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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Great book. I'm not rating non-fictions, but this one I'd like to have as a physical copy.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
An ambitious overview of challenges facing this brave new world. Heavy on cynicism and light on solutions
Content Warnings
Minor: Racism, Sexual violence, War
Vergeleken met [b:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind|23692271|Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind|Yuval Noah Harari|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420585954s/23692271.jpg|18962767] was [b:Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow|31138556|Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow|Yuval Noah Harari|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1468760805s/31138556.jpg|45087110] al een stuk minder interessant en [b:21 Lessons for the 21st Century|38820046|21 Lessons for the 21st Century|Yuval Noah Harari|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1529556215s/38820046.jpg|58048449] is daarbij vergeleken helaas nog minder interessant. Onderwerpen deugen, maar zijn veelal al in (zijn) andere boeken langs gekomen en toen beter uitgelegd of verteld.
De onderwerpen worden allemaal wel 'lekker' geserveerd, zodat 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - ondanks de weinig verrassende inhoud - (toch) nergens verveelt. Als smeuïg luistervoer een aanbeveling, maar het lost de belofte van de titel zelden in. Voor wie Harari's eerdere boeken heeft gelezen en/of - al is het maar een beetje - op de hoogte is van wat er zich zoal op politiek, cultuur en wetenschappelijk gebied afspeelt, sla dit boek met lessen over en wacht totdat de glitter van de roem is opgelost en Harari zich weer ontdaan heeft van zijn status als alleswetende guru. Wellicht dat hij dan weer een fijn en interessant boek schrijft.
Geluisterd naar de Audible versie, voorgelezen door Derek Perkins
De onderwerpen worden allemaal wel 'lekker' geserveerd, zodat 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - ondanks de weinig verrassende inhoud - (toch) nergens verveelt. Als smeuïg luistervoer een aanbeveling, maar het lost de belofte van de titel zelden in. Voor wie Harari's eerdere boeken heeft gelezen en/of - al is het maar een beetje - op de hoogte is van wat er zich zoal op politiek, cultuur en wetenschappelijk gebied afspeelt, sla dit boek met lessen over en wacht totdat de glitter van de roem is opgelost en Harari zich weer ontdaan heeft van zijn status als alleswetende guru. Wellicht dat hij dan weer een fijn en interessant boek schrijft.
Geluisterd naar de Audible versie, voorgelezen door Derek Perkins
I very much enjoyed the informative and easy to access information of Sapiens by this author he definitely has a way of writing that grips you and navigates you through even the most difficult theoretical ideas. This book was harder in some ways to follow because a lot of it is theory and based on future proposals but it was nevertheless interesting and thought provoking. You can see how things like AI, technology and political movements are transforming presently to become the challenges that Harari predicts for the rest of the century. It is depressing reading at times, but we know the hard facts of climate change and a growing world population are heading in that direction. There wasn't so much solutions put forward rather than past examples cycled to predict outcomes but that in itself remains to be seen.
I want to start this review by discussing what I call an "Obama book", which is a more specific form of the "Obama media" category. Obama books are books that gain much public success and acclaim despite lacking depth. They are usually by "public approved" authors (inoffensive writers that defend the status quo) and are recommended by people like Barrack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates (the last one even has a Goodreads account!). The main audience is professional middle-class white men and women who seek to enrich their lives by reading their one yearly book. This book by Yuval Noah Harari perfectly fits the bill. It is mostly shallow and contains very little useful advice despite being branded as "21 lessons". Harari is a public intellectual and he really tries hard to flex his intellectual muscles when he talks about AI or robotics. However, his arguments often fall flat as his predictions about the future are made with a lot of handwaving. Mostly, what he says in the first part of the book boils down to: AI is going to control us in the future. It is a fair prediction to make but it is based on no evidence (or very little as I will show shortly). A prediction about the future can be made by any single person on Earth and as Harari himself asserts multiple times in the book, it is pretty much impossible to predict the future. What if "AI", everyone's favorite techbro buzzword, is not the big revolutionary thing that futurist thinkers make it out to be? That certainly seems possible just like many predictions about the year 2000 that were made in previous centuries turned out to be false. There is no point in trying to create "lessons" out of predictions. Also, whenever Harari relies on external sources to support his points, his own sources end up contradicting him. At one point, he says that AI has gotten so advanced that it can predict whether or not an individual is gay based on pictures. His claim is that the algorithm behind the AI is capable of somehow detecting someone's sexuality based on their facial features. There is just one tiny problem, however. The original study was done by taking pictures of identified straight and gay people and feeding those pictures to the AI. The AI was then capable of looking at new pictures and predicting these new individuals' sexuality with a high success rate. What the study mentions (and Harari neglects to mention outside of an endnote) is that a large part of what "gayness" looks like to the algorithm is a social performance. Since the pictures were self-submitted by straight and gay people, the sample