Madame Stahl was a liberal thinker during the French Revolution, and her remark frightened Napoleon: "There is no woman more **" However, even more famous than this is her quote"Freedom is ancient, ** is modern".Saying. However, to this day, I am afraid that no one realizes that this shocking sentence at the time has become a historical prophecy for the next 200 years.
In the two hundred years between the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the development of capitalism and the progress of science and technology have pushed mankind to the pinnacle of civilization like never before, but with it comes the desire of the strong for the concentration of power and the resentment of the poor for the inequality of wealth. As a result, the enemies of freedom, such as utopianism and Nazism, have emerged, and economic collapse, political turmoil, human destruction, and civilization regression have intertwined, and these histories still haunt people's hearts today.
In the past 200 years, how many evil false names of freedom have prevailed? Fortunately, in exchange for the disaster, the beautiful values of freedom, equality, and equality have gradually become universal values that are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Today, the clash of civilization and barbarism continues, but no one will openly oppose these universal values anymore.
However, when universal values become a kind of belief, their enemies are not only obvious enemies such as "coercion", but also very hidden enemies such as "technology" and "algorithms". In the long run, the latter is more terrible than the former—not only because the latter can easily become a weapon for the former, but also because when science becomes the new God, it directly shakes the foundations of universal human values. ▍Science's Revolution of the Human Brain:Depression, not because of pain, but because the chip is deadUniversal values such as freedom have been able to emerge from the brutal competition of history because of their two fundamental premises that are most in line with human nature:
Human beings have free will, and civilized societies must respect the unique experiences of each person, whether in the market or in political life, everyone has the right to choose freely.
No one knows himself better than himself, only he knows what he wants, and no one can make decisions for himself.
However, the rise of technology and algorithms is shaking these two basic premises.
In "The Emperor's New Brain" of the "First Promotion Series", since the Spanish scientist Cajal discovered that the essence of the operation of the human brain is nothing more than the interaction between neurons, the more science understands the human brain, the more it is determined that almost 99% of people's behavior patterns are no different from computers, whether it is memory or external stimulation, it is nothing more than the electrical signals and chemical reactions of neurons. 
For example, when a person is confronted with a tiger, vision transmits images to the brain, and the brain makes a "very dangerous" decision based on a genetically set "biological algorithm!" This signal is then transmitted to the leg, and the leg immediately begins to run wildly after receiving the signal. This process is close to the mode of operation of a computer program, where a human gives instructions to the computer, and the computer then gives the human desired result based on the algorithm.
In the whole process, there is almost no room for human thoughts and concepts to participate - no one will stop and think about whether the tiger will eat me or not, whether I need to talk to it.
Scientists have concluded that there is no difference between the human brain and a computer in essence - human behavior is nothing more than a collection of various algorithms, and what kind of stimuli given by the outside world will make what kind of human reaction. They even think that consciousness, ideas, ideas are nothing more than an additional by-product.
So, are many of our daily behaviors and desires what we want to do, or are they instructions given to us by "biological algorithms" based on external stimuli? Can we choose our desires? Do we have "free will"?
The answer given by scientific experiments is no. In books such as A Brief History of the Future, Yuval Harari describes the famous "robot mouse" experiment and analyzes the challenges posed by scientific and technological progress to civilization.
The experiment was conducted by Professor Jiv Tavar of the State University of New York in the United States. At the beginning of the experiment, as long as three electrodes were inserted into the rat's brain, it could be commanded remotely - let it go straight, climb a ladder, go around the garbage heap, anything. What scientists control is actually the "free will" of mice! The remote control points to **, and the rat is not forced to go there, but the rat "wants" to go there. What we see is that the mouse is remotely controlled, and the rat's own feeling is that it can go wherever it wants, and it is very "free".
Due to ethical constraints, such experiments cannot, of course, be carried out on humans, but Israeli scientists still play a sideshow. In order to be depressed, they implanted a chip in the patient's brain, and as a result, the patient was happy again.
A patient once asked, "Why am I more depressed these days?" The scientist opened his brain and saw that the chip was dead.
By implanting a chip in the brain, you can control the human experience. Therefore, in the opinion of scientists, the conclusions of the "robot mouse" experiment are equally applicable to the human brain. ——Science and technology can control people, and even directly dissolve people's free will. "Human beings have free will", the first premise of universal values, was thus shaken by new technologies. 
Robot Mouse" experiment.
