ovirtanen 's review for:

Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

2.0

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Homo Deus does not deliver what it promises. Most of the book is focused on the same concepts that Harari's earlier book, Sapiens, focused on: the history of humankind. Not the future of humankind, as the title would suggest. Paradoxically, Harari is on solid ground only when he writes about history, which is his field of expertise. Because of its ambitious scope and less-than-perfect implementation of said ambitions, Homo Deus contains huge oversimplifications concerning a number of topics, ideas and even whole fields, such as modern experimental psychology, free-market capitalism, and humanism, just to name a few. One such example would be Harari denouncing the existence of free will on the basis of Libet et al.'s experiments, in which researchers were able to predict subjects' decisions to press a button even before the subjects had consciously made a decision to do so. However, to say the free will does not exist is a conclusion that is not only rash but a logical fallacy, too, and this kind of reductive reasoning characterizes Harari's arguments throughout the entire book.

Harari is an adequate writer and the book remains enjoyable even though the contents are quite disappointing. I really loved Sapiens, which is why I wanted to give this one a try. It's too bad that Homo Deus reads more like a freshman philosopher's dragged-out essay than a complete book full of original ideas. Homo Deus has the ingredients to be truly groundbreaking, but, unfortunately, Harari never utilizes the immense amount of knowledge he obviously has at his disposal.