data was obviously influenced by social standards of what straight and gay people look like. Obviously, there isn't an exact "gay look" or "straight look." However, people are influenced by what they see and that affects how they look. This is the basic concept of social norms (which Harari, being a respected historian, is obviously aware of). If I spent my time debunking every other iffy comment or argument that Harari makes in this first part of the book, I could write my own book. Other parts of the book can be much better. For example, the chapters on humility, religion, and god are quite decent, despite behind a bit shallow. This book is pretty much a mixed bag of good points and horrible points and the issue is that the arguments can show up back-to-back, granting the bad arguments a form of authority. A person reading this book who lacks the knowledge necessary to debunk the arguments made by Harari might believe what he says and even incorporate it into their worldview. This is my main concern with books like these. These "Obama" books are often branded as deep philosophical works by great thinkers and are presumed to be full of great ideas. It is much easier to form a worldview than it is to change it and a person who does not know any better may truly be mislead by this book, especially since it is so well written. As a nonfiction author, Harari is captivating. His sentences are well constructed and convey a lot without being convoluted. He transitions well between arguments which creates the illusion of ease in his writing. In some places though, his writing style gives him a sense of smugness that ends up making him look quite silly. In a later chapter of the book, he talks about cognitive dissonance and how even the most devoted of us still suffer from it. I generally agree with what he says here. However, the example that he uses to showcase his point is not very convincing. He says that the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks were done by Islamic State (IS) terrorists who were seeking revenge for the involvement of the French air force in combat against IS forces in Iraq and Syria. So far so good. Next, he says that the IS took credit for the attack and said that their fallen comrades are martyrs and have gone to heaven. Then, he claims that the IS is suffering from cognitive dissonance. Harari says that since Muslims want to go to heaven, the Islamic State should not seek revenge for the people who died as martyrs. He even compares this to a man bombing lottery offices after his brother wins the lottery. This is not a valid analogy as the IS terrorists could think that the killing of their people is a bad thing while still recognizing that they are martyrs and that heaven awaits them. I do not believe in what the IS terrorists say yet I see that there is no contradiction where Harari says there is. The reason I do not give this book a 1/5 rating is that some parts of the book can genuinely be good. Take for example the chapter on science fiction. In this chapter, Harari analyzes some popular movies and illustrates the importance of our media for our understanding of new technology such as AI and robotics. This chapter and a few others actually show the "enlightened" side of Yuval Noah Harari that is often absent in other parts. In the end, this is just another "big ideas" book that does not really provide much in terms of big ideas. It creates the illusion of depth and wisdom while lacking both of those things. Final rating: 2/5 (though very close to being 1/5)
This book is an exploration of what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment: How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms, and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children? This book explores all of these vital questions and more.
Our Unifying Story
Humans think in stories rather than facts, numbers, or equations. The simpler the story the better. During the 20th Century, the global elites in New York, London, Berlin, and Moscow formulated 3 grand stories that claimed to explain the whole past and to predict the future of the entire world – the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The second world war knocked out the fascist story. From the 1940s to the 1980s the world was a battleground between communism and liberalism. Next, the communist story collapsed. The liberal story has remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world. The liberal story celebrates the value and the power of liberty.
However, since 2008 people all over the world become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. People have concluded rightly or wrongly, liberalization and globalization are huge rackets empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses. In 1938, humans were offered 3 global stories to choose from, in 1968 it was two, in 2018, we are down to 0. Having one story is the most reassuring situation of all, everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying, nothing makes sense.
Liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face – ecological collapse and technological disruption. Liberalism traditionally relied on economic growth to magically solve difficult social and political conflicts. With a constantly growing pie, people could believe the story. However, economic growth will not save the global ecosystem – just the opposite, it is the cause of the ecological crisis. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption – it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies.
The Ecological Challenge
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells. Agriculture has only been around for 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period. Any deviation from Holocene standards will present human societies with enormous challenges they’ve never encountered before. It will be like conducting an open-ended experiment on billions of human guinea pigs. There is scientific consensus that greenhouse gases such as CO2 are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate. Nobody knows exactly how much can go out without irreversible cataclysm.
