Sapiens

Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

  • Outstanding! One of the best books Ive read. Lots of focus on the big picture of the human species. Learned a lot. Points out that there are 2 major developments:

    • cognitive revolution
    • agricultural revolution

    He highlights that the agricultural revolution was a big step back for the people living it. Emphasized that collective stories (or inter-subjective truths) are a major advantange that humans have. Also interesting was the discussion about if happiness has increased with history. Claimed that it is likely that only recently human happiness has been significantly changed, but this comes at the cost of severe drop in happiness of other animals. Science is described as having a central role in domination of the west; esp. in the idea of imperialism that was not done in the east.

  • Timeline: 3e9 ya Beginning of Biology / 7e4 Cognitive revolution (Beginning of History) / 1e4 Agricultural revolution / 5e3 1st kingdoms / 5e2 scientific revolution (entire planet single historical event) / 2e2 industrial revolution
  • Present: organisms increasingly shaped by intelligent design rather than natural selection
  • Scientific revolution may well end history and start something different (Reason that now is different)
  • Most important thing about prehistory humans: They were insignificant animals with no more impact on the environment than other animals.
  • Chimps closest ancestor: split 6e6 ya
  • Human Brain: ~3% of body weight / but 25% energy use (Only ~8% energy use in other apes)
  • Women who gave birth earlier when the infants head was smaller fared better / lived to have more children (humans are born prematurely) This contributed greatly both to humans extraordinary social abilities and to its unique social problems. Raising children required constant help from family members and neighbors. Since born underdeveloped, humans can be educated and socialized to a far greater extent than other animals
  • Humans position in the food chain (until quite recently) was solidly in the middle
  • In the last 1e5 years, we have leaped to the top of the food chain. This has had enormous consequences. Changed so fast that the ecosystem could not adjust. We are full of fears and anxieties over our new position.
  • Cooking inadvertently opened the way to big brains in humans. (Hard to have both big brain and long intestines)
  • Cognitive revolution: new ways of thinking and communicating. 3-7e4 ya
  • Can never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
  • Sapiens can cooperate in extraordinarily flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. This is why sapiens rule the world.
  • How did humans eventually found cities with 1e5 people and empires with 1e8 people ? Probably from fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate by believing in common myths.
  • There are no gods, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside of the common imagination of human beings.
  • Corporations among humans most ingenious inventions. Legally independent of people who set them up. Became the main players in the economy. Often forget they exist only in our imaginations.
  • Since the cognitive revolution humans have been living in a dual reality. Objective: rivers/ trees / lions Imagined: gods/nations and corporations
  • Since the cognitive revolution we have been able to revise behavior rapidly in accordance with changing needs (fast forward evolution) eg: Catholic Church survived for centuries not by passing on genes, but stories.
  • Cognitive revolution: History separates from biology. Narrative is now primary means of explaining the development of humans (Not biological theories)
  • Real differences between us and chimps is the mythical glue that binds us.
  • Our brains and minds are adapted to a life of hunting and gathering.
  • Foragers where less likely to suffer starvation and were more healthy than their peasant descendants.
  • The stories that foragers told themselves is one of the biggest holes in understanding human history.
  • Among all the worlds large creatures, the only survivors will be humans and the farmland creatures that are our slaves.
  • Agricultural revolution 1e5 ya
  • >90% of the calories we eat come from a handful of plants and animals our ancestors domesticated between 9k BCE - 3k BCE. (There has been no noteworthy plant or animal domesticated in 2e3 years)
  • Scholars once claimed agricultural revolution as a great leap forward for humanity. Fantasy! No evidence people became more intelligent. AR => harder lives for those who lived through it.
  • Plants domesticated humans, not the other way around.
  • The AR made the future far more important than it had even been before.
  • If we dont believe in God, creation and souls, how/why are people equal?
  • "Biological Declaration of Independence": We hold these truths … self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure"
  • An imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them
  • Slave trade: Paradoxically genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority; precisely because the Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans, they ended up as the slaves of European masters.
