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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
The world would be a better place if everybody read and pondered the lessons of this book. It’s far too easy to get caught up in our own little worlds. Hearing these topics from a new perspective was stimulating and grounding at the same time
I kind of feel like everyone should read this book. It is so relevant and so important to understanding the incredibly complex, chaotic, and confusing world we live in. A user’s guide to the 21st century (so far).
I continue my saga with Harari in chronological order after having finished Sapiens, finding Harari holding my hand now not in the past, but in the present. I was expecting this book to be a lot more fragmented than it was, expecting short essays on a variety of troubling topics. Yet I found an eloquently woven guide to unpacking the woes that we face in the 21st century, with each chapter compounding upon the last.
He starts with a truly eye-opening exploration of why our politic world seems so broken as of late. He lays out that for the last several hundred years there have been three stories, fascism, liberalism, and communism. After WWII fascism fell to the wayside and most of the 20th century was spent fighting proxy wars to destroy communism. Now most of the world operates in a liberal democracy or strives towards achieving this system. However, in the last 20 years we have been disenchanted with liberalism and now we have no stories to fall back on. Again we are lost.
Technology seems to have become the one thing we believe in the most globally. This makes our data a highly valuable asset that we are incredibly careless with now. Harari warns of a potential future where humans are not just underemployed, but unneeded. Irrelevant. Algorithms are becoming incredibly talented. They already run most of the stock market. Will they soon educate our children? Diagnose our patients? They can already create art that is indiscernible to most humans. Will the wealth gap and increase in technology create a disparity between those who can afford augmentation, both physically and genetically? There is a lot of possibilities and even more we don’t know.
Harari hammers a lot on the ironic rise between global issues emerging such as a dissolving of our privacy, this rise of technologies which threaten to make us obsolete, and climate change. These are problems no nation can face alone. And yet our world is becoming ever increasingly more nationalist, and we are finding new ways to divide ourselves while corporations are finding new ways to exploit this. We are drowning in an age of information where everyone reckons themselves an expert, but no one really knows as much as they think they do. Access to information is not the same thing as understanding it. All the while increasingly people are becoming set in their ways, ideologies, and religious beliefs and moving away from cooperation with those unlike themselves.
He preaches that in order for us to move forward we need to take a step back and relax. He has a brilliant essay on terrorism, where he highlights that no more than 50 people a year are killed annually by terrorism in the EU, but 80,000 a year die in traffic accidents. He explores how terrorism hacks out brains and makes us irrational, playing into the hands of the weakest groups. He wrestles with both sides of how to approach immigration and has a fascinating exploration of his own people’s Jewish faith.
He finished the book with essays exploring humans abilities to believe fiction, how overwhelmingly complicated our world has become, and how to accept our own ignorance is the only real way to move forward. Finally, he shares his own personal approach to the 21st century which involves meditation and mindfulness. A peaceful and powerful conclusion to the disarray he as stirred up.
I continue my saga with Harari in chronological order after having finished Sapiens, finding Harari holding my hand now not in the past, but in the present. I was expecting this book to be a lot more fragmented than it was, expecting short essays on a variety of troubling topics. Yet I found an eloquently woven guide to unpacking the woes that we face in the 21st century, with each chapter compounding upon the last.
He starts with a truly eye-opening exploration of why our politic world seems so broken as of late. He lays out that for the last several hundred years there have been three stories, fascism, liberalism, and communism. After WWII fascism fell to the wayside and most of the 20th century was spent fighting proxy wars to destroy communism. Now most of the world operates in a liberal democracy or strives towards achieving this system. However, in the last 20 years we have been disenchanted with liberalism and now we have no stories to fall back on. Again we are lost.
Technology seems to have become the one thing we believe in the most globally. This makes our data a highly valuable asset that we are incredibly careless with now. Harari warns of a potential future where humans are not just underemployed, but unneeded. Irrelevant. Algorithms are becoming incredibly talented. They already run most of the stock market. Will they soon educate our children? Diagnose our patients? They can already create art that is indiscernible to most humans. Will the wealth gap and increase in technology create a disparity between those who can afford augmentation, both physically and genetically? There is a lot of possibilities and even more we don’t know.
