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Comment by boston_clone | Hacker News Reader

For those that find this kind of history interesting, I strongly recommend the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari.

Its distillation of the complexities of human evolution while being careful to admit things we don’t know and not over-assume make for a truly great read (so far*, Im not yet done with it!)

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I read Guns, Germs, and Steel right before reading Sapiens. While I've heard that some of the ideas of GGS were not well received, I really enjoyed it. Sapiens felt more like a tech bro hand waving and jumping to conclusions that he thought was obvious and I thought was suspect.

Edit: Two takeaways I did enjoy (can't recall from which book):

Humans were pray animals that quickly became dominant predators, not allowing us to develop the confidence of "real" predators, so we are still scared of the dark and everything else.

Humans were able to stay in practically the same state for 40k years in Australia. After killing some megafauna of course. In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.

Ironically, the reason some of the ideas of Guns, Germs, and Steel were poorly received is that it, too, is perceived by experts in the relevant fields as rather egregiously engaging in handwaving and jumping to conclusions.

> In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.

It’s extremely unlikely that whatever we do to the environment will decrease QoL in developed countries below that which was experienced by the Australian aboriginals (when measured by child mortality, life expectancy, access to stuff etc.) though.

That strikes me as incredibly confident that humanity (and developed countries), will avoid even some of the pessimistic consequences of climate change, let alone some of the potentially dire scenarios. Please share why you are so confident. I could use a mood boost on this friday... :)

Aborigines didn't just hunt megafauna to extinction they managed their environment to make it what it is to day. This is true of Native Americans too.

Any thing we do in sufficient numbers has an effect on the environment regardless of our tech level.

It's not at all proven that the megafauna extinction is a result of overhunting.

> “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari

I was looking forward to this book but found it to be almost unreadable. I don't remember my specific issues, just that I was discouraged after several attempts and gave it up which rarely happens with me.

I believe I had just read a few other novels about human evolution/ancient civs and found some of Yuval's assertions to conflict (IMHO) with what I read elsewhere, most likely The Dawn of Everything (not certain).

what other books have you read? I'd be interested in that list.

I looked back, my issue was with another Yuval book: Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

Maybe I'll try Sapians it give Yuval another try.

My recent list:

The Half Known Life

Born a Crime

American Prometheus

Operation Mincemeat

Leonardo Da Vinci

Powers and Thrones

The Icepick Surgeon

Destiny of the Republic

The River of Doubt

Red Famine

Under the Banner of Heaven

In Order to Live

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream

Homo Deus

The Confidence Men

The Bomber Mafia

Calypso

Termination Shock

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor

The Dawn of Everything

The Secret Life of Groceries

The Hidden Life of Trees

I think Sapiens may be a product of it's time. It may still true today, but I think this became really popular during the Joe Rogan era prior to covid.

This type of content was taking off then. Lots of shrewd observations that seem to point in a convenient direction. Then you realize that most of these things were never really meaningful, if they were even true to begin with.

Just a collection of interesting annectdotes at best. Bunch of interesting factoids that are patched together, with no real meaning.

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