  • Biology enables, culture forbids
  • Even among chimps the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence.
  • How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individuals who are supposedly less cooperative (men) control individuals who are supposedly more cooperative (women) ? At present we have no good answer. (What We Don't Know)
  • Ever since the French revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction.
  • Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
  • Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset.
  • The 1st millennium BC witnessed the appearance of three potentially universal order, whose devotees could for the first time imagine the entire world and the entire human race as a single unit governed by a single set of laws: Monetary order / Imperial order / order of universal religions.
  • Money is a psychological construct. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
  • Whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something
  • Money is the apogee of human tolerance. Money more open minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits.
  • Contemporary critique of empires: they do not work / they are evil. First statement is non-sense, the second is deeply problematic. To color all empires black and to disavow all imperial legacies is to reject most of human culture.
  • Empire has been the worlds most common form of political government for the last 2500 years
  • Monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the universe – and He's evil.
  • The central figure in Buddhism is not a god but a human being, Siddhartha Guatama. (Buddhism)
  • No matter what people achieve they are never content. Suffering is caused by behavior patterns in ones own mind. If/when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. Meditation trains the mind to focus all its attention on the question "What am I experiencing now?" rather than on "What would I rather be experiencing?" (Buddhism)
  • The first principle of monotheistic religions is "God exists. What does He want from me?" The first principle of Buddhism is "Suffering exists. How do I escape it?" (Buddhism)
  • If a religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on beliefs in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam. The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of natural-law religions such as liberalism, Communism, nationalism, and Nazism.
  • Humanism is a belief that Homo Sapiens has a unique and sacred nature, which is fundamentally different form the nature of all other animals and of all other phenomena. Humanists believe that the unique nature of human beings is the most important thing in the world, and it determines the meaning of everything that happens in the universe.
  • The liberal belief in the free and sacred nature of each individual is a direct legacy of the traditional christian belief in free and eternal individual souls. Without recourse to eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to explain what is so special about individual Sapiens.
  • Social humanism is built on monotheist foundations. The idea that all humans are equal is a revamped version of the monotheistic conviction that all souls are equal before God.
  • Our liberal political and judicial system are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief. Scientist have found no soul, they argue behavior is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the rug. How long can we maintain the way separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science. (Paradox)
  • One of the distinguishing marks of history - the better you know a particular historical period the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. (Paradox) (History)
  • Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine. (History)
  • Cultures are a kind of mental infection or parasite with humans as its unwitting host.
  • Coping with the scientific revolution: Our current assumption that we do not know everything, and that even the knowledge we possess is tentative, extends to the shared myths that enable millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. If the evidence shows that many of those myths are doubtful, how can we hold society together ? All modern attempts to stabilize the sociopolitical order have had no choice but to rely on either of two unscientific methods: 1) Take a scientific theory, and in opposition to common scientific practices, declare that it is a final and absolute truth (Nazis, Communists) 2) Leave science out of it and live in accordance with a non-scientific absolute truth (liberal humanism).
  • Most ancient myth to come down to us - the Gilgamesh myth of ancient Sumer (defeat death).
  • In 1775 Asia accounted for 80% of the world economy.
  • European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects in history. Previous seekers of empire tended to assume that they already understood the world. European imperialists set out in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories. (History)
  • The first modern man was Amerigo Vespucci, who argued that the islands discovered by Columbus were not islands off the East Asian coast, but rather an entire continent unknown to Scriptures, classical geographers , and contemporary Europeans. Poetic Justice: 1/4 of the world is named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say "We dont know".
  • Discovery of America was the foundational event of the Scientific Revolution. It not only taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions, but the desire to conquer America also obliged the Europeans to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed.
  • Not one expedition of either exploration or conquest was ever sent to America from the Islamic world, India or China. The first non-European power that tried to send a military expedition to America was Japan in 1942.
