21 Lessons for the 21st Century

This 2018 book entitled: “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by Yuval Noah Harari was a thought-provoking look at the future and the impact of technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and bio-technology. The book is worth purchasing and reading but the 21 lessons were a bit obscure, at least to this reviewer, notwithstanding that the book contained 21 chapters. Moreover, whether or not the author is a good prognosticator of the future remains to be seen; none-the-less some of his predictions, may help individuals do contingency planning. Harari veers off into a variety of personal views important to him and undoubtedly of interest to some others. Some will find his historical look at various world religions as academic and informative while others might be offended. Illustrative of style and content of this book, Harari writes: “My first book, Sapiens, surveyed the human past, examining how an insignificant ape became the ruler of planet Earth. Homo Deus, my second book, explored the long-term future of life... In this book I… zoom in on the here and now, but without losing the long-term perspective.” Harari writes: “A single mother struggling to raise two children in a Mumbai slum is focused on where she will find their next meal; refugees in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean scan the horizon for any sign of land... They all have far more urgent problems than global warming or the crisis of liberal democracy… Climate change may be far beyond the concerns of people in the midst of a life-and-death emergency, but it might eventually make the Mumbai slums uninhabitable, send enormous new waves of refugees across the Mediterranean, and lead to a worldwide crisis in healthcare.” Harari writes: “this book is intended… as a selection of lessons. These lessons… aim to stimulate further thinking… The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality. Big Data… algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse—irrelevance… Philosophers are very patient people, but engineers are far less so, and investors are the least patient of all… Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.” Harari writes: “Some… just don’t want to give up their racial, national, or gendered privileges. Others have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that liberalization and globalization are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses… The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology…” Harari writes: “Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln’s principle that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”… Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with 87 percent of wealth concentrated in the hands of the richest 10 percent of people… Humans vote with their feet… I have met numerous people in many countries who wish to immigrate to the United States… But I have yet to meet a single person who dreams of immigrating to Russia… For every Muslim youth from Germany who traveled to the Middle East to live under a Muslim theocracy, probably a hundred Middle Eastern youths would have liked to make the opposite journey and start a new life for themselves in liberal Germany… throughout the world… even if they describe themselves as “anti-liberal,” none of them rejects liberalism wholesale. Rather, they… want to pick and … choose their own dishes from a liberal buffet… Even some of the staunchest supporters of democracy… have become decidedly lukewarm about allowing too many immigrants in.” Harari writes: “But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption... [In] the twentieth century, each generation—[worldwide]—enjoyed better education, superior healthcare and larger incomes than the one that came before it… [But] the… prospect of… unemployment—leaves nobody indifferent… Some believe that… within… a mere decade or two, billions of people will become economically redundant. Others maintain that even in the long run automation will keep generating new jobs and greater prosperity for all... Fears that automation will create massive unemployment go back to the nineteenth century, and so far they have never materialized.” Harari writes: “What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of individual human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network… AI doctors could provide far better and cheaper healthcare… particularly for those who currently receive no healthcare… at all… a poor villager in an underdeveloped country might come to enjoy far better healthcare via her smartphone...” Harari writes: “in the long run no job will remain absolutely safe from automation… After IBM’s chess program Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997, humans did not stop playing chess. Rather, thanks to AI trainers, human chess masters became better than ever, and at least for a while human-AI teams known as “centaurs” outperformed both humans and computers in chess… A closer look at the world of chess might indicate where things are heading… [In] 2017, a critical milestone was reached, not when a computer defeated a human at chess—that’s old news—but when Google’s AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program. Stockfish 8 was the world’s computer chess champion for 2016. It had access to centuries of accumulated human experience in chess... It was able to calculate seventy million chess positions per second. In contrast, AlphaZero performed only eighty thousand such calculations per second, and its human creators had not taught it any chess strategies—not even standard openings. Rather, AlphaZero used the latest machine-learning principles to self-learn chess by playing against itself. Nevertheless, out of a hundred games the novice AlphaZero played against Stockfish, AlphaZero won twenty-eight and tied seventy-two. It didn’t lose even once. Since AlphaZero had learned nothing from any human, many of its winning moves and strategies seemed unconventional to the human eye… guess how long it took AlphaZero to learn chess from scratch, prepare for the match… against Stockfish, and develop its