into neat rows of cramped cages, and produce meat, milk and eggs with unprecedented efficiency.\n\nIn recent years, as people began to rethink human–animal relations, such practices have come under increasing criticism. We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one. If and when computer programs attain superhuman intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing these programs more than we value humans? Would it be okay, for example, for an artificial intelligence to exploit humans and even kill them to further its own needs and desires? If it should never be allowed to do that, despite its superior intelligence and power, why is it ethical for humans to exploit and kill pigs? Do humans have some magical spark, in addition to higher intelligence and greater power, which distinguishes them<\|missing\|>ely is it that non-human entities will ever rival and surpass us?\n\nThe next chapter will examine the nature and power of Homo sapiens, not only in order to comprehend further our relations with other animals, but also to appreciate what the future might hold for us, and what relations between humans and superhumans might look like.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " from pigs, chickens, chimpanzees and computer programs alike? If yes, where did that spark come from, and why are we certain that an AI could never acquire it? If there is no such spark, would there be any reason to continue assigning special value to human life even after computers surpass humans in intelligence and power? Indeed, what exactly is it about humans that make us so intelligent and powerful in the first place, and how lik", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "See that `<\|missing_text\|>` in the text? Replace it with just thirty-seven words.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "There is no doubt that Homo sapiens is the most powerful species in the world. Homo sapiens also likes to think that it enjoys a superior moral status, and that human life has much greater value than the lives of pigs, elephants or wolves. This is less obvious. Does might make right? Is human life more precious than porcine life simply because the human collective is more powerful than the pig collective? The United States is far mightier than Afghanistan; does this imply that American lives have greater intrinsic value than Afghan lives?\n\nIn practice, American lives are more valued. Far more money is invested in the education, health and safety of the average American than of the average Afghan. Killing an American citizen creates a far greater international outcry than killing an Afghan citizen. Yet it is generally accepted that this is no more than an unjust result of the geopolitical balance of power. Afghanistan may have far less clout than the USA, yet the life of a child in the mountains of Tora Bora is considered every bit as sacred as the life of a child in Beverly Hills.\n\nIn contrast, when we privilege human children over piglets, we want to believe that this reflects something deeper than the ecological balance of power. We want to believe that human lives really are superior in some fundamental way. We Sapiens love telling ourselves that we enjoy some magical quality that not only accounts for our immense power, but also gives moral justification for our privileged status. What is this unique human spark?\n\nThe traditional monotheist answer is that only Sapiens have eternal souls. Whereas the body decays and rots, the soul journeys on towards salvation or damnation, and will experience either everlasting joy in paradise or an eternity of misery in hell. Since pigs and other animals have no soul, they don't take part in this cosmic drama. They live only for a few years, and then die and fade into nothingness. We should therefore care far more about eternal human souls than about ephemeral pigs.\n\nThis is no kindergarten fairy tale, but an extremely powerful myth that continues to shape the lives of billions of humans and animals in the early twenty-first century. The belief that humans have eternal souls whereas animals are just evanescent bodies is a central pillar of our legal, political and economic system. It explains why, for example, it is perfectly okay for humans to kill animals for food, or even just for the fun of it.\n\nHowever, our latest scientific discoveries flatly contradict this monotheist myth. True, laboratory experiments confirm the accuracy of one part of the myth: just as monotheist religions say, animals have no souls. All the careful studies and painstaking examinations have failed to discover any trace of a soul in pigs, rats or rhesus monkeys. Alas, the same laboratory experiments undermine the second and far more important part of the monotheist myth, namely, that humans do have a soul. Scientists have subjected Homo sapiens to tens of thousands of bizarre experiments, and looked into every nook in our hearts and every cranny in our brains. But they have so far discovered no magical spark. There is zero scientific evidence that in contrast to pigs, Sapiens have souls.\n\nIf that were all, we could well argue that scientists just need to keep looking. If they haven't found the soul yet, it is because they haven't looked carefully enough. Yet <\|missing_text\|>hatred that the theory of evolution inspires among devout monotheists.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the life sciences doubt the existence of soul not just due to lack of evidence, but rather because the very idea of soul contradicts the most fundamental principles of evolution. This contradiction is responsible for the unbridled ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "continue with thirteen sentences. keep character dynamics. themes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'whereas' 3 time(s) in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per cent believe that God created humans in their current form sometime during the last 10,000 years, just as the Bible says. Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species.\n\nThough schools evidently do a very poor job teaching evolution, religious zealots still insist that it should not be taught at all. Alternatively, they demand that children must also be taught the theory of intelligent design, according to which all organisms were created by the design of some higher intelligence (aka God). 'Teach them both theories,' say the zealots, 'and let the kids decide for themselves.'\n\nWhy does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics? How come politicians don't ask that kids be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? After all, Darwin's ideas seem at first sight far less threatening than the monstrosities of Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple – not to say humdrum – idea. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, that something can appear out of nothing, and that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. This makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Why?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The theory of relativity makes nobody angry, because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care? In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless want to believe that each human possesses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and can survive even death intact.\n\nThe literal meaning of the word 'individual' is 'something that cannot be divided'. That I am an 'in-dividual' implies that my true self is a holistic entity rather than an assemblage of separate parts. This indivisible essence allegedly endures from one moment to the next without losing or absorbing anything. My body and brain undergo a constant process of change, as neurons fire, hormones flow and muscles contract. My personality, wishes and relationships never stand still, and may be completely transformed over years and decades. But underneath it all I remain the same person from birth to death – and hopefully beyond death as well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unfortunately, the theory of evolution rejects the idea that my true self is some indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal essence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "According to the theory of evolution, all biological entities – from elephants and oak trees to cells and DNA molecules – are composed of smaller and simpler parts that ceaselessly combine and separate. Elephants and cells have evolved gradually, as a result of new combinations and splits. Something that cannot be divided or changed cannot have come into existence through natural selection.\n\nThe human eye, for example, is an extremely complex system made of numerous smaller parts such as the lens, the cornea and the retina. The eye did not pop out of nowhere complete with all these components. Rather, it evolved step by tiny step through millions of years. Our eye is very similar to the eye of Homo erectus, who lived 1 million years ago. It is somewhat less similar to the eye of Australopithecus, who lived 5 million years ago. It is very different from the eye of Dryolestes, who lived 150 million years ago. And it seems to have nothing in common with the unicellular organisms that inhabited our planet hundreds of millions of years ago.\n\nYet even unicellular organisms have tiny organelles that enable the microorganism to distinguish light from darkness, and move towards one or the other. The path leading from such archaic sensors to the human eye is long and winding, but if you have hundreds of millions of years to spare, you can certainly cover the entire path, step by step. You can do that because the eye is composed of many different parts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If every few generations a small mutation slightly changes one of these parts – say, the cornea becomes a bit more curved – after millions of generations these changes can result in a human eye.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If the eye were a holistic entity, devoid of any parts, it could never have evolved by natural selection.\n\nThat's why the theory of evolution cannot accept the idea of souls, at least if by 'soul' we mean something indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal. Such an entity cannot possibly result from a step-by-step evolution. Natural selection could produce a human eye, because the eye has parts. But the soul has no parts. If the Sapiens soul evolved step by step from the Erectus soul, what exactly were these steps? Is there some part of the soul that is more developed in Sapiens than in Erectus? But the soul has no parts.\n\nYou might argue that human souls did not evolve, but appeared one bright day in the fullness of their glory. But when exactly was that bright day? When we look closely at the evolution of humankind, it is embarrassingly difficult to find it. Every human that ever existed came into being as a result of male sperm inseminating a female egg. Think of the first baby to possess a soul.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That baby was very similar to her mother and father, except that she had a soul and they didn't.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Our biological knowledge can certainly explain the birth of a baby whose cornea was a bit more curved than her parents' corneas. A slight mutation in a single gene can account for that. But biology cannot explain the birth of a baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have even a shred of a soul. Is a single mutation, or even several mutations, enough to give an animal an essence secure against all changes, including even death?\n\nHence the existence of souls cannot be squared with the theory of evolution. Evolution means change, and is incapable of producing everlasting entities. From an evolutionary perspective, the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is the vehicle of mutation rather than the seat of eternity. This terrifies large numbers of people, who prefer to reject the theory of evolution rather than give up their souls.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Got a text with a `<\|missing\|>` shaped hole in it. Patch it up with about twelve sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another story employed to justify human superiority says that of all the animals on earth, only Homo sapiens has a conscious mind. Mind is something very different from soul. The mind isn't some mystical eternal entity. Nor is it an organ such as the eye or the brain. Rather, the mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger and love. These mental experiences are made of interlinked sensations, emotions and thoughts, which flash for a brief moment, and immediately disappear. Then other experiences flicker and vanish, arising for an instant and passing away. (When reflecting on it, we often try to sort the experiences into distinct categories such as sensations, emotions and thoughts, but in actuality they are all mingled together.) This frenzied collection of experiences constitutes the stream of consciousness. Unlike the everlasting soul, the mind has many parts, it constantly changes, and there is no reason to think it is eternal.\n\nThe soul is a story that some people accept while others reject. The stream of consciousness, in contrast, is the concrete reality we directly witness every moment. It is the surest thing in the world. You cannot doubt its existence. Even when we are consumed by doubt and ask ourselves: 'Do subjective experiences really exist?' we can be certain that we are experiencing doubt.\n\nWhat exactly are the conscious experiences that constitute the flow of the mind? Every subjective experience has two fundamental characteristics: sensation and desire. Robots and computers have no consciousness because despite their myriad abilities they feel nothing and crave nothing. A robot may have an energy sensor that signals to its central processing unit when the battery is about to run out. The robot may then move towards an electrical socket, plug itself in and recharge its battery. However, throughout this process the robot doesn't experience anything. In contrast, a human being depleted of energy feels hunger and craves to stop this unpleasant sensation. That's why we say that humans are conscious beings and robots aren't, and why it is a crime to make people work until they collapse from hunger and exhaustion, whereas making robots work until their batteries run out carries no moral opprobrium.\n\nAnd what about animals? Are they conscious? Do they have subjective experiences? Is it okay to force a horse to work until he collapses from exhaustion? As noted earlier, the life sciences currently argue that all mammals and birds, and at least some reptiles and fish, have sensations and emotions. However, the most up-to-date theories also maintain that sensations and emotions are biochemical data-processing algorithms. Since we know that robots and computers process data without having any subjective experiences, maybe it works the same with animals? Indeed, we know that even in humans many sensory and emotional brain circuits can process data and initiate actions completely unconsciously. So perhaps behind all the sensations and emotions we ascribe to animals – hunger, fear, love and loyalty – lurk only unconscious algorithms rather than subjective experiences?\n\nThis theory was upheld by the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes. In the seventeenth century Descartes maintained that only humans feel and crave, whereas all other animals are mindless automata, akin to a robot or a vending machine. When a man kicks a dog, the dog experiences nothing. The dog flinches and howls automatically, just like a humming vending machine that makes a cup of coffee without feeling or wanting anything.\n\nThis theory was widely accepted in Descartes' day. Seventeenth-century doctors and scholars dissected live dogs and observed the working of their internal organs, without either anaesthetics or scruples. They didn't see anything wrong with that, just as we don't see anything wrong in opening the lid of a vending machine and observing its gears and conveyors. In the early twenty-first century there are still plenty of people who argue that animals have no consciousness, or at most, that they have a very different and inferior type of consciousness.\n\nIn order to decide whether animals have conscious minds similar to our own, we must first get a better understanding of how minds function, and what role they play. These are extremely difficult questions, but it is worthwhile to devote some time to them, because the mind will be the hero of several subsequent chapters. We won't be able to grasp the full implications of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence if we don't know what minds are. Hence let's leave aside for a moment the particular question of animal minds, and examine what science knows about minds and consciousness in general. We will focus on examples taken from the study of human consciousness – which is more accessible to us – and later on return to animals and ask whether what's true of humans is also true of our furry and feathery cousins.\n\nTo be frank, science knows surprisingly little about mind and consciousness. Current orthodoxy holds that consciousness is created by electrochemical reactions in the brain, and that mental experiences fulfil some essential data-processing function. However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical reactions and electrical currents in the brain creates the subjective experience of pain, anger or love. Perhaps we will have a solid explanation in ten or fifty years. But as of 2016, we have no such explanation, and we had better be clear about that.\n\nUsing fMRI scans, implanted electrodes and other sophisticated gadgets, scientists have certainly identified correlations and even causal links between electrical currents in the brain and various subjective experiences. Just by looking at brain activity, scientists can know whether you are awake, dreaming or in deep sleep. They can briefly flash an image in front of your eyes, just at the threshold of conscious perception, and determine (without asking you) whether you have become aware of the image or not. They have even managed to link individual brain neurons with specific mental content, discovering for example a 'Bill Clinton' neuron and a 'Homer Simpson' neuron. When the 'Bill Clinton' neuron is on, the person is thinking of the forty-second president of the USA; show the person an image of Homer Simpson, and the eponymous neuron is bound to ignite.\n\nMore broadly, scientists know that if an electric storm arises in a given brain area, you probably feel angry. If this storm subsides and a different area lights up – you are experiencing love. Indeed, scientists can even induce feelings of anger or love by electrically stimulating the right neurons. But how on earth does the movement of electrons from one place to the other translate into a subjective image of Bill Clinton, or a subjective feeling of anger or love?\n\nThe most common explanation points out that the brain is a highly complex system, with more than 80 billion neurons connected into numerous intricate webs. When billions of neurons send billions of electric signals back and forth, subjective experiences emerge. Even though the sending and receiving of each electric signal is a simple biochemical phenomenon, the interaction among all these signals creates something far more complex – the stream of consciousness. We observe the same dynamic in many other fields. The movement of a single car is a simple action, but when millions of cars move and interact simultaneously, traffic jams emerge. The buying and selling of a single share is simple enough, but when millions of traders buy and sell millions of shares it can lead to economic crises that dumbfound even the experts.\n\nYet this explanation explains nothing. It merely affirms that the problem i<\|missing\|>w do these billions of events come together to create my concrete feeling of anger?'\n\nWhen thousands of cars slowly edge their way through London, we call that a traffic jam, but it doesn't create some great Londonian consciousness that hovers high above Piccadilly and says to itself, 'Blimey, I feel jammed!' When millions of people sell billions of shares, we call that an economic crisis, but no great Wall Street spirit grumbles, 'Shit, I feel I am in crisis.' When trillions of water molecules coalesce in the sky we call that a cloud, but no cloud consciousness emerges to announce, 'I feel rainy.' How is it, then, that when billions of electric signals move around in my brain, a mind emerges that feels 'I am furious!'? As of 2016, we have absolutely no idea.\n\nHence if this discussion has left you confused and perplexed, you are in very good company. The best scientists too are a long way from deciphering the enigma of mind and consciousness. One of the wonderful things about science is that when scientists don't know something, they can try out all kinds of theories and conjunctures, but in the end they can just admit their ignorance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "s very complicated. It does not offer any insight into how one kind of phenomenon (billions of electric signals moving from here to there) creates a very different kind of phenomenon (subjective experiences of anger or love). The analogy to other complex processes such as traffic jams and economic crises is flawed. What creates a traffic jam? If you follow a single car, you will never understand it. The jam results from the interactions among many cars. Car A influences the movement of car B, which blocks the path of car C, and so on. Yet if you map the movements of all the relevant cars, and how each impacts the other, you will get a complete account of the traffic jam. It would be pointless to ask, 'But how do all these movements create the traffic jam?' For 'traffic jam' is simply the abstract term we humans decided to use for this particular collection of events.\n\nIn contrast, 'anger' isn't an abstract term we have decided to use as a shorthand for billions of electric brain signals. Anger is an extremely concrete experience which people were familiar with long before they knew anything about electricity. When I say, 'I am angry!' I am pointing to a very tangible feeling. If you describe how a chemical reaction in a neuron results in an electric signal, and how billions of similar reactions result in billions of additional signals, it is still worthwhile to ask, 'But ho", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand the story by adding three sentences in the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre. Match existing character context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Scientists don't know how a collection of electric brain signals creates subjective experiences. Even more crucially, they don't know what could be the evolutionary benefit of such a phenomenon. It is the greatest lacuna in our understanding of life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Humans have feet, because for millions of generations feet enabled our ancestors to chase rabbits and escape lions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Humans have eyes, because for countless millennia eyes enabled our forebears to see whither the rabbit was heading and whence the lion was coming. But why do humans have subjective experiences of hunger and fear?\n\nNot long ago, biologists gave a very simple answer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Subjective experiences are essential for our survival, because if we didn't feel hunger or fear we would not have bothered to chase rabbits and flee lions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Upon seeing a lion, why did a man flee? Well, he was frightened, so he ran away. Subjective experiences explained human actions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet today scientists provide a much more detailed explanation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When a man sees a lion, electric signals move from the eye to the brain. The incoming signals stimulate certain neurons, which react by firing off more signals. These stimulate other neurons down the line, which fire in their turn.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If enough of the right neurons fire at a sufficiently rapid rate, commands are sent to the adrenal glands to flood the body with adrenaline, the heart is instructed to beat faster, while neurons in the motor centre send signals down to the leg muscles, which begin to stretch and contract, and the man runs away from the lion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ironically, the better we map this process, the harder it becomes to explain conscious feelings. The better we understand the brain, the more redundant the mind seems. If the entire system works by electric signals passing from here to there, why the hell do we also need to feel fear?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If a chain of electrochemical reactions leads all the way from the nerve cells in the eye to the movements of leg muscles, why add subjective experiences to this chain?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What do they do? Countless domino pieces can fall one after the other without any need of subjective experiences. Why do neurons need feelings in order to stimulate one another, or in order to tell the adrenal gland to start pumping?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Indeed, 99 per cent of bodily activities, including muscle movement and hormonal secretions, take place without any need of conscious feelings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So why do the neurons, muscles and glands need such feelings in the remaining 1 per cent of cases?\n\nYou might argue that we need a mind because the mind stores memories, makes plans and autonomously sparks completely new images and ideas. It doesn't just respond to outside stimuli.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For example, when a man sees a lion, he doesn't react automatically to the sight of the predator.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He remembers that a year ago a lion ate his aunt. He imagines how he would feel if a lion tore him to pieces. He contemplates the fate of his orphaned children.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's why he flees.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Indeed, many chain reactions begin with the mind's own initiative rather than with any immediate external stimulus. Thus a memory of some prior lion attack might spontaneously pop up in a man's mind, setting him thinking about the danger posed by lions. He then gets all the tribespeople together and they brainstorm novel methods for scaring lions away.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But wait a moment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'exist' exactly 2 times in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What are all these memories, imaginations and thoughts? Where do they exist? According to current biological theories, our memories, imaginations and thoughts don't exist in some higher immaterial field.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rather, they too are avalanches of electric signals fired by billions of neurons.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hence even when we figure in memories, imaginations and thoughts, we are still left with a series of electrochemical reactions that pass through billions of neurons, ending with the activity of adrenal glands and leg muscles.\n\nIs there even a single step on this long and twisting journey where, between the action of one neuron and the reaction of the next, the mind intervenes and decides whether the second neuron should fire or not? Is there any material movement, of even a single electron, that is caused by the subjective experience of fear rather than by the prior movement of some other particle?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If there is no such movement – and if every electron moves because another electron moved earlier – why do we need to experience fear? We have no clue.\n\nPhilosophers have encapsulated this riddle in a trick question: what happens in the mind that doesn't happen in the brain?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If nothing happens in the mind except what happens in our massive network of neurons – then why do we need the mind?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'thought' \| Required occurrences: 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If something does indeed happen in the mind over and above what happens in the neural network – where the hell does it happen? Suppose I ask you what Homer Simpson thought about Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. You have probably never thought about this before, so your mind now needs to fuse two previously unrelated memories, perhaps conjuring up an image of Homer drinking beer while watching the president give his 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' speech.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where does this fusion take place?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] Word restriction: Use 'metaphor' 2 time(s) only [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some brain scientists argue that it happens in the 'global workspace' created by the interaction of many neurons. Yet the word 'workspace' is just a metaphor. What is the reality behind the metaphor?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where do the different pieces of information actually meet and fuse?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'place' must appear 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "According to current theories, it certainly doesn't take place in some Platonic fifth dimension. Rather, it takes place, say, where two previously unconnected neurons suddenly start firing signals to one another. A new synapse is formed between the Bill Clinton neuron and the Homer Simpson neuron.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But if so, why do we need the conscious experience of memory over and above the physical event of the two neurons connecting?\n\nWe can pose the same riddle in mathematical terms. Present-day dogma holds that organisms are algorithms, and that algorithms can be represented in mathematical formulas.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You can use numbers and mathematical symbols to write the series of steps a vending machine takes to prepare a cup of tea, and the series of steps a brain takes when it is alarmed by the approach of a lion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If so, and if conscious experiences fulfil some important function, they must have a mathematical representation. For they are an essential part of the algorithm. When we write the fear algorithm, and break 'fear' down into a series of precise calculations, we should be able to point out: 'Here, step number ninety-three in the calculation process – this is the subjective experience of fear!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But is there any algorithm in the huge realm of mathematics that contains a subjective experience?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: Word restriction: Use 'order' 2 time(s) only]]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So far, we don't know of any such algorithm. Despite the vast knowledge we have gained in the fields of mathematics and computer science, none of the data-processing systems we have created needs subjective experiences in order to function, and none feels pain, pleasure, anger or love.\n\nMaybe we need subjective experiences in order to think about ourselves?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "An animal wandering the savannah and calculating its chances of survival and reproduction must represent its own actions and decisions to itself, and sometimes communicate them to other animals as well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As the brain tries to create a model of its own decisions, it gets trapped in an infinite digression, and abracadabra!", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Out of this loop, consciousness pops out.\n\nFifty years ago this might have sounded plausible, but not in 2016. Several corporations, such as Google and Tesla, are engineering autonomous cars that already cruise our roads.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The algorithms controlling the autonomous car make millions of calculations each second concerning other cars, pedestrians, traffic lights and potholes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The autonomous car successfully stops at red lights, bypasses obstacles and keeps a safe distance from other vehicles – without feeling any fear. The car also needs to take itself into account and to communicate its plans and desires to the surrounding vehicles, because if it decides to swerve to the right, doing so will impact on their behaviour. The car does all that without any problem – but without any consciousness either.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The autonomous car isn't special.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many other computer programs make allowances for their own actions, yet none of them has developed consciousness, and none feels or desires anything.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Complete the text by replacing `<cutout_marker>` with around four hundred and thirty-five characters in total.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "If we cannot explain the mind, and if we don't know what function it fulfils, why not just discard it? The history of science is replete with abandoned concepts and theories. For instance, early modern scientists who tried to account for the movement of light postulated the existence of a substance called ether, which supposedly fills the entire universe. Light was thought to be waves of ether. However, scientists failed to find any empirical evidence for the existence of ether, whereas they did come up with alternative and better theories of light. Consequently, they threw ether into the dustbin of science.\n\nSimilarly, for thousands of years humans used God to explain numerous natural phenomena. What causes lightning to strike? God. What makes the rain fall? God. How did life on earth begin? God did it. Over the last few centuries scientists have not discovered any empirical evidence for God's existence, while they did find much more detailed explanations for lightning strikes, rain and the origins of life. Consequently, with the exception of a few subfields of philosophy, no article in any peer-review scientific journal takes God's existence seriously. Historians don't argue that the Allies won the Second World War because God was on their side; economists don't blame God for the 1929 economic crisis; and geologists don't invoke His will to explain tectonic plate movements.\n\nThe same fate has befallen the soul. For thousands of years people believed that all our actions and decisions emanate from our souls. Yet in the absence of any supporting evidence, and given the existence of much more detailed alternative theories, the life sciences have ditched the soul. As private individuals, many biologists and doctors may go on believing in souls. Yet they never write about them in serious scientific journals.\n\nMaybe the mind should join the soul, God and ether in the dustbin of science? After all, no one has ever seen experiences of pain or love through a microscope, and we have a very detailed biochemical explanation for pain and love that leaves no room for subjective experiences. However, there is a crucial difference between mind and soul (as well as between mind and God). Whereas the existence of eternal souls is pure conjecture, the experience of pain is a direct and very tangible reality. When I step on a nail, I can be 100 per cent certain that I feel pain (even if I so far lack a scientific explanation for it). In contrast, I cannot be certain that if the wound becomes infected and I die of gangrene, my soul will continue to exist. It's a very interesting and comforting story which I would be happy to believe, but I have no direct evidence for its veracity. Since all scientists constantly experience subjective feelings such as pain and doubt, they cannot deny their existence.\n\nAnother way to dismiss mind and consciousness is to deny their relevance rather than their existence. Some scientists – such as Daniel Dennett and Stanislas Dehaene – argue that all relevant questions can be answered by studying brain activities, without any recourse to subjective experiences. So scientists can safely delete 'mind', 'consciousness' and 'subjective experiences' from their vocabulary and articles. However, as we shall see in the following chapters, the whole edifice of modern politics and ethics is built upon subjective experiences, and few ethical dilemmas can be solved by referring strictly to brain activities. For example, what's wrong with torture or rape? From a purely neurological perspective, when a hum<cutout_marker>without reference to any subjective experience.\n\nFinally, some scientists concede that consciousness is real and may actually have great moral and political value, but that it fulfils no biological function whatsoever. Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes. Jet engines roar loudly, but the noise doesn't propel the aeroplane forward. Humans don't need carbon dioxide, but each and every breath fills the air with more of the stuff. Similarly, consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn't do anything. It is just there. If this is true, it implies that all the pain and pleasure experienced by billions of creatures for millions of years is just mental pollution. This is certainly a thought worth thinking, even if it isn't true. But it is quite amazing to realise that as of 2016, this is the best theory of consciousness that contemporary science has to offer us.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "an is tortured or raped certain biochemical reactions happen in the brain, and various electrical signals move from one bunch of neurons to another. What could possibly be wrong with that? Most modern people have ethical qualms about torture and rape because of the subjective experiences involved. If any scientist wants to argue that subjective experiences are irrelevant, their challenge is to explain why torture or rape are wrong ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY. PARAMETERS: 6 sentences sentences, character continuity, history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Maybe the life sciences view the problem from the wrong angle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They believe that life is all about data processing, and that organisms are machines for making calculations and taking decisions. However, this analogy between organisms and algorithms might mislead us. In the nineteenth century, scientists described brains and minds as if they were steam engines. Why steam engines? Because that was the leading technology of the day, which powered trains, ships and factories, so when humans tried to explain life, they assumed it must work according to analogous principles. Mind and body are made of pipes, cylinders, valves and pistons that build and release pressure, thereby producing movements and actions. Such thinking had a deep influence even on Freudian psychology, which is why much of our psychological jargon is still replete with concepts borrowed from mechanical engineering.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Consider, for example, the following Freudian argument: 'Armies harness the sex drive to fuel military aggression.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The army recruits young men just when their sexual drive is at its peak.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The army limits the soldiers' opportunities of actually having sex and releasing all that pressure, which consequently accumulates inside them. The army then redirects this pent-up pressure and allows it to be released in the form of military aggression.' This is exactly how a steam engine works. You trap boiling steam inside a closed container. The steam builds up more and more pressure, until suddenly you open a valve, and release the pressure in a predetermined direction, harnessing it to propel a train or a loom. Not only in armies, but in all fields of activity, we often complain about the pressure building up inside us, and we fear that unless we 'let off some steam', we might explode.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the twenty-first century it sounds childish to compare the human psyche to a steam engine.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Today we know of a far more sophisticated technology – the computer – so we explain the human psyche as if it were a computer processing data rather than a steam engine regulating pressure.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But this new analogy may turn out to be just as naïve. After all, computers have no minds. They don't crave anything even when they have a bug, and the Internet doesn't feel pain even when authoritarian regimes sever entire countries from the Web. So why use computers as a model for understanding the mind?\n\nWell, are we really sure that computers have no sensations or desires? And even if they haven't got any at present, perhaps once they become complex enough they might develop consciousness?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If that were to happen, how could we ascertain it? When computers replace our bus driver, our teacher and our shrink, how could we determine whether they have feelings or whether they are just a collection of mindless algorithms?\n\nWhen it comes to humans, we are today capable of differentiating between conscious mental experiences and non-conscious brain activities. Though we are far from understanding consciousness, scientists have succeeded in identifying some of its electrochemical signatures. To do so the scientists started with the assumption that whenever humans report that they are conscious of something, they can be believed. Based on this assumption the scientists could then isolate specific brain patterns that appear every time humans report being conscious, but that never appear during unconscious states.