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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

The author is disappointing, particularly given his recent extreme popularity. His entire book Sapiens basically harps on the theme that human institutions are all "shared fictions", completely ignoring any kind of structural/economic reasons for existing. It's as if he thinks that how supply/demand affect prices is a "fiction" we invented and are free to un-invent if we so chose, rather than a reliable explanation of human behavior.

I just can't seem to find any real analytical or explanatory value in anything he's written thus far.

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I'm reading the sequel now (Homo Deus) and I agree that so far I'm disappointed in his output. It starts by arguing that humanity has essentially conquered famine, disease and war. The first two are arguable but they are technical issues that can be overcome with technology. War isn't. It goes downhill from there.

Still he has a way with words and it's an enjoyable read so far even if large parts are academic humanities nonsense.

Precisely.

It puzzles me how an educated person from the late 20th - early 21st century, who spends all his time learning and writing, can utterly fail to understand the structural and economic mechanisms of the modern world.

I am keen to treat this the same as ommiting technical details of trebuchets in a book about some Lord siegeing another Lord's castle - it's not the point, and if one really gets inspired to know, he must search on his own.

I don't think you're using "fiction" in the same way that Harari is. He absolutely does _not_ mean that human "are free to un-invent if we so chose." Many of our myths / fictions / metaphors are deeply embedded, to the extent that we simply aren't free to un-invent them because they're so fundamentally human. At the same time, though, because they are fictions they can be changed over time.

It took several thousand years for a significant number of humans to free themselves from religion.

The analytical value he has is that fictions change, and his point in the second book is that the pace of that change is accelerating rapidly. Fifty years from now may not look anything like the present, in very serious ways.

Regarding the validity of supply and demand determining prices, check out this essay from an Economics professor: https://professorwerner.org/shifting-from-central-planning-t...

He argues that equilibrium conditions necessary for validity of the supply-demand curve almost never actually occur. So what Harari writes is by no means nonsensical, certainly it has respectable academic support.

Werner says that supply and demand aren't in equilibrium, and supply has the upper hand in negotiating the price because the transaction cannot happen unless one of the suppliers is involved.

I don't see this in any way supporting Harari suggestion that any kind of fiction is involved in price discovery.

Werner writes:

"Thus the theoretical dream world of “market equilibrium” allows economists to avoid talking about the reality of pervasive rationing, and with it, power being exerted by the short side in every market. Thus the entire power dimension in our economic reality – how the short side, such as the producer hiring starlets for Hollywood films, can exploit his power of being able to pick and choose with whom to do business, by extracting ‘non-market benefits’ of all kinds. The pretense of ‘equilibrium’ not only keeps this real power dimension hidden. It also helps to deflect the public discourse onto the politically more convenient alleged role of ‘prices’, such as the price of money, the interest rate."

Whether Werner supports his own argument adequately is an interesting question. What's not in doubt, to me at least, is that he is in agreement with Harari regarding price discovery being a fiction.

Each to their own but I find his shared fictions ideas interesting for explanation and analysis. I mean take Trump's going on about the Russia investigation being a fake democrat witch hunt when it was in fact instigated and run by republicans on the advice of all the US intelligence agencies. It puzzled me why many people believe that stuff which appears objectively false. But it fits well with Harari's:

>But if the chief says “the sun rises in the west and sets in the east”, only true loyalists will clap their hands.

I'm not that political but as a personal prejudice am kind of truth and scientific evidence focused and that behaviour was puzzling to me. It seems a good chunk of the population does not judge truth on the evidence but on loyalty to the leader of their faction who is saying the stuff. Maybe that's old hat but I kind of came across that analysis through Harari. Also the evolutionary psychology angle - maybe the people who believed the great leader was infallible did better in ancient history than us skeptics.

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