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yoursisterscanary's review against another edition
4.0
This book dives into global philosophy, religion, moralism, ethics, and concepts of the self. An incredibly fascinating read but those anticipating a look at technology and specific predictions as to how the next generation of humans will upgrade themselves into gods will be disappointed. It is also worth mentioning that this book is rather depressing. If you’re like me you will close it with a sigh after having any shred of hope in finding meaning in god, religion, human exceptionalism, ethics, or even in life itself, utterly destroyed. The main theme seems to be “you are not special, there is no proof you even have a mind as opposed to a brain, any meaning you find is simply a story, your suffering and all suffering is for nothing”.
sswanney89's review against another edition
5.0
Profound piece of reading .. and very thought provoking about what the future may hold for our species if the current trajectory is any indication of future
peer_pastinakel's review against another edition
2.0
Honestly don't understand why it's so popular, no original insights to speak of, lots of tedious grandstanding. Easy to read, at least.
levininja's review against another edition
3.0
It's hard to know how to rate this. In this book, Harari starts off with some predictions that humans will try to achieve God status through several God-like powers that are being developed as we speak. Then he goes all the way back in time to the dawn of man and essentially summarizes history through a particular lense: that is, of world religions. These religions include not only conventional religions, but also includes socialism, capitalism, and three types of humanism: socialism, evolutionary humanism (eugenics), and liberalism. He then tries to predict the future religion, which he calls big-dataism. That is the book.
I'm a sucker for grand themes and pulling many disparate studies together into grand theories and predictions. So I enjoyed the structure of the book. I like that he tries to predict the future through first understanding history as well as he can. Predictions based on data are not always necessarily right--no prediction necessarily is--but they're a lot better than people just shooting their mouth off based on their limited worldview. We have a much better perspective from trying to understand all of humanity in all time periods and places--that is, to get outside of ourselves. I'm a huge proponent of studying history to understand today.
When it comes to all of his conclusions and lenses, it's hard to generalize. Some I thought were insightful and accurate, and others I thought were entirely misguided. And many were in the middle: they seemed accurate but didn't necessarily provide fresh insight.
I would recommend this book, for there were multiple insightful ideas here for me and I would guess there would be multiple for most other people as well, although not necessarily the same ones.
Many of my disagreements with him, as you will see below, were around religion. He is an atheist and I am not. However, my disagreements with him did not ruin any usefulness of the book. It was still insightful from understanding history and predicting the future, for as he says, in the 21st century, where do you expect most of the world-changing advancements to come from? The religions of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism? Or from science and engineering? In the past they came from the former but in the 20th century they all came from the later, and we can expect that to continue. Hence we need to understand the underlying philosophies/religions of science in order to predict the future with any relevancy at all. It's my goal to understand these and he has helped me do so. I don't hold it against him personally that he disagrees with me about the existence of God, nor does that disagreement in-and-of-itself make this a bad book, although it's certainly tangled up in some reasons that I think the book could be better.
So with all of that aside, now, in no particular order, here were some of my observations:
His argument that the Theory of Evolution disproves the existence of a soul is a flawed straw-man argument based on his definition of a soul as the root of the word "individual." While that origin is interesting, there is no reason that souls need be discrete and not a gradient thing, same as intelligence or creativity, and in fact this explanation would explain the relation of humans to animals anyways.
He never addresses the fact that science hasn't disproven the existence of the soul/spirit. He acts as if we haven't found it yet, therefore, it doesn't exist.
He doesn't discuss scientific bias, and in fact, completely whiffs on the fact that science is, itself, a religion (under his definition of religion used in this book, that classifies capitalism and liberalism and eugenics and big data-ism as religions). He briefly mentions that one could argue that science is a religion, and then says...nothing else about it at all. He just says essentially "no it isn't" and moves on. This was a huge wasted opportunity. It would have completely gone along with his theme to explore that dimension.