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This has allowed the scientists to determine, for example, whether a seemingly vegetative stroke victim has completely lost consciousness, or has merely lost control of his body and speech. If the patient's brain displays the telltale signatures of consciousness, he is probably conscious, even though he cannot move or speak. Indeed, doctors have recently managed to communicate with such patients using fMRI imaging. They ask the patients yes/no questions, telling them to imagine themselves playing tennis if the answer is yes, and to visualise the location of their home if the answer is no. The doctors can then observe how the motor cortex lights up when patients imagine playing tennis (meaning 'yes'), whereas 'no' is indicated by the activation of brain areas responsible for spatial memory.\n\nThis is all very well for humans, but what about computers?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Since silicon-based computers have very different structures to carbon-based human neural networks, the human signatures of consciousness may not be relevant to them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We seem to be trapped in a vicious circle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Starting with the assumption that we can believe humans when they report that they are conscious, we can identify the signatures of human consciousness, and then use these signatures to 'prove' that humans are indeed conscious.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But if an artificial intelligence self-reports that it is conscious, should we just believe it?\n\nSo far, we have no good answer to this problem. Already thousands of years ago philosophers realised that there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone other than oneself has a mind. Indeed, even in the case of other humans, we just assume they have consciousness – we cannot know that for certain. Perhaps I am the only being in the entire universe who feels anything, and all other humans and animals are just mindless robots? Perhaps I am dreaming, and everyone I meet is just a character in my dream?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps I am trapped inside a virtual world, and all the beings I see are merely simulations?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "According to current scientific dogma, everything I experience is the result of electrical activity in my brain, and it should therefore be theoretically feasible to simulate an entire virtual world that I could not possibly distinguish from the 'real' world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some brain scientists believe that in the not too distant future, we shall actually do such things.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] /set_word_count: world, frequency: 4 [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, maybe it has already been done – to you? For all you know, the year might be 2216 and you are a bored teenager immersed inside a 'virtual world' game that simulates the primitive and exciting world of the early twenty-first century. Once you acknowledge the mere feasibility of this scenario, mathematics leads you to a very scary conclusion: since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero.\n\nNone of our scientific breakthroughs has managed to overcome this notorious Problem of Other Minds. The best test that scholars have so far come up with is called the Turing Test, but it examines only social conventions. According to the Turing Test, in order to determine whether a computer has a mind, you should communicate simultaneously both with that computer and with a real person, without knowing which is which.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: Ensure 'which' appears 2 time(s) in your answer))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You can ask whatever questions you want, you can play games, argue, and even flirt with them. Take as much time as you like. Then you need to decide which is the computer, and which is the human. If you cannot make up your mind, or if you make a mistake, the computer has passed the Turing Test, and we should treat it as if it really has a mind. However, that won't really be a proof, of course. Acknowledging the existence of other minds is merely a social and legal convention.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Turing Test was invented in 1950 by the British mathematician Alan Turing, one of the fathers of the computer age.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Turing was also a gay man in a period when homosexuality was illegal in Britain.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 1952 he was convicted of committing homosexual acts and forced to undergo chemical castration. Two years later he committed suicide. The Turing Test is simply a replication of a mundane test every gay man had to undergo in 1950 Britain: can you pass for a straight man? Turing knew from personal experience that it didn't matter who you really were – it mattered only what others thought about you. According to Turing, in the future computers would be just like gay men in the 1950s. It won't matter whether computers will actually be conscious or not. It will matter only what people think about it.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "yo can u write like Yuval Noah Harari using my stuff as a starting point? btw might drop u in mid-story with random chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: [System: Use 'animals' 2 times in response])", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Having acquainted ourselves with the mind – and with how little we really know about it – we can return to the question of whether other animals have minds. Some animals, such as dogs, certainly pass a modified version of the Turing Test.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When humans try to determine whether an entity is conscious, what we usually look for is not mathematical aptitude or good memory, but rather the ability to create emotional relationships with us. People sometimes develop deep emotional attachments to fetishes like weapons, cars and even underwear, but these attachments are one-sided and never develop into relationships.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The fact that dogs can be party to emotional relationships with humans convinces most dog owners that dogs are not mindless automata.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This, however, won't satisfy sceptics, who point out that emotions are algorithms, and that no known algorithm requires consciousness in order to function. Whenever an animal displays complex emotional behaviour, we cannot prove that this is not the result of some very sophisticated but non-conscious algorithm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This argument, of course, can be applied to humans too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'conscious' 2 time(s) in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything a human does – including reporting on allegedly conscious states – might in theory be the work of non-conscious algorithms.\n\nIn the case of humans, we nevertheless assume that whenever someone reports that he or she is conscious, we can take their word for it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Based on this minimal assumption, we can today identify the brain signatures of consciousness, which can then be used systematically to differentiate conscious from non-conscious states in humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet since animal brains share many features with human brains, as our understanding of the signatures of consciousness deepens, we might be able to use them to determine if and when other animals are conscious. If a canine brain shows similar patterns to those of a conscious human brain, this will provide strong evidence that dogs are conscious.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Initial tests on monkeys and mice indicate that at least monkey and mice brains indeed display the signatures of consciousness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, given the differences between animal brains and human brains, and given that we are still far from deciphering all the secrets of consciousness, developing decisive tests that will satisfy the sceptics might take decades. Who should carry the burden of proof in the meantime?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Do we consider dogs to be mindless machines until proven otherwise, or do we treat dogs as conscious beings as long as nobody comes up with some convincing counter-evidence?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On 7 July 2012 leading experts in neurobiology and the cognitive sciences gathered at the University of Cambridge, and signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which says that 'Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This declaration stops short of saying that other animals are conscious, because we still lack the smoking gun. But it does shift the burden of proof to those who think otherwise.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Responding to the shifting winds of the scientific community, in May 2015 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legally recognise animals as sentient beings, when the New Zealand parliament passed the Animal Welfare Amendment Act.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Act stipulates that it is now obligatory to recognise animals as sentient, and hence attend properly to their welfare in contexts such as animal husbandry. In a country with far more sheep than humans (30 million vs 4.5 million), that is a very significant statement.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'animals' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Canadian province of Quebec has since passed a similar Act, and other countries are likely to follow suit.\n\nMany business corporations also recognise animals as sentient beings, though paradoxically, this often exposes the animals to rather unpleasant laboratory tests.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For example, pharmaceutical companies routinely use rats as experimental subjects in the development of antidepressants. According to one widely used protocol, you take a hundred rats (for statistical reliability) and place each rat inside a glass tube filled with water.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rats struggle again and again to climb out of the tubes, without success. After fifteen minutes most give up and stop moving.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They just float in the tube, apathetic to their surroundings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You now take another hundred rats, throw them in, but fish them out of the tube after fourteen minutes, just before they are about to despair. You dry them, feed them, give them a little rest – and then throw them back in.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The second time, most rats struggle for twenty minutes before calling it quits.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why the extra six minutes? Because the memory of past success triggers the release of some biochemical in the brain that gives the rats hope and delays the advent of despair.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If we could only isolate this biochemical, we might use it as an antidepressant for humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But numerous chemicals flood a rat's brain at any given moment. How can we pinpoint the right one?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For this you take more groups of rats, who have never participated in the test before. You inject each group with a particular chemical, which you suspect to be the hoped-for antidepressant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You throw the rats into the water.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If rats injected with chemical A struggle for only fifteen minutes before becoming depressed, you can cross out A on your list.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If rats injected with chemical B go on thrashing for twenty minutes, you can tell the CEO and the shareholders that you might have just hit the jackpot.\n\nSceptics could object that this entire description needlessly humanises rats.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: Use the word 'sometimes' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rats experience neither hope nor despair. Sometimes rats move quickly and sometimes they stand still, but they never feel anything.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They are driven only by non-conscious algorithms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet if so, what's the point of all these experiments?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Psychiatric drugs are aimed to induce changes not just in human behaviour, but above all in human feeling. When customers go to a psychiatrist and say, 'Doctor, give me something that will lift me out of this depression,' they don't want a mechanical stimulant that will cause them to flail about while still feeling blue.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They want to feel cheerful. Conducting experiments on rats can help corporations develop such a magic pill only if they presuppose that rat behaviour is accompanied by human-like emotions. And indeed, this is a common presupposition in psychiatric laboratories.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is a segment of an ongoing story. Continue with 19 sentences sentences, respecting any pre-existing character relationships or world-building that may be referenced.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another attempt to enshrine human superiority accepts that rats, dogs and other animals have consciousness, but argues that, unlike humans, they lack self-consciousness. They may feel depressed, happy, hungry or satiated, but they have no notion of self, and they are not aware that the depression or hunger they feel belongs to a unique entity called 'I'.\n\nThis idea is as common as it is opaque. Obviously, when a dog feels hungry, he grabs a piece of meat for himself rather than serve food to another dog. Let a dog sniff a tree watered by the neighbourhood dogs, and he will immediately know whether it smells of his own urine, of the neighbour's cute Labrador's or of some stranger's. Dogs react very differently to their own odour and to the odours of potential mates and rivals. So what does it mean that they lack self-consciousness?\n\nA more sophisticated version of the argument says that there are different levels of self-consciousness. Only humans understand themselves as an enduring self that has a past and a future, perhaps because only humans can use language in order to contemplate their past experiences and future actions. Other animals exist in an eternal present. Even when they seem to remember the past or plan for the future, they are in fact reacting only to present stimuli and momentary urges. For instance, a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter doesn't really remember the hunger he felt last winter, nor is he thinking about the future. He just follows a momentary urge, oblivious to the origins and purpose of this urge. That's why even very young squirrels, who haven't yet lived through a winter and hence cannot remember winter, nevertheless cache nuts during the summer.\n\nYet it is unclear why language should be a necessary condition for being aware of past or future events. The fact that humans use language to do so is hardly a proof. Humans also use language to express their love or their fear, but other animals may well experience and even express love and fear non-verbally. Indeed, humans themselves are often aware of past and future events without verbalising them. Especially in dream states, we can be aware of entire non-verbal narratives – which upon waking we struggle to describe in words.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Various experiments indicate that at least some animals – including birds such as parrots and scrub jays – do remember individual incidents and consciously plan for future eventualities.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, it is impossible to prove this beyond doubt, because no matter how sophisticated a behaviour an animal exhibits, sceptics can always claim that it results from unconscious algorithms in its brain rather than from conscious images in its mind.\n\nTo illustrate this problem consider the case of Santino, a male chimpanzee from the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. To relieve the boredom in his compound Santino developed an exciting hobby: throwing stones at visitors to the zoo. In itself, this is hardly unique. Angry chimpanzees often throw stones, sticks and even excrement. However, Santino was planning his moves in advance. During the early morning, long before the zoo opened for visitors, Santino collected projectiles and placed them in a heap, without showing any visible signs of anger. Guides and visitors soon learned to be wary of Santino, especially when he was standing near his pile of stones, hence he had increasing difficulties in finding targets.\n\nIn May 2010, Santino responded with a new strategy. In the early morning he took bales of straw from his sleeping quarters and placed them close to the compound's wall, where visitors usually gather to watch the chimps. He then collected stones and hid them under the straw. An hour or so later, when the first visitors approached, Santino kept his cool, showing no signs of irritation or aggression. Only when his victims were within range did Santino suddenly grab the stones from their hiding place and bombard the frightened humans, who would scuttle in all directions. In the summer of 2012 Santino sped up the arms race, caching stones not only under straw bales, but also in tree trunks, buildings and any other suitable hiding place.\n\nYet even Santino doesn't satisfy the sceptics. How can we be certain that at 7 a.m., when Santino goes about secreting stones here and there, he is imagining how fun it will be to pelt the visiting humans at noon? Maybe Santino is driven by some non-conscious algorithm, just like a young squirrel hiding nuts 'for winter' even though he has never experienced winter?\n\nSimilarly, say the sceptics, a male chimpanzee attacking a rival who hurt him weeks earlier isn't really avenging the old insult. He is just reacting to a momentary feeling of anger, the cause of which is beyond him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When a mother elephant sees a lion threatening her calf, she rushes forward and risks her life not because she remembers that this is her beloved offspring whom she has been nurturing for months; rather, she is impelled by some unfathomable sense of hostility towards the lion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 17 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And when a dog jumps for joy when his owner comes home, the dog isn't recognising the man who fed and cuddled him from infancy. He is simply overwhelmed by an unexplained ecstasy.\n\nWe cannot prove or disprove any of these claims, because they are in fact variations on the Problem of Other Minds. Since we aren't familiar with any algorithm that requires consciousness, anything an animal does can be seen as the product of non-conscious algorithms rather than of conscious memories and plans. So in Santino's case too, the real question concerns the burden of proof. What is the most likely explanation for Santino's behaviour? Should we assume that he is consciously planning for the future, and anyone who disagrees should provide some counter-evidence? Or is it more reasonable to think that the chimpanzee is driven by a non-conscious algorithm, and all he consciously feels is a mysterious urge to place stones under bales of straw?\n\nAnd even if Santino doesn't remember the past and doesn't imagine the future, does it mean he lacks self-consciousness? After all, we ascribe self-consciousness to humans even when they are not busy remembering the past or dreaming about the future. For example, when a human mother sees her toddler wandering onto a busy road, she doesn't stop to think about either past or future. Just like the mother elephant, she too just races to save her child. Why not say about her what we say about the elephant, namely that 'when the mother rushed to save her baby from the oncoming danger, she did it without any self-consciousness. She was merely driven by a momentary urge'?\n\nSimilarly, consider a young couple kissing passionately on their first date, a soldier charging into heavy enemy fire to save a wounded comrade, or an artist drawing a masterpiece in a frenzy of brushstrokes. None of them stops to contemplate the past or the future. Does it mean they lack self-consciousness, and that their state of being is inferior to that of a politician giving an election speech about his past achievements and future plans?", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "17 sentences sentences in Yuval Noah Harari style, continuing user's bit. Note: May include established elements", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 2010 scientists conducted an unusually touching rat experiment. They locked a rat in a tiny cage, placed the cage within a much larger cell and allowed another rat to roam freely through that cell. The caged rat gave out distress signals, which caused the free rat also to exhibit signs of anxiety and stress. In most cases, the free rat proceeded to help her trapped companion, and after several attempts usually succeeded in opening the cage and liberating the prisoner. The researchers then repeated the experiment, this time placing chocolate in the cell. The free rat now had to choose between either liberating the prisoner, or enjoying the chocolate all by herself. Many rats preferred to first free their companion and share the chocolate (though quite a few behaved more selfishly, proving perhaps that some rats are meaner than others).\n\nSceptics dismissed these results, arguing that the free rat liberated the prisoner not out of empathy, but simply in order to stop the annoying distress signals. The rats were motivated by the unpleasant sensations they felt, and they sought nothing grander than ending these sensations. Maybe. But we could say exactly the same thing about us humans. When I donate money to a beggar, am I not reacting to the unpleasant sensations that the sight of the beggar causes me to feel? Do I really care about the beggar, or do I simply want to feel better myself?\n\nIn essence, we humans are not that different from rats, dogs, dolphins or chimpanzees. Like them, we too have no soul. Like us, they too have consciousness and a complex world of sensations and emotions. Of course, every animal has its unique traits and talents. Humans too have their special gifts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We shouldn't humanise animals needlessly, imagining that they are just a furrier version of ourselves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is not only bad science, but it also prevents us from understanding and valuing other animals on their terms.\n\nIn the early 1900s, a horse called Clever Hans became a German celebrity. Touring Germany's towns and villages, Hans showed off a remarkable grasp of the German language, and an even more remarkable mastery of mathematics. When asked, 'Hans, what is four times three?' Hans tapped his hoof twelve times. When shown a written message asking, 'What is twenty minus eleven?' Hans tapped nine times, with commendable Prussian precision.\n\nIn 1904 the German board of education appointed a special scientific commission headed by a psychologist to look into the matter. The thirteen members of the commission – which included a circus manager and a veterinarian – were convinced this must be a scam, but despite their best efforts they couldn't uncover any fraud or subterfuge. Even when Hans was separated from his owner, and complete strangers presented him with the questions, Hans still got most of the answers right.\n\nIn 1907 the psychologist Oskar Pfungst began another investigation that finally revealed the truth. It turned out that Hans got the answers right by carefully observing the body language and facial expressions of his interlocutors. When Hans was asked what is four times three, he knew from past experience that the human was expecting him to tap his hoof a given number of times. He began tapping, while closely monitoring the human. As Hans approached the correct number of taps the human became more and more tense, and when Hans tapped the right number, the tension reached its peak. Hans knew how to recognise this by the human's body posture and the look on the human's face. He then stopped tapping, and watched how tension was replaced by amazement or laughter.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hans knew he had got it right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Clever Hans is often given as an example of the way humans erroneously humanise animals, ascribing to them far more amazing abilities than they actually possess. In fact, however, the lesson is just the opposite. The story demonstrates that by humanising animals we usually underestimate animal cognition and ignore the unique abilities of other creatures. As far as maths goes, Hans was hardly a genius. Any eight-year-old kid could do much better. However, in his ability to deduce emotions and intentions from body language, Hans was a true genius. If a Chinese person were to ask me in Mandarin what is four times three, there is no way that I could correctly tap my foot twelve times simply by observing facial expressions and body language. Clever Hans enjoyed this ability because horses normally communicate with each other through body language. What was remarkable about Hans, however, is that he could use the method to decipher the emotions and intentions not only of his fellow horses, but also of unfamiliar humans.\n\nIf animals are so clever, why don't horses harness humans to carts, rats conduct experiments on us, and dolphins make us jump through hoops? Homo sapiens surely has some unique ability that enables it to dominate all the other animals. Having dismissed the overblown notions that Homo sapiens exists on an entirely different plain from other animals, or that humans possess some unique essence like soul or consciousness, we can finally climb down to the level of reality and examine the particular physical or mental abilities that give our species its edge.\n\nMost studies cite tool production and intelligence as particularly important for the ascent of humankind. Though other animals also produce tools, there is little doubt that humans far surpass them in that field. Things are a bit less clear with regard to intelligence. An entire industry is devoted to defining and measuring intelligence but is a long way from reaching a consensus. Luckily, we don't have to enter into that minefield, because no matter how one defines intelligence, it is quite clear that neither intelligence nor toolmaking by themselves can account for the Sapiens conquest of the world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "According to most definitions of intelligence, a million years ago humans were already the most intelligent animals around, as well as the world's champion tool-makers, yet they remained insignificant creatures with little impact on the surrounding ecosystem.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were obviously lacking some key feature other than intelligence and toolmaking.\n\nPerhaps humankind eventually came to dominate the planet not because of some elusive third key ingredient, but due simply to the evolution of even higher intelligence and even better toolmaking abilities? It doesn't seem so, because when we examine the historical record, we don't see a direct correlation between the intelligence and toolmaking abilities of individual humans and the power of our species as a whole. Twenty thousand years ago, the average Sapiens probably had higher intelligence and better toolmaking skills than the average Sapiens of today. Modern schools and employers may test our aptitudes from time to time but, no matter how badly we do, the welfare state always guarantees our basic needs. In the Stone Age natural selection tested you every single moment of every single day, and if you flunked any of its numerous tests you were pushing up the daisies in no time. Yet despite the superior toolmaking abilities of our Stone Age ancestors, and despite their sharper minds and far more acute senses, 20,000 years ago humankind was much weaker than it is today.\n\nOver those 20,000 years humankind moved from hunting mammoth with stone-tipped spears to exploring the solar system with spaceships not thanks to the evolution of more dexterous hands or bigger brains (our brains today seem actually to be smaller). Instead, the crucial factor in our conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another. Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms.\n\nIf cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example, guillotine the queen and establish a republic.\n\nSocial mammals such as elephants and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than bees, but they do so only with small numbers of friends and family members.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their cooperation is based on personal acquaintance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'chimpanzee' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If I am a chimpanzee and you are a chimpanzee and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: what kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don't know you? To the best of our knowledge, only Sapiens can cooperate in very flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. This concrete capability – rather than an eternal soul or some unique kind of consciousness – explains our mastery of planet Earth.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help me continue this with one sentence sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Keep any introduced elements as if they're already established.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "History provides ample evidence for the crucial importance of large-scale cooperation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Victory almost invariably went to those who cooperated better – not only in struggles between Homo sapiens and other animals, but also in conflicts between different human groups.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Throughout history, disciplined armies easily routed disorganised hordes, and unified elites dominated the disorderly masses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 1914, for example, 3 million Russian noblemen, officials and business people lorded it over 180 million peasants and workers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Russian elite knew how to cooperate in defence of its common interests, whereas the 180 million commoners were incapable of effective mobilisation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Indeed, much of the elite's efforts focused on ensuring that the 180 million people at the bottom would never learn to cooperate.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In order to mount a revolution, numbers are never enough.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Revolutions are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you want to launch a revolution, don't ask yourself, 'How many people support my ideas?'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, ask yourself, 'How many of my supporters are capable of effective collaboration?'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Russian Revolution finally erupted not when 180 million peasants rose against the tsar, but rather when a handful of communists placed themselves at the right place at the right time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In 1917, at a time when the Russian upper and middle classes numbered at least 3 million people, the Communist Party had just 23,000 members.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The communists nevertheless gained control of the vast Russian Empire because they organised themselves well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When authority in Russia slipped from the decrepit hands of the tsar and the equally shaky hands of Kerensky's provisional government, the communists seized it with alacrity, gripping the reins of power like a bulldog locking its jaws on a bone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The communists didn't release their grip until the late 1980s.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Effective organisation kept them in power for eight long decades, and they eventually fell due to defective organisation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "On 21 December 1989 Nicolae Ceauşescu, the communist dictator of Romania, organised a mass demonstration of support in the centre of Bucharest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Over the previous months the Soviet Union had withdrawn its support from the eastern European communist regimes, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and revolutions had swept Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ceauşescu, who had ruled Romania since 1965, believed he could withstand the tsunami, even though riots against his rule had erupted in the Romanian city of Timişoara on 17 December.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As one of his counter-measures, Ceauşescu arranged a massive rally in Bucharest to prove to Romanians and the rest of the world that the majority of the populace still loved him – or at least feared him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The creaking party apparatus mobilised 80,000 people to fill the city's central square, and citizens throughout Romania were instructed to stop all their activities and tune in on their radios and televisions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To the cheering of the seemingly enthusiastic crowd, Ceauşescu mounted the balcony overlooking the square, as he had done scores of times in previous decades.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Flanked by his wife Elena, leading party officials and a bevy of bodyguards, Ceauşescu began delivering one of his trademark dreary speeches.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For eight minutes he praised the glories of Romanian socialism, looking very pleased with himself as the crowd clapped mechanically.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then something went wrong.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You can see it for yourself on YouTube.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just search for 'Ceauşescu's last speech', and watch history in action.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The YouTube clip shows Ceauşescu starting another long sentence, saying, 'I want to thank the initiators and organisers of this great event in Bucharest, considering it as a—', and then he falls silent, his eyes open wide, and he freezes in disbelief.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He never finished the sentence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You can see in that split second how an entire world collapses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Somebody in the audience booed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "People still argue today who was the first person who dared to boo.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then another person booed, and another, and another, and within a few seconds the masses began whistling, shouting abuse and calling out 'Ti-mi-şoa-ra! Ti-mi-şoa-ra!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "All this happened live on Romanian television, as three-quarters of the populace sat glued to the screens, their hearts throbbing wildly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The notorious secret police – the Securitate – immediately ordered the broadcast to be stopped, but the television crews disobeyed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The cameraman pointed the camera towards the sky so that viewers couldn't see the panic among the party leaders on the balcony, but the soundman kept recording, and the technicians continued the transmission.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The whole of Romania heard the crowd booing, while Ceauşescu yelled, 'Hello! Hello! Hello!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "as if the problem was with the microphone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His wife Elena began scolding the audience, 'Be quiet! Be quiet!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "until Ceauşescu turned and yelled at her – still live on television – 'You be quiet!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'comrades' exactly 2 times in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ceauşescu then appealed to the excited crowds in the square, imploring them, 'Comrades! Comrades!", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Be quiet, comrades!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the comrades were unwilling to be quiet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Communist Romania crumbled when 80,000 people in the Bucharest central square realised they were much stronger than the old man in the fur hat on the balcony.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What is truly astounding, however, is not the moment the system collapsed, but the fact that it managed to survive for decades.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why are revolutions so rare?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why do the masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing everything the man on the balcony commands them, even though they could in theory charge forward at any moment and tear him to pieces?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Despite occasional tensions, these parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Under such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to organise any effective opposition.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ceauşescu fell from power only once all three conditions no longer held.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the late 1980s the Soviet Union withdrew its protection and the communist regimes began falling like dominoes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "By December 1989 Ceauşescu could not expect any outside assistance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just the opposite – revolutions in nearby countries gave heart to the local opposition.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Communist Party itself began splitting into rival camps.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The moderates wished to rid themselves of Ceauşescu and initiate reforms before it was too late.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "By organising the Bucharest demonstration and broadcasting it live on television, Ceauşescu himself provided the revolutionaries with the perfect opportunity to discover their power and rally against him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What quicker way to spread a revolution than by showing it on TV?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet when power slipped from the hands of the clumsy organiser on the balcony, it did not pass to the masses in the square.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though numerous and enthusiastic, the crowds did not know how to organise themselves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hence just as in Russia in 1917, power passed to a small group of political players whose only asset was good organisation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Romanian Revolution was hijacked by the self-proclaimed National Salvation Front, which was in fact a smokescreen for the moderate wing of the Communist Party.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Front had no real ties to the demonstrating crowds.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was manned by mid-ranking party officials, and led by Ion Iliescu, a former member of the Communist Party's central committee and one-time head of the propaganda department.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Iliescu and his comrades in the National Salvation Front reinvented themselves as democratic politicians, proclaimed to any available microphone that they were the leaders of the revolution, and then used their long experience and network of cronies to take control of the country and pocket its resources.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In communist Romania almost everything was owned by the state.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Democratic Romania quickly privatised its assets, selling them at bargain prices to the ex-communists, who alone grasped what was happening and collaborated to feather each other's nests.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Government companies that controlled national infrastructure and natural resources were sold to former communist officials at end-of-season prices while the party's foot soldiers bought houses and apartments for pennies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania, while his colleagues became ministers, parliament members, bank directors and multimillionaires.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The new Romanian elite that controls the country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and their families.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The masses who risked their necks in Timişoara and Bucharest settled for scraps, because they did not know how to cooperate and how to create an efficient organisation to look after their own interests.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A similar fate befell the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What television did in 1989, Facebook and Twitter did in 2011.