Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Your favorite books and links
User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1610
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by fiby41 »

George-The PNW natives, like the natives up the coast in SE Alaska, weren't really hunter-gatherers in the traditional sense. Because of the plentiful salmon runs and varied ocean life it made much more sense to settle by the rivers and ocean for extended periods of time, instead of being constantly on the move.
Parallels can be drawn to the Nishada (niṣāda)

Niṣādas are tribes that have the hills and the forests for their abode and their chief occupation is fishing as written in the Manu Smriti.
Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:42 pm
It's almost like humans behave like humans, even without a eurocentric judeochristian patrarchy to inspire them to be all warlike. :roll:
The celebrated Niṣāda king Nala, who loved and married Damayanti the princess of Vidarbha (in central India, has same name till date)

In Ramayana, the king of the Niṣādas, named Guha, was a very close friend of Rama. He helps Rama and Sita to cross the Gaṅgā river.

So, no.

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by jennypenny »

I wasn't sure whether to give 21 Lessons it's own thread or not. I decided this thread works as the Harari thread as we've done with the Peterson thread. It's apt since I found 21 Lessons to be the progressive answer to Peterson's 12 Rules. In some ways, the books are similar. Both authors are ensconced in the humanities. They give credence to the power of narratives, bristle against the current focus on technology, and have an idealistic idea of who humans can be when they apply themselves. They also both have a fascination with pop culture and know more about Disney movies than an adult male should IMO. :lol:

That said, they diverge on the usefulness of narratives. Peterson's book is almost an ode to the inherent truths in popular narratives and a warning that abandoning those narratives will cause us to lose our way, personally and as a society. Harari's Lessons are more a warning about the power of narratives and how they are used to control us, again both personally and as a society. Both authors show their perspectives in the best possible light and only give lip service to others ... Harari talks about secularism in the most positive terms while outlining all the dangers of other isms while Peterson makes traditional narratives sound like the only path to contentment. Of course, there are horrible secularists just as there are horrible traditionalists, both of whom can use their belief system to justify anything with only minimal effort.

I think there is as much 'truth' in Harari's book as there is in Peterson's. Peterson eschews progressive ideals as trampling over innate truths about humans, and in some cases that might be correct. Harari warns against clinging to narratives just because we've invested so much time and energy into them; he believes humans are best served by constantly reinventing themselves. Both, of course, are right. And wrong. There is no need to cling completely to established western truths to maintain a civil society as Peterson suggests. OTOH, Harari's idea of a constantly evolving set of human truths sounds, well, inhuman, so is probably an impossible task for most people.

I enjoy Harari's writing and the success of Sapiens means he's given license to expound on ideas where other authors might get told to edit down. That said, he indulges in his pet peeves in every book and it's getting a little tiresome. One of those is his opposition to religion.* While I totally respect that viewpoint and can understand why a gay man growing up in judeo-christian society might have strong feelings about the subject, his understanding of religion, particularly of faith, is off the mark. When he mentions (several times) why people are religious, particularly why people have faith, he views it from his own perspective. He only talks about how he would have faith -- what would need to be true for him to have a faith in something -- which is very different from how many people come to faith or remain faithful. His version of faith is very different from mine and many other people based on my experience in the church. He misjudges its benefits and failures to some extent because of this.

Is it worth reading? I'd say yes, if nothing else as a counterpoint to Peterson. 21 Lessons is a much more exhaustive book and Harari is a better writer and thinker. He is also very good at identifying what the key issues are going forward even if IMO his remedies are naively optimistic at times. Serious discussion of how humans should act and how the world should function is useful, even if it is mostly academic in the end.



*Full disclosure ... a pet peeve of mine is when people criticize religion (particularly the Catholic Church) by invoking the wrongs done centuries ago. I have my own version of Godwin's law, where as soon as someone mentions Galileo in an argument against the Church I dismiss their argument. Harari commits this sin in 21 Lessons.
Last edited by jennypenny on Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Riggerjack
Posts: 3180
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Riggerjack »

The celebrated Niṣāda king Nala, who loved and married Damayanti the princess of Vidarbha (in central India, has same name till date)

In Ramayana, the king of the Niṣādas, named Guha, was a very close friend of Rama. He helps Rama and Sita to cross the Gaṅgā river.