genius instincts? Four hours. That’s not a typo... AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide.” Harari writes: “even after self-driving vehicles prove themselves safer and cheaper than human drivers, politicians and consumers might nevertheless block the change for… decades… Government regulation can successfully block new technologies even if they are commercially viable and economically lucrative… For example… human “body farms” in underdeveloped countries and an almost insatiable demand from desperate affluent buyers. Such body farms could well be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet regulations have prevented free trade in human body parts” Harari writes: “In the stock exchange… algorithms are becoming the most important buyers of bonds, shares, and commodities… The Google search algorithm [ranks] the web pages of ice cream vendors… the Google algorithm ranks first—[NOT] those that produce the tastiest ice cream… When I publish a book, my publishers ask me to write a short description that they use for publicity online. But they have a special expert who… goes over my text and says, “Don’t use this word—use that word instead. Then we will get more attention from the Google algorithm…” Harari writes: “with the rise of AI… cheap unskilled labor will become far less important… If AI and 3-D printers indeed take over from the Bangladeshis… the revenues that previously flowed to South Asia will now [flow] California.” Harari writes: “Within a few decades, Big Data algorithms informed by a constant stream of biometric data could monitor our health 24/ 7. They might be able to detect the very beginning of influenza, cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease, long before we feel anything is wrong with us. They could then recommend appropriate treatments, diets… custom-built for our unique physique, DNA, and personality… by 2050, thanks to biometric sensors and Big Data algorithms, diseases may be diagnosed and treated long before they lead to pain or disability… when you apply to your bank for a loan, it is likely that your application will be processed by an algorithm rather than by a human being. The algorithm analyzes lots of data about you and statistics about millions of other people and decides whether you are reliable enough to receive a loan.” Harari writes: “Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth… the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion… If new treatments for extending life and upgrading physical and cognitive abilities prove to be expensive, humankind might split into biological castes… Humans and machines might merge so completely that humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected from the network.” Harari writes: “the “clash of civilizations” thesis is false. Human groups—all the way from small tribes to huge civilizations—are fundamentally different from animal species, and historical conflicts differ greatly from natural selection processes… human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries…” Harari writes: “distortions of ancient traditions characterize all religions… The heated argument about the true essence of Islam is simply pointless. Islam has no fixed DNA. Islam is whatever Muslims make of it… Species often split, but they never merge. About seven million years ago chimpanzees and gorillas had common ancestors… Since individuals belonging to different species cannot produce fertile offspring together, species can never merge… Human tribes, in contrast, tend to coalesce over time into larger… groups… Ten thousand years ago humankind was divided into countless isolated tribes. With each passing millennium, these fused into… larger groups… remaining civilizations have been blending into a single global civilization…” Harari writes: “People across the globe are not only in touch with one another, they increasingly share identical beliefs and practices… Today, if you happen to be sick… you will be taken to similar-looking hospitals, where you will meet doctors in white coats who learned the same scientific theories in the same medical colleges. They will follow identical protocols and use identical tests to reach very similar diagnoses…” Harari writes: “Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells… cities, and complex societies have existed for no more than ten thousand years. During this period… Earth’s climate has been relatively stable… [but now] climate change is a present reality…[and] Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels… the mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different tack… Over the centuries… the… world has increasingly become a single civilization. When things really work, everybody adopts them.” Harari writes: “global warming is a fact, but there is no consensus regarding the best economic reaction to this threat… Ancient scriptures are just not good guides for modern economics… religion doesn’t really have much to contribute to the great policy debates of our time… Religions still have a lot of political power… As more and more humans cross more and more borders in search of jobs, security, and a better future, the need to confront, assimilate, or expel strangers strains political systems… about immigration… it would perhaps be helpful to view immigration as a deal with three basic conditions or terms: TERM 1: The host country allows the immigrants in… TERM 2: In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values... TERM 3: If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, over time they become equal and full members of the host country… When people argue about immigration, they often confuse the four debates…[and Harari explains... ]” Harari writes: “Racism was seen not only as morally abysmal but also as scientifically bankrupt. Life scientists… anthropologists, sociologists, historians, behavioral economists, and even brain scientists have accumulated a wealth of data for the existence of significant differences between human cultures… most people concede the existence of at least some significant differences between human cultures, in things ranging from sexual mores to political habits… consider the way different cultures relate to strangers, immigrants, and refugees. Not all cultures are characterized by exactly the same level of acceptance… Norms and values that are appropriate in one country just don’t work well under different circumstances… [and goes on to suggest] let’s imagine two fictional countries: Coldia and Warmland… Much the same thing happens to Coldians who immigrate to Warmland… Both of these cases may seem to smack of racism. But in fact, they are not racist. They are “culturist.” People continue to conduct a heroic struggle against traditional racism without noticing that the battlefront has shifted. Traditional racism is waning, but the world is now full of “culturists.”