  • What enables banks - and the entire economy - to survive and flourish is our trust in the future.
  • Credit enables us to build the present at the expense of the future. The problem in previous eras was not that no one had the idea or know how to use it. It was that people seldom wanted to extend much credit because they didn't trust the future would be better than the present.
  • Adam Smiths claim that the selfish human urge to increase profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history - revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, bet even more so from a moral and political perspective.
  • Capitalism's belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.
  • There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. The most important economic resource is trust in the future, and this resource is constantly threatened by thieves, and charlatans. Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. (Politics)
  • The rise in European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organized and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies sold shares on major stock exchanges. Middle-class Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares. (Politics)
  • When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted by any other ethical considerations, it can easily lead to catastrophe. (Politics)
  • The Industrial Revolution has been a revolution in energy conversion. Before the Industrial Revolution, since human and animal bodies were the only energy conversion device available, muscle power was the key to all human activities. Every few decades or so we discover a new energy source, so that the sum total of energy available to us keeps growing.
  • Chemists discovered Aluminum only in the 1820s, but separating the metal from its ore was extremely difficult and costly. For decades Al more expensive than gold. In 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III commissioned aluminum cutlery for his finest guests, less important visitors had to make due with gold
  • The IR was above all else the second agricultural revolution: without the industrialization of agriculture the urban IR could never have taken place.
  • Ironically, the same scientific disciplines which shape our milk machines and egg machines have lately demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that mammals and birds have a complex sensory and emotional make-up. They not only feel physical pain, but can also suffer emotional distress.
  • The basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction. (Mental Models)
  • Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world.
  • Capitalist-consumerist ethic: "Invest!" and "Buy!" This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. (Religion)
  • German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast rings of big Ben.
  • The most momentous social revolution that ever befell humankind is the collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market. Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.
  • These days every year is revolutionary. Today, even a thirty-year old can honestly tell disbelieving teenagers "When I was young, the was completely different". (NowIsDifferent)
  • During the last 70 years, humankind has for the first time faced the possibility of complete self-annihilation and has experienced a fair number of actual wars and genocides. Yet these decades were also the most peaceful era in human history- by a wide margin. This is surprising because these very same decades experienced more economic, social and political change than any previous era. The tectonic plates of history are moving at a frantic pace, but the volcanoes are mostly silent. (History)
  • Wealth today consists mainly of human capital and organizational know-how. It is difficult to carry it off or conquer it by military force. The few full-scale international wars that still take place in the world, eg Middle east, occur in places were wealth is old-fashioned material wealth.
  • Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace-loving elite - politicians, business people, intellectuals and artists which genuinely see war as both evil and avoidable. (NowIsDifferent)
  • Did the wealth humankind accumulated in the last 5 centuries translate into a new-found contentment? If not, what is the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires, science and industry ? Historians seldom ask these questions, yet they are the more important questions one can ask of history. (History) (Buddhism)
  • The brief golden age of the last half-century may turn out to have sown the seeds of future catastrophe.
  • We can congratulate ourselves with on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals.
  • Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being and between bad marriages and misery.