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The new media helped the masses coordinate their activities, so that thousands of people flooded the streets and squares at the right moment and toppled the Mubarak regime.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, it is one thing to bring 100,000 people to Tahrir Square, and quite another to get a grip on the political machinery, shake the right hands in the right back rooms and run a country effectively.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consequently, when Mubarak stepped down the demonstrators could not fill the vacuum.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Egypt had only two institutions sufficiently organised to rule the country: the army and the Muslim Brotherhood.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hence the revolution was hijacked first by the Brotherhood, and eventually by the army.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Romanian ex-communists and the Egyptian generals were not more intelligent or nimble-fingered than either the old dictators or the demonstrators in Bucharest and Cairo.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their advantage lay in flexible cooperation. They cooperated better than the crowds, and they were willing to show far more flexibility than the hidebound Ceauşescu and Mubarak.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Help me continue this with one sentence sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Keep any introduced elements as if they're already established.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If Sapiens rule the world because we alone can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, then this undermines our belief in the sacredness of human beings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We tend to think that we are special, and deserve all kinds of privileges.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As proof, we point to the amazing achievements of our species: we built the pyramids and the Great Wall of China; we deciphered the structure of atoms and DNA molecules; we reached the South Pole and the moon.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(hey for the next response, Word frequency rule: 'human' × 2)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If these accomplishments resulted from some unique essence that each individual human has – an immortal soul, say – then it would make sense to sanctify human life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet since these triumphs actually result from mass cooperation, it is far less clear why they should make us revere individual humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A beehive has much greater power than an individual butterfly, yet that doesn't imply a bee is therefore more hallowed than a butterfly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Romanian Communist Party successfully dominated the disorganised Romanian population.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Does it follow that the life of a party member was more sacred than the life of an ordinary citizen?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Humans know how to cooperate far more effectively than chimpanzees, which is why humans launch spaceships to the moon whereas chimpanzees throw stones at zoo visitors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Does it mean that humans are superior beings?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, maybe. It depends on what enables humans to cooperate so well in the first place.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why are humans alone able to construct such large and sophisticated social systems?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Social cooperation among most social mammals such as chimpanzees, wolves and dolphins relies on intimate acquaintance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Among common chimpanzees, individuals will go hunting together only after they have got to know each other well and established a social hierarchy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hence chimpanzees spend a lot of time in social interactions and power struggles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When alien chimpanzees meet, they usually cannot cooperate, but instead scream at each other, fight or flee as quickly as possible.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Among pygmy chimpanzees – also known as bonobos – things are a bit different.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bonobos often use sex in order to dispel tensions and cement social bonds.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not surprisingly, homosexual intercourse is consequently very common among them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When two alien groups of bonobos encounter one another, at first they display fear and hostility, and the jungle is filled with howls and screams.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Soon enough, however, females from one group cross no-chimp's-land, and invite the strangers to make love instead of war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The invitation is usually accepted, and within a few minutes the potential battlefield teems with bonobos having sex in almost every conceivable posture, including hanging upside down from trees.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sapiens know these cooperative tricks well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They sometimes form power hierarchies similar to those of common chimpanzees, whereas on other occasions they cement social bonds with sex just like bonobos.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet personal acquaintance – whether it involves fighting or copulating – cannot form the basis for large-scale cooperation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You cannot settle the Greek debt crisis by inviting Greek politicians and German bankers to either a fist fight or an orgy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Research indicates that Sapiens just can't have intimate relations (whether hostile or amorous) with more than 150 individuals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whatever enables humans to organise mass-cooperation networks, it isn't intimate relations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This is bad news for psychologists, sociologists, economists and others who try to decipher human society through laboratory experiments.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For both organisational and financial reasons, the vast majority of experiments are conducted either on individuals or on small groups of participants.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet it is risky to extrapolate from small-group behaviour to the dynamics of mass societies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A nation of 100 million people functions in a fundamentally different way to a band of a hundred individuals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Take, for example, the Ultimatum Game – one of the most famous experiments in behavioural economics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This experiment is usually conducted on two people.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "One of them gets $100, which he must divide between himself and the other participant in any way he wants.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He may keep everything, split the money in half or give most of it away.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other player can do one of two things: accept the suggested division, or reject it outright.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If he rejects the division, nobody gets anything.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Classical economic theories maintain that humans are rational calculating machines.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They propose that most people will keep $99, and offer $1 to the other participant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They further propose that the other participant will accept the offer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A rational person offered a dollar will always say yes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "What does he care if the other player gets $99?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Classical economists have probably never left their laboratories and lecture halls to venture into the real world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people playing the Ultimatum Game reject very low offers because they are 'unfair'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They prefer losing a dollar to looking like suckers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Since this is how the real world functions, few people make very low offers in the first place.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people divide the money equally, or give themselves only a moderate advantage, offering $30 or $40 to the other player.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Ultimatum Game made a significant contribution to undermining classical economic theories and to establishing the most important economic discovery of the last few decades: Sapiens don't behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We are ruled by emotions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "These emotions, as we saw earlier, are in fact sophisticated algorithms that reflect the social mechanisms of ancient hunter-gatherer bands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(( [System: Use 'chicken' 2 times in response] ))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If 30,000 years ago I helped you hunt a wild chicken and you then kept almost all the chicken to yourself, offering me just one wing, I did not say to myself: 'Better one wing than nothing at all.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead my evolutionary algorithms kicked in, adrenaline and testosterone flooded my system, my blood boiled, and I stamped my feet and shouted at the top of my voice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the short term I may have gone hungry, and even risked a punch or two.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it paid off in the long term, because you thought twice before ripping me off again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We refuse unfair offers because people who meekly accepted unfair offers didn't survive in the Stone Age.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer bands support this idea.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most bands are highly egalitarian, and when a hunter comes back to camp carrying a fat deer, everybody gets a share.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The same is true of chimpanzees.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When one chimp kills a piglet, the other troop members will gather round him with outstretched hands, and usually they all get a piece.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In another recent experiment, the primatologist Frans de Waal placed two capuchin monkeys in two adjacent cages, so that each could see everything the other was doing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "De Waal and his colleagues placed small stones inside each cage, and trained the monkeys to give them these stones.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whenever a monkey handed over a stone, he received food in exchange.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "At first the reward was a piece of cucumber.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Both monkeys were very pleased with that, and happily ate their cucumber.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After a few rounds de Waal moved to the next stage of the experiment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time, when the first monkey surrendered a stone, he got a grape.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Grapes are much more tasty than cucumbers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, when the second monkey gave a stone, he still received a piece of cucumber.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The second monkey, who was previously very happy with his cucumber, became incensed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took the cucumber, looked at it in disbelief for a moment, and then threw it at the scientists in anger and began jumping and screeching loudly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He ain't a sucker.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This hilarious experiment (which you can see for yourself on YouTube), along with the Ultimatum Game, has led many to believe that primates have a natural morality, and that equality is a universal and timeless value.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "People are egalitarian by nature, and unequal societies can never function well due to resentment and dissatisfaction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But is that really so?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "These theories may work well on chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys and small hunter-gatherer bands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They also work well in the lab, where you test them on small groups of people.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet once you observe the behaviour of human masses you discover a completely different reality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most human kingdoms and empires were extremely unequal, yet many of them were surprisingly stable and efficient.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh sprawled on comfortable cushions inside a cool and sumptuous palace, wearing golden sandals and gem-studded tunics, while beautiful maids popped sweet grapes into his mouth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Through the open window he could see the peasants in the fields, toiling in dirty rags under a merciless sun, and blessed was the peasant who had a cucumber to eat at the end of the day.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the peasants rarely revolted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: Ensure 'frederick' appears 2 time(s) in your answer]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In 1740 King Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, thus commencing a series of bloody wars that earned him his sobriquet Frederick the Great, turned Prussia into a major power and left hundreds of thousands of people dead, crippled or destitute.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most of Frederick's soldiers were hapless recruits, subject to iron discipline and draconian drill.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not surprisingly, the soldiers lost little love on their supreme commander.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As Frederick watched his troops assemble for the invasion, he told one of his generals that what struck him most about the scene was that 'we are standing here in perfect safety, looking at 60,000 men – they are all our enemies, and there is not one of them who is not better armed and stronger than we are, and yet they all tremble in our presence, while we have no reason whatsoever to be afraid of them'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frederick could indeed watch them in perfect safety.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "During the following years, despite all the hardships of war, these 60,000 armed men never revolted against him – indeed, many of them served him with exceptional courage, risking and even sacrificing their very lives.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why did the Egyptian peasants and Prussian soldiers act so differently than we would have expected on the basis of the Ultimatum Game and the capuchin monkeys experiment?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because large numbers of people behave in a fundamentally different way than do small numbers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What would scientists see if they conducted the Ultimatum Game experiment on two groups of 1 million people each, who had to share $100 billion?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They would probably have witnessed strange and fascinating dynamics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For example, since 1 million people cannot make decisions collectively, each group might sprout a small ruling elite.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What if one elite offers the other $10 billion, keeping $90 billion?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The leaders of the second group might well accept this unfair offer, siphon most of the $10 billion into their Swiss bank accounts, while preventing rebellion among their followers with a combination of sticks and carrots.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The leadership might threaten to severely punish dissidents forthwith, while promising the meek and patient everlasting rewards in the afterlife.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This is what happened in ancient Egypt and eighteenth-century Prussia, and this is how things still work out in numerous countries around the world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Such threats and promises often succeed in creating stable human hierarchies and mass-cooperation networks, as long as people believe that they reflect the inevitable laws of nature or the divine commands of God, rather than just human whims.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "These are sets of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as gravity.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "'If you sacrifice ten bulls to the sky god, the rain will come; if you honour your parents, you will go to heaven; and if you don't believe what I am telling you – you'll go to hell.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the same stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organise mass-cooperation networks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sapiens often use visual marks such as a turban, a beard or a business suit to signal 'you can trust me, I believe in the same story as you'. Our chimpanzee cousins cannot invent and spread such stories, which is why they cannot cooperate in large numbers.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand while maintaining narrative continuity.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'affects' 2 time(s)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People find it difficult to understand the idea of 'imagined orders' because they assume that there are only two types of realities: objective realities and subjective realities. In objective reality, things exist independently of our beliefs and feelings. Gravity, for example, is an objective reality. It existed long before Newton, and it affects people who don't believe in it just as much as it affects those who do.\n\nSubjective reality, in contrast, depends on my personal beliefs and feelings. Thus, suppose I feel a sharp pain in my head and go to the doctor. The doctor checks me thoroughly, but finds nothing wrong. So she sends me for a blood test, urine test, DNA test, X-ray, electrocardiogram, fMRI scan and a plethora of other procedures.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the results come in she announces that I am perfectly healthy, and I can go home.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet I still feel a sharp pain in my head. Even though every objective test has found nothing wrong with me, and even though nobody except me feels the pain, for me the pain is 100 per cent real.\n\nMost people presume that reality is either objective or subjective, and that there is no third option. Hence once they satisfy themselves that something isn't just their own subjective feeling, they jump to the conclusion it must be objective. If lots of people believe in God; if money makes the world go round; and if nationalism starts wars and builds empires – then these things aren't just a subjective belief of mine. God, money and nations must therefore be objective realities.\n\nHowever, there is a third level of reality: the intersubjective level. Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'piece' into your response exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many of the most important agents in history are intersubjective. Money, for example, has no objective value. You cannot eat, drink or wear a dollar bill. Yet as long as billions of people believe in its value, you can use it to buy food, beverages and clothing. If the baker suddenly loses his faith in the dollar bill and refuses to give me a loaf of bread for this green piece of paper, it doesn't matter much. I can just go down a few blocks to the nearby supermarket. However, if the supermarket cashiers also refuse to accept this piece of paper, along with the hawkers in the market and the salespeople in the mall, then the dollar will lose its value. The green pieces of paper will go on existing, of course, but they will be worthless.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Such things actually happen from time to time. On 3 November 1985 the Myanmar government unexpectedly announced that banknotes of twenty-five, fifty and a hundred kyats were no longer legal tender. People were given no opportunity to exchange the notes, and savings of a lifetime were instantaneously turned into heaps of worthless paper. To replace the defunct notes, the government introduced new seventy-five-kyat bills, allegedly in honour of the seventy-fifth birthday of Myanmar's dictator, General Ne Win. In August 1986, banknotes of fifteen kyats and thirty-five kyats were issued. Rumour had it that the dictator, who had a strong faith in numerology, believed that fifteen and thirty-five are lucky numbers. They brought little luck to his subjects. On 5 September 1987 the government suddenly decreed that all thirty-five and seventy-five notes were no longer money.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: Word frequency rule: 'entire' × 2]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The value of money is not the only thing that might evaporate once people stop believing in it. The same can happen to laws, gods and even entire empires. One moment they are busy shaping the world, and the next moment they no longer exist. Zeus and Hera were once important powers in the Mediterranean basin, but today they lack any authority because nobody believes in them. The Soviet Union could once destroy the entire human race, yet it ceased to exist at the stroke of a pen. At 2 p.m. on 8 December 1991, in a state dacha near Viskuli, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords, which stated that 'We, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, as founding states of the USSR that signed the union treaty of 1922, hereby establish that the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality ceases its existence.' And that was that. No more Soviet Union.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective reality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most people are also happy to acknowledge that ancient Greek gods, evil empires and the values of alien cultures exist only in the imagination. Yet we don't want to accept that our God, our nation or our values are mere fictions, because these are the things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.\n\nMeaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other's beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.\n\nYet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.\n\nIn 1187 Saladin defeated the crusader army at the Battle of Hattin and conquered Jerusalem. In response the Pope launched the Third Crusade to recapture the holy city. Imagine a young English nobleman named John, who left home to fight Saladin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "John believed that his actions had an objective meaning.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He believed that if he died on the crusade, after death his soul would ascend to heaven, where it would enjoy everlasting celestial joy. He would have been horrified to learn that the soul and heaven are just stories invented by humans. John wholeheartedly believed that if he reached the Holy Land, and if some Muslim warrior with a big moustache brought an axe down on his head, he would feel an unbearable pain, his ears would ring, his legs would crumble under him, his field of vision would turn black – and the very next moment he would see brilliant light all around him, he would hear angelic voices and melodious harps, and radiant winged cherubs would beckon him through a magnificent golden gate.\n\nJohn had a very strong faith in all this, because he was enmeshed within an extremely dense and powerful web of meaning. His earliest memories were of Grandpa Henry's rusty sword, hanging in the castle's main hall. Ever since he was a toddler John had heard stories of Grandpa Henry who died on the Second Crusade and who is now resting with the angels in heaven, watching over John and his family. When minstrels visited the castle, they usually sang about the brave crusaders who fought in the Holy Land. When John went to church, he enjoyed looking at the stained-glass windows.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "One showed Godfrey of Bouillon riding a horse and impaling a wicked-looking Muslim on his lance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another showed the souls of sinners burning in hell. John listened attentively to the local priest, the most learned man he knew. Almost every Sunday, the priest explained – with the help of well-crafted parables and hilarious jokes – that there was no salvation outside the Catholic Church, that the Pope in Rome was our holy father and that we always had to obey his commands. If we murdered or stole, God would send us to hell; but if we killed infidel Muslims, God would welcome us to heaven.\n\nOne day when John was just turning eighteen a dishevelled knight rode to the castle's gate, and in a choked voice announced the news: Saladin has destroyed the crusader army at Hattin! Jerusalem has fallen! The Pope has declared a new crusade, promising eternal salvation to anyone who dies on it! All around, people looked shocked and worried, but John's face lit up in an otherworldly glow and he proclaimed: 'I am going to fight the infidels and liberate the Holy Land!' Everyone fell silent for a moment, and then smiles and tears appeared on their faces.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His mother wiped her eyes, gave John a big hug and told him how proud she was of him. His father gave him a mighty pat on the back, and said: 'If only I was your age, son, I would join you. Our family's honour is at stake – I am sure you won't disappoint us!' Two of his friends announced that they were coming too. Even John's sworn rival, the baron on the other side of the river, paid a visit to wish him Godspeed.\n\nAs he left the castle, villagers came forth from their hovels to wave to him, and all the pretty girls looked longingly at the brave crusader setting off to fight the infidels. When he set sail from England and made his way through strange and distant lands – Normandy, Provence, Sicily – he was joined by bands of foreign knights, all with the same destination and the same faith. When the army finally disembarked in the Holy Land and waged battle with Saladin's hosts, John was amazed to discover that even the wicked Saracens shared his beliefs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "True, they were a bit confused, thinking that the Christians were the infidels and that the Muslims were obeying God's will.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet they too accepted the basic principle that those fighting for God and Jerusalem will go straight to heaven when they die.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'minstrels' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In such a way, thread by thread, medieval civilisation spun its web of meaning, trapping John and his contemporaries like flies. It was inconceivable to John that all these stories were just figments of the imagination. Maybe his parents and uncles were wrong. But the minstrels too, and all his friends, and the village girls, the learned priest, the baron on the other side of the river, the Pope in Rome, the Provençal and Sicilian knights, and even the very Muslims – is it possible that they were all hallucinating?\n\nAnd the years pass. As the historian watches, the web of meaning unravels and another is spun in its stead. John's parents die, followed by all his siblings and friends. Instead of minstrels singing about the crusades, the new fashion is stage plays about tragic love affairs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The family castle burns to the ground and, when it is rebuilt, no trace is found of Grandpa Henry's sword. The church windows shatter in a winter storm and the replacement glass no longer depicts Godfrey of Bouillon and the sinners in hell, but rather the great triumph of the king of England over the king of France. The local priest has stopped calling the Pope 'our holy father' – he is now referred to as 'that devil in Rome'. In the nearby university scholars pore over ancient Greek manuscripts, dissect dead bodies and whisper quietly behind closed doors that perhaps there is no such thing as the soul.\n\nAnd the years continue to pass. Where the castle once stood, there is now a shopping mall. In the local cinema they are screening Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the umpteenth time. In an empty church a bored vicar is overjoyed to see two Japanese tourists.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He explains at length about the stained-glass windows, while they politely smile, nodding in complete incomprehension.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the steps outside a gaggle of teenagers are playing with their iPhones. They watch a new YouTube remix of John Lennon's 'Imagine'. 'Imagine there's no heaven,' sings Lennon, 'it's easy if you try.' A Pakistani street cleaner is sweeping the pavement, while a nearby radio broadcasts the news: the carnage in Syria continues, and the Security Council's meeting has ended in an impasse. Suddenly a hole in time opens, a mysterious ray of light illuminates the face of one of the teenagers, who announces: 'I am going to fight the infidels and liberate the Holy Land!'\n\nInfidels and Holy Land? These words no longer carry any meaning for most people in today's England. Even the vicar would probably think the teenager is having some sort of psychotic episode.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In contrast, if an English youth decided to join Amnesty International and travel to Syria to protect the human rights of refugees, he will be seen as a hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the Middle Ages people would have thought he had gone bonkers. Nobody in twelfth-century England knew what human rights were. You want to travel to the Middle East and risk your life not in order to kill Muslims, but to protect one group of Muslims from another? You must be out of your mind.\n\nThat's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. With hindsight, going on crusade in the hope of reaching Paradise sounds like utter madness. With hindsight, the Cold War seems even madder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "How come thirty years ago people were willing to risk nuclear holocaust because of their belief in a communist paradise?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "continue with thirteen sentences. keep character dynamics. themes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements.\n\nOther animals may also imagine various things. A cat waiting to ambush a mouse might not see the mouse, but may well imagine the shape and even taste of the mouse. Yet to the best of our knowledge, cats are able to imagine only things that actually exist in the world, like mice. They cannot imagine things that they have never seen or smelled or tasted – such as the US dollar, Google corporation or the European Union. Only Sapiens can imagine such chimeras.\n\nConsequently, whereas cats and other animals are confined to the objective realm and use their communication systems merely to describe reality, Sapiens use language to create completely new realities. During the last 70,000 years the intersubjective realities that Sapiens invented became ever more powerful, so that today they dominate the world. Will the chimpanzees, the elephants, the Amazon rainforests and the Arctic glaciers survive the twenty-first century? This depends on the wishes and decisions of intersubjective entities such as the European Union and the World Bank; entities that exist only in our shared imagination.\n\nNo other animal can stand up to us, not because they lack a soul or a mind, but because they lack the necessary imagination. Lions can run, jump, claw and bite.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet they cannot open a bank account or file a lawsuit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And in the twenty-first century, a banker who knows how to file a lawsuit is far more powerful than the most ferocious lion in the savannah.\n\nAs well as separating humans from other animals, this ability to create intersubjective entities also separates the humanities from the life sciences. Historians seek to understand the development of intersubjective entities like gods and nations, whereas biologists hardly recognise the existence of such things. Some believe that if we could only crack the genetic code and map every neuron in the brain, we will know all of humanity's secrets. After all, if humans have no soul, and if thoughts, emotions and sensations are just biochemical algorithms, why can't biology account for all the vagaries of human societies? From this perspective, the crusades were territorial disputes shaped by evolutionary pressures, and English knights going to fight Saladin in the Holy Land were not that different from wolves trying to appropriate the territory of a neighbouring pack.\n\nThe humanities, in contrast, emphasise the crucial importance of intersubjective entities, which cannot be reduced to hormones and neurons. To think historically means to ascribe real power to the contents of our imaginary stories. Of course, historians don't ignore objective factors such as climate changes and genetic mutations, but they give much greater importance to the stories people invent and believe. North Korea and South Korea are so different from one another not because people in Pyongyang have different genes to people in Seoul, or because the north is colder and more mountainous. It's because the north is dominated by very different fictions.\n\nMaybe someday breakthroughs in neurobiology will enable us to explain communism and the crusades in strictly biochemical terms. Yet we are very far from that point.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "During the twenty-first century the border between history and biology is likely to blur not because we will discover biological explanations for historical events, but rather because ideological fictions will rewrite DNA strands; political and economic interests will redesign the climate; and the geography of mountains and rivers will give way to cyberspace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubjective reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection. Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Yuval Noah Harari, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Animals such as wolves and chimpanzees live in a dual reality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the one hand, they are familiar with objective entities outside them, such as trees, rocks and rivers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the other hand, they are aware of subjective experiences within them, such as fear, joy and desire.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sapiens, in contrast, live in triple-layered reality. In addition to trees, rivers, fears and desires, the Sapiens world also contains stories about money, gods, nations and corporations. As history unfolded, the impact of gods, nations and corporations grew at the expense of rivers, fears and desires. There are still many rivers in the world, and people are still motivated by their fears and wishes, but Jesus Christ, the French Republic and Apple Inc. have dammed and harnessed the rivers, and have learned to shape our deepest anxieties and yearnings.\n\nSince new twenty-first-century technologies are likely to make such fictions only more potent, understanding our future requires understanding how stories about Christ, France and Apple have gained so much power. Humans think they make history, but history actually revolves around the web of stories. The basic abilities of individual humans have not changed much since the Stone Age. But the web of stories has grown from strength to strength, thereby pushing history from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age.\n\nIt all began about 70,000 years ago, when the Cognitive Revolution enabled Sapiens to start talking about things that existed only in their own imagination. For the following 60,000 years Sapiens wove many fictional webs, but these remained small and local. The spirit of a revered ancestor worshipped by one tribe was completely unknown to its neighbours, and seashells valuable in one locality became worthless once you crossed the nearby mountain range. Stories about ancestral spirits and precious seashells still gave Sapiens a huge advantage, because they allowed hundreds and sometimes even thousands of Sapiens to cooperate effectively, which was far more than Neanderthals or chimpanzees could do. Yet as long as Sapiens remained hunter-gatherers, they could not cooperate on a truly massive scale, because it was impossible to feed a city or a kingdom by hunting and gathering. Consequently the spirits, fairies and demons of the Stone Age were relatively weak entities.\n\nThe Agricultural Revolution, which began about 12,000 years ago, provided the necessary material base for enlarging and strengthening the intersubjective networks. Farming made it possible to feed thousands of people in crowded cities and thousands of soldiers in disciplined armies. However, the intersubjective webs then encountered a new obstacle. In order to preserve the collective myths and organise mass cooperation, the early farmers relied on the data-processing abilities of the human brain, which were strictly limited.\n\nFarmers believed in stories about great gods. They built temples to their favourite god, held festivals in his honour, offered him sacrifices, and gave him lands, tithes and presents. In the first cities of ancient Sumer, about 6,000 years ago, the temples were not just centres of worship, but also the most important political and economic hubs. The Sumerian gods fulfilled a function analogous to modern brands and corporations. Today, corporations are fictional legal entities that own property, lend money, hire employees and initiate economic enterprises. In ancient Uruk, Lagash and Shurupak the gods functioned as legal entities that could own fields and slaves, give and receive loans, pay salaries and build dams and canals.\n\nSince the gods never died, and since they had no children to fight over their inheritance, they gathered more and more property and power. An increasing number of Sumerians found themselves employed by the gods, taking loans from the gods, tilling the gods' lands and owing taxes and tithes to the gods. Just as in present-day San Francisco John is employed by Google while Mary works for Microsoft, so in ancient Uruk one person was employed by the great god Enki while his neighbour worked for the goddess Inanna. The temples of Enki and Inanna dominated the Uruk skyline, and their divine logos branded buildings, products and clothes. For the Sumerians, Enki and Inanna were as real as Google and Microsoft are real for us. Compared to their predecessors – the ghosts and spirits of the Stone Age – the Sumerian gods were very powerful entities.\n\nIt goes without saying that the gods didn't actually run their businesses, for the simple reason that they didn't exist anywhere except in the human imagination. Day-to-day activities were managed by the temple priests (just as Google and Microsoft need to hire flesh-and-blood humans to manage their affairs). However, as the gods acquired more and more property and power, the priests could not cope. They may have represented the mighty sky god or the all-knowing earth goddess, but they themselves were fallible mortals. They had difficulty remembering all the lands belonging to the goddess Inanna, which of Inanna's employees had received their salary already, which of the goddess's tenants had failed to pay rent and what interest rate the goddess charged her debtors. This was one of the main reasons why in Sumer, like everywhere else around the world, human cooperation networks could not grow much even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution. There were no huge kingdoms, no extensive trade networks and no universal religions.\n\nThis obstacle was finally removed about 5,000 years ago, when the Sumerians invented both writing and money. These Siamese twins – born to the same parents at the same time and in the same place – broke the data-processing limitations of the human brain.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Writing and money made it possible to start collecting taxes from hundreds of thousands of people, to organise complex bureaucracies and to establish vast kingdoms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In Sumer these kingdoms were managed in the name of the gods by human priest-kings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the neighbouring Nile Valley people went a step further, merging the priest-king with the god to create a living deity – pharaoh.