… Today, in contrast, while many individuals still make such racist assertions, they have lost all of their scientific backing and most of their political respectability—unless they are rephrased in cultural terms.” Harari writes: “The shift from biology to culture is not just a meaningless change of jargon. It is a profound shift with far-reaching practical consequences, some good, some bad. For starters, culture is more malleable than biology. This means, on one hand, that present-day culturists might be more tolerant than traditional racists—… In many cases there is little reason to adopt the dominant culture, and in many other cases it is… an all but impossible mission… A second key difference… is that unlike traditional racist bigotry, culturist arguments might occasionally make good sense, as in the case of Warmland and Coldia. Warmlanders and Coldians really have different cultures, characterized by different styles of human relations. Since human relations are crucial to many jobs, is it unethical for a Warmlander firm to penalize Coldians for behaving in accordance with their cultural legacy?” Harari writes: “The last few decades have been the most peaceful era in human history. Whereas in early agricultural societies human violence caused up to 15 percent of all human deaths, and in the twentieth century it caused 5 percent, today it is responsible for only 1 percent… The greatest victory in living memory—of the United States over the Soviet Union—was achieved without any major military confrontation… Like the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Iran, Israel seems to understand that in the twenty-first century the most successful strategy is to sit on the fence and let others do the fighting for you.” Harari writes: “All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation… “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal” were well known in the legal and ethical codes of Sumerian city-states, pharaonic Egypt, and the Babylonian Empire… A thousand years before the prophet Amos… the Babylonian king Hammurabi explained that the great gods had instructed him “to demonstrate justice within the land, to destroy evil and wickedness, to stop the mighty exploiting the weak… Many biblical laws copy rules that were accepted in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan centuries and even millennia prior to the establishment of the… kingdoms of Judah and Israel.” Harari writes: “Unfortunately, for other people religious belief actually stokes and justifies their anger, especially if someone dares to insult their god or ignores His wishes… As the last few centuries have proved, we don’t need to invoke God’s name in order to live a moral life. Secularism can provide us with all the values we need… many of the secular values are shared by various religious traditions… Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence… Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.” Harari writes: “behavioral economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than on rational analysis, and that while our emotions and heuristics were perhaps suitable for dealing with life in the Stone Age, they are woefully inadequate in the Silicon Age… As Socrates observed more than two thousand years ago, the best we can do… is to acknowledge our own individual ignorance.” Harari writes: “In trying to comprehend and judge moral dilemmas people often resort to one of four methods. The first is to downsize the issue… The second method is to focus on a touching human story that ostensibly stands for the whole conflict… The third method of dealing with large-scale moral dilemmas is to weave conspiracy theories… These three methods try to deny the true complexity of the world. The fourth and ultimate method is to create a dogma, put our trust in some allegedly all-knowing theory, institution, or chief, and follow it wherever it leads us. Religious and ideological dogmas are still highly attractive in our scientific age precisely because they offer us a safe haven from the frustrating complexity of reality.” Harari writes: “Even the most religious people would agree that all religions, except one, are fictions… that does not mean that these fictions are necessarily worthless or harmful… you cannot organize masses of people effectively without relying on some mythology. If you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you… If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth… if all your neighbors believe the same outrageous tale, you can count on them to stand together in times of crisis… When most people see a dollar bill, they forget that it is just a human convention… We learn to respect holy books in exactly the same way we learn to respect paper currency” Harari writes: “How can we prepare ourselves and our children for a world of such unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties?... people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world… Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity… Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve.” Harari writes: “Planet Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and humans have existed for at least 2 million years… As for the future, physics tells us that planet Earth will be absorbed by an expanding sun about 7.5 billion years from now and that our universe will continue to exist for at least 13 billion years more.”