What's even more terrifying is that technology's manipulation of "free will" has gone out of the laboratory and is being rapidly commercialized - the U.S. military has developed a helmet that can exert influence on certain parts of the brain through electrodes, wearing it, soldiers no longer feel fear and nervousness, and can also make soldiers more focused, react faster, and combat more efficiently. This technology is also being used by more and more people at work and in games.
According to a survey in the United States**, as early as 2015, 1 in 3 college students in the United States used "smart drugs" - drugs that allow people to concentrate for a period of time. According to scientific research, the human brain has various desires and thoughts at all times. Taking "smart medicine" can clear the "distracting thoughts" in people's minds and help people focus on one thing, so as to achieve a state of "self-forgetfulness".
It is said that Jobs has taken similar "smart drugs", and many top engineers and mathematicians in the United States have taken them. An expert at CNN said that almost all the billionaires he knows rely on "smart drugs" to improve their thinking skills.
At present, the focus of the discussion on this phenomenon is, does taking "smart drugs" count as fair competition? But in reality, the significance of this phenomenon is far greater than we think.
In the past, drug addiction stimulated the secretion of dopamine in the most direct way, making people enjoy unprecedented pleasure. In fact, drug addiction not only corrupts people's bodies, but also deprives people of their free will - addicts cannot choose not to take drugs. Therefore, drug trafficking is considered a crime against human ethics.
But now, if "smart drugs" or "chips in the brain" are allowed to develop, human beings will also rely on these technologies to control the senses and free will, just like the dependence on drugs, and one day, various experiences such as "happiness", "hope", "self-confidence" and "love" will also be clearly marked and sold on the shelves. At that time, human society will enter a dark age of "etiquette collapse". 
People's "free will" has become a harvesting ground for science and technology, and it is often joked that we don't understand the happiness of the rich, but in the future, it is likely that the happiness of the rich is the same as the happiness of the poor, but the poor have no money to buy it.
In the past, the deprivation of people's liberty was obvious; In the future, technology will quietly deprive people of their freedom.
Algorithms & Big Data:From "fortune teller" to "the new god of mankind".In daily life, we all spend impulsively and often buy back a bunch of things that we don't need; In public life, a bad ** may be elected, and so on. However, these are not the worst outcomes. The worst outcome is that we are deprived of our choice and replaced by someone else. From arranged marriages and arranged jobs by parents, to what kind of information a small number of people choose to obtain on our behalf, what kind of knowledge to learn, what kind of policies to implement, and so on.
This is based on the second fundamental premise of universal human values: no one knows himself better than himself, and only he knows what he wants. Therefore, freedom of choice, not coercion, is a fundamental and self-evident right. But what if technology and algorithms know themselves better than they do?
There was an incident in the United States where a man angrily complained about Target, saying, "You actually sold pregnant women to my daughter who is in high school!" Do you want to encourage her to get pregnant? But a week later, the father apologized because his daughter was really pregnant. It turned out that the supermarket thought that the girl was likely to be pregnant through big data analysis, so it pushed relevant products to her.
In this true story,The cold big data actually knows his daughter better than the father who gets along day and night.
Big data has changed the world, but the pace of technological updates and iterations cannot be stopped. According to reports, tech giants such as Google are developing a powerful super system that can monitor various indicators of the human body in real time, combine everyone's genes, and provide people with various health advice anytime, anywhere. When to wake up, when to eat, when to work out, when to work, when to sleep.
Google has also developed an assistant system similar to "virtual life" that will give important advice when faced with life decisions. Whether it is what major to study in college, what job to choose, to live, or who to marry, whether to have children, etc., it can give specific suggestions based on big data.
When we're at a loss, Google Assistant will tell us, "I've known you since the day you were born, your complete DNA, the books you've read, the words you've said, your favorite movies, and even your heartbeat on a date." I know yourself better than you, and next year, you should marry xx, and he and she are more suitable for you. "Who can refuse such a scientific, accurate, and considerate service?
Of course, humans can work backwards and tame AI by changing big data. However, it takes a lot of time and mind, and it has to be normalized. Otherwise, the new data that has just been tamed will soon become the old data of the first industrial intelligence. In the end, we have to admit that the most cost-effective thing to do is to bow down in the face of big data. Today, more and more people are accustomed to recording, uploading, and sharing their own data, and people are unknowingly becoming part of the data flow, and the so-called "individual" is becoming an insignificant "electrode tube" in the era of big data. In the end, the relationship between scientific algorithms and human beings will probably be divided into three steps:
The algorithm is equivalent to the "fortune teller" around us, ask him a question, but people still have the right to make decisions.
