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.
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.
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.
We have far more power to do effective and good things than Yuval gives us credit for.