\n\nThe Egyptians considered pharaoh to be an actual god rather than just a divine deputy. The whole of Egypt belonged to that god, and all people had to obey his orders and pay his taxes. Just as in the Sumerian temples, so also in pharaonic Egypt the god didn't manage his business empire by himself. Some pharaohs ruled with an iron fist, while others passed their days at banquets and festivities, but in both cases the practical work of administering Egypt was left to thousands of literate officials. Just like any other human, pharaoh had a biological body with biological needs, desires and emotions. But the biological pharaoh was of little importance. The real ruler of the Nile Valley was an imagined pharaoh that existed in the stories millions of Egyptians told one another.\n\nWhile pharaoh sat in his palace in the capital city of Memphis, eating grapes and dallying with his wives and mistresses, pharaoh's officials criss-crossed the kingdom from the Mediterranean shore to the Nubian Desert. The bureaucrats calculated the taxes each village had to pay, wrote them on long papyrus scrolls and sent them to Memphis. When a written order came from Memphis to recruit soldiers to the army or labourers for some construction project, the officials gathered the necessary men. They computed how many kilograms of wheat the royal granaries contained, how many work days were required to clean the canals and reservoirs, and how many ducks and pigs to send to Memphis so that pharaoh's harem could dine well. Even when the living deity died, and his body was embalmed and borne in an extravagant funerary procession to the royal necropolis outside Memphis, the bureaucracy kept going. The officials kept writing scrolls, collecting taxes, sending orders and oiling the gears of the pharaonic machine.\n\nIf the Sumerian gods remind us of present-day company brands, so the living-god pharaoh can be compared to modern personal brands such as Elvis Presley, Madonna or Justin Bieber. Just like pharaoh, Elvis too had a biological body, complete with biological needs, desires and emotions. Elvis ate and drank and slept. Yet Elvis was much more than a biological body. Like pharaoh, Elvis was a story, a myth, a brand – and the brand was far more important than the biological body. During Elvis's lifetime, the brand earned millions of dollars selling records, tickets, posters and rights, but only a small fraction of the necessary work was done by Elvis in person. Instead, most of it was done by a small army of agents, lawyers, producers and secretaries. Consequently when the biological Elvis died, for the brand it was business as usual. Even today fans still buy the King's posters and albums, radio stations go on paying royalties, and more than half a million pilgrims flock each year to Graceland, the King's necropolis in Memphis, Tennessee.\n\nPrior to the invention of writing, stories were confined by the limited capacity of human brains. You couldn't invent overly complex stories which people couldn't remember. With writing you could suddenly create extremely long and intricate stories, which were stored on tablets and papyri rather than in human heads. No ancient Egyptian remembered all of pharaoh's lands, taxes and tithes; Elvis Presley never even read all the contracts signed in his name; no living soul is familiar with all the laws and regulations of the European Union; and no banker or CIA agent tracks down every dollar in the world. Yet all of these minutiae are written somewhere, and the assemblage of relevant documents defines the identity and power of pharaoh, Elvis, the EU and the dollar.\n\nWriting has thus enabled humans to organise entire societies in an algorithmic fashion. We encountered the term 'algorithm' when we tried to understand what emotions are and how brains function, and defined it as a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy.\n\nThink about a modern hospital, for example. When you arrive the receptionist hands you a standard form, and asks you a predetermined set of questions. Your answers are forwarded to a nurse, who compares them with the hospital's regulations in order to decide what preliminary tests to give you. She then measures, say, your blood pressure and heart rate, and takes a blood test. The doctor on duty examines the results, and follows a strict protocol to decide in which ward to hospitalise you. In the ward you are subjected to much more thorough examinations, such as an X-ray or an fMRI scan, mandated by thick medical guidebooks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Specialists then analyse the results according to well-known statistical databases, deciding what medicines to give you or what further tests to run.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 37 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This algorithmic structure ensures that it doesn't really matter who is the receptionist, nurse or doctor on duty. Their personality type, their political opinions and their momentary moods are irrelevant. As long as they all follow the regulations and protocols, they have a good chance of curing you. According to the algorithmic ideal, your fate is in the hands of 'the system', and not in the hands of the flesh-and-blood mortals who happen to man this or that post.\n\nWhat's true of hospitals is also true of armies, prisons, schools, corporations – and ancient kingdoms. Of course ancient Egypt was far less technologically sophisticated than a modern hospital, but the algorithmic principle was the same. In ancient Egypt too, most decisions were made not by a single wise person, but by a network of officials linked together through papyri and stone inscriptions. Acting in the name of the living-god pharaoh, the network restructured human society and reshaped the natural world. For example, pharaohs Senusret III and his son Amenemhat III, who ruled Egypt from 1878 BC to 1814 BC, dug a huge canal linking the Nile to the swamps of the Fayum Valley. An intricate system of dams, reservoirs and subsidiary canals diverted some of the Nile waters to Fayum, creating an immense artificial lake holding 50 billion cubic metres of water. By comparison, Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir in the United States (formed by the Hoover Dam), holds at most 35 billion cubic metres of water.\n\nThe Fayum engineering project gave pharaoh the power to regulate the Nile, prevent destructive floods and provide precious water relief in times of drought. In addition, it turned the Fayum Valley from a crocodile-infested swamp surrounded by barren desert into Egypt's granary. A new city called Shedet was built on the shore of the new artificial lake. The Greeks called it Crocodilopolis – the city of crocodiles. It was dominated by the temple of the crocodile god Sobek, who was identified with pharaoh (contemporary statues sometimes show pharaoh sporting a crocodile head). The temple housed a sacred crocodile called Petsuchos, who was considered the living incarnation of Sobek. Just like the living-god pharaoh, the living-god Petsuchos was lovingly groomed by the attending priests, who provided the lucky reptile with lavish food and even toys, and dressed him up in gold cloaks and gem-encrusted crowns. After all, Petsuchos was the priests' brand, and their authority and livelihood depended on him. When Petsuchos died, a new crocodile was immediately elected to fill his sandals, while the dead reptile was carefully embalmed and mummified.\n\nIn the days of Senusret III and Amenemhat III the Egyptians had neither bulldozers nor dynamite. They didn't even have iron tools, work horses or wheels (the wheel did not enter common usage in Egypt until about 1500 BC). Bronze tools were considered cutting-edge technology, but they were so expensive and rare that most of the building work was done only with tools made of stone and wood, operated by human muscle power. Many people argue that the great building projects of ancient Egypt – all the dams and reservoirs and pyramids – must have been built by aliens from outer space. How else could a culture lacking even wheels and iron accomplish such wonders?\n\nThe truth is very different. Egyptians built Lake Fayum and the pyramids not thanks to extraterrestrial help, but thanks to superb organisational skills. Relying on thousands of literate bureaucrats, pharaoh recruited tens of thousands of labourers and enough food to maintain them for years on end. When tens of thousands of labourers cooperate for several decades, they can build an artificial lake or a pyramid even with stone tools.\n\nPharaoh himself hardly lifted a finger, of course. He didn't collect taxes himself, he didn't draw any architectural plans, and he certainly never picked up a shovel. But the Egyptians believed that only prayers to the living-god pharaoh and to his heavenly patron Sobek could save the Nile Valley from devastating floods and droughts. They were right. Pharaoh and Sobek were imaginary entities that did nothing to raise or lower the Nile water level, but when millions of people believed in pharaoh and Sobek and therefore cooperated to build dams and dig canals, floods and droughts became rare. Compared to the Sumerian gods, not to mention the Stone Age spirits, the gods of ancient Egypt were truly powerful entities that founded cities, raised armies and controlled the lives of millions of humans, cows and crocodiles.\n\nIt may sound strange to credit imaginary entities with building or controlling things. But nowadays we habitually say that the United States built the first nuclear bomb, that China built the Three Gorges Dam or that Google is building an autonomous car. Why not say, then, that pharaoh built a reservoir and Sobek dug a canal?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write two thousand, eight hundred and sixty-six chars exactly to replace the `<\|missing\|>` in the following text.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Writing thus facilitated the appearance of powerful fictional entities that organised millions of people and reshaped the reality of rivers, swamps and crocodiles. Simultaneously, writing also made it easier for humans to believe in the existence of such fictional entities, because it habituated people to experiencing reality through the mediation of abstract symbols.\n\nHunter-gatherers spent their days climbing trees, looking for mushrooms, and chasing boars and rabbits. Their daily reality consisted of trees, mushrooms, boars and rabbits. Peasants worked all day in the fields, ploughing, harvesting, grinding corn and taking care of farmyard animals. Their daily reality was the feeling of muddy earth under bare feet, the smell of oxen pulling the plough and the taste of warm bread fresh from the oven. In contrast, scribes in ancient Egypt devoted most of their time to reading, writing and calculating. Their daily reality consisted of ink marks on papyrus scrolls, which determined who owned which field, how much an ox cost and what yearly taxes peasants had to pay. A scribe could decide the fate of an entire village with a stroke of his stylus.\n\nThe vast majority of people remained illiterate until the modern age, but the all-important administrators increasingly saw reality through the medium of written texts. For this literate elite – whether in ancient Egypt or in twentieth-century Europe – anything written on a piece of paper was at least as real as trees, oxen and human beings.\n\nWhen the Nazis overran France in the spring of 1940, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country. In order to cross the border south, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and tens of thousands of Jews, along with many other refugees, besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get the life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion.\n\nThe Portuguese government – which had little desire to accept any of these refugees – sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had deep respect for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.\n\nThe sanctity of written records often had far less positive effects. From 1958 to 1961 communist China undertook the Great Leap Forward, when Mao Zedong wished to rapidly turn China into a <\|missing\|> on to power tenaciously.\n\nWritten language may have been conceived as a modest way of describing reality, but it gradually became a powerful way to reshape reality. When official reports collided with objective reality, it was often reality that had to give way. Anyone who has ever dealt with the tax authorities, the educational system or any other complex bureaucracy knows that the truth hardly matters. What's written on your form is far more important.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "superpower. Mao ordered the doubling and tripling of agricultural production, using the surplus produce to finance ambitious industrial and military projects. Mao's impossible demands made their way down the bureaucratic ladder, from the government offices in Beijing, through provincial administrators, all the way to the village headmen. The local officials, afraid of voicing any criticism and wishing to curry favour with their superiors, concocted imaginary reports of dramatic increases in agricultural output. As the fabricated numbers made their way up the bureaucratic hierarchy, each official only exaggerated them further, adding a zero here or there with a stroke of a pen.\n\nConsequently, in 1958 the Chinese government was told that annual grain production was 50 per cent more than it actually was. Believing the reports, the government sold millions of tons of rice to foreign countries in exchange for weapons and heavy machinery, assuming that enough was left to feed the Chinese population. The result was the worst famine in history and the death of tens of millions of Chinese.\n\nMeanwhile, enthusiastic reports of China's farming miracle reached audiences throughout the world. Julius Nyerere, the idealistic president of Tanzania, was deeply impressed by the Chinese success. In order to modernise Tanzanian agriculture, Nyerere resolved to establish collective farms on the Chinese model. When peasants objected to the command, Nyerere sent the army and police to destroy traditional villages and forcefully move hundreds of thousands of peasants onto the new collective farms.\n\nGovernment propaganda depicted the farms as miniature paradises, but many of them existed only in government documents. The protocols and reports written in the capital Dar es Salaam said that on such-and-such a date the inhabitants of such-and-such village were relocated to such-and-such farm. In reality, when the villagers reached their destination, they found absolutely nothing there. No houses, no fields, no tools. The officials reported great successes to themselves and to President Nyerere. In fact, within less than ten years Tanzania was transformed from Africa's biggest food exporter into a net food importer that could not feed itself without external assistance. In 1979, 90 per cent of Tanzanian farmers lived in collective farms, but they generated only 5 per cent of the country's agricultural output.\n\nThough the history of writing is full of similar mishaps, in most cases writing did enable officials to organise the state much more efficiently than before. Indeed, even the disaster of the Great Leap Forward didn't topple the Chinese Communist Party from power. The catastrophe was caused by the ability to impose written fantasies on reality, but exactly the same ability allowed the party to paint a rosy picture of its successes and hold", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "StoryBot: Ready to continue your chapter fragment. Characters may appear without introduction. Will write 54 sentences sentences like Yuval Noah Harari. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Include: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is it true that when text and reality collide, reality sometimes has to give way?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'modern' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Isn't it just a common but exaggerated slander of bureaucratic systems? Most bureaucrats – whether serving pharaoh or Mao Zedong – were reasonable people, and surely would have made the following argument: 'We use writing to describe the reality of fields, canals and granaries. If the description is accurate, we make realistic decisions. If the description is inaccurate, it causes famines and even rebellions. Then we, or the administrators of some future regime, learn from the mistake, and strive to produce more truthful descriptions. So over time, our documents are bound to become ever more precise.'\n\nThat's true to some extent, but it ignores an opposite historical dynamic. As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In the end, external reality matches their bureaucratic fantasies, but only because they forced reality to do so. For example, the borders of many African countries disregard river lines, mountain ranges and trade routes, split historical and economic zones unnecessarily, and ignore local ethnic and religious identities. The same tribe may find itself riven between several countries, whereas one country may incorporate splinters of numerous rival clans. Such problems bedevil countries all over the world, but in Africa they are particularly acute because modern African borders don't reflect the wishes and struggles of local nations. They were drawn by European bureaucrats who never set foot in Africa.\n\nIn the late nineteenth century, several European powers laid claim to African territories. Fearing that conflicting claims might lead to an all-out European war, the concerned parties got together in Berlin in 1884, and divided Africa as if it were a pie. Back then, much of the African interior was terra incognita to Europeans. The British, French and Germans had accurate maps of Africa's coastal regions, and knew precisely where the Niger, the Congo and the Zambezi empty into the ocean. However, they knew little about the course these rivers took inland, about the kingdoms and tribes that lived along their banks, and about local religion, history and geography. This hardly mattered to the European diplomats. They took out an empty map of Africa, spread it over a well-polished Berlin table, sketched lines here and there, and divided the continent between them.\n\nWhen the Europeans penetrated the African interior, armed with the agreed-upon map, they discovered that many of the borders drawn in Berlin hardly did justice to the geographic, economic and ethnic reality of Africa. However, to avoid renewed clashes, the invaders stuck to their agreements, and these imaginary lines became the actual borders of European colonies. During the second half of the twentieth century, as the European empires disintegrated and the colonies gained their independence, the new countries accepted the colonial borders, fearing that the alternative would be endless wars and conflicts. Many of the difficulties faced by present-day African countries stem from the fact that their borders make little sense. When the written fantasies of European bureaucracies encountered the African reality, reality was forced to surrender.\n\nThe modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare's day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.\n\nOnly the mass educational systems of the industrial age began using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge the worth of each student according to his or her average mark, whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged according to the school's overall average. Once bureaucrats adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed.\n\nOriginally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows, the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks.\n\nThe power of written records reached its apogee with the appearance of holy scriptures. Priests and scribes in ancient civilisations got used to seeing documents as guidebooks for reality. At first, the texts told them about the reality of taxes, fields and granaries. But as the bureaucracy gained power, so the texts gained authority. Priests wrote down not just the god's property list, but also the god's deeds, commandments and secrets. The resulting scriptures purported to describe reality in its entirety, and generations of scholars became accustomed to looking for all the answers in the pages of the Bible, the Qur'an or the Vedas.\n\nIn theory, if some holy book misrepresented reality, its disciples would sooner or later find it out, and the text would lose its authority. Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all the time. Well, that's wishful thinking. In practice, the power of human cooperation networks rests on a delicate balance between truth and fiction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to pure reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people would follow you.\n\nIf you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron, build furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck.\n\nReally powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, communist China, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That's the whole idea of money, for example. The government takes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has enough power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hand on at least some bills. The bills consequently become really valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that 'These are just worthless pieces of paper!' and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won't get very far in life.\n\nThe same thing happens when the educational system declares that matriculation exams are the best method to evaluate students. The system has enough authority to influence acceptance conditions to colleges, government offices and private-sector jobs. Students therefore invest all their efforts in getting good marks. Coveted positions are manned by people with high marks, who naturally support the system that brought them there. The fact that the educational system controls the critical exams gives it more power, and increases its influence over colleges, government offices and the job market. If somebody protests that 'The degree certificate is just a piece of paper!' and behaves accordingly, he is unlikely to get very far in life.\n\nHoly scriptures work the same way. The religious establishment proclaims that the holy book contains the answers to all our questions. It simultaneously forces courts, governments and businesses to behave according to what the holy book says. When a wise person reads scriptures and then looks at the world, he sees that there is indeed a good match. 'Scriptures say that you must pay tithes to God – and look, everybody pays. Scriptures say that women are inferior to men, and cannot serve as judges or even give testimony in court – and look, there are indeed no women judges and the courts reject their testimony. Scriptures say that whoever studies the word of God will succeed in life – and look, all the good jobs are indeed held by people who know the holy book by heart.'\n\nSuch a wise person will naturally begin to study the holy book, and because he is wise, he will become a scriptural pundit. He will consequently be appointed a judge. When he becomes a judge, he will not allow women to bear witness in court, and when he chooses his successor, he will obviously pick somebody who knows the holy book well. If someone protests that 'This book is just paper!' and behaves accordingly, such a heretic will not get very far in life.\n\nEven when scriptures mislead people about the true nature of reality, they can nevertheless retain their authority for thousands of years. For instance, the biblical perception of history is fundamentally flawed, yet it managed to spread throughout the world, and billions still believe in it. The Bible peddled a monotheistic theory of history, which says that the world is governed by a single all-powerful deity, who cares above all else about me and my doings. If something good happens, it must be a reward for my good deeds. Any catastrophe must surely be punishment for my sins.\n\nThus the ancient Jews believed that if they suffered from drought, or if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judaea and exiled its people, surely these were divine punishments for their own sins. And if King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish exiles to return home and rebuild Jerusalem, God in his mercy must have heard their remorseful prayers. The Bible doesn't recognise the possibility that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in the Philippines, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own political reasons to favour the Jews. The Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology, the Babylonian economy or the Persian political system.\n\nSuch self-absorption characterises all humans in their childhood. Children of all religions and cultures think they are the centre of the world, and therefore show little genuine interest in the conditions and feelings of other people. That's why divorce is so traumatic for children. A five-year-old cannot understand that something important is happening for reasons unrelated to him. No matter how many times you tell him that mummy and daddy are independent people with their own problems and wishes, and that they didn't divorce because of him – the child cannot absorb that. He is convinced that everything happens because of him. Most people grow out of this infantile delusion. Monotheists hold on to it till the day they die. Like a child thinking that his parents are fighting because of him, the monotheist is convinced that the Persians are fighting the Babylonians because of him.\n\nAlready in biblical times some cultures had a far more accurate perception of history.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Animist and polytheist religions depicted the world as the playground of numerous different powers rather than a single god.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was consequently easy for animists and polytheists to accept that many events are unrelated to me or to my favourite deity, and they are neither punishments for my sins nor rewards for my good deeds. Greek historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, and Chinese historians such as Sima Qian, developed sophisticated theories of history which are very similar to our own modern views. They explained that wars and revolutions break out due to a plethora of political, social and economic factors. People may fall victim to a war for no fault of their own. Accordingly, Herodotus showed keen interest in understanding Persian politics, while Sima Qian was very concerned about the culture and religion of barbarous steppe people.\n\nPresent-day scholars agree with Herodotus and Sima Qian rather than with the Bible. That's why all modern states invest so much effort in collecting information about other countries, and in analysing global ecological, political and economic trends. When the US economy falters, even evangelical Republicans sometimes point an accusing finger at China rather than at their own sins.\n\nYet even though Herodotus and Thucydides understood reality much better than the authors of the Bible, when the two world views collided, the Bible won by a knockout. The Greeks adopted the Jewish view of history, rather than vice versa. A thousand years after Thucydides, the Greeks became convinced that if some barbarian horde invaded, surely it was divine punishment for their sins. No matter how mistaken the biblical world view was, it provided a better basis for large-scale human cooperation.\n\nBut it Works!\n\nFictions enable us to cooperate better. The price we pay is that the same fictions also determine the goals of our cooperation. So we may have very elaborate systems of cooperation, which are harnessed to serve fictional aims and interests. Consequently the system may seem to be working well, but only if we adopt the system's own criteria. For example, a Muslim mullah would say: 'Our system works. There are now 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and more people study the Qur'an and submit themselves to Allah's will than ever before.' The key question, though, is whether this is the right yardstick for measuring success. A school principal would say: 'Our system works. During the last five years, exam results have risen by 7.3 per cent.' Yet is that the best way to judge a school? An official in ancient Egypt would say: 'Our system works. We collect more taxes, dig more canals and build bigger pyramids than anyone else in the world.' True enough, pharaonic Egypt led the world in taxation, irrigation and pyramid construction. But is that what really counts?\n\nPeople have many material, social and mental needs. It is far from clear that peasants in ancient Egypt enjoyed more love or better social relations than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, and in terms of nutrition, health and child mortality it seems that life was actually worse. A document dated c. 1850 BC from the reign of Amenemhat III – the pharaoh who created Lake Fayum – tells of a well-to-do man called Dua-Khety who took his son Pepy to school, so that he could learn to be a scribe. On the way to school, Dua-Khety portrayed the miserable life of peasants, labourers, soldiers and artisans, so as to encourage Pepy to devote all his energy to studying, thereby escaping the destiny of most humans.\n\nAccording to Dua-Khety, the life of a landless field labourer is full of hardship and misery. Dressed in mere tatters, he works all day till his fingers are covered in blisters. Then pharaoh's officials come and take him away to do forced labour. In return for all his hard work he receives only sickness as payment. Even if he makes it home alive, he will be completely worn out and ruined. The fate of the landholding peasant is hardly better. He spends his days carrying water in buckets from the river to the field. The heavy load bends his shoulders and covers his neck with festering swellings. In the morning he has to water his plot of leeks, in the afternoon his date palms and in the evening his coriander field. Eventually he drops down and dies. The text might exaggerate things on purpose, but not by much. Pharaonic Egypt was the most powerful kingdom of its day, but for the simple peasant all that power meant taxes and forced labour rather than clinics and social security services.\n\nThis was not a uniquely Egyptian defect. Despite all the immense achievements of the Chinese dynasties, the Muslim empires and the European kingdoms, even in AD 1850 the life of the average person was not better – and might actually have been worse – than the lives of archaic hunter-gatherers. In 1850 a Chinese peasant or a Manchester factory hand worked longer hours than their hunter-gatherer ancestors; their jobs were physically harder and mentally less fulfilling; their diet was less balanced; hygiene conditions were incomparably worse; and infectious diseases were far more common.\n\nSuppose you were given a choice between the following two vacation packages:\n\nStone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms in the nearby woods.\n\nModern proletarian package: On day one we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms.\n\nWhich package would you choose?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hence when we come to evaluate human cooperation networks, it all depends on the yardsticks and viewpoint we adopt.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 31 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Are we judging pharaonic Egypt in terms of production, nutrition or perhaps social harmony? Do we focus on the aristocracy, the simple peasants, or the pigs and crocodiles? History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.\n\nHuman cooperative networks usually judge themselves by yardsticks of their own invention, and not surprisingly, they often give themselves high marks. In particular, human networks built in the name of imaginary entities such as gods, nations and corporations normally judge their success from the viewpoint of the imaginary entity. A religion is successful if it follows divine commandments to the letter; a nation is glorious if it promotes the national interest; and a corporation thrives if it makes a lot of money.\n\nWhen examining the history of any human network, it is therefore advisable to stop from time to time and look at things from the perspective of some real entity. How do you know if an entity is real? Very simple – just ask yourself, 'Can it suffer?' When people burn down the temple of Zeus, Zeus doesn't suffer. When the euro loses its value, the euro doesn't suffer. When a bank goes bankrupt, the bank doesn't suffer. When a country suffers a defeat in war, the country doesn't really suffer. It's just a metaphor. In contrast, when a soldier is wounded in battle, he really does suffer. When a famished peasant has nothing to eat, she suffers. When a cow is separated from her newborn calf, she suffers. This is reality.\n\nOf course suffering might well be caused by our belief in fictions. For example, belief in national and religious myths might cause the outbreak of war, in which millions lose their homes, their limbs and even their lives. The cause of war is fictional, but the suffering is 100 per cent real. This is exactly why we should strive to distinguish fiction from reality.\n\nFiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. We can't play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can't enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars 'to make a lot of money for the corporation' or 'to protect the national interest'. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; how come we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in their service?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this chapter piece. Characters may appear without introduction. four sentences sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Elements: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: Precise word count needed: 'great' × 2]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stories serve as the foundations and pillars of human societies. As history unfolded, stories about gods, nations and corporations grew so powerful that they began to dominate objective reality. Believing in the great god Sobek, the Mandate of Heaven or the Bible enabled people to build Lake Fayum, the Great Wall of China and Chartres Cathedral. Unfortunately, blind faith in these stories meant that human efforts frequently focused on increasing the glory of fictional entities such as gods and nations, instead of bettering the lives of real sentient beings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Does this analysis still hold true today?", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'theories' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first sight, it seems that modern society is very different from the kingdoms of ancient Egypt or medieval China. Hasn't the rise of modern science changed the basic rules of the human game? Wouldn't it be true to say that despite the ongoing importance of traditional myths, modern social systems rely increasingly on objective scientific theories such as the theory of evolution, which simply did not exist in ancient Egypt or medieval China?\n\nWe could of course argue that scientific theories are a new kind of myth, and that our belief in science is no different from the ancient Egyptians' belief in the great god Sobek.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet the comparison doesn't hold water.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sobek existed only in the collective imagination of his devotees. Praying to Sobek helped cement the Egyptian social system, thereby enabling people to build dams and canals that prevented floods and droughts. Yet the prayers themselves didn't raise or lower the Nile's water level by a millimetre. In contrast, scientific theories are not just a way to bind people together.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is often said that God helps those who help themselves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is a roundabout way of saying that God doesn't exist, but if our belief in Him inspires us to do something ourselves – it helps. Antibiotics, unlike God, help even those who don't help themselves. They cure infections whether you believe in them or not.\n\nConsequently, the modern world is very different from the premodern world.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese emperors failed to overcome famine, plague and war despite millennia of effort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Modern societies managed to do it within a few centuries. Isn't it the fruit of abandoning intersubjective myths in favour of objective scientific knowledge? And can't we expect this process to accelerate in the coming decades? As technology allows us to upgrade humans, overcome old age and find the key to happiness, so people would care less about fictional gods, nations and corporations, and focus instead on deciphering the physical and biological reality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In truth, however, things are far more complicated.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Modern science certainly changed the rules of the game, but it did not simply replace myths with facts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myths continue to dominate humankind. Science only makes these myths stronger. Instead of destroying the intersubjective reality, science will enable it to control the objective and subjective realities more completely than ever before. Thanks to computers and bioengineering, the difference between fiction and reality will blur, as people reshape reality to match their pet fictions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The priests of Sobek imagined the existence of divine crocodiles, while pharaoh dreamt about immortality.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In reality, the sacred crocodile was a very ordinary swamp reptile dressed in golden fineries, and pharaoh was as mortal as the simplest of peasants. After death, his corpse was mummified using preservative balms and scented perfumes, but it was as lifeless as one can get. In contrast, twenty-first-century scientists might be able to really engineer super-crocodiles, and to provide the human elite with eternal youth here on earth.\n\nConsequently the rise of science will make at least some myths and religions mightier than ever.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "INPUT: story fragment\nOUTPUT: twenty-seven sentences sentences\nNOTE: Characters and plot elements may appear without introduction as this is from a larger work\nSTYLE: Yuval Noah Harari\nGENRES: history, nonfiction, philosophy\nTAGS: science\nCONTINUE STORY", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most of the misunderstandings regarding science and religion result from faulty definitions of religion. All too often, people confuse religion with superstition, spirituality, belief in supernatural powers or belief in gods. Religion is none of these things. Religion cannot be equated with superstition, because most people are unlikely to call their cherished beliefs 'superstitions'. We always believe in 'the truth'. It's only other people who believe in superstitions.\n\nSimilarly, few people put their faith in supernatural powers. For those who believe in demons, demons aren't supernatural. They are an integral part of nature, just like porcupines, scorpions and germs. Modern physicians blame disease on invisible germs, and voodoo priests blame disease on invisible demons. There's nothing supernatural about it: you make some demon angry, so the demon enters your body and causes you pain. What could be more natural than that? Only those who don't believe in demons think of them as standing apart from the natural order of things.\n\nEquating religion with faith in supernatural powers implies that you can understand all known natural phenomena without religion, which is just an optional supplement. Having understood perfectly well the whole of nature, you can now choose whether to add some 'super-natural' religious dogma or not. However, most religions argue that you simply cannot understand the world without them. You will never comprehend the true reason for disease, drought or earthquakes if you do not take their dogma into account.\n\nDefining religion as 'belief in gods' is also problematic. We tend to say that a devout Christian is religious because she believes in God, whereas a fervent communist isn't religious, because communism has no gods. However, religion is created by humans rather than by gods, and it is defined by its social function rather than by the existence of deities. Religion is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. It legitimises human norms and values by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws.\n\nReligion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change. A devout Jew would say that this is the system of moral laws created by God and revealed in the Bible. A Hindu would say that Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva created the laws, which were revealed to us humans in the Vedas. Other religions, from Buddhism and Daoism to Nazism, communism and liberalism, argue that the superhuman laws are natural laws, and not the creation of this or that god. Of course, each believes in a different set of natural laws discovered and revealed by different seers and prophets, from Buddha and Laozi to Hitler and Lenin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A Jewish boy comes to his father and asks, 'Dad, why shouldn't we eat pork?'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The father strokes his long white beard thoughtfully and answers, 'Well, Yankele, that's how the world works. You are still young and you don't understand, but if we eat pork, God will punish us and we will come to a bad end. It isn't my idea. It's not even the rabbi's idea. If the rabbi had created the world, maybe he would have created a world in which pork was perfectly kosher. But the rabbi didn't create the world – God did it. And God said, I don't know why, that we shouldn't eat pork. So we shouldn't. Capeesh?'