The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari

The larger problem this article points to is the lack of scientific review of popular science books, or perhaps rather the fact that the market does not seem to demand that as much as one would like.<p>Good warning though, I&#x27;ll have to research a bit more carefully next time I&#x27;m in the bookshop.

&gt; A hundred years from now it is quite likely that humans will disappear, and the earth will be populated by very different beings like cyborgs and A.I., Harari said to Paikin.<p>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).

In a world of endless moronic grifters, Yuval is one of the least of my concerns. You’d do better than 99% by adopting the ideals of a Professor of History who is a reasonable centrist and understands the value of spreading the topic of Sapiens and Homo Deus into a wider understanding, as opposed to yet another textbook.

My first reading of Sapiens was like reading a story. I got pulled into the story telling. On a more detailed reading, I felt Harari is a western apologist. He credits the western civilization and the colonization for all the &quot;good things&quot; as if they never existed in places colonized by the european powers.<p>Here are a few choice quotes - &quot;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.&quot;<p>Really??? Conquest for knowledge and everyone else just did it for money?<p>&quot;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&#x27;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.&quot;<p>self-determination, socialism and human rights, all of which are Western legacies - Really?? The rest of world was just hunter-gatherers before western civilizations?<p>There are many, many more - but this idea that western civilization is manifest destiny bothers me a lot.

This article is pretty frustrating to read. There is so many things wrong with it.<p>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&#x27;t exist.<p>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 &quot;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).&quot;<p>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&#x27;t that stupid.<p>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&#x27;re supposed to do. if you predict no pandemic before corona hits, you apparently need to adjust your models. it&#x27;s the scientific method, not a character flaw.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;s greatness, but guess what? that new capitalist model IS humanity, it&#x27;s us, we&#x27;re doing that. Humanity is doing the good things but also the bad things. We cannot claim ownership of one without owning the other.<p>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?

The article is quite bold in its claim. Had to Stop reading, when after a few paragraphs the article still had not disputed any facts of Yuval’s book, but was bluntly calling them a fraud. Kinda strange way of trying to discredit someone.