So, no.
I am completely unfamiliar with this story. So I use the power of Google and Wikipedia to get to:
Nishada (niṣāda) is the name of a kingdom mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata.[1] The kingdom belonged to a tribe of the same name. The 'Nishada' are also used to designate aboriginal communities practicing fishing or hunting as their chief occupation and they are thought to designate Austric origin.
And
The main profession of Nishaadas was fishing and hunting. When a Nishaada had killed one bird from a pair, the other bird was remorseful of its loss and was in pangs of pain, observing this deep pain inspired the sage Valmiki to write the life history of king Rama of Ayodhya and his dutiful wife queen Sita, who lived in separation due to her capture by deceit by the egoistic demon-like king Ravana. This poetic mythology is revered in India as a guide to highest ideals of human-life, is known as the Ramayana, or the record of king Rama's life.[4] In Ramayana, the king of Nishaadas, named Guha, was a very close friend of Rama. He helps Rama and Sita to cross Ganges river.
And I think if we are throwing out PNW natives as not Hunter gatherer enough, I don't know how natives of a story about an old kingdom make the cut. But it does fit nicely with the narrative I was so critical of, and shows about the same level of narrative to anthropology ratio.

It seems that my expectations are the ones out of line.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I agree with jennypenny. Both books are around 80% on track, 20% off on personal tangent cuckoo-bananas.

hojo-e
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2018 5:46 pm

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by hojo-e »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Nov 21, 2018 5:59 am
Both books are around 80% on track, 20% off on personal tangent cuckoo-bananas.
Two levels or more above seems crazy.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@hojo-e:

:lol: Could be that, but I've been on a bit of an obsessive "where are things heading?" reading binge, and if/when it comes down to narrative vs. biology and/or ingenuity vs. energy/resources, I am lately tending towards the biology/energy-resources quadrant (or octant?)

Jin+Guice
Posts: 1276
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2018 8:15 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Jin+Guice »

I just finished 21 Lessons. It's extremely good and I highly recommend it. It blew my mind several times, though as often happens I never quite remember why.

I read Sapiens a few years ago, and that book is better. He's a great thinker but a better historian, and 21 Lessons isn't a history book. What I like about 21 Lessons is that he really harps on his previous notion that what defines humans is their ability to collectively create and believe stories. He draws all kinds of conclusions from this, but I think it's a really important lesson, especially for the logical/ nerd types (of which I am one). If we accept that this is true, or even partially true, than all humans (including ourselves) will never really know truth and we are a slave to our narratives/ stories, in a certain sense. This is important to keep in mind as we seek to know and interact with others and know ourselves. It'd never really occurred to me that a nation isn't actually real, except in our minds.

The book does have some flaws. Harari clearly believes the story of liberal secular humanism and therefore favors it. I don't tend to hold religion in high regard, but I agree with JP that for a book of this nature he does a rather poor job of treating religion with an unbiased lens. If anything 21 Lessons helped me to better understand and gain more respect for religion, but I feel like Harari could have done with internalizing some of his own points as it's pretty clear that he biases his own church of liberal secular humanism over traditional religion (unless he's just that meta).

As 7w5 mentioned in previous posts he pays lip service to some ecological problems (mostly global warming) but clearly doesn't believe it will impact the future. He is more of a techno-pessimist than an eco-pessisimist.

Did anyone read Homo Deus? I checked it out at the same time but after rereading this thread I remembered how weak the future predictions part in Sapiens was. Consequently has anyone reread Sapiens? I'm thinking of reading it again, based on the strength of 21 Lessons, though I don't usually reread books.

daylen
Posts: 2528
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:17 am
Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by daylen »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Sun Dec 23, 2018 11:53 pm
Did anyone read Homo Deus? I checked it out at the same time but after rereading this thread I remembered how weak the future predictions part in Sapiens was.
Not worth your time. Way too techno-optimistic.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8187&p=139136&hili ... us#p139136

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by jennypenny »

Corrected link from daylen's post viewtopic.php?f=13&t=10349
(fixed original thread)


+1 to Homo Deus being my least favorite book of his. If you read 21 Lessons there's no need to read Homo Deus.