Harari hammers a lot on the ironic rise between global issues emerging such as a dissolving of our privacy, this rise of technologies which threaten to make us obsolete, and climate change. These are problems no nation can face alone. And yet our world is becoming ever increasingly more nationalist, and we are finding new ways to divide ourselves while corporations are finding new ways to exploit this. We are drowning in an age of information where everyone reckons themselves an expert, but no one really knows as much as they think they do. Access to information is not the same thing as understanding it. All the while increasingly people are becoming set in their ways, ideologies, and religious beliefs and moving away from cooperation with those unlike themselves.
He preaches that in order for us to move forward we need to take a step back and relax. He has a brilliant essay on terrorism, where he highlights that no more than 50 people a year are killed annually by terrorism in the EU, but 80,000 a year die in traffic accidents. He explores how terrorism hacks out brains and makes us irrational, playing into the hands of the weakest groups. He wrestles with both sides of how to approach immigration and has a fascinating exploration of his own people’s Jewish faith.
He finished the book with essays exploring humans abilities to believe fiction, how overwhelmingly complicated our world has become, and how to accept our own ignorance is the only real way to move forward. Finally, he shares his own personal approach to the 21st century which involves meditation and mindfulness. A peaceful and powerful conclusion to the disarray he as stirred up.
This third book by Harari is an exposition of some of the basic issues that humankind is facing right now, or will be facing very shortly. It bears a somewhat misleading title: as written by Bill Gates in this review, more than delivering lessons, Harari is interested in "defining the terms of the discussion and giving you historical and philosophical perspective". Not least because they are issues with no clear and definite answer: who can honestly claim to have the solution to the problems arising from climate crisis, or from immigration, or from the increasing automation of jobs?
It's not an easy book (but it is a brilliantly written one), and it poses more questions than it answers, but I think that's what makes it valuable: in a time of oversimplicistic answers, having the courage to tackle complexity is necessary and almost heroic.
//
Questo terzo libro di Harari presenta alcuni dei problemi fondamentali che l'umanità sta affrontando in questo momento, o affronterà molto a breve. Il titolo è, in una certa misura, ingannevole: come scrive Bill Gates in questa recensione, più che di fare lezioni, Harari si sforza di "definire i termini della discussione, e di fornire una prospettiva storica e filosofica*". Anche perché si tratta di questioni che non hanno risposte chiare e definite: chi può onestamente sostenere di avere la soluzione ai problemi che emergono dalla crisi climatica, o dall'immigrazione, o dalla sempre più presente automazione del lavoro?
Non è un libro facile (anche se è scritto splendidamente), e pone più domande di quelle a cui risponde, ma credo che sia questo che lo rende così prezioso: in un tempo di risposte troppo semplicistiche, avere il coraggio di affrontare la complessità è necessario e quasi eroico.
* Traduzione del vostro affezionatissimo
It's not an easy book (but it is a brilliantly written one), and it poses more questions than it answers, but I think that's what makes it valuable: in a time of oversimplicistic answers, having the courage to tackle complexity is necessary and almost heroic.
//
Questo terzo libro di Harari presenta alcuni dei problemi fondamentali che l'umanità sta affrontando in questo momento, o affronterà molto a breve. Il titolo è, in una certa misura, ingannevole: come scrive Bill Gates in questa recensione, più che di fare lezioni, Harari si sforza di "definire i termini della discussione, e di fornire una prospettiva storica e filosofica*". Anche perché si tratta di questioni che non hanno risposte chiare e definite: chi può onestamente sostenere di avere la soluzione ai problemi che emergono dalla crisi climatica, o dall'immigrazione, o dalla sempre più presente automazione del lavoro?
Non è un libro facile (anche se è scritto splendidamente), e pone più domande di quelle a cui risponde, ma credo che sia questo che lo rende così prezioso: in un tempo di risposte troppo semplicistiche, avere il coraggio di affrontare la complessità è necessario e quasi eroico.
* Traduzione del vostro affezionatissimo
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
The book was a nice and easy read. There are some good ideas there. But the tone of the book differs a lot from the previous I've read. It's more like a compendium of ideas than a science based report and view, as Sapiens and others. This does not make it bad, but makes me wonder if I liked because it's true or because I agree with it. Besides this, the book sounds like a long conversation with and old and wise uncle. Which is nice.
Well, that didn't age well...