The Technological Challenge
The combination of infotech and biotech opens the door to a plethora of doomsday scenarios, ranging from digital dictatorships to creations of the global useless class. Where are the nationalists' answers? As in the case of climate change, the nationalist state is the wrong framework to address it. If the US government forbids genetically engineered human embryos, this doesn’t prevent the Chinese from doing so, and if the resulting benefits give the Chinese an economic or military advantage, the USA will be tempted to break its own ban. If a single country decides to pursue a high-risk, high gain technological path, other countries will be forced to do the same. It will be a race to the bottom. Human beings need some kind of global identity to stop this. If human beings are to flourish, we have little choice but to complement local loyalties with substantial obligations to a global community. A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, neighborhood, her profession, and her nation – why not add humankind and planet Earth to that list?
Terrorism
Terrorists are masters of mind control. They kill very few people. But nevertheless, manage to terrify billions and shake huge political structures such as the EU or the USA. Since Sep11 2001, every year terrorists have killed about 50 people in the EU, about 10 people in the USA, about 7 people in China, and up to 25,000 people globally – mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria. In contrast, each year traffic accidents kill 80,000 Europeans, 40,000 Americans, 270,000 Chinese, and 1.25 million people altogether. Diabetes and high sugar kill about 7 million people. So why do we fear terrorism, more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution.
How is it, that terrorists achieve so much? Terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a China Shop. The fly is so weak that it can’t move a single teacup. So how does it destroy the China Shop? It finds a bull, gets in its ear, and starts buzzing, then the bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the china shop. This is what happened after 9/11 as Islamic Fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern China Shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage.
By killing a handful of people they cause millions to fear for their lives. Governments react to the theatre by showing security and orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of the entire population or the invasion of Countries.
Resilience
How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed, and no new story has yet emerged to replace them? Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes, and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about, and what is my particular role in the cosmic drama.
In order to construct a viable identity for yourself and give meaning to life, the story doesn’t need to be devoid of blind spots and contradictions. It needs to satisfy only two conditions to give your life meaning. First, it needs to give you some role to play. Like movie stars, humans like only those scrips that reserve an important role for them. Second, a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond your horizons.
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What does Harari think we should do about all this? He offers some practical advice, including a three-prong strategy for fighting terrorism and a few tips for dealing with fake news. But his big idea boils down to this: Meditate. Of course, he isn’t suggesting that the world’s problems will vanish if enough of us start sitting in the lotus position and chanting om. But he does insist that life in the 21st century demands mindfulness—getting to know ourselves better and seeing how we contribute to suffering in our own lives.
Our Unifying Story
Humans think in stories rather than facts, numbers, or equations. The simpler the story the better. During the 20th Century, the global elites in New York, London, Berlin, and Moscow formulated 3 grand stories that claimed to explain the whole past and to predict the future of the entire world – the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The second world war knocked out the fascist story. From the 1940s to the 1980s the world was a battleground between communism and liberalism. Next, the communist story collapsed. The liberal story has remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world. The liberal story celebrates the value and the power of liberty.
However, since 2008 people all over the world become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. People have concluded rightly or wrongly, liberalization and globalization are huge rackets empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses. In 1938, humans were offered 3 global stories to choose from, in 1968 it was two, in 2018, we are down to 0. Having one story is the most reassuring situation of all, everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying, nothing makes sense.
Liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face – ecological collapse and technological disruption. Liberalism traditionally relied on economic growth to magically solve difficult social and political conflicts. With a constantly growing pie, people could believe the story. However, economic growth will not save the global ecosystem – just the opposite, it is the cause of the ecological crisis. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption – it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies.
The Ecological Challenge
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells. Agriculture has only been around for 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period. Any deviation from Holocene standards will present human societies with enormous challenges they’ve never encountered before. It will be like conducting an open-ended experiment on billions of human guinea pigs. There is scientific consensus that greenhouse gases such as CO2 are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate. Nobody knows exactly how much can go out without irreversible cataclysm.
The Technological Challenge
The combination of infotech and biotech opens the door to a plethora of doomsday scenarios, ranging from digital dictatorships to creations of the global useless class. Where are the nationalists' answers? As in the case of climate change, the nationalist state is the wrong framework to address it. If the US government forbids genetically engineered human embryos, this doesn’t prevent the Chinese from doing so, and if the resulting benefits give the Chinese an economic or military advantage, the USA will be tempted to break its own ban. If a single country decides to pursue a high-risk, high gain technological path, other countries will be forced to do the same. It will be a race to the bottom. Human beings need some kind of global identity to stop this. If human beings are to flourish, we have little choice but to complement local loyalties with substantial obligations to a global community. A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, neighborhood, her profession, and her nation – why not add humankind and planet Earth to that list?