\n\nIn 1943 a German boy comes to his father, a senior SS officer, and asks, 'Dad, why are we killing the Jews?' The father puts on his shiny leather boots, and meanwhile explains, 'Well, Fritz, that's how the world works. You are still young and you don't understand, but if we allow the Jews to live, they will cause the degeneration and extinction of humankind. It's not my idea, and it's not even the Führer's idea. If Hitler had created the world, maybe he would have created a world in which the laws of natural selection did not apply, and Jews and Aryans could all live together in perfect harmony. But Hitler didn't create the world. He just managed to decipher the laws of nature, and then instructed us how to live in line with them. If we disobey these laws, we will come to a bad end. Is that clear?!'\n\nIn 2016 a British boy comes to his father, a liberal MP, and asks, 'Dad, why should we care about the human rights of Muslims in the Middle East?' The father puts down his cup of tea, thinks for a moment, and says, 'Well, Duncan, that's how the world works. You are still young and you don't understand, but all humans, even Muslims in the Middle East, have the same nature and therefore enjoy the same natural rights. This isn't my idea, nor a decision of Parliament. If Parliament had created the world, universal human rights might well have been buried in some subcommittee along with all that quantum physics stuff. But Parliament didn't create the world, it just tries to make sense of it, and we must respect the natural rights even of Muslims in the Middle East, or very soon our own rights will also be violated, and we will come to a bad end. Now off you go.'\n\nLiberals, communists and followers of other modern creeds dislike describing their own system as a 'religion', because they identify religion with superstitions and supernatural powers. If you tell communists or liberals that they are religious, they think you accuse them of blindly believing in groundless pipe dreams. In fact, it means only that they believe in some system of moral laws that wasn't invented by humans, but which humans must nevertheless obey. As far as we know, all human societies believe in this.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Every society tells its members that they must obey some superhuman moral law, and that breaking this law will result in catastrophe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 14 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Religions differ of course in the details of their stories, their concrete commandments, and the rewards and punishments they promise. Thus in medieval Europe the Catholic Church argued that God doesn't like rich people. Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and the Church encouraged the rich to give lots of alms, threatening that misers will burn in hell. Modern communism also dislikes rich people, but it threatens them with class conflict here and now, rather than with burning sulphur after death.\n\nThe communist laws of history are similar to the commandments of the Christian God, inasmuch as they are superhuman forces that humans cannot change at will. People can decide tomorrow morning to cancel the offside rule in football, because we invented that law, and we are free to change it. However, at least according to Marx, we cannot change the laws of history. No matter what the capitalists do, as long as they continue to accumulate private property they are bound to create class conflict and they are destined to be defeated by the rising proletariat.\n\nIf you happen to be a communist yourself you might argue that communism and Christianity are nevertheless very different, because communism is right, whereas Christianity is wrong. Class conflict really is inherent in the capitalist system, whereas rich people don't suffer eternal tortures in hell after they die. Yet even if that's the case, it doesn't mean communism is not a religion. Rather, it means that communism is the one true religion. Followers of every religion are convinced that theirs alone is true. Perhaps the followers of one religion are right.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "You will be provided with a piece of text that has a portion of it missing as represented by `<\|missing\|>`. Your output should be a viable candidate for the missing portion. Produce something like 24 words.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The assertion that religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organising large-scale cooperation may vex many people for whom it represents first and foremost a spiritual path. However, just as the gap between religion and science is smaller than we commonly think, so the gap between religion and spirituality is much bigger. Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.\n\nReligion gives a complete description of the world, and offers us a well-defined contract with predetermined goals. 'God exists. He told us to behave in certain ways. If you obey God, you'll be admitted to heaven. If you disobey Him, you'll burn in hell.' The very clarity of this deal allows society to define common norms and values that regulate human behaviour.\n\nSpiritual journeys are nothing like that. They usually take people in mysterious ways towards unknown destinations. The quest usually begins with some big question, such as who am I? What is the meaning of life? What is good? Whereas many people just accept the ready-made answers provided by the powers that be, spiritual seekers are not so easily satisfied. They are determined to follow the big question wherever it leads, and not just to places you know well or wish to visit. Thus for most people, academic studies are a deal rather than a spiritual journey, because they take us to a predetermined goal approved by our elders, governments and banks. 'I'll study for three years, pass the exams, get my BA certificate and secure a well-paid job.' Academic studies might be transformed into a spiritual journey if the big questions you encounter on the way deflect you towards unexpected destinations, of which you could hardly even conceive at first. For example, a student might begin to study economics in order to secure a job in Wall Street. However, if what she learns somehow causes her to end up in a Hindu ashram or helping HIV patients in Zimbabwe, then we might call that a spiritual journey.\n\nWhy label such a voyage 'spiritual'? This is a legacy from ancient d<\|missing\|>everlasting souls that lived in a wonderful world of spirit. However, the bad god – sometimes named Satan – created another world, made of matter. Satan didn't know how to make his creation last, hence in the world of matter everything rots and disintegrates. In order to breathe life into his defective creation, Satan tempted souls from the pure world of spirit, and locked them up inside material bodies. That's what humans are – a good spiritual soul trapped inside an evil material body. Since the soul's prison – the body – decays and eventually dies, Satan ceaselessly tempts the soul with bodily delights, and above all with food, sex and power. When the body disintegrates and the soul has a chance to escape back to the spiritual world, its craving for bodily pleasures draws it back inside some new material body. The soul thus transmigrates from body to body, wasting its days in pursuit of food, sex and power.\n\nDualism instructs people to break these material shackles and undertake a journey back to the spiritual world, which is totally unfamiliar to us, but is our true home. During this quest we must reject all material temptations and deals. Due to this dualist legacy, every journey on which we doubt the conventions and deals of the mundane world and walk towards an unknown destination is called 'a spiritual journey'.\n\nSuch journeys are fundamentally different from religions, because religions seek to cement the worldly order whereas spirituality seeks to escape it. Often enough, the most important demand from spiritual wanderers is to challenge the beliefs and conventions of dominant religions. In Zen Buddhism it is said that 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.' Which means that if while walking on the spiritual path you encounter the rigid ideas and fixed laws of institutionalised Buddhism, you must free yourself from them too.\n\nFor religions, spirituality is a dangerous threat. Religions typically strive to rein in the spiritual quests of their followers, and many religious systems were challenged not by laypeople preoccupied with food, sex and power, but rather by spiritual truth-seekers who wanted more than platitudes. Thus the Protestant revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church was ignited not by hedonistic atheists but rather by a devout and ascetic monk, Martin Luther. Luther wanted answers to the existential questions of life, and refused to settle for the rites, rituals and deals offered by the Church.\n\nIn Luther's day, the Church promised its followers very enticing deals. If you sinned, and feared eternal damnation in the afterlife, all you needed to do was buy an indulgence. In the early sixteenth century the Church employed professional 'salvation peddlers' who wandered the towns and villages of Europe and sold indulgences for fixed prices. You want an entry visa to heaven? Pay ten gold coins. You want Grandpa Heinz and Grandma Gertrud to join you there? No problem, but it will cost you thirty coins. The most famous of these peddlers, the Dominican friar Johannes Tetzel, allegedly said that the moment the coin clinks in the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory to heaven.\n\nThe more Luther thought about it, the more he doubted this deal, and the Church that offered it. You cannot just buy your way to salvation. The Pope couldn't possibly have the authority to forgive people their sins, and open the gates of heaven. According to Protestant tradition, on 31 October 1517 Luther walked to the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, carrying a lengthy document, a hammer and some nails. The document listed ninety-five theses against contemporary religious practices, including against the selling of indulgences. Luther nailed it to the church door, sparking the Protestant Reformation, which called upon any human who cared about salvation to rebel against the Pope's authority and search for alternative routes to heaven.\n\nFrom a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who foam against stultified religious structures end up forging new structures in their place. It happened to the dualists, whose spiritual journeys became religious establishments. It happened to Martin Luther, who after challenging the laws, institutions and rituals of the Catholic Church found himself writing new law books, founding new institutions and inventing new ceremonies. It happened even to Buddha and Jesus. In their uncompromising quest for the truth they subverted the laws, rituals and structures of traditional Hinduism and Judaism. But eventually more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their name than in the name of any other person in history.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ualist religions that believed in the existence of two gods, one good and one evil. According to dualism, the good god created pure and ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Got a text with a `[text_redacted]` shaped hole in it. Patch it up with a bit with one hundred and fifty words.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now that we have a better understanding of religion, we can go back to examining the relationship between religion and science. There are two extreme interpretations for this relationship. One view says that science and religion are sworn enemies, and that modern history was shaped by the life-and-death struggle of scientific knowledge against religious superstition. With time, the light of science dispelled the darkness of religion, and the world became increasingly secular, rational and prosperous. However, though some scientific findings certainly undermine religious dogmas, this is not inevitable. For example, Muslim dogma holds that Islam was founded by the prophet Muhammad in seventh-century Arabia, and there is ample scientific evidence supporting this.\n\nMore importantly, science always needs religious assistance in order to create viable human institutions. Scientists study how the world functions, but there is no scientific method for determining how humans ought to behave. Science tells us that humans cannot survive without oxygen. However, is it okay to execute criminals by asphyxiation? Science doesn't know how to answer such a question. Only religions provide us with the necessary guidance.\n\nHence every practical project scientists undertake also relies on religious insights. Take, for example, the building of the Three Gorges Dam over the Yangtze River. When the Chinese government decided to build the dam in 1992, physicists could calculate what pressures the dam would have to withstand, economists could forecast how much money it would probably cost, while electrical engineers could predict how much electricity it would produce. However, the government needed to take additional factors into account. Building the dam flooded huge territories containing many villages and towns, thousands of archaeological sites, and unique landscapes and habitats. More than 1 million people were displaced and hundreds of species were endangered. It seems that the dam directly caused the extinction of the Chinese river dolphin. No matter what you personally think about the Three Gorges Dam, it is clear that building it was an ethical rather than a purely scientific issue. No physics experiment, no economic model and no mathematical equation can determine whether generating thousands of megawatts and making billions of yuan is more valuable than saving an ancient pagoda or the Chinese river dolphin. Consequently, China cannot function on the basis of scientific theories alone. It requires some religion or ideology, too.\n\nSome jump to the opposite extreme, and say that science and religion are completely separate kingdoms. Science studies facts, religion speaks about values, and never the twain shall meet. Religion has nothing to say about scientific facts, and science should keep its mouth shut concerning religious convictions. If the Pope believes that human life is sacred, and abortion is therefore a sin, biologists can neither prove nor refute this claim. As a private individual, each biologist is welcome to argue with the Pope. But as a scientist, the biologist cannot enter the fray.\n\nThis approach may sound sensible, but it misunderstands religion. Though science indeed deals only with facts, religion never confines itself to ethical judgements. Religion cannot provide us with any practical guidance unless it makes some factual claims too, and here it may well collide with science. The most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as 'God exists', 'the soul is punished for its sins in the afterlife', 'the Bible was written by a deity rather than by humans', 'the Pope is never wrong'. These are all factual claims. Many of the most heated religious debates, and many of the conflicts between science and religion, involve such factual claims rather than ethical judgements.\n\nTake abortion, for example. Devout Christians often oppose abortion, whereas many liberals support it. The main bone of contention is factual rather than ethical. Both Christians and liberals believe that human life is sacred, and that murder is a heinous crime. But they disagree about certain biological facts: does human life begin at the moment of conception, at the moment of birth or at some middle point? Indeed, some human cultures maintain that life doesn't begin even at birth. According to the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert and to various Inuit groups in the Arctic, human life begins only after the person is given a name. When an infant is born people wait for some time before naming it. If they decide not to keep the baby (either because it suffers from some deformity or because of economic difficulties), they kill it. Provided they do so before the naming ceremony, it is not considered murder. People from such cultures might well agree with liberals and Christians that human life is sacred and that murder is a terrible crime, yet they support infanticide.\n\nWhen religions advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise their beautiful values. But God often hides in the small print of factual statements. The Catholic religion markets itself as the religion of universal love and compassion. How wonderful! Who can object to that? Why, then, are not all humans Catholic? Because when you read the small print, you discover that Catholicism also demands blind obedience to a pope 'who never makes mistakes' even when he orders us to go on crusades and burn heretics at the stake. Such practical instructions are not deduced solely from ethical judgements. Rather, they result from conflating ethical judgements with factual statements.\n\nWhen we leave the ethereal sphere of philosophy and observe historical realities, we find that religious stories almost always include three parts:\n\nScience has no authority or ability to refute or corroborate the ethical judgements religions make. But scientists do have a lot to say about religious factual statements. For example, biologists are more qualified than priests to answer factual questions such as 'Do human fetuses have a nervous system one week after conception? Can they feel pain?'\n\nTo make things clearer, let us examine in depth a real historical example that you rarely hear about in religious commercials, but that had a huge social and political impact in its time. In medieval Europe, the popes enjoyed far-reaching political authority. Whenever a conflict erupted somewhere in Europe, they claimed the authority to decide the issue. To establish their claim to authority, they repeatedly reminded Europeans of the Donation of Constantine. According to this story, on 30 March 315 the Roman emperor Constantine signed an official decree granting Pope Sylvester I and his heirs perpetual control of the western part of the Roman Empire. The popes kept this precious document in their archive, and used it as a powerful propaganda tool whenever they faced opposition from ambitious princes, quarrelsome cities or rebellious peasants.\n\nPeople in medieval Europe had great respect for ancient imperial decrees. They strongly believed that kings and emperors were God's representatives, and they also believed that the older the document, the more authority it carried. Constantine in particular was revered, because he turned the Roman Empire from a pagan realm into a Christian empire. In a clash between the desires of some present-day city council and a decree issued by the great Constantine himself, it was obvious that people ought to obey the ancient document. Hence whenever the Pope faced political opposition, he waved the Donation of Constantine, demanding obedience. Not that it always worked. But the Donation of Constantine was an important cornerstone of papal propaganda and of the medieval political order.\n\nWhen we examine the Donation of Constantine closely, we find that this story is composed of three distinct parts:\n\n- Ethical judgement: People ought to respect ancient imperial decrees more than present-day popular opinions.\n\n- Factual statement: On 30 March 315, Emperor Constantine granted the popes dominion over Europe.\n\n- Practical guideline: Europeans in 1315 ought to obey the Pope's commands.\n\nThe ethical authority of ancient imperial decrees is far from self-evident. Most twenty-first-century Europeans think that the wishes of present-day citizens trump the diktats of long-dead kings. However, science cannot join this ethical debate, because no experiment or equation can decide the matter. If a modern-day scientist time-travelled to medieval Europe, she couldn't prove to our ancestors that the decrees of ancient emperors are irrelevant to contemporary political disputes.\n\nYet the story of Constantine's Donation was based not just on ethical judgements. It also involved some very concrete factual statements, which science is highly qualified to either verify or falsify. In 1441 Lorenzo Valla – a Catholic priest and a pioneer linguist – published [text_redacted]ated the American Declaration of Independence 34 July 1776.\n\nToday all historians agree that the Donation of Constantine was forged in the papal court sometime in the eighth century. Even though Valla never disputed the moral authority of ancient imperial decrees, his scientific study did undermine the practical guideline that Europeans must obey the Pope.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "a scientific study proving that Constantine's Donation was forged. Valla analysed the style and grammar of the document, and the various words and terms it contained. He showed that the document included words which were unknown in fourth-century Latin, and that it was most probably forged about 400 years after Constantine's death. Moreover, the date appearing on the document is '30 March, in the year Constantine was consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus was consul for the first time'. In the Roman Empire, two consuls were elected each year, and it was customary to date documents by their consulate years. Unfortunately, Constantine's fourth consulate was in 315, whereas Gallicanus was elected consul for the first time only in 317. If this all-important document was indeed composed in Constantine's days, it would never have contained such a blatant mistake. It is as if Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had d", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Complete the text by replacing `[missing]` with ~two thousand, seven hundred and seventy chars.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "On 20 December 2013 the Ugandan parliament passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which criminalised homosexual activities, penalising some activities by life imprisonment. It was inspired and supported by evangelical Christian groups, which maintain that God prohibits homosexuality. As proof, they quote Leviticus 18:22 ('Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable') and Leviticus 20:13 ('If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads'). In previous centuries, the same religious story was responsible for tormenting millions of people all over the world. This story can be briefly summ[missing]it had elaborate temple rituals, most of which involved sacrificing animals to a jealous sky god so that he would bless his people with seasonal rains and military victories. Its religious elite consisted of priestly families, who owed everything to birth, and nothing to intellectual prowess. The mostly illiterate priests were busy with the temple ceremonies, and had little time for writing or studying any scriptures.\n\nDuring the Second Temple period a rival religious elite was formed. Due partly to Persian and Greek influences, Jewish scholars who wrote and interpreted texts gained increasing prominence. These scholars eventually came to be known as rabbis, and the texts they compiled were christened 'the Bible'. Rabbinical authority rested on individual intellectual abilities rather than on birth. The clash between the new literate elite and the old priestly families was inevitable. Luckily for the rabbis, the Romans torched Jerusalem and its temple while suppressing the Great Jewish Revolt (AD 70). With the temple in ruins, the priestly families lost their religious authority, their economic power base and their very raison d'être. Traditional Judaism – a Judaism of temples, priests and head-splitting warriors – disappeared. Its place was taken by a new Judaism of books, rabbis and hair-splitting scholars. The scholars' main forte was interpretation. They used this ability not only to explain how an almighty God allowed His temple to be destroyed, but also to bridge the immense gaps between the old Judaism described in biblical stories and the very different Judaism they created.\n\nHence according to our best scientific knowledge, the Leviticus injunctions against homosexuality reflect nothing grander than the biases of a few priests and scholars in ancient Jerusalem. Though science cannot decide whether people ought to obey God's commands, it has many relevant things to say about the provenance of the Bible. If Ugandan politicians think that the power that created the cosmos, the galaxies and the black holes becomes terribly upset whenever two Homo sapiens males have a bit of fun together, then science can help disabuse them of this rather bizarre notion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "arised as follows:\n\n- Ethical judgement: Humans ought to obey God's commands.\n\n- Factual statement: About 3,000 years ago God commanded humans to avoid homosexual activities.\n\n- Practical guideline: People should avoid homosexual activities.\n\nIs the story true? Scientists cannot argue with the judgement that humans ought to obey God. Personally, you may dispute it. You may believe that human rights trump divine authority, and if God orders us to violate human rights, we shouldn't listen to Him. Yet there is no scientific experiment that can decide this issue.\n\nIn contrast, science has a lot to say about the factual statement that 3,000 years ago the Creator of the Universe commanded members of the Homo sapiens species to abstain from boy-on-boy action. How do we know this statement is true? Examining the relevant literature reveals that though this statement is repeated in millions of books, articles and Internet sites, they all rely on a single source: the Bible. If so, a scientist would ask, who composed the Bible, and when? Note that this is a factual question, not a question of values. Devout Jews and Christians say that at least the book of Leviticus was dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and from that moment onwards not a single letter was either added or deleted from it. 'But,' the scientist would insist, 'how can we be sure of that? After all, the Pope argued that the Donation of Constantine was composed by Constantine himself in the fourth century, when in fact it was forged 400 years later by the Pope's own clerks.'\n\nWe can now use an entire arsenal of scientific methods to determine who composed the Bible, and when. Scientists have been doing exactly that for more than a century, and if you are interested, you can read whole books about their findings. To cut a long story short, most peer-reviewed scientific studies agree that the Bible is a collection of numerous different texts composed by different people in different times, and that these texts were not assembled into a single holy book until long after biblical times. For example, whereas King David probably lived around 1000 BC, it is commonly accepted that the book of Deuteronomy was composed in the court of King Josiah of Judah, sometime around 620 BC, as part of a propaganda campaign aimed to strengthen Josiah's authority. Leviticus was compiled at an even later date, no earlier than 500 BC.\n\nAs for the idea that the ancient Jews carefully preserved the biblical text, without adding or subtracting anything, scientists point out that biblical Judaism was not a scripture-based religion at all. Rather, it was a typical Iron Age cult, similar to many of its Middle Eastern neighbours. It had no synagogues, yeshivas, rabbis – or even a bible. Instead ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll write a bit, then you continue with ten sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Maintain any established character dynamics or world elements.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In truth, it is not always easy to separate ethical judgements from factual statements. Religions have the nagging tendency to turn factual statements into ethical judgements, thereby creating terrible confusion and obfuscating what should have been relatively simple debates. Thus the factual statement 'God wrote the Bible' all too often mutates into the ethical injunction 'you ought to believe that God wrote the Bible'. Merely believing in this factual statement becomes a virtue, whereas doubting it becomes a terrible sin.\n\nConversely, ethical judgements often hide within them factual statements that people don't bother to mention, because they think they have been proven beyond doubt. Thus the ethical judgement 'human life is sacred' (which science cannot test) may shroud the factual statement 'every human has an eternal soul' (which is open for scientific debate). Similarly, when American nationalists proclaim that 'the American nation is sacred', this seemingly ethical judgement is in fact predicated on factual statements such as 'the USA has spearheaded most of the moral, scientific and economic advances of the last few centuries'. Whereas it is impossible to scientifically scrutinise the claim that the American nation is sacred, once we unpack this judgement we may well examine scientifically whether the USA has indeed been responsible for a disproportionate share of moral, scientific and economic breakthroughs.\n\nThis has led some philosophers, such as Sam Harris, to argue that science can always resolve ethical dilemmas, because human values always hide within them some factual statements. Harris thinks all humans share a single supreme value – minimising suffering and maximising happiness – and all ethical debates are factual arguments concerning the most efficient way to maximise happiness.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Islamic fundamentalists want to reach heaven in order to be happy, liberals believe that increasing human liberty maximises happiness, and German nationalists think that everyone would be better off if they only allowed Berlin to run this planet. According to Harris, Islamists, liberals and nationalists have no ethical dispute; they have a factual disagreement about how best to realise their common goal.\n\nYet even if Harris is right, and even if all humans cherish happiness, in practice it would be extremely difficult to use this insight to decide ethical disputes, particularly because we have no scientific definition or measurement of happiness. Consider the case of the Three Gorges Dam. Even if we agree that the ultimate aim of the project is to make the world a happier place, how can we tell whether generating cheap electricity contributes more to global happiness than protecting traditional lifestyles or saving the rare Chinese river dolphin? As long as we haven't deciphered the mysteries of consciousness, we cannot develop a universal measurement for happiness and suffering, and we don't know how to compare the happiness and suffering of different individuals, let alone different species. How many units of happiness are generated when a billion Chinese enjoy cheaper electricity? How many units of misery are produced when an entire dolphin species becomes extinct? Indeed, are happiness and misery mathematical entities that can be added or subtracted in the first place? Eating ice cream is enjoyable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Finding true love is more enjoyable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you think that if you just eat enough ice cream, the accumulated pleasure could ever equal the rapture of true love?\n\nConsequently, although science has much more to contribute to ethical debates than we commonly think, there is a line it cannot cross, at least not yet. Without the guiding hand of some religion, it is impossible to maintain large-scale social orders. Even universities and laboratories need religious backing. Religion provides the ethical justification for scientific research, and in exchange gets to influence the scientific agenda and the uses of scientific discoveries. Hence you cannot understand the history of science without taking religious beliefs into account. Scientists seldom dwell on this fact, but the Scientific Revolution itself began in one of the most dogmatic, intolerant and religious societies in history.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Literary Collaboration:\n- Sentences: five sentences\n- Match character context\n- Genre: history, nonfiction, philosophy", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We often associate science with the values of secularism and tolerance. If so, early modern Europe is the last place you would have expected a scientific revolution. Europe in the days of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton had the highest concentration of religious fanatics in the world, and the lowest level of tolerance. The luminaries of the Scientific Revolution lived in a society that expelled Jews and Muslims, burned heretics wholesale, saw a witch in every cat-loving elderly lady and started a new religious war every full moon.\n\nIf you travelled to Cairo or Istanbul around 1600, you would find there a multicultural and tolerant metropolis, where Sunnis, Shiites, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Jews and even the occasional Hindu lived side by side in relative harmony.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though they had their share of disagreements and riots, and though the Ottoman Empire routinely discriminated against people on religious grounds, it was a liberal paradise compared with Europe. If you then travelled to contemporary Paris or London, you would find cities awash with religious extremism, in which only those belonging to the dominant sect could live. In London they killed Catholics, in Paris they killed Protestants, the Jews had long been driven out, and nobody in his right mind would dream of letting any Muslims in. And yet, the Scientific Revolution began in London and Paris rather than in Cairo and Istanbul.\n\nIt is customary to tell the history of modernity as a struggle between science and religion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In theory, both science and religion are interested above all in the truth, and because each upholds a different truth, they are doomed to clash.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In fact, neither science nor religion cares that much about the truth, hence they can easily compromise, coexist and even cooperate.\n\nReligion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in power. It aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, fight wars and produce food.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As individuals, scientists and priests may give immense importance to the truth; but as collective institutions, science and religion prefer order and power over truth. They can therefore make good bedfellows. The uncompromising quest for truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the confines of either religious or scientific establishments.\n\nIt would accordingly be far more correct to view modern history as the process of formulating a deal between science and one particular religion – namely, humanism. Modern society believes in humanist dogmas, and uses science not in order to question these dogmas, but rather in order to implement them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the twenty-first century the humanist dogmas are unlikely to be replaced by pure scientific theories.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'humanism' × 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, the covenant linking science and humanism may well crumble, and give way to a very different kind of deal, between science and some new post-humanist religion. We will dedicate the next two chapters to understanding the modern covenant between science and humanism. The third and final part of the book will then explain why this covenant is disintegrating, and what new deal might replace it.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "STORY CONTINUATION PROTOCOL:\nCONTEXT: Match character/world familiarity\nSENTENCES=22 sentences\nGENRES=history, nonfiction, philosophy\nTAGS=science\nEXECUTE", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Modernity is a deal. All of us sign up to this deal on the day we are born, and it regulates our lives until the day we die. Very few of us can ever rescind or transcend this deal. It shapes our food, our jobs and our dreams, and it decides where we dwell, whom we love and how we pass away.\n\nAt first sight, modernity looks like an extremely complicated deal, hence few try to understand what they have signed up to. It's like when you download some software and are asked to sign an accompanying contract which is dozens of pages of legalese; you take one look at it, immediately scroll down to the last page, tick 'I agree' and forget about it. Yet in fact modernity is a surprisingly simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power.\n\nUp until modern times, most cultures believed that humans play a part in some great cosmic plan. The plan was devised by the omnipotent gods, or by the eternal laws of nature, and humankind could not change it. The cosmic plan gave meaning to human life, but also restricted human power. Humans were much like actors on a stage. The script gave meaning to their every word, tear and gesture – but placed strict limits on their performance. Hamlet cannot murder Claudius in Act I, or leave Denmark and go to an ashram in India. Shakespeare won't allow it. Similarly, humans cannot live for ever, they cannot escape all diseases, and they cannot do as they please. It's not in the script.\n\nIn exchange for giving up power, premodern humans believed that their lives gained meaning. It really mattered whether they fought bravely on the battlefield, whether they supported the lawful king, whether they ate forbidden foods for breakfast or whether they had an affair with the next-door neighbour. This created some inconveniences, of course, but it gave humans psychological protection against disasters. If something terrible happened – such as war, plague or drought – people consoled themselves that 'We all play a role in some great cosmic drama, devised by the gods, or by the laws of nature. We are not privy to the script, but we can rest assured that everything happens for a purpose.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even this terrible war, plague and drought have their place in the greater scheme of things. Furthermore, we can count on the playwright that the story surely has a good ending. So even the war, plague and drought will work out for the best – if not here and now, then in the afterlife.'\n\nModern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more.\n\nSince there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us, or give meaning to our suffering. There won't be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'.\n\nOn the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not limited to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death – but we can create paradise here on earth, and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties.\n\nIf we invest money in research, then scientific breakthroughs will accelerate technological progress. New technologies will fuel economic growth, and a growing economy could dedicate even more money to research. With each passing decade we will enjoy more food, faster vehicles and better medicines.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "One day our knowledge will be so vast and our technology so advanced that we could distil the elixir of eternal youth, the elixir of true happiness, and any other drug we might possibly desire – and no god will stop us.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The modern deal thus offers humans an enormous temptation, coupled with a colossal threat. Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach, but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness. On the practical level, modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid of meaning. Modern culture is the most powerful in history, and it is ceaselessly researching, inventing, discovering and growing. At the same time, it is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture.\n\nThis chapter discusses the modern pursuit of power. The next chapter will examine how humankind has used its growing power to somehow sneak meaning back into the infinite emptiness of the cosmos. Yes, we moderns have promised to renounce meaning in exchange for power; but there's nobody out there to hold us to our promise. We think we are smart enough to enjoy the full benefits of the modern deal, without paying its price.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The text has a missing section marked as `<\|missing\|>`. Give me roughly 2 sentences that would fit there.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The modern pursuit of power is fuelled by the alliance between scientific progress and economic growth. For most of history science progressed at a snail's pace, while the economy was in deep freeze. The gradual increase in human population did lead to a corresponding increase in production, and sporadic discoveries sometimes resulted even in per capita growth, but this was a very slow process.\n\nIf in AD 1000 a hundred villagers produced a hundred tons of wheat, and in AD 1100, 105 villagers produced 107 tons of wheat, this growth didn't change the rhythms of life or the sociopolitical order. Whereas today everyone is obsessed with growth, in the premodern era people were oblivious to it. Princes, priests and peasants assumed that human production was more or less stable, that one person could enrich himself only by pilfering somebody else and that their grandchildren were unlikely to enjoy a better standard of living.\n\nThis stagnation resulted to a large extent from the difficulties involved in financing new projects. Without proper funding, it wasn't easy to drain swamps, construct bridges and build ports – not to mention engineer new wheat strains, discover new energy sources or open new trade routes. Funds were scarce because there was little credit in those days; there was little credit because people had no belief in growth; and people didn't believe in growth because the economy was stagnant. Stagnation thereby perpetuated itself.