Sapiens is one of my top favourite books of all time, while Homo Deus was generally disappointing for me. Now Yuval Noah Harari’s 3rd book, 21 lessons for the 21st century, feels more like a summary from the previous 2 books, with the best frame of thoughts of Sapiens are filled with additional commentary and analysis for the prediction onto the future. Hence, in a way this book is like Harari’s 2nd attempt to complete the incomplete Homo Deus, or, dare I say it, with rhyming pun intended, Homo Deus part deux.True to Harari’s style, in this book he takes some current affairs key ideas and scale them wide to the scope of global macro and everything in it. He then reframe them into 21 lessons in 21 chapters. Let’s jump straight into them shall we.Lesson 1 evolve around the evolution of the 3 stories of fascism, communism, and liberalism, and how the world evolved from having all 3 in 1938, to 2 in 1968 (with fascism virtually disappeared), to only 1 in 1998 (with communism already collapsed), and zero in 2018 (when the book was written). It covers all the different countries adopting different political systems and all the geopolitics that come with it.Lesson 2 is about work, specifically analysing the threat of work being replaced by AI. Lesson 3 dives deep into liberty, whether what we have today is pure or fabricated liberty, and what will happen with our liberty once AI takes over. It is also elaborates on the potential of AI which in truth is already embedded within our daily lives, such as in the smart watch we wear to track fitness, the algorithm in Netflix to cater the movie suggestion for us, the google search engine, etc (and fittingly, I’m reading this book on Kindle after buying the book thanks to Amazon recommendation).Lesson 4 is what we should ideally have after liberty have been sorted out: equality, with one line in particular caught my eyes: “If we want to prevent the concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, the key is to regulate the ownership of data." Meanwhile lesson 5 is about global community, with special focus on facebook and its control over digital community that fits the AI narrative.Lesson 6 is about the long road towards our modern civilisation, how society has evolved into a more homogenous global civilisation with the same consensus on the likes of medicine, form of money, even sports where Harari put a nice touch of fictitiously organising the 1016 Olympic games where countries weren’t countries yet and the various empires each had such big egos and complications. Harari then elaborates that “when you watch the Tokyo Games in 2020, remember that this seeming competition between nations actually represents an astonishing global agreement.”Which brings us to lesson 7, nationalism. Again, old frame of thought that we've already learned in Sapiens but with additional commentaries, such as "huge systems cannot function without mass loyalties", which sums it all about nationalism. The same goes with lesson 8 on religion, where Harari adds more examples into his old frame of thoughts, such as religious conflicts are seldom about theological differences but instead a class war or struggles about power and money. His take on the use of state religion to organise a country is also fascinating.Lesson 9 is about the dilemma and complications of immigration. Lesson 10 is putting terrorism in a bigger context, where since 9/11 much less people are actually killed by terrorist attacks compared with diabetes, car accidents, and air pollution, but yet they provoke the most profound reactions among countries around the world. It also provides the cause and effects and the reasons for terror attacks, and most importantly how to properly face them.Lesson 11 in war confirms the suspicion that when it comes to Israel, his home country, Harari is biased, where according to him native Palestinians are Muslim fanatics, the 1967 (illegal) war was successful, that Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance from conquering Damascus during the 2011 Arab Spring when he can easily captured the city was considered the greatest political move. But to be fair, later on in lesson 17 he is critical on the Zionist movement and Israel’s general propaganda on Palestine.Lesson 12 is an interesting take about humility (or the lack thereof throughout history), especially interesting is his take on the formal Jewish education system that hugely explains why Jewish people stereotypically behave the way they behave. Lesson 13 is the vain attempt to describe God, lesson 14 is his attempt to include secularism in the vanity. Lesson 15 is about ignorance, while lesson 16 is his interesting take on justice, where the lines on the sand of justice in this vast and complicated global web are becoming blurrier than ever (where even the meat that we eat and the clothes that we wear can make us indirectly complicit to unethical and immoral injustice occurring halfway across the globe).Lesson 17 is about the “post-truth world”, which is arguably one of the most relevant chapters for current time, which also happens to be the most eye opening chapter in the book for me. This line perhaps sums it up best, “if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product”, where Harari then elaborates “[y]our attention is first captured by sensational headlines, and then sold to advertisers or politicians.”Lesson 18 is somewhat the extension of lesson 17, and it is everything about science fiction, where you might not realise it but the