Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Review
I got interested in the book after listening to a podcast with Yuval, in which he explained some of the biggest points from the book. I was fascinated by the role of fiction in the history of our civilization and read about a whole lot of other things about our history I did not know about yet. I did put the book down for a while during some dryer history parts but other than that it was a good read.
notes
- We discuss how homo sapiens came to dominate the world, how our society is built on fiction, the creation of a class of useless people, and the future for our species
- species depends on inability to distinguish true / untrue stories
- separate views of God:
- mystery / unexplainable through science
- angry man in the skies: fictional details
- slight of hand between these cards.
- ai will make decisions better than humans: global education and health not interesting anymore
- Intersubjective: subjectiviteit die bestaat in de gedachte van velen, kan niet worden veranderd door 1 persoon
- volgorde en regels zijn niet geprogrammeerd zoals bijen: geen lawyerbees nodig in een Bijenkorf
- imagined hierarchies: commoners and slaves, maar ook hedendaags rijk en arm
- Evolutionarily seen we are not more happy than peasants 1000 years ago (same levels of seratonin)
- Humans on the verge of creating life: what do we want to want?
- orders of chaos
- first order chaos: weather: does not react on predictions
- Second order chaos: markets & politics: reacts on predictions
- Memes memetics replication of cultural information
- Game theory: behavior that harms all players manage to take root and spread
quotes
“Most likely, both the gossip theory and the there-is-a-lion-near-the-river theory are valid. Yet the truly unique feature of our language is not its ability to transmit information about men and lions. Rather, it’s the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all.”
Luxury trap: getting used to luxury and doubling efforts / increase number of children to keep up, instead of retiring early
Buddhism: escape suffering