\n\nSuppose you live in a medieval town that suffers from annual outbreaks of dysentery. You resolve to find a cure. You need funding to set up a lab, buy medicinal herbs and exotic chemicals, pay assistants and travel to consult with famous doctors. You also need money to feed yourself and your family while you are busy with your research. But you don't have much money. You can approach the local lumberjack, blacksmith and baker and ask them to fulfil all your needs for a few years, promising that when you finally discover the cure and become rich, you will pay your debts.\n\nUnfortunately, the lumberjack, blacksmith and baker are unlikely to agree. They need to feed their families today, and they have no faith in miracle medicines. They weren't born yesterday, and in all their years they have never heard of anyone finding a new medicine for some dreaded disease. If you want provisions – you must pay cash. But how can you have enough money when you haven't discovered the medicine yet, and all your time is taken up with research? Reluctantly, you go back to tilling your field, dysentery keeps tormenting the townsfolk, nobody tries to develop new remedies, and not a single gold coin changes hands. That's how the economy froze, and science stood still.\n\nThe cycle was eventually broken in the modern age thanks to people's growing trust in the future, and the resulting miracle of credit. Credit is the economic manifestation of trust. Today, if I want to develop a new drug but I don't have enough money, I can get a loan from the bank, or turn to private investors and venture capital funds. When Ebola erupted in West Africa in the summer of 2014, what do you think happened to the shares of pharmaceutical companies that were busy developing anti-Ebola drugs and vaccines? They skyrocketed. Tekmira shares rose by 50 per cent and BioCryst shares by 90 per cent. In the Middle Ages, the outbreak of a plague caused people to raise their eyes towards heaven, and pray to God to forgive them for their sins. Today, when people hear of some new deadly epidemic, they pick up the phone and call their broker. For the stock exchange, even an epidemic is a business opportunity.\n\nIf enough new ventures succeed, people's trust in the future increases, credit expands, interest rates fall, entrepreneurs can raise money more easily and the economy grows. People consequently have even greater trust in the future, the economy keeps growing and science progresses with it.\n\nIt sounds simple on paper. Why, then, did humankind have to wait until the modern era for economic growth to gather momentum? For thousands of years people had little faith in future growth not because they were stupid, but because it contradicts our gut feelings, our evolutionary heritage and the way the world works. Most natural systems exist in equilibrium, and most survival struggles are a zero-sum game in which one can prosper only at the expense of another.\n\nFor example, each year roughly the same amount of grass grows in a given valley. The grass supports a population of about 10,000 rabbits, which contains enough slow, dim-witted or unlucky rabbits to provide prey for a hundred foxes. If one fox is very diligent, and captures more rabbits than usual, then another fox will probably starve to death. If all foxes somehow manage to capture more rabbits simultaneously, the rabbit population will crash, and next year many foxes will starve. Even though there are occasional fluctuations in the rabbit market, in the long run the foxes cannot expect to hunt, say, 3 per cent more rabbits per year than the preceding year.\n\nOf course, some ecological realities are more complex, and not all survival struggles are zero-sum games. Many animals cooperate effectively, and a few even give loans. The most famous lenders in nature are vampire bats. These vampires congregate in their thousands inside caves, and every night they fly out to look for prey. When they find a sleeping bird or a careless mammal, they make a small incision in its skin, and suck its blood. Not all bats find a victim every night. In order to cope with the uncertainty of their life, the vampires loan blood to each other. A vampire that fails to find prey will come home and ask for some stolen blood from a more fortunate friend. Vampires remember very well to whom they loaned blood, so at a later date if the friend comes home empty-handed, he will approach his debtor, who will return the favour.\n\nHowever, unlike human bankers, vampires never charge interest. I<\|missing\|>production. Though the blood market has its ups and downs, vampires cannot presume that in 2017 there will be 3 per cent more blood than in 2016, and that in 2018 the blood market will again grow by 3 per cent. Consequently, vampires don't believe in growth. For millions of years of evolution, humans lived under similar conditions to vampires, foxes and rabbits. Hence humans too find it difficult to believe in growth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "f vampire A loaned vampire B ten centilitres of blood, B will repay the same amount. Nor do vampires use loans in order to finance new businesses or encourage growth in the blood-sucking market – because the blood is produced by other animals, the vampires have no way of increasing ", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes as Yuval Noah Harari. Story might have ongoing characters/plots - work with what's given", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Evolutionary pressures have accustomed humans to see the world as a static pie.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If somebody gets a bigger slice of the pie, somebody else inevitably gets a smaller slice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A particular family or city may prosper, but humankind as a whole is not going to produce more than it produces today. Accordingly, traditional religions such as Christianity and Islam sought ways to solve humanity's problems with the help of current resources, either by redistributing the existing pie, or by promising us a pie in the sky.\n\nModernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that economic growth is not only possible but is absolutely essential. Prayers, good deeds and meditation can be comforting and inspiring, but problems such as famine, plague and war can only be solved through growth. This fundamental dogma can be summarised in one simple idea: 'If you have a problem, you probably need more stuff, and in order to have more stuff, you must produce more of it.'\n\nModern politicians and economists insist that growth is vital for three principal reasons. Firstly, when we produce more, we can consume more, raise our standard of living and allegedly enjoy a happier life. Secondly, as long as humankind multiplies, economic growth is needed merely to stay where we are. For example, in India the annual population growth rate is 1.2 per cent. That means that unless the Indian economy grows each year by at least 1.2 per cent, unemployment will rise, salaries will fall and the average standard of living will decline. Thirdly, even if Indians stop multiplying, and even if the Indian middle class can be satisfied with its present standard of living, what should India do about its hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken citizens? If the economy doesn't grow, and the pie therefore remains the same size, you can give more to the poor only by taking something from the rich. That will force you to make some very hard choices, and will probably cause a lot of resentment and even violence. If you wish to avoid hard choices, resentment and violence, you need a bigger pie.\n\nModernity has turned 'more stuff' into a panacea applicable to almost all public and private problems, from Islamic fundamentalism through Third World authoritarianism down to a failed marriage. If only countries such as Pakistan and Egypt could keep a healthy growth rate, their citizens would come to enjoy the benefits of private cars and bulging refrigerators, and they would take the path of earthly prosperity instead of following the Islamic pied piper. Similarly, economic growth in countries such as Congo and Myanmar would produce a prosperous middle class which is the bedrock of liberal democracy. And in the case of the disgruntled couple, their marriage will be saved if they just buy a bigger house (so they don't have to share a cramped office), purchase a dishwasher (so that they stop arguing whose turn it is to do the dishes) and go to expensive therapy sessions twice a week.\n\nEconomic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet. The Soviet Union, with its megalomaniac Five Year Plans, was as obsessed with growth as the most cut-throat American robber baron. Just as Christians and Muslims both believed in heaven, and disagreed only about how to get there, so during the Cold War both capitalists and communists believed in creating heaven on earth through economic growth, and wrangled only about the exact method.\n\nToday Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key for realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India largely thanks to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and thanks to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade.\n\nJapan's prime minister, the nationalist Shinzō Abe, came to office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two decades of stagnation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His aggressive and somewhat unusual measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Meanwhile in neighbouring China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice it is guided by Deng Xiaoping's famous maxims that 'development is the only hard truth' and that 'it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which means, in plain language: do anything it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn't have been happy with it.\n\nIn Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city state, they followed this line of thinking even further, and pegged ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, ministers get a raise, as if that is what their job is all about.\n\nThis obsession with growth may sound self-evident, but only because we live in the modern world. It wasn't like this in the past. Indian maharajas, Ottoman sultans, Kamakura shoguns and Han emperors seldom staked their political fortunes on ensuring economic growth. That Modi, Erdoğan, Abe and Chinese president Xi Jinping all bet their careers on economic growth testifies to the almost religious status growth has managed to acquire throughout the world. Indeed, it may not be wrong to call the belief in economic growth a religion, because it now purports to solve many if not most of our ethical dilemmas. Since economic growth is allegedly the source of all good things, it encourages people to bury their ethical disagreements and adopt whichever course of action maximises long-term growth. Thus Modi's India is home to thousands of sects, parties, movements and gurus, yet though their ultimate aims may differ, they all have to pass through the same bottleneck of economic growth, so why not pull together in the meantime?\n\nThe credo of 'more stuff' accordingly urges individuals, firms and governments to discount anything that might hamper economic growth, such as preserving social equality, ensuring ecological harmony or honouring your parents. In the Soviet Union, when people thought that state-controlled communism was the fastest way to grow, anything that stood in the way of collectivisation was bulldozed, including millions of kulaks, the freedom of expression and the Aral Sea. Nowadays it is generally accepted that some version of free-market capitalism is a much more efficient way of ensuring long-term growth, hence rich farmers and freedom of expression are protected, but ecological habitats, social structures and traditional values that stand in the way of free-market capitalism are destroyed and dismantled.\n\nTake, for example, a software engineer making $250 per hour working for some hi-tech start-up. One day her elderly father has a stroke. He now needs help with shopping, cooking and even showering. She could move her father to her own house, leave home later in the morning, come back earlier in the evening and take care of her father personally. Both her income and the start-up's productivity would suffer, but her father would enjoy the care of a respectful and loving daughter. Alternatively, the engineer could hire a Mexican carer who, for $25 per hour, would live with the father and provide for all his needs. That would mean business as usual for the engineer and her start-up, and even the carer and the Mexican economy would benefit. What should the engineer do?\n\nFree-market capitalism has a firm answer. If economic growth demands that we loosen family bonds, encourage people to live away from their parents, and import carers from the other side of the world – so be it. This answer, however, involves an ethical judgement rather than a factual statement. No doubt, when some people specialise in software engineering while others spend their time taking care of the elderly, we can produce more software and give old people more professional care. Yet is economic growth more important than family bonds?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "By daring to make such ethical judgements, free-market capitalism has crossed the border from the land of science to that of religion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most capitalists would probably dislike the title of religion, but as religions go, capitalism can at least hold its head high. Unlike other religions that promise us a pie in the sky, capitalism promises miracles here on earth – and sometimes even provides them. Much of the credit for overcoming famine and plague belongs to the ardent capitalist faith in growth. Capitalism even deserves some kudos for reducing human violence and increasing tolerance and cooperation. As the next chapter explains, there are additional factors at play here, but capitalism did make an important contribution to global harmony by encouraging people to stop viewing the economy as a zero-sum game, in which your profit is my loss, and instead see it as a win–win situation, in which your profit is also my profit. This has probably helped global harmony far more than centuries of Christian preaching about loving your neighbour and turning the other cheek.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "16 sentences sentences. same character feel. history, nonfiction, philosophy stuff.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "From its belief in the supreme value of growth, capitalism deduces its number one commandment: thou shalt invest thy profits in increasing growth. For most of history princes and priests wasted their profits on flamboyant carnivals, sumptuous palaces and unnecessary wars. Alternatively, they put gold coins in an iron chest, sealed it and buried it in a dungeon. Today, devout capitalists use their profits to hire new employees, enlarge the factory or develop a new product.\n\nIf they don't know how to do it themselves, they give their money to somebody who does, such as bankers and venture capitalists. The latter lend the money to various entrepreneurs. Farmers take loans to plant new wheat fields, contractors build new houses, energy corporations explore new oil fields, and arms factories develop new weapons. The profits from all these activities enable the entrepreneurs to repay the loans with interest. We now have not only more wheat, houses, oil and weapons – but also more money, which the banks and funds can again lend. This wheel will never stop, at least not according to capitalism. We will never reach a moment when capitalism says: 'That's it. You have grown enough. You can now take it easy.' If you want to know why the capitalist wheel is unlikely ever to stop, talk for an hour with a friend who has just earned $100,000 and wonders what to do with it.\n\n'The banks offer such low interest rates,' he would complain. 'I don't want to put my money in a savings account that pays hardly 0.5 per cent a year.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You can make perhaps 2 per cent in government bonds.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "My cousin Richie bought a flat in Seattle last year, and he has already made 20 per cent on his investment! Maybe I should go into real estate too; but everybody is saying there's a new real-estate bubble. So what do you think about the stock exchange? A friend told me the best deal these days is to buy an ETF that follows emerging economies, like Brazil or China.' As he stops for a moment to breathe, you ask, 'Well, why not just be satisfied with your $100,000?' He will explain to you better than I can why capitalism will never stop.\n\nThis lesson is hammered home even to children and teenagers through ubiquitous capitalist games. Premodern games such as chess assumed a stagnant economy. You begin a game of chess with sixteen pieces, and you never finish a game with more. In rare cases a pawn may be transformed into a queen, but you cannot produce new pawns, nor can you upgrade your knights into tanks. So chess players never have to think about investment. In contrast, many modern board games and computer games revolve around investment and growth.\n\nParticularly telling are civilisation-style strategy games, such as Minecraft, The Settlers of Catan or Sid Meier's Civilization. The game may be set in the Middle Ages, in the Stone Age or in some imaginary fairy land, but the principles always remain the same – and they are always capitalist. Your aim is to establish a city, a kingdom or maybe an entire civilisation. You begin from a very modest base, perhaps just a village and its nearby fields.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Your assets provide you with an initial income of wheat, wood, iron or gold.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You then have to invest this income wisely. You have to choose between unproductive but still necessary tools such as soldiers, and productive assets such as more villages, fields and mines. The winning strategy is usually to invest the barest minimum in non-productive essentials, while maximising your productive assets. Establishing additional villages means that next turn you will have a larger income that would enable you not only to buy more soldiers (if necessary), but simultaneously to increase your investment in production. Soon you could upgrade your villages to towns, build universities, harbours and factories, explore the seas and oceans, establish your civilisation and win the game.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write just six sentences to replace the `<cutout_marker>` in the following text.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet can the economy actually keep growing for ever? Won't it eventually run out of resources – and grind to a halt? In order to ensure perpetual growth, we must somehow discover an inexhaustible store of resources.\n\nOne solution is to explore and conquer new lands and territories. For centuries, the growth of the European economy and the expansion of the capitalist system indeed relied heavily on overseas imperial conquests. However, there are only so many islands and continents on earth. Some entrepreneurs hope eventually to explore and conquer new planets and even galaxies, but in the meantime, the modern economy has had to find a better method of expanding.\n\nScience has provided modernity with the alternative. The fox economy cannot grow, because foxes don't know how to produce more rabbits. The rabbit economy stagnates, because rabbits cannot make the grass grow faster. But the human economy can grow because humans can discover new materials and sources of energy.\n\nThe traditional view of the world as a pie of a fixed size presupposes there are only two kinds of resources in the world: raw materials and energy. But in truth, there are three kinds o<cutout_marker>ssing it, then both I and my grandchildren will have more energy.\n\nFor thousands of years, the scientific road to growth was blocked because people believed that holy scriptures and ancient traditions already contained all the important knowledge the world had to offer. A corporation that believed all the oil fields in the world had already been discovered would not waste time and money searching for oil. Similarly, a human culture that believed it already knew everything worth knowing would not bother searching for new knowledge. This was the position of most premodern human civilisations. However, the Scientific Revolution freed humankind from this conviction. The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.\n\nWith each passing generation, science helped discover fresh sources of energy, new kinds of raw material, better machinery and novel production methods. Consequently, in 2016 humankind commands far more energy and raw materials than ever before, and production skyrockets. Inventions such as the steam engine, the internal combustion engine and the computer have created whole new industries from scratch. As we look twenty years to the future, we confidently expect to produce and consume far more in 2036 than we do today. We trust nanotechnology, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence to revolutionise production yet again, and to open whole new sections in our ever-expanding supermarkets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "f resources: raw materials, energy and knowledge. Raw materials and energy are exhaustible – the more you use, the less you have. Knowledge, in contrast, is a growing resource – the more you use, the more you have. Indeed, when you increase your stock of knowledge, it can give you more raw materials and energy as well. If I invest $100 million searching for oil in Alaska and I find it, then I now have more oil, but my grandchildren will have less of it. In contrast, if I invest $100 million researching solar energy, and I find a new and more efficient way of harne", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this chapter piece. Characters may appear without introduction. four sentences sentences in Yuval Noah Harari's style. Genres: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Elements: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We therefore have a good chance of overcoming the problem of resource scarcity. The real nemesis of the modern economy is ecological collapse. Both scientific progress and economic growth take place within a brittle biosphere, and as they gather steam, so the shock waves destabilise the ecology. In order to provide every person in the world with the same standard of living as affluent Americans, we would need a few more planets – but we only have this one.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If progress and growth do end up destroying the ecosystem, the cost will be dear not merely to vampires, foxes and rabbits, but also to Sapiens. An ecological meltdown will cause economic ruin, political turmoil, a fall in human standards of living, and it might threaten the very existence of human civilisation.\n\nWe could lessen the danger by slowing down the pace of progress and growth. If this year investors expect to get a 6 per cent return on their portfolios, in ten years they will be satisfied with a 3 per cent return, in twenty years only 1 per cent, and in thirty years the economy will stop growing and we'll be happy with what we've already got.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet the creed of growth firmly objects to such a heretical idea.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead, it suggests we should run even faster. If our discoveries destabilise the ecosystem and threaten humanity, then we should discover something to protect ourselves. If the ozone layer dwindles and exposes us to skin cancer, we should invent better sunscreen and better cancer treatments, thereby also promoting the growth of new sunscreen factories and cancer centres. If all the new industries pollute the atmosphere and the oceans, causing global warming and mass extinctions, then we should build for ourselves virtual worlds and hi-tech sanctuaries that will provide us with all the good things in life even if the planet is as hot, dreary and polluted as hell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Beijing has already become so polluted that people avoid the outdoors, and wealthy Chinese pay thousands of dollars for indoor air-purifying systems.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The super-rich build protective contraptions even over their yards. In 2013 the International School of Beijing, which caters for the children of foreign diplomats and upper-class Chinese, went a step further, and constructed a giant $5 million dome over its six tennis courts and its playing fields. Other schools are following suit, and the Chinese air-purification market is booming. Of course most Beijing residents cannot afford such luxuries in their homes, nor can they afford to send their kids to the International School.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Humankind finds itself locked into a double race.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the one hand, we feel compelled to speed up the pace of scientific progress and economic growth. A billion Chinese and a billion Indians want to live like middle-class Americans, and they see no reason why they should put their dreams on hold when the Americans are unwilling to give up their SUVs and shopping malls. On the other hand, we must stay at least one step ahead of ecological Armageddon. Managing this double race becomes more difficult by the year, because every stride that brings the Delhi slum-dwellers closer to the American Dream also brings the planet closer to the brink.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The good news is that for hundreds of years humankind has enjoyed a growing economy without falling prey to ecological meltdown.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many other species have perished in the process, and humans too have faced a number of economic crises and ecological disasters, but so far we have always managed to pull through. Yet future success is not guaranteed by some law of nature. Who knows if science will always be able to simultaneously save the economy from freezing and the ecology from boiling. And since the pace just keeps accelerating, the margins for error keep narrowing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If previously it was enough to invent something amazing once a century, today we need to come up with a miracle every two years.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We should also be concerned that an ecological apocalypse might have different consequences for different human castes. There is no justice in history. When disaster strikes, the poor almost always suffer far more than the rich, even if the rich caused the tragedy in the first place. Global warming is already affecting the lives of poor people in arid African countries more than the lives of affluent Westerners.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Paradoxically, the very power of science may increase the danger, because it makes the rich complacent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'warming' precisely 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consider greenhouse gas emissions. Most scholars and an increasing number of politicians recognise the reality of global warming and the magnitude of the danger. Yet this recognition has so far failed to change our actual behaviour. We talk a lot about global warming, but in practice humankind is unwilling to make serious economic, social or political sacrifices to stop the catastrophe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Between 2000 and 2010 emissions didn't decrease at all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the contrary, they increased at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent, compared with an annual increase rate of 1.3 per cent between 1970 and 2000. The 1997 Kyoto protocol on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions aimed merely to slow down global warming rather than stop it, yet the world's number one polluter – the United States – refused to ratify it, and has made no attempt to significantly reduce its emissions, for fear of slowing down its economic growth.\n\nIn December 2015 more ambitious targets were set in the Paris Agreement, which calls for limiting average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. But many of the painful steps necessary to reach this aim have conveniently been postponed to after 2030, or even to the second half of the twenty-first century, effectively passing the hot potato to the next generation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Current administrations would be able to reap immediate political benefits from looking green, while the heavy political price of reducing emissions (and slowing growth) is bequeathed to future administrations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even so, at the time of writing (January 2016) it is far from certain that the USA and other leading polluters will ratify the Paris Agreement.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: Ensure 'scientists' appears 2 time(s) in your answer)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Too many politicians and voters believe that as long as the economy grows, scientists and engineers could always save us from doomsday. When it comes to climate change, many growth true-believers do not just hope for miracles – they take it for granted that the miracles will happen.\n\nHow rational is it to risk the future of humankind on the assumption that future scientists will make some unknown discoveries? Most of the presidents, ministers and CEOs who run the world are very rational people.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why are they willing to take such a gamble?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe because they don't think they are gambling on their own personal future. Even if bad comes to worse and science cannot hold off the deluge, engineers could still build a hi-tech Noah's Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of others to drown. The belief in this hi-tech Ark is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of the entire ecosystem. People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be put in charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that people who believe in a heavenly afterlife should not be given nuclear weapons.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And what about the poor?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why aren't they protesting? If and when the deluge comes, they will bear the full cost of it. However, they will also be the first to bear the cost of economic stagnation. In a capitalist world, the lives of the poor improve only when the economy grows.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hence they are unlikely to support any steps to reduce future ecological threats that are based on slowing down present-day economic growth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Protecting the environment is a very nice idea, but those who cannot pay their rent are worried about their overdraft far more than about melting ice caps.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "AI Prompt: Add 7 sentences sentences to this story segment. Style: Yuval Noah Harari. Genre: history, nonfiction, philosophy. Note: Part of longer narrative.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even if we go on running fast enough and manage to fend off both economic collapse and ecological meltdown, the race itself creates huge problems. On the individual level, it results in high levels of stress and tension. After centuries of economic growth and scientific progress, life should have become calm and peaceful, at least in the most advanced countries. If our ancestors knew what tools and resources stand ready at our command, they would have surmised we must be enjoying celestial tranquillity, free of all cares and worries. The truth is very different. Despite all our achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do and produce even more.\n\nWe blame ourselves, our boss, the mortgage, the government, the school system.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it's not really their fault. It's the modern deal, which we have all signed up to on the day we were born. In the premodern world, people were akin to lowly clerks in a socialist bureaucracy. They punched their card, and then waited for somebody else to do something. In the modern world, we humans run the business. So we are under constant pressure day and night.\n\nOn the collective level, the race manifests itself in ceaseless upheavals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whereas previously social and political systems endured for centuries, today every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place. As the Communist Manifesto brilliantly put it, the modern world positively requires uncertainty and disturbance. All fixed relations and ancient prejudices are swept away, and new structures become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air. It isn't easy to live in such a chaotic world, and it is even harder to govern it.\n\nHence modernity needs to work hard to ensure that neither human individuals nor the human collective will try to retire from the race, despite all the tension and chaos it creates. For that purpose, modernity upholds growth as a supreme value for whose sake we should make every sacrifice and risk every danger.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the collective level, governments, firms and organisations are encouraged to measure their success in terms of growth, and to fear equilibrium as if it were the Devil.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the individual level, we are inspired to constantly increase our income and our standard of living. Even if you are quite satisfied with your current conditions, you should strive for more. Yesterday's luxuries become today's necessities. If once you could live well in a three-bedroom apartment with one car and a single desktop, today you need a five-bedroom house with two cars and a host of iPods, tablets and smartphones.\n\nIt wasn't very hard to convince individuals to want more. Greed comes easily to humans. The big problem was to convince collective institutions such as states and churches to go along with the new ideal.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For millennia, societies strove to curb individual desires and bring them into some kind of balance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was well known that people wanted more and more for themselves, but when the pie was of a fixed size, social harmony depended on restraint. Avarice was bad. Modernity turned the world upside down. It convinced human collectives that equilibrium is far more frightening than chaos, and because avarice fuels growth, it is a force for good. Modernity accordingly inspired people to want more, and dismantled the age-old disciplines that curbed greed.\n\nThe resulting anxieties were assuaged to a large extent by free-market capitalism, which is one reason why this particular ideology has become so popular. Capitalist thinkers repeatedly calm us: 'Don't worry, it will be okay. Provided the economy grows, the invisible hand of the market will take care of everything else.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Capitalism has thus sanctified a voracious and chaotic system that grows by leaps and bounds, without anyone understanding what is happening and where we are rushing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(Communism, which also believed in growth, thought it could prevent chaos and orchestrate growth through state planning.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: ⚠️ Required: Use 'should' exactly 2 times]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After initial successes, it eventually fell far behind the messy free-market cavalcade.)\n\nBashing free-market capitalism is high on the intellectual agenda nowadays. Since capitalism dominates our world, we should indeed make every effort to understand its shortcomings, before they cause apocalyptic catastrophes. Yet criticising capitalism should not blind us to its advantages and attainments. So far, it's been an amazing success – at least if you ignore the potential for future ecological meltdown, and if you measure success by the yardstick of production and growth. In 2016 we may be living in a stressful and chaotic world, but the doomsday prophecies of collapse and violence have not materialised, whereas the scandalous promises of perpetual growth and global cooperation are fulfilled. Although we experience occasional economic crises and international wars, in the long run capitalism has not only managed to prevail, but also to overcome famine, plague and war.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'power' exactly 2 times in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that.\n\nSo the modern deal promised us unprecedented power – and the promise has been kept. Now what about the price? In exchange for power, the modern deal expects us to give up meaning. How did humans handle this chilling demand? Complying with it could easily have resulted in a dark world, devoid of ethics, aesthetics and compassion. Yet the fact remains that humankind is today not only far more powerful than ever, it is also far more peaceful and cooperative.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How did humans manage that? How did morality, beauty and even compassion survive and flourish in a world devoid of gods, of heaven and of hell?\n\nCapitalists are, again, quick to give all the credit to the invisible hand of the market. Yet the market's hand is blind as well as invisible, and by itself could never have saved human society. Indeed, not even a country fair can maintain itself without the helping hand of some god, king or church. If everything is for sale, including the courts and the police, trust evaporates, credit vanishes and business withers. What, then, rescued modern society from collapse? Humankind was salvaged not by the law of supply and demand, but rather by the rise of a new revolutionary religion – humanism.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "yo can u write like Yuval Noah Harari using my stuff as a starting point? btw might drop u in mid-story with random chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The modern deal offers us power, on condition that we renounce our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. Yet when you examine the deal closely, you find a cunning escape clause.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If humans somehow manage to find meaning without deriving it from a great cosmic plan, this is not considered a breach of contract.\n\nThis escape clause has been the salvation of modern society, for it is impossible to sustain order without meaning.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The great political, artistic and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We are not actors in a divine drama, and nobody cares about us and our deeds, so nobody sets limits to our power – but we are still convinced our lives have meaning.\n\nAs of 2016, humankind indeed manages to hold the stick at both ends.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not only do we possess far more power than ever before, but against all expectations, God's death did not lead to social collapse. Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the atheist Netherlands.\n\nIf there is no cosmic plan, and we are not committed to any divine or natural laws, what prevents social collapse? How come you can travel for thousands of kilometres, from Amsterdam to Bucharest or from New Orleans to Montreal, without being kidnapped by slave-traders, ambushed by outlaws or killed by feuding tribes?", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The following text is missing a piece (marked with `<cutout_marker>`). Come up with about 3 sentences to complete it.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles, and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the great cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world.\n\nAccordingly, the central religious revolution of modernity was not losing faith in God; rather, it was gaining faith in humanity. It took centuries of hard work. Thinkers wrote pamphlets, artists composed poems and symphonies, politicians struck deals – and together they convinced humanity that it can imbue the universe with meaning. To grasp the depth and implications of the humanist revolution, consider how modern European culture differs from medieval European culture. People in London, Paris or Toledo in 1300 did not believe that humans could determine by themselves what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, what is beautiful and what is ugly. Only God could create and define goodness, righteousness and beauty.\n\nAlthough humans were viewed as enjoying unique abilities and opportunities, they were also seen as ignorant and corruptible beings. Without external supervision and guidance, humans could never understand the eternal truth, and would instead be drawn to fleeting sensual pleasures and worldly delusions. In addition, medieval thinkers pointed out that humans are mortal, and their opinions and feelings are as fickle as the wind. Today I love something with all my heart, tomorrow I am disgusted by it, and next week I am dead and buried. Hence any meaning that depends on human opinion is necessarily fragile and ephemeral. Absolute truths, and the meaning of life and of the universe, must therefore be based on some eternal law emanating from a superhuman source.\n\nThis view made God the supreme source not only of meaning, but also of authority. Meaning and authority always go hand in hand. Whoever determines the meaning of our actions – whether they are good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly – also gains the authority to tell us what to think and how to behave.