  • The most important finding regarding happiness is that it doesn't really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or community. Rather it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. Being satisfied with what you already have is far more important that getting more of what you want. (Happiness)
  • People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. A person who just won the lottery or found new love jumps from joy is not really reaction to the money or the lover. She is reaction to various hormones coursing throughout her bloodstream, and to the storm of electric signal flashing between different parts of their brain. (Happiness) (Buddhism)
  • Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. (Happiness) (Buddhism)
  • There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realize that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can focus on the only that that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression. (Happiness)
  • Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions - none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine oxytocin. (Happiness)
  • If we accept the biological approach to happiness, then history turns out to be of minor importance, since most historical events have had no impact on our biochemistry. (Happiness) (History)
  • To be happy is no more and no less than experiencing pleasant bodily sensations. (Happiness) (Buddhism)
  • A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is. (Buddhism)
  • Although the people in all cultures and eras have felt the same types of pleasures and pains, the meaning they ascribed to their experiences has probably varied widely. If so, the history of happiness might have been far more turbulent than biologists imagine. Its a conclusion that does not necessarily favor modernity. (History)
  • As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. Counter point: the beginning of infinity, science, humanity. (WhoWeAre)
  • Buddhism has assigned the question of happiness more importance than perhaps any other human creed. For 2500 years, Buddhists have systematically studied the essence and causes of happiness. Buddhism shares the basic insight of the biological approach, namely that happiness results from processing occurring within one's body, and not form events in the outside world. (Buddhism)
  • If I want to experience pleasant feelings, I have to constantly chase them, while driving away the unpleasant feelings. Even if I succeed, I immediately have to start all over again, without ever getting any lasting reward for my troubles. According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather the real root of suffering is the never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit the mind is never satisfied. People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. (Buddhism)
  • This idea is so alien to modern liberal culture that when Western New Age movements encountered Buddhist insights, they translated them into liberal terms. "Happiness begins within" This is exactly what biologists argue, but more or less the opposite of what Buddha said. Buddha agreed with biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Buddha's recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings. (Buddhism) (Happiness)
  • If Buddhism is right, our entire understanding of the history of happiness might be misguided. Maybe it isn't so important whether peoples expectations are fulfilled and whether they enjoy pleasant feelings. The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves. (Buddhism) (Happiness) (History)
  • Most history books say nothing about how the course of history has influenced the happiness and suffering of individuals. This is the biggest lacuna in our understanding of history. (Happiness) (History) (What We Don't Know)
  • History is the next stage in the continuum of physics to chemistry to biology. (History)
  • Homo sapiens are transcending biologically determined limits. It is now beginning to break the laws of natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design. The first crack in the old regime appeared 10k years ago in the Agriculture revolution. Sapiens who dreamed of fat, slow-moving chickens discovered that if they mated the fattest hen with the slowest cock, some of the offspring would be both fat and slow. It was a race of chickens unknown to nature, produced by intelligent design not of a god but of a human. (NowIsDifferent)
  • Today the 4 billion year old regime of natural selection is facing a completely different challenge: scientists are directly engineering living beings. (NowIsDifferent)
  • The Scientific Revolution may prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth. If this happens, the whole of human history up to that point might, with hindsight, be reinterpreted as a process of experimentation and apprenticeship that revolutionized the game of life. Such a process should be understood from a cosmic perspective of billions of years, rather than from a human perspective of millennia. (NowIsDifferent)
  • Biologists are right about the past, but the proponents of intelligent design might, ironically, be right about the future. (Paradox)
  • The Cognitive Revolution that turned Homo sapiens from an insignificant ape into the master of the world did not require any noticeable change in the physiology or even the size of and external shape of the Sapiens brain. It apparently involved no more than a few small changes to internal brain structure. Perhaps another small change would be enough to ignite a Second Cognitive Revolution, create a completely new type of consciousness, and transform Homo Sapiens into something altogether different. (AI)
  • The last days are fast approaching. Unless some nuclear or ecological catastrophe intervenes, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. (It may take a few millennia, but from the the perspective of 70k years of Sapiens history, what are a few millennia?) (NowIsDifferent)
  • What do we want to become? This question dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today's debates between today's religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo Sapiens. And yet the great debates of history are important because at least the first generation of the new gods would be shaped by the cultural ideas of their human designers. (Politics) (Religion)
  • The implication of creating a mind in a computer are far more dramatic than curing psychiatric illness. This is why the Gilgamesh project is the flagship of science. It serves to justify everything science does.
  • "What do we want to want? " Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.
  • Modern Humans: Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We a consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction. Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who dont know what they want ? (WhoWeAre)
  • Humans are gods to other animals (not benevolent ones!) (WhoWeAre) (AI) (Religion)

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