In A Brief History of the Future, the author pessimistically predicts that dataism will replace humanism, although humanism has influenced the civilizing process of human society for hundreds of years. In politics, we believe that power depends on the free choice of ordinary voters. In a market economy, we believe that the customer is always right. Humanist art holds that beauty depends on the eye of the beholder. Humanist education teaches us to think for ourselves. Humanist ethics reminds us that if we think something is good, we should do it.
However, as the Church and the KGB gave way to Google and Facebook, humanism lost its practical edge. For we are now subject to two scientific currents. On the one hand, biologists are deciphering the mysteries of the human body, especially the brain and human emotions. At the same time, computer scientists are giving us unprecedented data processing power. When you combine the two, you have an external system that can monitor my emotions and understand me better than I understand myself. Once the Big Data system understands me better than I understand myself, the power shifts from humans to algorithms. Then, Big Data will make "Big Brother" (meaning large-scale surveillance) a reality.
This is already happening in healthcare. The most important medical decisions in your life will no longer be made based on how you feel about your illness or health, or even the predictions your doctor tells you, but will be calculations made by computers that know you better than you know yourself. Actress Angelina Jolie is an example of this. In 2013, Jolie underwent genetic testing that proved she carries the mutated BRCA1 gene. According to statistics, women who carry this mutated gene have an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. Even though Jolie did not have breast cancer at the time, she decided to undergo a double mastectomy before she became ill. She didn't feel sick, but she wisely decided to listen to the computer algorithm. "You may not feel like something bad is happening," the algorithm said, "but there's a ticking time bomb in your DNA. And right now, you have to make a decision!"
What's happening in health care is also happening in more and more fields. It starts with something as simple as deciding which book to buy or read. How do humanists choose a book? They'll go to a bookstore, stroll between the aisles, flip through a book and read the first few sentences, and keep going until they feel something special about a particular book. And data nerds will use Amazon. When I go into Amazon's virtual store, a message pops up telling me, "I know which books you've liked in the past, and people with similar tastes tend to like this or that new book, too."
That's just the beginning. Many devices, such as Amazon's Kindle, can constantly collect user data as they read. Your Kindle can monitor which parts of a book you read fast and which parts you read slowly, which pages you took a break on and which sentences you abandoned the book on. If the Kindle is upgraded with facial recognition software and biosensors, it will also know how each sentence affects your heart rate and blood pressure. It would know what makes you laugh, what makes you sad, what makes you angry. Before long, the book is reading you as you read it. While you soon forget most of what you read, the computer program never forgets. This data eventually allows Amazon to pick exactly the books you like for you. It will also allow Amazon to know exactly who you are and what your emotional points are.
Using this, it can be deduced that eventually, people may authorize algorithms to make the most important decisions of their lives for them, such as who to marry. In medieval Europe, priests and parents had the right to decide who your partner would be. In a humanist society, we give that power to our emotions. And in a data-driven society, I would let Google choose. I would say, "Hey, Google. John and Paul are both pursuing me, and I like both of them, but the two feelings are different. I'm having a really hard time sorting it out. Given all the information you know, what do you suggest I do?"
And Google would reply, "Well, I've known you since the day you were born. I've read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favorite movies, your DNA, and all the historical biological information about your heart. I have precise data on each of your appointments, and I can show you real-time graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels every time you go on a date with John or Paul. And, I know them as well as I know you. Based on this information and my advanced algorithms, as well as decades of statistics about millions of pairs of romantic relationships, I recommend that you stay with John because there's an 87% likelihood that you'll be more satisfied with him in the long run.
"In fact, I know you so well that I even know you don't like that answer. Because you give too much weight to looks, and Paul is more handsome than John, you inwardly want my answer to be "Paul". Of course appearance is important, but not as important as you think. Your biochemical algorithm gives 35% weight to appearance in its overall assessment of potential mates. My algorithm, on the other hand, is based on the latest research and statistics that suggest that appearance has only a 14% impact on the long-term success of a relationship. So even though I take Paul's appearance into account, I'm going to tell you that you're better off with John."
Google won't have to be perfect. It doesn't need to be right all the time. It just needs to be better than me on average. And that's not so hard, because most people don't know themselves very well, and most people often make big mistakes on the most important decisions in their lives.
The datist worldview is very appealing to politicians, businesspeople and ordinary consumers because it leads to groundbreaking technology and great new power. Despite the fear of losing our privacy and freedom of choice, when consumers have to choose whether to keep their privacy or get better healthcare, most people will choose the latter for the sake of their health.
While big data can bring many benefits to humanity as a whole, I personally feel that humanity has evolved to this point more because of unique personal emotions and the many different ways of thinking that have given birth to our colorful human civilization, and that the loss of personal emotions will probably cost us everything.