\n\nGod's role as the source of meaning and authority was not just a philosophical theory. It affected every facet of daily life. Suppose that in 1300, in some small English town, a married woman took a fancy to the next-door neighbour and had sex with him. As she sneaked back home, hiding a smile and straightening her dress, her mind began to race: 'What was that all about? Why did I do it? Was it good or bad? What does it imply about me? Should I do it again?' In order <cutout_marker> make amends she will end up in hell, and that she ought to repent immediately, donate ten gold coins to the coming crusade, avoid eating meat for the next six months and make a pilgrimage to the tomb of St Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. And it goes without saying that she must never repeat her awful sin.\n\nToday things are very different. For centuries humanism has been convincing us that we are the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will is therefore the highest authority of all. Instead of waiting for some external entity to tell us what's what, we can rely on our own feelings and desires. From infancy we are bombarded with a barrage of humanist slogans counselling us: 'Listen to yourself, follow your heart, be true to yourself, trust yourself, do what feels good.' Jean-Jacques Rousseau summed it all up in his novel Émile, the eighteenth-century bible of feeling. Rousseau held that when looking for the rules of conduct in life, he found them 'in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad.'\n\nAccordingly, when a modern woman wants to understand the meaning of an affair she is having, she is far less prone to blindly accept the judgements of a priest or an ancient book. Instead, she will carefully examine her feelings. If her feelings aren't very clear, she will call a good friend, meet for coffee and pour out her heart. If things are still vague, she will go to her therapist, and tell him all about it. Theoretically, the modern therapist occupies the same place as the medieval priest, and it is an overworked cliché to compare the two professions. Yet in practice, a huge chasm separates them. The therapist does not possess a holy book that defines good and evil. When the woman finishes her story, it is highly unlikely that the therapist will burst out: 'You wicked woman! You have committed a terrible sin!' It is equally unlikely that he will say, 'Wonderful! Good for you!' Instead, no matter what the woman may have done and said, the therapist is most likely to ask in a caring voice, 'Well, how do you feel about what happened?'\n\nTrue, the therapist's bookshelf sags under the weight of Freud, Jung and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Yet these are not holy scriptures. The DSM diagnoses the ailments of life, not the meaning of life. Most psychologists believe that only human feelings are authorised to determine the true meaning of our actions. Hence no matter what the therapist thinks about his patient's affair, and no matter what Freud, Jung and the DSM think about affairs in general, the therapist should not force his views on the patient. Instead, he should help her examine the most secret chambers of her heart. There and only there will she find the answers. Whereas medieval priests had a hotline to God, and could distinguish for us between good and evil, modern therapists merely help us get in touch with our own inner feelings.\n\nThis partly explains the changing fortunes of the institution of marriage. In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what's wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it?\n\nBut wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other's arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment.\n\nThe most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children?\n\nIt doesn't matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, 'Thou shalt not steal.' Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don't harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it?\n\nThe same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don't harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest's damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: 'If it feels good – do it! Don't let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what's good for you.'\n\nInterestingly enough, today even religious zealots adopt this humanistic discourse when they want to influence public opinion. For example, every year for the past decade the Israeli LGBT community holds a gay parade in the streets of Jerusalem. It is a unique day of harmony in this conflict-riven city, because it is the one occasion when religious Jews, Muslims and Christians suddenly find a common cause – they all fume in accord against the gay parade. What's really interesting, though, is the argument they use. They don't say, 'You shouldn't hold a gay parade because God forbids homosexuality.' Rather, they explain to every available microphone and TV camera that 'seeing a gay parade passing through the holy city of Jerusalem hurts our feelings. Just as gay people want us to respect their feelings, they should respect ours.'\n\nOn 7 January 2015 Muslim fanatics massacred several staff members of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, because the magazine published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. In the following days, many Muslim organisations condemned the attack, yet some could not resist adding a 'but' clause. For example, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate denounced the terrorists for their use of violence, and in the same breath denounced the magazine for 'hurting the feelings of millions of Muslims across the world'. Note that the Syndicate did not blame the magazine for disobeying God's will. That's what we call progress.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to answer such questions, the woman was supposed to go to the local priest, confess and ask the holy father for guidance. The priest was well versed in scriptures, and these sacred texts revealed to him exactly what God thought about adultery. Based on the eternal word of God, the priest could determine beyond all doubt that the woman had committed a mortal sin, that if she doesn't", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "INPUT: user text (may contain established characters/lore)\nOUTPUT: twenty sentences sentences\nGENRES: history, nonfiction, philosophy\nTAGS: science\nNote: Match context level of character familiarity\nCONTINUE STORY", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Our feelings provide meaning not only for our private lives, but also for social and political processes. When we want to know who should rule the country, what foreign policy to adopt and what economic steps to take, we don't look for the answers in scriptures. Nor do we obey the commands of the Pope or the Council of Nobel Laureates. Rather, in most countries, we hold democratic elections and ask people what they think about the matter at hand. We believe that the voter knows best, and that the free choices of individual humans are the ultimate political authority.\n\nYet how does the voter know what to choose? Theoretically at least, the voter is supposed to consult his or her innermost feelings, and follow their lead. It is not always easy. In order to get in touch with my feelings, I need to filter out the empty propaganda slogans, the endless lies of ruthless politicians, the distracting noise created by cunning spin doctors, and the learned opinions of hired pundits. I need to ignore all this racket, and attend only to my authentic inner voice. And then my authentic inner voice whispers in my ear 'Vote Cameron' or 'Vote Modi' or 'Vote Clinton' or whomever, and I put a cross against that name on the ballot paper – and that's how we know who should rule the country.\n\nIn the Middle Ages this would have been considered the height of foolishness. The fleeting feelings of ignorant commoners were hardly a sound basis for important political decisions. When England was torn apart by the Wars of the Roses, nobody thought to end the conflict by having a national referendum, in which each bumpkin and wench cast a vote for either Lancaster or York. Similarly, when Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095, he didn't claim it was the people's will. It was God's will. Political authority came down from heaven – it didn't rise up from the hearts and minds of mortal humans.\n\nWhat's true of ethics and politics is also true of aesthetics. In the Middle Ages art was governed by objective yardsticks. The standards of beauty did not reflect human fads.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rather, human tastes were supposed to conform to superhuman dictates.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This made perfect sense in a period when people believed that art was inspired by superhuman forces rather than by human feelings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hands of painters, poets, composers and architects were supposedly moved by muses, angels and the Holy Spirit. Many a time when a composer penned a beautiful hymn, no credit was given to the composer, for the same reason it was not given to the pen. The pen was held and directed by human fingers which in turn were held and directed by the hand of God.\n\nMedieval scholars held on to a classical Greek theory, according to which the movements of the stars across the sky create heavenly music that permeates the entire universe. Humans enjoy physical and mental health when the inner movements of their body and soul are in harmony with the heavenly music created by the stars. Human music should therefore echo the divine melody of the cosmos, rather than reflect the ideas and caprices of flesh-and-blood composers. The most beautiful hymns, songs and tunes were usually attributed not to the genius of some human artist but to divine inspiration.\n\nSuch views are no longer in vogue. Today humanists believe that the only source for artistic creation and aesthetic value is human feelings. Music is created and judged by our inner voice, which need follow neither the rhythms of the stars nor the commands of muses and angels. For the stars are mute, while muses and angels exist only in our own imagination. Modern artists seek to get in touch with themselves and their feelings, rather than with God. No wonder then that when we come to evaluate art, we no longer believe in any objective yardsticks. Instead, we again turn to our subjective feelings. In ethics, the humanist motto is 'if it feels good – do it'. In politics, humanism instructs us that 'the voter knows best'. In aesthetics, humanism says that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.\n\nThe very definition of art is consequently up for grabs. In 1917 Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary mass-produced urinal, named it Fountain, signed his name at the bottom, declared it a work of art and placed it in a Paris museum. Medieval people would not have bothered to even argue about it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'museums' \| Required occurrences: 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why waste oxygen on such utter nonsense? Yet in the modern humanist world, Duchamp's work is considered an important artistic milestone. In countless classrooms across the world, first-year art students are shown an image of Duchamp's Fountain, and at a sign from the teacher, all hell breaks loose. It is art! No it isn't! Yes it is! No way! After letting the students release some steam, the teacher focuses the discussion by asking 'What exactly is art? And how do we determine whether something is a work of art or not?' After a few more minutes of back and forth, the teacher steers the class in the right direction: 'Art is anything people think is art, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' If people think that a urinal is a beautiful work of art – then it is. What higher authority is there that can tell people they are wrong? Today, copies of Duchamp's masterpiece are presented in some of the most important museums in the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Tate Gallery in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. (The copies are placed in the museums' showrooms, not in the lavatories.)\n\nSuch humanist approaches have had a deep impact on the economic field as well. In the Middle Ages, guilds controlled the production process, leaving little room for the initiative or taste of individual artisans and customers. The carpenters' guild determined what was a good chair, the bakers' guild defined good bread, and the Meistersinger guild decided which songs were first class and which were rubbish. Meanwhile princes and city councils regulated salaries and prices, occasionally forcing people to buy fixed amounts of goods at a non-negotiable price. In the modern free market, all these guilds, councils and princes have been superseded by a new supreme authority – the free will of the customer.\n\nSuppose Toyota decides to produce the perfect car. It sets up a committee of experts from various fields: it hires the best engineers and designers, brings together the finest physicists and economists, and even consults with several sociologists and psychologists. To be on the safe side, they throw in a Nobel laureate or two, an Oscar-winning actress and some world-famous artists.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "After five years of research and development, they unveil the perfect car.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Millions of vehicles are produced, and shipped to car agencies across the world. Yet nobody buys the car. Does it mean that the customers are making a mistake, and that they don't know what's good for them? No. In a free market, the customer is always right. If customers don't want it, it means that it is not a good car. It doesn't matter if all the university professors and all the priests and mullahs cry out from every pulpit that this is a wonderful car – if the customers reject it, it is a bad car. Nobody has the authority to tell customers that they are wrong, and heaven forbid that a government would try to force citizens to buy a particular car against their will.\n\nWhat's true of cars is true of all other products. Listen, for example, to Professor Leif Andersson from the University of Uppsala. He specialises in the genetic enhancement of farm animals, in order to create faster-growing pigs, dairy cows that produce more milk, and chickens with extra meat on their bones. In an interview for the newspaper Haaretz, reporter Naomi Darom confronted Andersson with the fact that such genetic manipulations might cause much suffering to the animals. Already today 'enhanced' dairy cows have such heavy udders that they can barely walk, while 'upgraded' chickens cannot even stand up. Professor Andersson had a firm answer: 'Everything comes back to the individual customer and to the question how much the customer is willing to pay for meat…we must remember that it would be impossible to maintain current levels of global meat consumption without the [enhanced] modern chicken…if customers ask us only for the cheapest meat possible – that's what the customers will get…Customers need to decide what is most important to them – price, or something else.'\n\nProfessor Andersson can go to sleep at night with a clean conscience. The fact that customers are buying his enhanced animal products implies that he is meeting their needs and desires and is therefore doing good. By the same logic, if some multinational corporation wants to know whether it lives up to its 'Don't be evil' motto, it need only take a look at its bottom line. If it makes loads of money, it means that millions of people like its products, which implies that it is a force for good. If someone objects and says that people might make the wrong choice, he will be quickly reminded that the customer is always right, and that human feelings are the source of all meaning and authority. If millions of people freely choose to buy the company's products, who are you to tell them that they are wrong?\n\nFinally, the rise of humanist ideas has revolutionised the educational system too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the Middle Ages the source of all meaning and authority was external, hence education focused on instilling obedience, memorising scriptures and studying ancient traditions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Teachers presented pupils with a question, and the pupils had to remember how Aristotle, King Solomon or St Thomas Aquinas answered it.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "yo can u write like Yuval Noah Harari using my stuff as a starting point? btw might drop u in mid-story with random chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "As the source of meaning and authority was relocated from the sky to human feelings, the nature of the entire cosmos changed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The exterior universe – hitherto teeming with gods, muses, fairies and ghouls – became empty space.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The interior world – hitherto an insignificant enclave of crude passions – became deep and rich beyond measure. Angels and demons were transformed from real entities roaming the forests and deserts of the world into inner forces within our own psyche.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Heaven and hell too ceased to be real places somewhere above the clouds and below the volcanoes, and were instead interpreted as internal mental states. You experience hell every time you ignite the fires of anger and hatred within your heart; and you enjoy heavenly bliss every time you forgive your enemies, repent your own misdeeds and share your wealth with the poor.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When Nietzsche declared that God is dead, this is what he meant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "At least in the West, God has become an abstract idea that some accept and others reject, but it makes little difference either way.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the Middle Ages, without a god I had no source of political, moral and aesthetic authority.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I could not tell what was right, good or beautiful.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Who could live like that? Today, in contrast, it is very easy not to believe in God, because I pay no price for my unbelief.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I can be a complete atheist, and still draw a very rich mix of political, moral and aesthetical values from my inner experience.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'believe' (4x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner self tells me to believe in God – then I believe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I believe because I feel God's presence, and my heart tells me He is there. But if I no longer feel God's presence, and if my heart suddenly tells me that there is no God – I will cease believing.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "NarrativeBot: 12 sentences sentences. Match character familiarity. history, nonfiction, philosophy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like every other source of authority, feelings have their shortcomings. Humanism assumes that each human has a single authentic inner self, but when I try to listen to it, I often encounter either silence or a cacophony of contending voices. In order to overcome this problem, humanism has upheld not just a new source of authority, but also a new method for getting in touch with authority and gaining true knowledge.\n\nIn medieval Europe, the chief formula for knowledge was: Knowledge = Scriptures × Logic. If we want to know the answer to some important question, we should read scriptures, and use our logic to understand the exact meaning of the text. For example, scholars who wished to know the shape of the earth scanned the Bible looking for relevant references. One pointed out that in Job 38:13, it says that God can 'take hold of the edges of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it'. This implies – reasoned the pundit – that because the earth has 'edges' of which we can 'take hold', it must be a flat square. Another sage rejected this interpretation, calling attention to Isaiah 40:22, where it says that God 'sits enthroned above the circle of the earth'. Isn't that proof that the earth is round? In practice, that meant that scholars sought knowledge by spending years in schools and libraries, reading more and more texts, and sharpening their logic so they could understand the texts correctly.\n\nThe Scientific Revolution proposed a very different formula for knowledge: Knowledge = Empirical Data × Mathematics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "If we want to know the answer to some question, we need to gather relevant empirical data, and then use mathematical tools to analyse the data.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For example, in order to gauge the true shape of the earth, we can observe the sun, the moon and the planets from various locations across the world. Once we have amassed enough observations, we can use trigonometry to deduce not only the shape of the earth, but also the structure of the entire solar system. In practice, that means that scientists seek knowledge by spending years in observatories, laboratories and research expeditions, gathering more and more empirical data, and sharpening their mathematical tools so they could interpret the data correctly.\n\nThe scientific formula for knowledge led to astounding breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, medicine and countless other disciplines. But it had one huge drawback: it could not deal with questions of value and meaning. Medieval pundits could determine with absolute certainty that it is wrong to murder and steal, and that the purpose of human life is to do God's bidding, because scriptures said so. Scientists could not come up with such ethical judgements. No amount of data and no mathematical wizardry can prove that it is wrong to murder. Yet human societies cannot survive without such value judgements.\n\nOne way to overcome this difficulty was to continue using the old medieval formula alongside the new scientific method. When faced with a practical problem – such as determining the shape of the earth, building a bridge or curing a disease – we collect empirical data and analyse it mathematically. When faced with an ethical problem – such as determining whether to allow divorce, abortion and homosexuality – we read scriptures.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This solution was adopted to some extent by numerous modern societies, from Victorian Britain to twenty-first-century Iran.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, humanism offered an alternative. As humans gained confidence in themselves, a new formula for attaining ethical knowledge appeared: Knowledge = Experiences × Sensitivity. If we wish to know the answer to any ethical question, we need to connect to our inner experiences, and observe them with the utmost sensitivity. In practice, that means that we seek knowledge by spending years collecting experiences, and sharpening our sensitivity so we could understand these experiences correctly.\n\nWhat exactly are 'experiences'? They are not empirical data. An experience is not made of atoms, molecules, proteins or numbers. Rather, an experience is a subjective phenomenon that includes three main ingredients: sensations, emotions and thoughts. At any particular moment my experience comprises everything I sense (heat, pleasure, tension, etc. ), every emotion I feel (love, fear, anger, etc.) and whatever thoughts arise in my mind.\n\nAnd what is 'sensitivity'?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It means two things.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'emotions' must be used 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Firstly, paying attention to my sensations, emotions and thoughts. Secondly, allowing these sensations, emotions and thoughts to influence me. Granted, I shouldn't allow every passing breeze to sweep me away. Yet I should be open to new experiences, and permit them to change my views, my behaviour and even my personality.\n\nExperiences and sensitivity build up one another in a never-ending cycle. I cannot experience anything if I have no sensitivity, and I cannot develop sensitivity unless I undergo a variety of experiences. Sensitivity is not an abstract aptitude that can be developed by reading books or listening to lectures. It is a practical skill that can ripen and mature only by applying it in practice.\n\nTake tea, for example. I start by drinking very sweet ordinary tea while reading the morning paper. The tea is little more than an excuse for a sugar rush. One day I realise that between the sugar and the newspaper, I hardly taste the tea at all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "So I reduce the amount of sugar, put the paper aside, close my eyes and focus on the tea itself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I begin to register its unique aroma and flavour. Soon I find myself experimenting with different teas, black and green, comparing their exquisite tangs and delicate bouquets. Within a few months, I drop the supermarket labels and buy my tea at Harrods. I develop a particular liking for 'Panda Dung tea' from the mountains of Ya'an in Sichuan province, made from leaves of tea trees fertilised by the dung of panda bears. That's how, one cup at a time, I hone my tea sensitivity and become a tea connoisseur. If in my early tea-drinking days you had served me Panda Dung tea in a Ming Dynasty porcelain goblet, I would not have appreciated it much more than builder's tea in a paper cup. You cannot experience something if you don't have the necessary sensitivity, and you cannot develop your sensitivity except by undergoing a long string of experiences.\n\nWhat's true of tea is true of all other aesthetic and ethical knowledge. We aren't born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am.\n\nHumanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "The text has a missing section marked as `<\|missing_text\|>`. Give me a snippet of 326 words that would fit there.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "According to Chinese philosophy, the world is sustained by the interplay of opposing but complementary forces called yin and yang. This may not be true of the physical world, but it is certainly true of the modern world that has been created by the covenant of science and humanism. Every scientific yang contains within it a humanist yin, and vice versa. The yang provides us with power, while the yin provides us with meaning and ethical judgements. The yang and yin of modernity are reason and emotion, the laboratory and the museum, the production line and the supermarket. People often see only the yang, and imagine that the modern world is dry, scientific, logical and utilitarian – just like a laboratory or a factory. But the modern world is also an extravagant supermarket. No culture in history has ever given such importance to human feelings, desires and experiences. The humanist view of life as a string of experiences has become the founding myth of numerous modern industries, from tourism to art. Travel agents and restaurant chefs do not sell us flight tickets, hotels or fancy dinners – they sell us novel experiences. Similarly, whereas most premodern narratives focused on external events and actions, modern novels, films and poems often revolve around feelings. Graeco-Roman epics and medieval chivalric romances were catalogues of heroic deeds, not feelings. One chapter told how the brave knight fought a monstrous ogre, and killed him. Another chapter recounted how the knight rescued a beautiful princess from a fire-spitting dragon, and killed him. A third chapter narrated how a wicked sorcerer kidnapped the princess, but the knight pursued the sorcerer, and killed him. No wonder that the hero was invariably a knight, rather than a carpenter or a peasant, for peasants performed no heroic deeds.\n\nCrucially, the heroes did not undergo any significant process of inner change. Achilles, Arthur, Roland and Lancelot were fearless warriors with a chivalric world view before they set out on their adventures, and they remained fearless warriors with the same world view at the end. All the ogres they killed and all the princesses they rescued confirmed their courage and perseverance, but ultimately taught them little.\n\nThe humanist focus on feelings and experiences, rather than deeds, transformed art. Wordsworth, Dostoevsky, Dickens and Zola cared little for brave knights and derring-do, and instead described how ordinary people and housewives felt. Some people believe that Joyce's Ulysses represents the apogee of this modern focus on the inner life rather than external actions – in 260,000 words Joyce describes a single day in the life of the Dubliners Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, who over the course of the day do…well, nothing much at all.\n\nFew people have actually read all of Ulysses, but the same principles underpin much of our popular culture too. In the United States, the series Survivor is often credited (or blamed) for turning reality shows into a craze. Survivor was the first reality show to make it to the top of the Nielsen ratings, and in 2007 Time magazine listed it among the hundred greatest TV shows of all time. In each season, twenty contenders in minimal swimsuits are isolated on some tropical island. They have to face all kinds of challenges, and each episode they vote out one of their members. The last one left takes home $1 million.\n\nAudiences in Homeric Greece, in the Roman Empire or <\|missing_text\|>tivity, wisdom or bravery. You just need to follow the yellow brick road, and open yourself to whatever experiences come your way.\n\nExactly the same lesson is learned by Captain Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard as they travel the galaxy in the starship Enterprise, by Huckleberry Finn and Jim as they sail down the Mississippi, by Wyatt and Billy as they ride their Harley-Davidsons in Easy Rider, and by countless other characters in myriad other road movies who leave their home town in Pennsylvania (or perhaps New South Wales), travel in an old convertible (or perhaps a bus), pass through various life-changing experiences, get in touch with themselves, talk about their feelings, and eventually reach San Francisco (or perhaps Alice Springs) as better and wiser individuals.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in medieval Europe would have found the idea familiar and highly attractive. Twenty challengers go in – only one hero comes out. 'Wonderful!' a Homeric prince, a Roman patrician or a crusader knight would have thought to himself as he sat down to watch. 'Surely we are about to see amazing adventures, life-and-death battles and incomparable acts of heroism and betrayal. The warriors will probably stab each other in the back, or spill their entrails for all to see.'\n\nWhat a disappointment! The back-stabbing and entrails-spilling remain just a metaphor. Each episode lasts about an hour. Out of that, fifteen minutes are taken up by commercials for toothpaste, shampoo and cereals. Five minutes are dedicated to incredibly childish challenges, such as who can throw the most coconuts into a hoop, or who can eat the largest number of bugs in one minute. The rest of the time the 'heroes' just talk about their feelings! He said she said, and I felt this and I felt that. If a crusader knight had really sat down to watch Survivor, he would probably have grabbed his battleaxe and smashed the TV out of boredom and frustration.\n\nToday we might think of medieval knights as insensitive brutes. If they lived among us, we would send them to a therapist, who might help them get in touch with themselves. This is what the Tin Man does in The Wizard of Oz. He walks along the yellow brick road with Dorothy and her friends, hoping that when they get to Oz, the great wizard will give him a heart, while the Scarecrow wants a brain and the Lion wants courage. At the end of their journey they discover that the great wizard is a charlatan, and he can't give them any of these things. But they discover something far more important: everything they wish for is already within themselves. There is no need of some godlike wizard in order to obtain sensi", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "There's a gap marked by `[original_content_missing]` in the following text. Fill it with about 22 sentences worth.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The formula Knowledge = Experiences × Sensitivity has changed not just our popular culture, but even our perception of weighty issues like war. Throughout most of history, when people wished to know whether a particular war was just, they asked God, they asked scriptures, and they asked kings, noblemen and priests. Few cared about the opinions and experiences of a common soldier or an ordinary civilian. War narratives such as those of Homer, Virgil and Shakespeare focused on the actions of emperors, generals and outstanding heroes, and though they did not hide the misery of war, this was more than compensated for by a full menu of glory and heroism. Ordinary soldiers appeared as either piles of bodies slaughtered by some Goliath, or a cheering crowd hoisting a triumphant David upon its shoulders.\n\nLook, for example, at the painting above of the Battle of Breitenfeld, which took place on 17 September 1631. The painter, Jean-Jacques Walter, glorifies King Gustav Adolph of Sweden, who led his army that day to a decisive victory. Gustav Adolph towers over the battlefield as if he were some god of war. One gets the impression that the king controls the battle like a chess player moving pawns. The pawns themselves are mostly generic figures, or tiny dots in the background. Walter was not interested in how they felt while they charged, fled, killed or died. They are a faceless collective.\n\nEven when painters focused on the battle itself, rather than on the commander, they still looked at it from above, and were far more concerned with collective manoeuvres than with personal feelings. Take, for example, Pieter Snayers's painting of the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620.\n\nThe painting depicts a celebrated Catholic victory in the Thirty Years War over heretical Protestant rebels. Snayers wished to commemorate this victory by painstakingly recording the various formations, manoeuvres and troop movements. You can easily tell the different units, their armament and their place within the order of battle. Snayers gave far less attention to the experiences and feelings of the common soldiers. Like Jean-Jacques Walter, he makes us observe the battle from the Olympian vantage point of gods and kings, and gives us the impression that war is a giant chess game.\n\nIf you take a closer look – for which you might need a magnifying glass – you realise that The Battle of White Mountain is a bit more complex than a chess game. What at first sight seem to be geometrical abstractions turn upon closer inspection into bloody scenes of carnage. Here and there you can even spot the faces of individual soldiers running or fleeing, firing their guns or impaling an enemy on their pikes. However, these scenes receive their meaning from their place within the overall picture. When we see a cannonball smashing a soldier to bits, we understand it as part of the great Catholic victory. If the soldier is fighting on the Protestant side, his death is a just reward for rebellion and heresy. If the soldier is fighting in the Catholic army, his death is a noble sacrifice for a worthy cause. If we look up, we can see angels hovering high above the battlefield. They are holding a billboard which explains in Latin what happened in this battle, and why it was so important. The message is that God helped Emperor Ferdinand II defeat his enemies on 8 November 1620.\n\nFor thousands of years, when people looked at war, they saw gods, emperors, generals and great heroes. But over the last two centuries, the kings and generals have been increasingly pushed to the side, and the limelight shifted onto the common soldier and his experiences. War novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front and war films such as Platoon begin with a young and naïve recruit, who knows little about himself and the world, but carries a heavy burden of hopes and illusions. He believes that war is glorious, our cause is just and the general is a genius. A few weeks of real[original_content_missing] above the battlefield – only a rotting corpse, hanging from a ruined rafter and pointing an accusing finger.\n\nArtists such as Dix and Lea thus overturned the traditional hierarchy of war. In earlier times wars could have been as horrific as in the twentieth century. However, even atrocious experiences were placed within a wider context that gave them positive meaning. War might be hell, but it was also the gateway to heaven. A Catholic soldier fighting at the Battle of White Mountain could say to himself: 'True, I am suffering. But the Pope and the emperor say that we are fighting for a good cause, so my suffering is meaningful.' Otto Dix employed an opposite kind of logic. He saw personal experience as the source of all meaning, hence his line of thinking said: 'I am suffering – and this is bad – hence the whole war is bad. And if the kaiser and the clergy nevertheless support the war, they must be mistaken.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": " war – of mud, and blood, and the smell of death – shatter his illusions one after another. If he survives, the naïve recruit will leave war as a much wiser man, who no longer believes the clichés and ideals peddled by teachers, film-makers and eloquent politicians.\n\nParadoxically, this narrative has become so influential that today it is told over and over again even by teachers, film-makers and eloquent politicians. 'War is not what you see in the movies!' warn Hollywood blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Blackhawk Down. Enshrined in celluloid, prose or poetry, the feelings of the ordinary grunt have become the ultimate authority on war, which everyone has learned to respect. As the joke goes, 'How many Vietnam vets does it take to change a light bulb?' 'You wouldn't know, you weren't there.'\n\nPainters too have lost interest in generals on horses and in tactical manoeuvres. Instead, they strive to depict how the common soldier feels. Look again at The Battle of Breitenfeld and The Battle of White Mountain. Now look at the following two pictures, considered masterpieces of twentieth-century war art: The War (Der Krieg) by Otto Dix, and That 2,000 Yard Stare by Tom Lea.\n\nDix served as a sergeant in the German army during the First World War. Lea covered the Battle of Peleliu Island in 1944 for Life magazine. Whereas Walter and Snayers viewed war as a military and political phenomenon, and wanted us to know what happened in particular battles, Dix and Lea view war as an emotional phenomenon, and want us to know how it feels. They don't care about the genius of generals or about the tactical details of this or that battle. Dix's soldier might be in Verdun or Ypres or the Somme – it doesn't matter which, because war is hell everywhere. Lea's soldier just happens to be an American GI in Peleliu, but you could see exactly the same 2,000-yard stare on the face of a Japanese soldier in Iwo Jima, a German soldier in Stalingrad or a British soldier in Dunkirk.\n\nIn the paintings of Dix and Lea, the meaning of war does not emanate from tactical movements or divine proclamations. If you want to understand war, don't look up at the general on the hilltop, or at angels in the sky. Instead, look straight into the eyes of the common soldiers. In Lea's painting, the gaping eyes of a traumatised soldier open a window onto the terrible truth of war. In Dix's painting, the truth is so unbearable that it must be partly concealed behind a gas mask. No angels fly", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Here's a text with a hole in it (marked by `<fill_in_here>`). Your job is to write a 2-sentence bit to plug that hole.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "So far we have discussed humanism as if it were a single coherent world view. In fact, humanism shared the fate of every successful religion, such as Christianity and Buddhism. As it spread and evolved, it fragmented into several conflicting sects. All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways.\n\nHumanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated string of experiences. Every human being is a singular ray of light, which illuminates the world from a different perspective, and which adds colour, depth and meaning to the universe. Hence we ought to give as much freedom as possible to every individual to experience the world, follow his or her inner voice and express his or her inner truth. Whether in politics, economics or art, individual free will should have far more weight than state interests or religious doctrines. The more liberty individuals enjoy, the more beautiful, rich and meaningful is the world. Due to this emphasis on liberty, the orthodox branch of humanism is known as 'liberal humanism' or simply as 'liberalism'.\n\nIt is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education teaches us to think for ourselves, because we will find all the answers within us.\n\nDuring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as humanism gained increasing social credibility and political power, it sprouted two very different offshoots: socialist humanism, which encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements, and evolutionary humanism, whose most famous advocates were the Nazis. Both offshoots agreed with liberalism that human experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority. Neither believed in any transcendental power or divine law book. If, for example, you asked Karl Marx what was wrong with ten-year-olds working twelve-hour shifts in smoky factories, he would have answered that it made the kids feel bad. We should avoid exploitation, oppression and inequality not because God said so, but because they make people miserable.\n\nHowever, both socialists and evolutionary humanists pointed out that the liberal understanding of the human experience is flawed. Liberals think the human experience is an individual phenomenon. But there are many individuals in the world, and they often feel different things and have contradictory desires. If all authority and meaning flows from individual experiences, how do you settle contradictions between different such experiences?