The algorithm is our ** person, we tell it what to do, let it execute.
The algorithm eventually became our monarch, and we voluntarily surrendered the decision-making power, and we could only listen to it.
In the not-too-distant future, science will be omnipotent, and it will become the "new God" of mankind.
In contrast, hot topics such as "facial recognition technology violates personal privacy" and "mobile app uploading personal data", which are widely discussed, may be insignificant.
The basic logic and ethics of human society, which have been formed over thousands of years, have been shaken by technology and algorithms in just a few decades, and people have gone from reluctant to voluntarily becoming slaves of data and algorithms. We listen to assistants for shopping, fitness, going to ** life, who to marry, and even listening to assistants in public life such as voting, what is left of the once self-evident "free choice"?
When algorithm engineers become the people who can influence our decision-making the most, when scientists and technologists can constantly "patch" people's brains, when tech giants and political strongmen master core algorithms, all coercion seems so "free". What happens when they are united? It's scary to think about! Orwell wrote in 1984"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength".It used to be a political allegory, but now it turns out to be a prophecy. Science and ReasonThe light of human civilization, but often misused as a death of history"Nature and the laws of nature are hidden in the night. God said, let Newton be born! So, the world was bright. This is the epitaph inscribed by the English poet Alexander Pope for Newton.
In the 18th century, the birth of Newtonian mechanics set off a scientific revolution; The Industrial Revolution propelled the British Empire to an unprecedented pinnacle of civilization; In the 20th century, the advent of Einstein's theory of relativity once again triggered a frenzy of science worship. The large-scale application of new technologies has not only led to a blowout growth in the economy, but also completely changed the way of life of human beings.
The rise of science is a product of human rationality, but scientific thinking is quickly abused in the social realm. For example, the social Darwinists tried to use the "scientific method" to control the path of human evolution, which resulted in the Nazi race during World War II. Utopians tried to use "scientific thinking" to plan and transform human society, but the result was full of disasters. The transformation of human society with scientific thinking was the source of the major disasters of the 20th century. However, the misuse of science in the 20th century is at best nothing compared to today's. In recent years, the development of mobile Internet, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology has directly changed the human brain itself and changed the meaning of human beings. In the face of technology and algorithms, all people "voluntarily" run towards slavery.
Science seems omnipotent, and the trend seems irreversible. In this regard, Hayek wrote in his book The Counter-Revolution of Science:
Those "scientologists" who try to use the scientific method to treat everyone as an inanimate atom and devote themselves to manipulating human "free will" ignore the basic premise ...... scienceWhen science tries to interfere in human ethical issues, it will pursue value neutrality, dissolve ethics and morality, expel value judgments, and eventually inevitably lead human society to the road of slavery.
Hayek made an unusually pessimistic prediction after writing this book:Human beings have a natural impulse to worship reason and utopia, and we will not be able to escape the eternal curse of the abuse of science on individual freedom! However, no matter how powerful science is, it has its natural limitations - no matter how much data the lab can produce and what new conclusions it can find, it will not be able to justify acts such as **, robbery, etc. But when science is powerful enough to dissolve universal values in a calm manner, we can no longer turn a blind eye, let alone be vigilant.
For this reason, I strongly recommend Hayek's long-forgotten classic "The Counter-Revolution of Science: A Study of the Abuse of Reason".
If books such as Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" and "The Charter of Freedom" are a counter-attack to the ideas of Nazism and utopianism that prevailed in the 20th century, then "The Counter-Revolution of Science" is an important entry point for us to discuss how to get rid of the absurd fate of "freedom to slavery" in the 21st century.
Liu Yejin, a teacher who has devoted himself to the study of Hayek for more than ten years, said: "As long as the glory of scientific progress continues, the rational conceit of human beings to organize the order of human cooperation with 'scientific and engineering thinking' will always be inevitable, so Hayek's book "The Counter-Revolution of Science" will have eternal value. ”
However, this book was once out of print, and we are well aware of the value of this book, and we are fortunate to resurrect this book together with Yilin Publishing House and Professor Feng Keli, a first-class translator in ChinaClick on the product card below to collect it exclusivelyOther works by Hayek are also available for purchase.