Terrorism
Terrorists are masters of mind control. They kill very few people. But nevertheless, manage to terrify billions and shake huge political structures such as the EU or the USA. Since Sep11 2001, every year terrorists have killed about 50 people in the EU, about 10 people in the USA, about 7 people in China, and up to 25,000 people globally – mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria. In contrast, each year traffic accidents kill 80,000 Europeans, 40,000 Americans, 270,000 Chinese, and 1.25 million people altogether. Diabetes and high sugar kill about 7 million people. So why do we fear terrorism, more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution.
How is it, that terrorists achieve so much? Terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a China Shop. The fly is so weak that it can’t move a single teacup. So how does it destroy the China Shop? It finds a bull, gets in its ear, and starts buzzing, then the bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the china shop. This is what happened after 9/11 as Islamic Fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern China Shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage.
By killing a handful of people they cause millions to fear for their lives. Governments react to the theatre by showing security and orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of the entire population or the invasion of Countries.
Resilience
How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed, and no new story has yet emerged to replace them? Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes, and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about, and what is my particular role in the cosmic drama.
In order to construct a viable identity for yourself and give meaning to life, the story doesn’t need to be devoid of blind spots and contradictions. It needs to satisfy only two conditions to give your life meaning. First, it needs to give you some role to play. Like movie stars, humans like only those scrips that reserve an important role for them. Second, a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond your horizons.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What does Harari think we should do about all this? He offers some practical advice, including a three-prong strategy for fighting terrorism and a few tips for dealing with fake news. But his big idea boils down to this: Meditate. Of course, he isn’t suggesting that the world’s problems will vanish if enough of us start sitting in the lotus position and chanting om. But he does insist that life in the 21st century demands mindfulness—getting to know ourselves better and seeing how we contribute to suffering in our own lives.
A book that covers the challenges and tribulations of our current times and the likely transition period into what I would call the AI/Technological phase of humanity.
Talks about nationalism, Data, Biotech, Culturism vs racism, the trade-off of truth and power, how sci-fi can shape our perceptions of tech, narrative/stories, what it means to be a self (vs following the algorithm), and an interesting ending note on meditation!
Talks about nationalism, Data, Biotech, Culturism vs racism, the trade-off of truth and power, how sci-fi can shape our perceptions of tech, narrative/stories, what it means to be a self (vs following the algorithm), and an interesting ending note on meditation!
Bestimmt eines der besten Bücher die ich in den letzten Jahren im Zusammenhang mit Philosophie, Wirtschaftstheorie und Politik gelesen habe.
Harari nimmt sich eine Menge Themen vor und adressiert die meisten davon hervorragend, mit vielen nachvollziehbaren Ideen und wichtigen Analysen des Hintergrundes. Die letzten Kapitel konnten dann zwar nicht 100-%-ig überzeugen, gerade Resilienz ist ein enorm wichtiges Thema, das für meinen Geschmack zu kurz kommt, aber insgesamt tut das dem Buch und der Qualität keinen Abbruch.
Das Buch kann man wirklich jedem ans Herzen legen, der sich fragt, was geht hier eigentlich gerade ab und wo wird das hinführen. Harari demaskiert viele der Strömungen in der Gesellschaft und redet der liberalen Idee das Wort, wie man es nur selten findet.
Ein Buch das man gerne auf Dauer am Nachtkästchen liegen haben kann, um immer mal wieder das eine oder andere nachzulesen.
Harari nimmt sich eine Menge Themen vor und adressiert die meisten davon hervorragend, mit vielen nachvollziehbaren Ideen und wichtigen Analysen des Hintergrundes. Die letzten Kapitel konnten dann zwar nicht 100-%-ig überzeugen, gerade Resilienz ist ein enorm wichtiges Thema, das für meinen Geschmack zu kurz kommt, aber insgesamt tut das dem Buch und der Qualität keinen Abbruch.
Das Buch kann man wirklich jedem ans Herzen legen, der sich fragt, was geht hier eigentlich gerade ab und wo wird das hinführen. Harari demaskiert viele der Strömungen in der Gesellschaft und redet der liberalen Idee das Wort, wie man es nur selten findet.
Ein Buch das man gerne auf Dauer am Nachtkästchen liegen haben kann, um immer mal wieder das eine oder andere nachzulesen.