User avatar
Ego
Posts: 6357
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:42 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Ego »

Harari at Davos 2020
https://youtu.be/eOsKFOrW5h8?t=600

What he calls the defining equation of life in the 21st century.

B x C x D = AHH

AHH is the ability to hack humans.

User avatar
Mister Imperceptible
Posts: 1669
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:18 pm

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Judging by the comments on that video it appears the humans may put up the devil of a fight against being hacked.

User avatar
Ego
Posts: 6357
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:42 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Ego »

@MI, I would hope you are right but I wonder if maybe commenting on videos is the extent of the fight they will put up. Not that I am any better. Tenant screening is only one of the places where AI has recently been introduced. Loan applications. Job applications. Insurance pricing.

His riff on North Korea requiring people to wear sensors that detect how they react to the great leader's speech reminded me of how wearables (fitbit, Apple watch...) detected Covid symptoms before their wearers noticed the symptoms themselves and counted exactly how may days they had elevated heartrates post-infection.

I believe the moment people are barred from boarding a plane, entering a bar or renting an apartment, they will agree. And those who don't will literally be marginalized.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What struck me was that Harari described this entirely new process being applied to utterly conventional decision constructs. Why would the process for decision making change so radically without also changing the field? For example, why would AI gain the capability of answering the question “What will I have for breakfast?” for each of us, while not gaining the ability to deconstruct or obliterate the concept of breakfast?

User avatar
Ego
Posts: 6357
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:42 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by Ego »

In the near term they may not answer the question. They may influence the available choices and certainly influence the answer.
'
Car insurance is a good example of how this will play out. Right now many companies offer a discount if you install their telematic app on your phone that tracks driving habits. It used to be mileage alone determined price. Now they can measure if you are parking in a bad neighborhood at 3am or speeding.

Blueberry muffin or kale smoothie for breakfast?

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Yes, the book “Nudge” suggested strategies for that which did not even involve AI. For instance, if you want to nudge humans towards kale smoothies rather than blueberry muffins, make the kale smoothies easy to grab and the muffins more difficult to find at your hospital cafeteria.

For the time being, most humans are smart enough to know whether they should allow themselves to be tracked by their car insurance company or not. So, the car insurance companies are actually probably better able to sort their customers based on whether or not they agreed to be tracked than by the actual results of the tracking.

At this stage in the game, obvious means to thwart system is leading unconventional lifestyle or purposefully inputting contrary data. For instance, I wonder what the AI tracking my cell phone is coming up with based on my movements from residence of mega-millionaire to abandoned house in the hood or my recent purchases of a box of Captain Crunch cereal and a book on identifying wild edibles?

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1610
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by fiby41 »

Hospital cafeterias maybe different but what supermarkets do is find the joint probability of items being present in a checkout (eg. top 3 items almost everyone buys one of). So if these items are milk, bread and butter; then put these in far away aisles so that someone wanting to fix tomorrow's breakfast has to browse through much of what is on offer.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@fiby41:

Yeah, our environment is generally highly designed in ways we don’t even consider considering. For instance, the squares of concrete that pre-define your walking path.

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Sapiens -- A Brief History of Human Kind

Post by jennypenny »

Harari's thoughts on Ukraine


Nothing earth-shattering, but at one point he gives Germany 'permission' so to speak to re-arm and speak/act forcefully. He's not the first prominent Israeli I've heard make that same statement, basically acknowledging that Germany has moved past Nazism and they will not be accused of it if they reassert their strength in the region. Interesting byproduct of the conflict, although I don't know whether that increases or decreases the chance of war in Europe.

Post Reply