Large section are attack on religion while pretending to be something else. He classes branding, nationalism, and religions as "fictions" or "intersubjective realities" for they become real by humans believing collectively in them. He ignores that scientific theories are also fictions by this definition.
His definition of reality is humanist: whatever can cause people suffering. If we were being generous and assume by his examples that his real definition of reality is what can be experienced through human senses, then that's a little better, but not much. Many things have scientific evidence and can't be experienced. He also ignores any real investigation of evidence of the spiritual/supernatural.
He defines monotheists as those who believe that everything that happens to them is for spiritual reasons and claims that therefore all monotheists are childish. In fact he uses scripture as a source for this argument but never mentions that the entire book of Job is dedicated to debunking that every bad thing that happens to us is understandable and because we did something bad. This is a pattern I noticed throughout the book: he doesn't know his Old Testament as well as he thinks he does. Either that or he's cherry-picking intentionally, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
His explanation of the three camps of humanism and how they played out in 20th century history was useful. This feels like something I should have already known. Liberalism was challenged by two other humanisms: on the right, fascism (evolutionary humanism) and on the left, socialism (Marxist humanism). The great wars of the 1900s were actually religious wars between these three factions of the new world religion.
He's insightful that the masses (lower class) won't be necessary to leaders in the future as they were in the past, where leaders were incentivized to care for the source of their labor and armies.
Also, good insight that when algorithms understand individuals better than they do themselves, there's a natural step from recommending to you, to deciding for you: agency.
The last 5% or so of the book is his prediction of big data-ism: the worship of data. Yet he really only stubs out this idea. He presents what big data is doing to us and the philosophy (religion) that is emerging around it. But he doesn't take the time to ask: what does all of the data lead unto? Just more big data? This is circular thinking so there has to something more. Also, he claims that there is no other contender for the new world religion...really? Seems he could have explored other alternatives or at least attempted to show why big data is superior to others.
I don't disagree though that the big data religion is looming and in fact, some of the current events that he's mentioning can be expanded on greatly if you want to read [b:AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order|38242135|AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order|Kai-Fu Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521228712l/38242135._SX50_.jpg|59924665]. I highly recommend that for understanding the coming shift in the global economy (no it's not going to be like the automation shifts in the past), the advent of machine learning, what AI really is in different forms, and why it's going to be the US and China who will duke it out for supremacy of the new world battlefield: data.
How do I summarize Homo Deus? It seems impossible. I will only say that if you want to understand the present and future better, this is certainly worth reading, and as with anything should be examined and inspected and serve as a springboard to more reading. I appreciate the tremendous work that Harari has put into this and I hope that if he finds the time, he will expand on this even more in future editions.
I'm a sucker for grand themes and pulling many disparate studies together into grand theories and predictions. So I enjoyed the structure of the book. I like that he tries to predict the future through first understanding history as well as he can. Predictions based on data are not always necessarily right--no prediction necessarily is--but they're a lot better than people just shooting their mouth off based on their limited worldview. We have a much better perspective from trying to understand all of humanity in all time periods and places--that is, to get outside of ourselves. I'm a huge proponent of studying history to understand today.
When it comes to all of his conclusions and lenses, it's hard to generalize. Some I thought were insightful and accurate, and others I thought were entirely misguided. And many were in the middle: they seemed accurate but didn't necessarily provide fresh insight.
I would recommend this book, for there were multiple insightful ideas here for me and I would guess there would be multiple for most other people as well, although not necessarily the same ones.
Many of my disagreements with him, as you will see below, were around religion. He is an atheist and I am not. However, my disagreements with him did not ruin any usefulness of the book. It was still insightful from understanding history and predicting the future, for as he says, in the 21st century, where do you expect most of the world-changing advancements to come from? The religions of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism? Or from science and engineering? In the past they came from the former but in the 20th century they all came from the later, and we can expect that to continue. Hence we need to understand the underlying philosophies/religions of science in order to predict the future with any relevancy at all. It's my goal to understand these and he has helped me do so. I don't hold it against him personally that he disagrees with me about the existence of God, nor does that disagreement in-and-of-itself make this a bad book, although it's certainly tangled up in some reasons that I think the book could be better.