I was stoked to read my first Harari, (I had been meaning to read it since it came out and was hoping it would be engaging, interesting, a new pov) given how many positive reviews I had heard about his previous books, but wow, if this is a representation of his work, I am shocked so many people responded so well (and I'll be staying far away from his other works).
This book is filled with his opinions that are based on broad generalizations, monolithic stereotypes, very conscious bias, and little logical or scientific defense. There aren't any lessons, and while some of his criticisms are welcome, they seem to be cherry-picked to support his personal ideologies.
Reading this in a post 2020, current war between Russia and Ukraine, AND a genocide of Palestinian people by Isreal time, it's hard to take a lot of what he says seriously. The reality of where we are sounds like a series of impossibilities from his view, but I realize no one could have predicted the unhinged world we live in....or couldn't they? War, greed, and power-hungry dictators all seemed to have existed throughout history and have committed unmeasurable atrocities. Why would they stop now? It's not like 2018 was a paradise unknown to us now.
The way he brushes off anything related to the power, importance, and optimism for women really made me mad. His whole rant about ai and women, governments and r*pe, and women from different societies clearly showcased his anti-feminist bias that he mascaraded in being acceptable because he is a gay man.
There is complexity, making it hard to write off everything, but most of it has, thankfully, in my opinion, become outdated and frankly, out of touch.
I was stoked to read my first Harari, (I had been meaning to read it since it came out and was hoping it would be engaging, interesting, a new pov) given how many positive reviews I had heard about his previous books, but wow, if this is a representation of his work, I am shocked so many people responded so well (and I'll be staying far away from his other works).
This book is filled with his opinions that are based on broad generalizations, monolithic stereotypes, very conscious bias, and little logical or scientific defense. There aren't any lessons, and while some of his criticisms are welcome, they seem to be cherry-picked to support his personal ideologies.
Reading this in a post 2020, current war between Russia and Ukraine, AND a genocide of Palestinian people by Isreal time, it's hard to take a lot of what he says seriously. The reality of where we are sounds like a series of impossibilities from his view, but I realize no one could have predicted the unhinged world we live in....or couldn't they? War, greed, and power-hungry dictators all seemed to have existed throughout history and have committed unmeasurable atrocities. Why would they stop now? It's not like 2018 was a paradise unknown to us now.
The way he brushes off anything related to the power, importance, and optimism for women really made me mad. His whole rant about ai and women, governments and r*pe, and women from different societies clearly showcased his anti-feminist bias that he mascaraded in being acceptable because he is a gay man.
There is complexity, making it hard to write off everything, but most of it has, thankfully, in my opinion, become outdated and frankly, out of touch.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Alla fine della lettura confermo quanto detto durante la stessa: il libro mantiene, a mio avviso, pregi e difetti dei due precedenti.
Per un libro scritto prima della pandemia, stupisce il focus sui rischi delle IA per il futuro dell'uomo in quanto tale (è solo delle ultime settimane l'esplosione delle IA e le voci di preoccupazione di scienziati e politici) e sulla pericolosità della Russia per la pace in Europa (quanto rapidamente il mondo aveva scordato la cosa, dopo la Crimea?). Attuale in maniera impressionante.
Però come sempre mi perde quando tracima troppo sulla sociologia, sull'etica e la morale e come dovrebbe comportarsi l'uomo e cosa dovrebbe fare per conoscere se stesso. Ecco, lì mi diventa davvero soporifero.
Gusti personali eh, ma su me ha l'effetto di una mattinata quando attacca con queste parti...
Per un libro scritto prima della pandemia, stupisce il focus sui rischi delle IA per il futuro dell'uomo in quanto tale (è solo delle ultime settimane l'esplosione delle IA e le voci di preoccupazione di scienziati e politici) e sulla pericolosità della Russia per la pace in Europa (quanto rapidamente il mondo aveva scordato la cosa, dopo la Crimea?). Attuale in maniera impressionante.
Però come sempre mi perde quando tracima troppo sulla sociologia, sull'etica e la morale e come dovrebbe comportarsi l'uomo e cosa dovrebbe fare per conoscere se stesso. Ecco, lì mi diventa davvero soporifero.
Gusti personali eh, ma su me ha l'effetto di una mattinata quando attacca con queste parti...
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
An excellent read, but a little repetitive if you've recently read his previous two. I read all three this year, so a lot of ground was re-covered here.