Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up …
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
Какое-то дикое поппури. Ладно набор тем, даже векторы атаки скачут между пинкеровщиной и андерсеновщиной, с щепоткой Бострома (цитируется напрямую), и чёрт разберёт, кого ещё. Достаточно спорных/ничем не подтвержденных заявлений; атаки на либеральный гуманизм (или что-то, что Харари под этим определением понимает) как стержень книги... обложка зазывала, прямо скажем, исследовать совсем не это, но:
Кто знает, соответствуй книга обложке, может, было б и ещё хуже. Я читал достаточно авторов, те же наборы исходных позиций куда более убедительно применявших не для атаки, а для защиты.
Harari is an historian, which is the lens he uses here to think about the future. What he attempts to do is to use the trajectory of human development in the past as a guide to how the future will go. For example, how people have related to animals in the past is taken as a forecast of how future "super-humans" will relate to us. On this point he is fairly comfortable that we have nothing to worry about. But this is a book that is great at stimulating thought and throwing out questions, but not in providing answers. Whether that is a good or a bad thing you would have to decide, but in the course of reading I often stopped to just think about what he said, and about related ideas that came to mind because of what he said.
In the last chapter he goes in a …
Harari is an historian, which is the lens he uses here to think about the future. What he attempts to do is to use the trajectory of human development in the past as a guide to how the future will go. For example, how people have related to animals in the past is taken as a forecast of how future "super-humans" will relate to us. On this point he is fairly comfortable that we have nothing to worry about. But this is a book that is great at stimulating thought and throwing out questions, but not in providing answers. Whether that is a good or a bad thing you would have to decide, but in the course of reading I often stopped to just think about what he said, and about related ideas that came to mind because of what he said.
In the last chapter he goes in a direction somewhat similar to Kevin Kelly in What Technology Wants when Harari discusses what he calls "The Data Religion", and this quote can give you an idea of what he is thinking here:
"1. Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing. 2. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. 3. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves."
This is definitely thought-provoking stuff, but I found this last chapter the least convincing part of the book.
Powerful, insightful look at the past and speculation into our future. Harari makes some bold claims but does support them. He may be writing for Elon Musk, but it's useful for all of us to see the long view of the future. His historical interpretation is sound and that gives credibility on the future. The idea that humans could be farmed like pigs is concerning, but I think that's the point. While we may think we'd never make such a trade off, Harari points out that past decisions were made for us collectively. With the agricultural revolution we gave up meaning for power, I think most people would not have made the trade off. The future trade off maybe submission to AI or the IoT in exchange for happiness and longevity.