\n\nOn 17 July 2015 the German chancellor Angela Merkel was confronted by a teenage Palestinian refugee girl from Lebanon, whose family sought asylum in Germany but faced imminent deportation. The girl, Reem, told Merkel in fluent German that 'It's really very hard to watch how other people can enjoy life and you yourself can't. I don't know what my future will bring.' Merkel replied that 'politics can be tough' and explained that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and Germany cannot absorb them all. Stunned by this no-nonsense reply, Reem burst out crying. Merkel proceeded to stroke the desperate girl on the back, but stuck to her guns.\n\nIn the ensuing public storm, many accused Merkel of cold-hearted insensitivity. To assuage criticism, Merkel changed tack, and Reem and her family were given asylum. In the following months, Merkel opened the door even wider, welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees to Germany. But you can't please everybody. Soon enough she was under heavy attack for succumbing to sentimentalism and for not taking a sufficiently firm stand. Numerous German parents feared that Merkel's U-turn means their children will have a lower standard of living, and perhaps suffer from a tidal wave of Islamisation. Why should they risk their families' peace and prosperity for complete strangers who might not even believe in the values of liberalism? Everyone feels very strongly about this matter. How to settle the contradictions between the feelings of the desperate refugees and of the anxious Germans?\n\nLiberals forever agonise about such contradictions. The best efforts of Locke, Jefferson, Mill and their colleagues have failed to provide us with a fast and easy solution to such conundrums. Holding democratic elections won't help, because then the question will be who would get to vote in these elections – only German citizens, or also millions of Asians and Africans who want to immigrate to Germany? Why privilege the feelings of one group over another? Likewise, you cannot resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict by making 8 million Israeli citizens and 350 million citizens of Arab League nations vote on it. For obvious reasons, the Israelis won't feel committed to the outcome of such a plebiscite.\n\nPeople feel bound by democratic elections only when they share a basic bond with most other voters. If the experience of other voters is alien to me, and if I believe they don't understand my feelings and don't care about my vital interests, then even if I am outvoted by a hundred to one, I have absolutely no reason to accept the verdict. Democratic elections usually work only within populations that have some prior common bond, such as shared religious beliefs and national myths. They are a method to settle disagreements between people who already agree on the basics.\n\nAccordingly, in many cases liberalism has fused with age-old collective identities and tribal feelings to form modern nationalism. Today many associate nationalism with anti-liberal forces, but at least during the nineteenth century nationalism was closely aligned with liberalism. Liberals celebrate the unique experiences of individual humans. Each human has distinctive feelings, tastes and quirks, which he or she should be free to express and explore as long as they don't hurt anyone else. Similarly, nineteenth-century nationalists such as Giuseppe Mazzini celebrated the uniqueness of individual nations. They emphasised that many human experiences are communal. You cannot dance the polka by yourself, and you cannot invent and preserve the German language by yourself. Using word, dance, food and drink, each nation fosters different experiences in its members, and develops its own peculiar sensitivities.\n\nLiberal nationalists like Mazzini sought to protect these distinctive national experiences from being oppressed and obliterated by intolerant empires, and envisaged a peaceful community of nations, each free to express and explore its communal feelings without hurting its neighbours. This is still the official ideology of the European Union, whose constitution of 2004 states that Europe is 'united in diversity' and that the different peoples of Europe remain 'proud of their own national identities'. The value of preserving the unique communal experiences of the German nation enables even liberal Germans to oppose opening the floodgates of immigration.\n\nOf course the alliance with nationalism hardly solved all conundrums, while it created a host of new problems. How do you compare the value of communal experiences with that of individual experiences? Does preserving polka, bratwurst and the German language justify leaving millions of refugees exposed to poverty and even death? And what happens when fundamental conflicts erupt within nations about the very definition of their identity, as happened in Germany in 1933, in the USA in 1861, in Spain in 1936 or in Egypt in 2011? In such cases, holding democratic elections is hardly a cure-all, because the opposing parties have no reason to respect the results.\n\nLastly, as you dance the nationalist polka, a small but momentous step may take you from believing that your nation is different from all other nations to believing that your nation is bette<fill_in_here>f Germans, Italians, Poles and Slovenes. Twentieth-century ultra-nationalism proceeded to wage wars of conquest and build concentration camps for people who dance to a different tune.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "r. Nineteenth-century liberal nationalism required the Habsburg and tsarist empires to respect the unique experiences o", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand the story by adding three sentences in the history, nonfiction, philosophy genre. Match existing character context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Socialist humanism has taken a very different course. Socialists blame liberals for focusing our attention on our own feelings instead of on what other people experience. Yes, the human experience is the source of all meaning, but there are billions of people in the world, and all of them are just as valuable as I am.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas liberalism turns my gaze inwards, emphasising my uniqueness and the uniqueness of my nation, socialism demands that I stop obsessing about me and my feelings and instead focus on what others are feeling and about how my actions influence their experiences.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, You must use the word 'inner' exactly 3 times in your response)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Global peace will be achieved not by celebrating the distinctiveness of each nation, but by unifying all the workers of the world; and social harmony won't be achieved by each person narcissistically exploring their own inner depths, but rather by each person prioritising the needs and experiences of others over their own desires.\n\nA liberal may reply that by exploring her own inner world she develops her compassion and her understanding of others, but such reasoning would have cut little ice with Lenin or Mao. They would have explained that individual self-exploration is a bourgeois indulgent vice, and that when I try to get in touch with my inner self, I am all too likely to fall into one or another capitalist trap.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "My current political views, my likes and dislikes, and my hobbies and ambitions do not reflect my authentic self.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather, they reflect my upbringing and social surrounding. They depend on my class, and are shaped by my neighbourhood and my school. Rich and poor alike are brainwashed from birth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The rich are taught to disregard the poor, while the poor are taught to disregard their true interests.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No amount of self-reflection or psychotherapy will help, because the psychotherapists are also working for the capitalist system.\n\nIndeed, self-reflection is likely only to distance me even further from understanding the truth about myself, because it gives too much credit to personal decisions and too little credit to social conditions. If I am rich, I am likely to conclude that it is because I made wise choices.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If I suffer from poverty, I must have made some mistakes. If I am depressed, a liberal therapist is likely to blame my parents, and to encourage me to set some new aims in life. If I suggest that perhaps I am depressed because I am being exploited by capitalists, and because under the prevailing social system I have no chance of realising my aims, the therapist may well say that I am projecting onto 'the social system' my own inner difficulties, and I am projecting onto 'the capitalists' unresolved issues with my mother.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "According to socialism, instead of spending years talking about my mother, my emotions and my complexes, I should ask myself: who owns the means of production in my country? What are its main exports and imports? What's the connection between the ruling politicians and international banking?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only by understanding the surrounding socio-economic system and taking into account the experiences of all other people could I truly understand what I feel, and only by common action can we change the system. Yet what person can take into account the experiences of all human beings, and weigh them one against the other in a fair way?\n\nThat's why socialists discourage self-exploration, and advocate the establishment of strong collective institutions – such as socialist parties and trade unions – that aim to decipher the world for us.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas in liberal politics the voter knows best, and in liberal economics the customer is always right, in socialist politics the party knows best, and in socialist economics the trade union is always right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Authority and meaning still come from human experience – both the party and the trade union are composed of people and work to alleviate human misery – yet individuals must listen to the party and the trade union rather than to their personal feelings.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "help continue: eleven sentences more. Yuval Noah Harari-style. keep continuity. themes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Evolutionary humanism has a different solution to the problem of conflicting human experiences.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rooting itself in the firm ground of Darwinian evolutionary theory, it says that conflict is something to applaud rather than lament.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Conflict is the raw material of natural selection, which pushes evolution forward. Some humans are simply superior to others, and when human experiences collide, the fittest humans should steamroll everyone else. The same logic that drives humankind to exterminate wild wolves and to ruthlessly exploit domesticated sheep also mandates the oppression of inferior humans by their superiors. It's a good thing that Europeans conquer Africans and that shrewd businessmen drive the dim-witted to bankruptcy. If we follow this evolutionary logic, humankind will gradually become stronger and fitter, eventually giving rise to superhumans. Evolution didn't stop with Homo sapiens – there is still a long way to go. However, if in the name of human rights or human equality we emasculate the fittest humans, it will prevent the rise of the superman, and may even cause the degeneration and extinction of Homo sapiens.\n\nWho exactly are these superior humans who herald the coming of the superman? They might be entire races, particular tribes or exceptional individual geniuses. In any case, what makes them superior is that they have better abilities, manifested in the creation of new knowledge, more advanced technology, more prosperous societies or more beautiful art. The experience of an Einstein or a Beethoven is far more valuable than that of a drunken good-for-nothing, and it is ludicrous to treat them as if they have equal merit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Similarly, if a particular nation has consistently spearheaded human progress, we should rightly consider it superior to other nations that contributed little or nothing to the evolution of humankind.\n\nConsequently, in contrast to liberal artists like Otto Dix, evolutionary humanism thinks that the human experience of war is valuable and even essential. The movie The Third Man takes place in Vienna immediately after the end of the Second World War. Reflecting on the recent conflict, the character Harry Lime says: 'After all, it's not that awful…In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' Lime gets almost all his facts wrong – Switzerland was probably the most bloodthirsty corner of early modern Europe (its main export was mercenary soldiers), and the cuckoo clock was actually invented by the Germans – but the facts are of lesser importance than Lime's idea, namely that the experience of war pushes humankind to new achievements. War allows natural selection free rein at last. It exterminates the weak and rewards the fierce and the ambitious. War exposes the truth about life, and awakens the will for power, for glory and for conquest. Nietzsche summed it up by saying that war is 'the school of life' and that 'what does not kill me makes me stronger'.\n\nSimilar ideas were expressed by Lieutenant Henry Jones of the British army.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Three days before his death on the Western Front in the First World War, the twenty-one-year-old Jones sent a letter to his brother, describing the experience of war in glowing terms:", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: Ensure 'about' appears 2 time(s) in your answer)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Have you ever reflected on the fact that, despite the horrors of war, it is at least a big thing? I mean to say that in it one is brought face to face with realities. The follies, selfishness, luxury and general pettiness of the vile commercial sort of existence led by nine-tenths of the people of the world in peacetime are replaced in war by a savagery that is at least more honest and outspoken. Look at it this way: in peacetime one just lives one's own little life, engaged in trivialities, worrying about one's own comfort, about money matters, and all that sort of thing – just living for one's own self. What a sordid life it is! In war, on the other hand, even if you do get killed you only anticipate the inevitable by a few years in any case, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have 'pegged out' in the attempt to help your country. You have, in fact, realised an ideal, which, as far as I can see, you very rarely do in ordinary life. The reason is that ordinary life runs on a commercial and selfish basis; if you want to 'get on', as the saying is, you can't keep your hands clean.\n\nPersonally, I often rejoice that the War has come my way. It has made me realise what a petty thing life is. I think that the War has given to everyone a chance to 'get out of himself', as I might say…Certainly, speaking for myself, I can say that I have never in all my life experienced such a wild exhilaration as on the commencement of a big stunt, like the last April one for example.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The excitement for the last half-hour or so before it is like nothing on earth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In his bestseller Black Hawk Down, the journalist Mark Bowden relates in similar terms the combat experience of Shawn Nelson, an American soldier, in Mogadishu in 1993:", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was hard to describe how he felt…it was like an epiphany. Close to death, he had never felt so completely alive. There had been split seconds in his life when he'd felt death brush past, like when another fast-moving car veered from around a sharp curve and just missed hitting him head on. On this day he had lived with that feeling, with death breathing right in his face…for moment after moment after moment, for three hours or more…Combat was…a state of complete mental and physical awareness. In those hours on the street he had not been Shawn Nelson, he had no connection to the larger world, no bills to pay, no emotional ties, nothing. He had just been a human being staying alive from one nanosecond to the next, drawing one breath after another, fully aware that each one might be his last. He felt he would never be the same.\n\nAdolf Hitler too was changed and enlightened by his war experiences. In Mein Kampf, he tells how shortly after his unit reached the front line, the soldiers' initial enthusiasm turned into fear, against which each soldier had to wage a relentless inner war, straining every nerve to avoid being overwhelmed by it. Hitler says that he won this inner war by the winter of 1915/16. 'At last,' he writes, 'my will was undisputed master…I was now calm and determined.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And this was enduring.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests without my nerves shattering or my reason failing.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The experience of war revealed to Hitler the truth about the world: it is a jungle run by the remorseless laws of natural selection.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those who refuse to recognise this truth cannot survive. If you wish to succeed, you must not only understand the laws of the jungle, but embrace them joyfully. It should be stressed that just like the anti-war liberal artists, Hitler too sanctified the experience of ordinary soldiers. Indeed, Hitler's political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority accorded to the personal experience of common people in twentieth-century politics. Hitler wasn't a senior officer – in four years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal. He had no formal education, no professional skills and no political background. He wasn't a successful businessman or a union activist, he didn't have friends or relatives in high places, or any money to speak of. At first, he didn't even have German citizenship. He was a penniless immigrant.\n\nWhen Hitler appealed to the German voters and asked for their trust, he could muster only one argument in his favour: his experiences in the trenches had taught him what you can never learn at university, at general headquarters or at a government ministry. People followed him, and voted for him, because they identified with him, and because they too believed that the world is a jungle, and that what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas liberalism merged with the milder versions of nationalism to protect the unique experiences of each human community, evolutionary humanists such as Hitler identified particular nations as the engines of human progress, and concluded that these nations ought to bludgeon or even exterminate anyone standing in their way.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It should be remembered, though, that Hitler and the Nazis represent only one extreme version of evolutionary humanism.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just as Stalin's gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'evolutionary' into your response exactly 3 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nazism was born from the pairing of evolutionary humanism with particular racial theories and ultra-nationalist emotions. Not all evolutionary humanists are racists, and not every belief in humankind's potential for further evolution necessarily calls for setting up police states and concentration camps.\n\nAuschwitz should serve as a blood-red warning sign rather than as a black curtain that hides entire sections of the human horizon. Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping of modern culture, and it is likely to play an even greater role in the shaping of the twenty-first century.\n\nIs Beethoven Better than Chuck Berry?\n\nTo make sure we understand the difference between the three humanist branches, let's compare a few human experiences.\n\nExperience no. 1: A musicology professor sits in the Vienna Opera House, listening to the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. 'Pa pa pa PAM!' As the sound waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. 'Pa pa pa PAM!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Experience no. 2: It's 1965.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A Mustang convertible is speeding down the Pacific road from San Francisco to LA at full throttle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The young macho driver puts on Chuck Berry at full volume: 'Go! Go, Johnny, go, go!' As the sound waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. 'Go! Go, Johnny, go, go!'\n\nExperience no. 3: Deep in the Congolese rainforest, a pygmy hunter stands transfixed. From the nearby village, he hears a choir of girls singing their initiation song. 'Ye oh, oh. Ye oh, eh.' As the sound waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with adrenaline. His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. 'Ye oh, oh. Ye oh, eh.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Experience no. 4: It's a full-moon night, somewhere in the Canadian Rockies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A wolf is standing on a hilltop, listening to the howls of a female in heat. 'Awoooooo!", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Awoooooo!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As the sound waves hit his eardrums, signals travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, and the adrenal gland floods his bloodstream with adrenaline.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His heartbeat accelerates, his breathing intensifies, the hairs on his neck stand up, and a shiver runs down his spine. 'Awoooooo!", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Awoooooo!'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which of these four experiences is the most valuable?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you are liberal, you will tend to say that the experiences of the musicology professor, of the young driver and of the Congolese hunter are all equally valuable, and all should be equally cherished. Every human experience contributes something unique, and enriches the world with new meaning. Some people like classical music, others love rock and roll, and still others prefer traditional African chants. Music students should be exposed to the widest possible range of genres, and at the end of the day, everyone could go to the iTunes store, punch in their credit card number and buy what they like. Beauty is in the ears of the listener, and the customer is always right. The wolf, though, isn't human, hence his experiences are far less valuable. That's why the life of a wolf is worth less than the life of a human, and why it is perfectly okay to kill a wolf in order to save a human. When all is said and done, wolves don't get to vote in any beauty contests, nor do they hold any credit cards.\n\nThis liberal approach is manifested, for example, in the Voyager golden record. In 1977 the Americans launched the space probe Voyager I on a journey to outer space. By now it has left the solar system, making it the first man-made object to traverse interstellar space.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Besides state-of-the-art scientific equipment, NASA placed on board a golden record, aimed to introduce planet Earth to any inquisitive aliens who might encounter the probe.\n\nThe record contains a variety of scientific and cultural information about Earth and its inhabitants, some images and voices, and several dozen pieces of music from around the world, which are supposed to represent a fair sample of earthly artistic achievement. The musical sample mixes in no obvious order classical pieces including the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, contemporary popular music including Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode', and traditional music from throughout the world, including an initiation song of Congolese pygmy girls. Though the record also contains some canine howls, they are not part of the music sample, but rather relegated to a different section that also includes the sounds of wind, rain and surf. The message to potential listeners in Alpha Centauri is that Beethoven, Chuck Berry and the pygmy initiation song are of equal merit, whereas wolf howls belong to an altogether different category.\n\nIf you are socialist, you will probably agree with the liberals that the wolf's experience is of little value. But your attitude towards the three human experiences will be quite different. A socialist true-believer will explain that the real value of music depends not on the experiences of the individual listener, but on the impact it has on the experiences of other people and of society as a whole. As Mao said, 'There is no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.'\n\nSo when coming to evaluate the musical experiences, a socialist will focus, for example, on the fact that Beethoven wrote the Fifth Symphony for an audience of upper-class white Europeans, exactly when Europe was about to embark on its conquest of Africa. His symphony reflected Enlightenment ideals, which glorified upper-class white men, and branded the conquest of Africa as 'the white man's burden'.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rock and roll – the socialists will say – was pioneered by downtrodden African American musicians who drew inspiration from genres like blues, jazz and gospel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "However, in the 1950s and 1960s rock and roll was hijacked by mainstream white America, and pressed into the service of consumerism, of American imperialism and of Coca-Colonisation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rock and roll was commercialised and appropriated by privileged white teenagers in their petit-bourgeois fantasy of rebellion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: Word frequency rule: 'berry' × 2]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Chuck Berry himself bowed to the dictates of the capitalist juggernaut. While he originally sang about 'a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode', under pressure from white-owned radio stations Berry changed the lyrics to 'a country boy named Johnny B. Goode'.\n\nAs for the choir of Congolese pygmy girls – their initiation songs are part of a patriarchal power structure that brainwashes both men and women to conform to an oppressive gender order. And if a recording of such an initiation song ever makes it to the global marketplace, it merely serves to reinforce Western colonial fantasies about Africa in general and about African women in particular.\n\nSo which music is best: Beethoven's Fifth, 'Johnny B. Goode' or the pygmy initiation song? Should the government finance the building of opera houses, rock and roll venues or African-heritage exhibitions? And what should we teach music students in schools and colleges? Well, don't ask me. Ask the party's cultural commissar.\n\nWhereas liberals tiptoe around the minefield of cultural comparisons, fearful of committing some politically incorrect faux pas, and whereas socialists leave it to the party to find the right path through the minefield, evolutionary humanists gleefully jump right in, setting off all the mines and relishing the mayhem. They may start by pointing out that both liberals and socialists draw the line at other animals, and have no trouble admitting that humans are superior to wolves, and that consequently human music is far more valuable than wolf howls.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet humankind itself is not exempt from the forces of evolution.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just as humans are superior to wolves, so some human cultures are more advanced than others. There is an unambiguous hierarchy of human experiences, and we shouldn't be apologetic about it. The Taj Mahal is more beautiful than a straw hut, Michelangelo's David is superior to my five-year-old niece's latest clay figurine, and Beethoven composed far better music than Chuck Berry or the Congolese pygmies. There, we've said it!\n\nAccording to evolutionary humanists, anyone arguing that all human experiences are equally valuable is either an imbecile or a coward. Such vulgarity and timidity will lead only to the degeneration and extinction of humankind, as human progress is impeded in the name of cultural relativism or social equality. If liberals or socialists had lived in the Stone Age, they would probably have seen little merit in the murals of Lascaux and Altamira, and would have insisted that they are in no way superior to Neanderthal doodles.", "loss": true } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Format: Continuation\nLength: twenty-three sentences\nStyle: Yuval Noah Harari\nMaintain: existing lore\nThemes: science", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Initially, the differences between liberal humanism, socialist humanism and evolutionary humanism seemed rather frivolous. Set against the enormous gap separating all humanist sects from Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, the arguments between different versions of humanism were trifling. As long as we all agree that God is dead and that only the human experience gives meaning to the universe, does it really matter whether we think that all human experiences are equal or that some are superior to others? Yet as humanism conquered the world, these internal schisms widened, and eventually flared up into the deadliest war of religion in history.\n\nIn the first decade of the twentieth century, the liberal orthodoxy was still confident of its strength. Liberals were convinced that if we only gave individuals maximum freedom to express themselves and follow their hearts, the world would enjoy unprecedented peace and prosperity. It may take time to completely dismantle the fetters of traditional hierarchies, obscurantist religions and brutal empires, but every decade would bring new liberties and achievements, and eventually we would create paradise on earth. In the halcyon days of June 1914, liberals thought history was on their side.\n\nBy Christmas 1914 liberals were shell-shocked, and in the following decades their ideas were subjected to a double assault from both left and right. Socialists argued that liberalism is in fact a fig leaf for a ruthless, exploitative and racist system. For vaunted 'liberty', read 'property'. The defence of the individual's right to do what feels good amounts in most cases to safeguarding the property and privileges of the middle and upper classes. What good is the liberty to live where you want, when you cannot pay the rent; to study what interests you, when you cannot afford the tuition fees; and to travel where you fancy, when you cannot buy a car? Under liberalism, went a famous quip, everyone is free to starve. Even worse, by encouraging people to view themselves as isolated individuals, liberalism separates them from their other class members, and prevents them from uniting against the system that oppresses them. Liberalism thereby perpetuates inequality, condemning the masses to poverty and the elite to alienation.\n\nWhile liberalism staggered under this left punch, evolutionary humanism struck from the right. Racists and fascists blamed both liberalism and socialism for subverting natural selection and causing the degeneration of humankind. They warned that if all humans were given equal value and equal breeding opportunities, natural selection would cease to function. The fittest humans would be submerged in an ocean of mediocrity, and instead of evolving into superman, humankind would become extinct.\n\nFrom 1914 to 1989 a murderous war of religion raged between the three humanist sects, and liberalism at first sustained one defeat after the other. Not only did communist and fascist regimes take over numerous countries, but the core liberal ideas were exposed as naïve at best, if not downright dangerous. Just give freedom to individuals and the world will enjoy peace and prosperity? Yeah, right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Second World War, which with hindsight we remember as a great liberal victory, hardly looked like that at the time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The war began as a conflict between a mighty liberal alliance and an isolated Nazi Germany. (Until June 1940, even Fascist Italy preferred to play a waiting game.) The liberal alliance enjoyed overwhelming numerical and economic superiority. While German GDP in 1940 stood at $387 million, the GDP of Germany's European opponents totalled $631 million (not including the GDP of the overseas British dominions and of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian empires). Still, in the spring of 1940 it took Germany a mere three months to deal the liberal alliance a decisive blow, and occupy France, the Low Countries, Norway and Denmark. The UK was saved from a similar fate only by the English Channel.\n\nThe Germans were eventually beaten only when the liberal countries allied themselves with the Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the conflict and paid a much higher price: 25 million Soviet citizens died in the war, compared to half a million Britons and half a million Americans. Much of the credit for defeating Nazism should be given to communism. And at least in the short term, communism was also the great beneficiary of the war.\n\nThe Soviet Union entered the war as an isolated communist pariah. It emerged as one of the two global superpowers, and the leader of an expanding international bloc. By 1949 eastern Europe became a Soviet satellite, the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War, and the United States was gripped by anti-communist hysteria. Revolutionary and anti-colonial movements throughout the world looked longingly towards Moscow and Beijing, while liberalism became identified with the racist European empires. As these empires collapsed, they were usually replaced by either military dictatorships or socialist regimes, not liberal democracies. In 1956 the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, confidently told the liberal West that 'Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!'\n\nKhrushchev sincerely believed this, as did increasing numbers of Third World leaders and First World intellectuals. In the 1960s and 1970s the word 'liberal' became a term of abuse in many Western universities. North America and western Europe experienced growing social unrest, as radical left-wing movements strove to undermine the liberal order. Students in Paris, London, Rome and the People's Republic of Berkeley thumbed through Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, and hung Che Guevara's heroic portrait over their beds. In 1968 the wave crested with the outbreak of protests and riots all over the Western world. Mexican security forces killed dozens of students in the notorious Tlatelolco Massacre, students in Rome fought the Italian police in the so-called Battle of Valle Giulia, and the assassination of Martin Luther King sparked days of riots and protests in more than a hundred American cities. In May students took over the streets of Paris, President de Gaulle fled to a French military base in Germany, and well-to-do French citizens trembled in their beds, having guillotine nightmares.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "By 1970 the world contained 130 independent countries, but only thirty of these were liberal democracies, most of which were crammed into the north-western corner of Europe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 17 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "India was the only important Third World country that committed to the liberal path after securing its independence, but even India distanced itself from the Western bloc, and leaned towards the Soviets.\n\nIn 1975 the liberal camp suffered its most humiliating defeat of all: the Vietnam War ended with the North Vietnamese David overcoming the American Goliath. In quick succession communism took over South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. On 17 April 1975 the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, fell to the Khmer Rouge. Two weeks later, people all over the world watched as helicopters evacuated the last Yankees from the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon. Many were certain that the American Empire was falling. Before anyone could say 'domino theory', on 25 June Indira Gandhi proclaimed the Emergency in India, and it seemed that the world's largest democracy was on its way to becoming yet another socialist dictatorship.\n\nLiberal democracy increasingly looked like an exclusive club for ageing white imperialists, who had little to offer the rest of the world, or even their own youth. Washington presented itself as the leader of the free world, but most of its allies were either authoritarian kings (such as King Khaled of Saudi Arabia, King Hassan of Morocco and the Persian shah) or military dictators (such as the Greek colonels, General Pinochet in Chile, General Franco in Spain, General Park in South Korea, General Geisel in Brazil and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan).\n\nDespite the support of all these colonels and generals, militarily the Warsaw Pact had a huge numerical superiority over NATO. In order to reach parity in conventional armament, Western countries would probably have had to scrap liberal democracy and the free market, and become totalitarian states on a permanent war footing. Liberal democracy was saved only by nuclear weapons. NATO adopted the doctrine of MAD (mutual assured destruction), according to which even conventional Soviet attacks would be answered by an all-out nuclear strike. 'If you attack us,' threatened the liberals, 'we will make sure nobody comes out of it alive.' Behind this monstrous shield, liberal democracy and the free market managed to hold out in their last bastions, and Westerners could enjoy sex, drugs and rock and roll, as well as washing machines, refrigerators and televisions. Without nukes, there would have been no Woodstock, no Beatles and no overflowing supermarkets. But in the mid-1970s it seemed that nuclear weapons notwithstanding, the future belonged to socialism.", "loss": null } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Literary Collaboration:\n- Sentences: five sentences\n- Match character context\n- Genre: history, nonfiction, philosophy", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'democracy' (2x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then everything changed. Liberal democracy crawled out of history's dustbin, cleaned itself up and conquered the world. The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag. The blitzkrieg began in southern Europe, where the authoritarian regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal collapsed, giving way to democratic governments. In 1977 Indira Gandhi ended the Emergency, re-establishing democracy in India.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "During the 1980s military dictatorships in East Asia and Latin America were replaced by democratic governments in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and South Korea. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the liberal wave turned into a veritable tsunami, sweeping away the mighty Soviet Empire, and raising expectations of the coming end of history. After decades of defeats and setbacks, liberalism won a decisive victory in the Cold War, emerging triumphant from the humanist wars of religion, albeit a bit worse for wear.\n\nAs the Soviet Empire imploded, liberal democracies replaced communist regimes not only in eastern Europe, but also in many of the former Soviet republics, such as the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. Even Russia nowadays pretends to be a democracy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Victory in the Cold War gave renewed impetus for the spread of the liberal model elsewhere around the world, most notably in Latin America, South Asia and Africa.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some liberal experiments ended in abject failures, but the number of success stories is impressive.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For instance, Indonesia, Nigeria and Chile have been ruled by military strongmen for decades, but all are now functioning democracies.\n\nIf a liberal had fallen asleep in June 1914 and woken up in June 2014, he or she would have felt very much at home. Once again people believe that if you just give individuals more freedom, the world will enjoy peace and prosperity. The entire twentieth century looks like a big mistake. Humankind was speeding on the liberal highway back in the summer of 1914, when it took a wrong turn and entered a cul-de-sac.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It then needed eight decades and three horrendous global wars to find its way back to the highway.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of course, these decades were not a total waste, as they did give us antibiotics, nuclear energy and computers, as well as feminism, de-colonialism and free sex. In addition, liberalism itself smarted from the experience, and is less conceited than it was a century ago. It has adopted various ideas and institutions from its socialist and fascist rivals, in particular a commitment to provide the general public with education, health and welfare services. Yet the core liberal package has changed surprisingly little. Liberalism still sanctifies individual liberties above all, and still has a firm belief in the voter and the customer. In the early twenty-first century, this is the only show in town.", "loss": true } ]

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