So with all of that aside, now, in no particular order, here were some of my observations:
His argument that the Theory of Evolution disproves the existence of a soul is a flawed straw-man argument based on his definition of a soul as the root of the word "individual." While that origin is interesting, there is no reason that souls need be discrete and not a gradient thing, same as intelligence or creativity, and in fact this explanation would explain the relation of humans to animals anyways.
He never addresses the fact that science hasn't disproven the existence of the soul/spirit. He acts as if we haven't found it yet, therefore, it doesn't exist.
He doesn't discuss scientific bias, and in fact, completely whiffs on the fact that science is, itself, a religion (under his definition of religion used in this book, that classifies capitalism and liberalism and eugenics and big data-ism as religions). He briefly mentions that one could argue that science is a religion, and then says...nothing else about it at all. He just says essentially "no it isn't" and moves on. This was a huge wasted opportunity. It would have completely gone along with his theme to explore that dimension.
Large section are attack on religion while pretending to be something else. He classes branding, nationalism, and religions as "fictions" or "intersubjective realities" for they become real by humans believing collectively in them. He ignores that scientific theories are also fictions by this definition.
His definition of reality is humanist: whatever can cause people suffering. If we were being generous and assume by his examples that his real definition of reality is what can be experienced through human senses, then that's a little better, but not much. Many things have scientific evidence and can't be experienced. He also ignores any real investigation of evidence of the spiritual/supernatural.
He defines monotheists as those who believe that everything that happens to them is for spiritual reasons and claims that therefore all monotheists are childish. In fact he uses scripture as a source for this argument but never mentions that the entire book of Job is dedicated to debunking that every bad thing that happens to us is understandable and because we did something bad. This is a pattern I noticed throughout the book: he doesn't know his Old Testament as well as he thinks he does. Either that or he's cherry-picking intentionally, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
His explanation of the three camps of humanism and how they played out in 20th century history was useful. This feels like something I should have already known. Liberalism was challenged by two other humanisms: on the right, fascism (evolutionary humanism) and on the left, socialism (Marxist humanism). The great wars of the 1900s were actually religious wars between these three factions of the new world religion.
He's insightful that the masses (lower class) won't be necessary to leaders in the future as they were in the past, where leaders were incentivized to care for the source of their labor and armies.
Also, good insight that when algorithms understand individuals better than they do themselves, there's a natural step from recommending to you, to deciding for you: agency.
The last 5% or so of the book is his prediction of big data-ism: the worship of data. Yet he really only stubs out this idea. He presents what big data is doing to us and the philosophy (religion) that is emerging around it. But he doesn't take the time to ask: what does all of the data lead unto? Just more big data? This is circular thinking so there has to something more. Also, he claims that there is no other contender for the new world religion...really? Seems he could have explored other alternatives or at least attempted to show why big data is superior to others.
I don't disagree though that the big data religion is looming and in fact, some of the current events that he's mentioning can be expanded on greatly if you want to read [b:AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order|38242135|AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order|Kai-Fu Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521228712l/38242135._SX50_.jpg|59924665]. I highly recommend that for understanding the coming shift in the global economy (no it's not going to be like the automation shifts in the past), the advent of machine learning, what AI really is in different forms, and why it's going to be the US and China who will duke it out for supremacy of the new world battlefield: data.
How do I summarize Homo Deus? It seems impossible. I will only say that if you want to understand the present and future better, this is certainly worth reading, and as with anything should be examined and inspected and serve as a springboard to more reading. I appreciate the tremendous work that Harari has put into this and I hope that if he finds the time, he will expand on this even more in future editions.
schinko94's review against another edition
2.0
(Really 2.5 stars)
People either seem to really like this book or think that it's disappointing, and unfortunately I fall into the latter camp. I haven't read Sapiens, but now I'm not sure if I want to.
