The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
currentaffairs.org
currentaffairs.org
Good warning though, I'll have to research a bit more carefully next time I'm in the bookshop.
Actual science is often a total opposite from that: it is not an easy reading, and it sometimes makes you feel stupid and stuck, at least until you climb that particular knowledge hill. You will rarely find something like this in airport kiosks.
Edit: oh and in big history, Earth Transformed by Frankopan does a great job of being grounded, balanced and accessible.
Orrrr maybe people just find them interesting? I thought Sapiens is a terrific book. I don't really care if every detail in there is down with the latest scientific research, I don't think that's what the book is trying to do anyway. Sure 100% accuracy would have been nice but I prefer the author to focus on his main message and effort to tell the history (and present/future) of humans even if it means sacrificing 100% accuracy.
The criticisms basically boils down to one case of mentioning the wrong animal. the point about 'language' purely comes from the author choosing to use a specific definition of language that's different from Harari's definition.
As in he confused two different tapirs, or as in he demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of basic biology?
I would bet that not only will humanity still be around 100 years from now, the changes won’t be as profoundly altering as the difference between 1900 and 2000 (aircraft, electricity, antibiotics, computers, birth control, moon landing, satellites, etc).
Smartphones, video conferencing, remote work, social media, are pervasive and consume the majority of most peoples waking lives.
I vehemently disagree. The invention of air conditioning/refrigeration alone is more impactful than anything released between 2000-2020. Add in aviation, automobiles, telephones, and television and it’s not even close.
It is kind of like “Economist predicted 10 of the last 2 recessions.
Example: He has a positive view on the gender gains of the last 100 years and a broad definition of gender in the future[1], but still believes in gender essentialist stuff [2]. If forced, I'd rather people adopt his views over those of others, so you are right there. But the bones of his arguments are the same ones we've heard for ages repackaged with an affect of intelligence that is agreeable to modern sensibilities.
As an aside, regardless of whether you believe in gender essentialism or not, having someone talking out of both sides of an argument doesn't instill a ton of confidence that the individual has considered the interplay of their arguments.
Curious how you would have answered.
It's a simplistic point of view that does not consider the sociological aspects of gender contributing to gendered outcomes.
The phrasing was: "spatially across the world, and temporally throughout history."
He then talks about innate differences in animals which leads to matriarchal societies (he claims in elephants and bonobos.) Then speculates that there may be a similar distinction in humans. How do you find this simplistic? How is this "gender essentialism"?
He looks at an outcome, and then draws a conclusion about the mechanism behind the outcome which supports his position.
He does this without proposing an experiment to verify his hypothesis about the mechanisms. Just finding a correlation with gender says nothing about any "innate mechanism".
I don't think I'm vilifying anyone by saying this. But if that's where we're heading, yes, I think he's a grifter, same as Michio Kaku. He goes far beyond his area of expertise to make big statements that give him publicity.
Everyone can decide for themselves. Speaking for myself, sociologists are notorious for downplaying the importance of genes to individual/group outcomes (something that, IMO, should be consensus) and I imagine they will try to push a blank slate agenda whenever they can. So I adjust my trust in them accordingly.
You make it look like there's a consensus between them.
It's unfortunate that Harari gets this bad press. I've read his books and listen to a bunch of his podcasts and he looks very open-minded and scientific based. I see myself disagreeing with him a lot of times, but I don't get mad at him because he tries to speak the language of science, which is good enough for me.
Even if we accept your comment that sociologists don't know what their talking about, Harari is not the right alternative to turn to. Harari is not a biologist, he is a historian. If you ask evolutionary biologists, they tend to agree with the sociologists.
We have far more power to do effective and good things than Yuval gives us credit for.
Here are a few choice quotes - "European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects in history. Previous seekers of empire tended to assume that they already understood the world. Conquest merely utilised and spread their view of the world. The Arabs, to name one example, did not conquer Egypt, Spain or India in order to discover something they did not know. The Romans, Mongols and Aztecs voraciously conquered new lands in search of power and wealth - not of knowledge. In contrast, European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories."
Really??? Conquest for knowledge and everyone else just did it for money?
"During the twentieth century, local groups that had adopted Western values claimed equality with their European conquerors in the name of these very values. Many anti-colonial struggles were waged under the banners of self-determination, socialism and human rights, all of which are Western legacies. Just as Egyptians, Iranians and Turks adopted and adapted the imperial culture that they inherited from the original Arab conquerors, so today's Indians, Africans and Chinese have accepted much of the imperial culture of their former Western overlords, while seeking to mould it in accordance with their needs and traditions."
self-determination, socialism and human rights, all of which are Western legacies - Really?? The rest of world was just hunter-gatherers before western civilizations?
There are many, many more - but this idea that western civilization is manifest destiny bothers me a lot.
The romans conquered greece and nearly adopted ancient greek knowledge and culture wholesale. The mongols were reknown for invading china, persia, etc and taking their best scholars with them. The mongol empire is responsible for much of the cross-eurasian transfer of knowledge. Along with the preservation of much knowledge and culture as they were multireligious and multiculturalists. It's why people in china still speak chinese and arabs still worship as they do. The mongols didn't wipe out entire cultures like 'european imperialists'.
