books

Somewhat shamefully, the first thing I did after reading was look at reviews of Sapiens online. Here are some:

“The thing to keep in mind Sapiens is a very reductionist, surface level glance at what is a staggeringly complex topic that absolutely requires all the nuance and context that comes with it. Harari almost entirely ignores that.”

or this or this or this or this….

Here’s my centrist take on a four hundred page encapsulation on the entire history of humans: Sapiens is not meant to be judged as a history book.

Most history books are well-documented, nuanced, but can only capture a single element of human history. Harari takes the inverse approach so we can hear an atomic bomb being dropped on July 1945 on a timescale that spans hundreds of thousands of years.

Sapiens is an opportunity for Harari to be a curator of interesting ideas (often fueled by first principles). Here are a few ideas:

• Real peace is the implausibility of war. There is no war right now because there is less and less to gain by fighting. e.g. China can’t take over Google by taking over Silicon Valley. There are still some places with war for gain like Iraqi invasion of Kuwait for permanent oil fields.
  • This made me ask questions about the implausibility of war in today’s conditions. Would a new world order or a country defaulting on debt result in war?
• Intimate communities being replaced by imagined communities. e.g. Madonna fans instead of neighborhood BBQ.
  • Is this why marriage rates are dropping, less dependence on nuclear and immediate intimate communities? What is the end state? Should I try to create online communities?
• Natural-law religions (human norms and values founded on belief in a super human order e.g. liberalism, nationalism, or capitalism, etc.) replacing traditional religions (e.g. Christianity).
  • What are prevalent contemporary natural-law religions (that we might not be thinking of)? How do these religions fall out of popularity? Will the capitalist story lose credibility at late stages?
• The first chapter of Sapiens sets the stage for an insignificant animal. The final chapter compares Sapiens to god: Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?
  • This book to be something akin to Jeff Bezos’s 10,000 year clock (tiktok, site), a symbol for long term thinking. What is our current path of acceleration? What is our current trajectory of manufactured want?

There are many more ideas in this book, using history as a backdrop.

I kind of know nothing about human history. So honestly, all the critical commentary about this book being overly reductionist or having cherry-picked evidence kind of flies over my head. I was left asking questions that I might not otherwise be asking, and I consider that a win.

Some more meat and potatoes here.