One of the major failings of this book is that Harari tries to turn a behemoth of individual (and seemingly unrelated) historical facts into a cohesive vision of the future of humanity. I'm not even sure that the best of historians could accomplish this, let alone an author who has some grandiose ideas of how humans will interact with technology in the future. I just think that the extremely "macro" view of history that Harari attempts to present in this book is too much to chew on, and he would be better off refining this book into a narrower selection of historical subject matter.
The "bureaucratic narratives vs. reality" argument that he presents is also interesting, but I don't know if I buy it. Harari tries to say that human reality ultimately bends to the will of fictional stories told by bureaucrats, which is true, but only to a point. He then presents the division of Africa as evidence of this argument, but I don't think he does it well enough. Did Africa really bend to the fictional borders of the Berlin Conference, or did reality continue to fester while Europeans told themselves that everything would be okay and that Africa would be better off because of them? I believe the latter happened, not the former.
This sort of shaky philosophical reasoning is part of the reason that I'm skeptical of the rest of the book. While I respect Harari's attempt to think things through, I don't think his version of the future will ultimately come to fruition, because there are just too many moving parts that he didn't take into account.
People either seem to really like this book or think that it's disappointing, and unfortunately I fall into the latter camp. I haven't read Sapiens, but now I'm not sure if I want to.
One of the major failings of this book is that Harari tries to turn a behemoth of individual (and seemingly unrelated) historical facts into a cohesive vision of the future of humanity. I'm not even sure that the best of historians could accomplish this, let alone an author who has some grandiose ideas of how humans will interact with technology in the future. I just think that the extremely "macro" view of history that Harari attempts to present in this book is too much to chew on, and he would be better off refining this book into a narrower selection of historical subject matter.
The "bureaucratic narratives vs. reality" argument that he presents is also interesting, but I don't know if I buy it. Harari tries to say that human reality ultimately bends to the will of fictional stories told by bureaucrats, which is true, but only to a point. He then presents the division of Africa as evidence of this argument, but I don't think he does it well enough. Did Africa really bend to the fictional borders of the Berlin Conference, or did reality continue to fester while Europeans told themselves that everything would be okay and that Africa would be better off because of them? I believe the latter happened, not the former.
This sort of shaky philosophical reasoning is part of the reason that I'm skeptical of the rest of the book. While I respect Harari's attempt to think things through, I don't think his version of the future will ultimately come to fruition, because there are just too many moving parts that he didn't take into account.
mikeroderique's review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
jordi's review against another edition
5.0
Un libro que te hace pensar bastante . Tiene muchas ideas interesantes que son para darles vueltas:
- Que pasara a los humanos cuando las inteligencias artificiales nos haga prescindibles economicamente.
- Que pasara a los humanos cuando drogas nos puedan mantener siempre contentos y sin ganas de cambiar.
Etc. Hay muchas preguntas interesantes.
Por supuesto el autor tiene algunas ideas y algunas respuestas. Pueden gustar mas o menos o pensar que son mas o menos adecaudas pero yo creo que el simple hecho de ponerlas ahi fuera y hacer esas preguntas es muy interesante y una gran lectura.
- Que pasara a los humanos cuando las inteligencias artificiales nos haga prescindibles economicamente.
- Que pasara a los humanos cuando drogas nos puedan mantener siempre contentos y sin ganas de cambiar.
Etc. Hay muchas preguntas interesantes.
Por supuesto el autor tiene algunas ideas y algunas respuestas. Pueden gustar mas o menos o pensar que son mas o menos adecaudas pero yo creo que el simple hecho de ponerlas ahi fuera y hacer esas preguntas es muy interesante y una gran lectura.
fahad's review against another edition
4.0
Very well written. The author has a very good style of persuasion, and is very well informed. The book's ending feels a bit rushed, though.