> In contrast, European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories."
So wiping out entire continents of people ( their histories, language, culture, knowledge ) was in hopes of obtaining new knowledge. We can't even ascertain the etymology of many of the names of towns, cities, lakes, etc because we killed off entire native language families.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
It's not surprising, and in fact quite obvious, that any historical event has "good" impacts as well as "bad" ones. But to speak of the Mongols as "preservers of knowledge and culture" is silly. I suppose they could have done more to wipe such things out, and didn't, but it hardly seems like something they deserve credit for. Certainly you could make the argument the colonization of the Americas really did not in any way resemble Mongol extermination campaigns.
They didn't. I checked. The fact that you write 'undoubtedly wiped out' without being able to name a single ethnic group, language, religion, culture that got wiped out says something. No?
> They killed millions of people.
They did kill people and were destructive as all empires are. But they weren't genocidal. And most of the 'brutality' is exaggerated for the benefit of oddly enough the conquering mongols and subjugated peoples.
> But to speak of the Mongols as "preservers of knowledge and culture" is silly.
They preserved it because they merged into local populations. Hence mughal persia, mughal india and the various khanates throughout central asia and china. As I said, they were multicultural and multiracial empire. They didn't force their language, customs, religions, etc on the conquered people. They did the oppposite. They adopted the local language, religions, customs. All the way from eastern europe to china to persia and the middle east. Now juxtapose that with what happened to european imperialism?
> but it hardly seems like something they deserve credit for.
It isn't a coincidence that marco polo went to china during the rule of the mongols. The mongols deserve credit for much of the modern world. Starting with the italian renaissance ( it isn't a coincidence that the italian renaissance, medicis, etc ) occurred during the mongol empire, to the rise of russian empire, the rise of china, the rise of the ottomans, etc.
It's remarkable how the mongols were so bloodthirsty and genocidal but the peoples they conquered are the most numerous in the world?
Now compare the mongols to the european imperialists who wiped out an entire hemisphere and more.
Here is a list of regions the mongols and their descendents conquered - china, india, persia, middle east, eastern europe, russia, central asia, etc. Tell me which of these people were wiped out. I'll wait.
You are absolutely right in this. Genghis Khan was not only a conqueror, but also an efficient administrator. The various khanates across central asia were a result of mongol invasion. In most of the ancient world, conquest also meant integration with local population. It is not an superior race ruling over inferiors.
On the other hand, what knowledge did european conqueror save? We have all the lost civilization, primarily because europeans did not care to save anything that is not christian.
Mine would be that the Mongols were brutal and efficient administrators. Killing 50 million people and being a good administrator are orthogonal concepts.
Reading through the Wikipedia article, you can also find references to the Mongols engaging in deliberate cultural destruction, including the massive wastage of books, and targeted religious persecution. I am not sure where the Mongol revisionism comes from but it is surprising to me.
If you tell me that the Romans or Persians were good administrators, that makes sense. We know they implemented laws, tax systems, roads, construction projects, etc. Do we have evidence that the Mongols did the same and did it as effectively?
First there is the false assumption that a sciencey book like like Sapiens should be written scientifically like a research paper. This is wrong. A pop sci book aims to have a satisfying narrative that is able to interest the reader through dense information. In a research paper it is important to point out each and every way our current understanding might be lacking or wrong but for popsci books this requirement ofc doesn't exist.
Secondly, the author claimd that Harari’s speculations are consistently based on a poor understanding of science. But he says this after making his own bad speculation based on bad understanding of science by saying "This is why we have not been able to create technological systems that can infer what you or I feel at a given moment (and why we may never be able to build these all-reading all-knowing systems)."
Thirdly, the author assumes that whenever somebody asks Harari for his speculation on the future, that they see him as some sort of oracle, and take it as fact? People aren't that stupid.
Fourthly, he points to Harari writing in 2017 that he thinks a pandemic is unlikely and that he still continues to do interviews, even though he was wrong. Again, predicting the future is impossible, and every prediction will be wrong in some way. Also incorporating new data and adjusting your future speculation, is exactly what you're supposed to do. if you predict no pandemic before corona hits, you apparently need to adjust your models. it's the scientific method, not a character flaw.
fifthly, the author seems to add his own flavor of human exceptionalism in the end. Implying that human genetics and biology is such an intricate process that it forever will be impossible to truly understand and target certain qualities with gene editing. This idea is like going into the ocean, diving 10 meters, realise that you still cannot see the bottom and conclude that the ocean is therefore bottomless.
Again he inserts his ideas of human exceptionalism by saying that the fate of humanity is free for us to decide and he claims that we should see the new capitalist model as some sort of malicious external thing that blemishes humanity's greatness, but guess what? that new capitalist model IS humanity, it's us, we're doing that. Humanity is doing the good things but also the bad things. We cannot claim ownership of one without owning the other.
Also this author berates Harari for fear mongering when he posits a thought experiment about biometric trackers being a privacy nightmare, but in the end accuses him of helping surveillance capitalist do exactly that?