ideas that the people in Hollywood planted in our heads are more deeply embedded in our views of the world than we’d like to think. And this thinking transitioned smoothly into lesson 19, education, where “[h]umankind is facing unprecedented revolutions, all our old stories are crumbling, and no new story has so far emerged to replace them.” So how better prepare for the future?Nobody have the definitive answer but Harari provides an intriguing analysis and proposal for what modern education should be. With the essence can be found in this line, “[m]any pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.”In lesson 20 we circle back to meaning, to reflect and contemplate the underlying meaning behind every ideology, using vast examples from Bhagavad Gita to Lion King, Zionism, Communist Manifesto, Sikh’s turban, Easter Egg, diamond engagement ring, Ashura reenactment, to buying local but inferior pasta. Or in other words, according to Harari, finding meaning using what practically are fiction stories and the personal identity we build around them. As Hariri commented, “[o]nce personal identities and entire social systems are built on top of a story, it becomes unthinkable to doubt it, not because of the evidence supporting it, but because its collapse will trigger a personal and social cataclysm. In history, the roof is sometimes more important than the foundations.”The final lesson 21 is on meditation, in which Harari provides his own personal story and reflections on the practice. And the book then culminates in a Q&A session with what I assume is himself, addressing several key points that are unable to fit in any of the narratives in the 21 lessons.All in all, this is a big book, with big ideas, big examples, and big enlightenment. There are definitely a lot of new things to pick up in this 3rd book, although there are also quite a lot of elaborations that went a little too long and can become repetitive after a while. It has genuine 5 stars qualities for some parts of the book but it also has 3 to 4 stars qualities for others. A solid 4.5 would probably give a fair rating, as it’s definitely not a flawless 5. So in the end it’s a 4 stars book for me in an only 5-level ratings system, although it probably doesn’t fully reflect the whole sentiment on the book.

Harari’s first two books, ‘Sapiens’, ‘and ‘Homo Deus’ have been critically acclaimed, and one wonders what else can he come up with. This question is normally asked of fiction writers, but Harari’s first two books have been so tremendously popular to the extent that they were likened to best-selling novels. This, his third book, does not disappoint. It is a book of 21 essays on different subjects beginning with ‘Disillusionment’, ‘Work’, ‘Liberty’, and ‘Equality’ under Part I, entitled, ‘The Technological Challenge’. The book has a total of five Parts. The other four are: ‘The Political Challenge’, Despair and Hope’, Truth’, and ‘Resilience’. Harari’s thoughts spring from the basic, but important question, ‘What can we say about the meaning of life today?’ In order to put the age-old question into the context of today, Harari examines the scientific and cultural changes that have transformed human societies across the world. One major change wrought by technology is the phenomenon in which we get increasingly distanced from our own bodies, and are being absorbed into smartphones and computers. Harari shows how ‘benign patriotism’ can so easily be transformed into ultra-nationalism; form the belief that ‘My nation is unique’ (every nation is) to ‘My nation is supreme’. Once we get to that, war and strife is, frighteningly, just a step away. He devotes a chapter each to ‘immigration’ and ‘terrorism’ because these are the two bogeymen of the world – not just the Western world. Harari fears that when New York or London eventually sinks below the Atlantic Ocean, people will be blaming Bush, Blair and Obama for focussing on the wrong front. Given the undertones of religious conflicts and differences in the wars that an American-led West had inflicted on various parts of the world, Harari had much to say in his chapters on ‘God’ and ‘Secularism’. He tries to show how irrational belief in a personal God is. ‘Science cannot explain the “Big Bang”, they exclaim, “so that must be God’s doing”…After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces’. Not to mention abortion, eating pork, and drinking beer. What does it mean ‘Not to use the name of God in vain’? Harari suggests that it should mean that ‘we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatred’. He exposes the problems of dogmatism, and warns against the illusion that the falsity in one’s creed or ideology will never be allowed to happen. ‘if you believe in an absolute truth revealed in a transcendent power’, he writes, ‘you cannot allow yourself to admit any error – for that would nullify your whole story. But if you believe in a quest for truth by fallible humans, admitting blunders is an inherent part of the game’. Harari’s conclusion is a treat to read and has much to commend in the way he reconciles religious beliefs and rational thinking. Humans love story-telling, he writes, and the answers to the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ lie in the stories – but we do not have just one story each. And this is crucial. We not just a Muslim, or an Italian, or a capitalist. We do not have just one identity as a human. And we have many stories. We must not shut them out for the sake of one favourite.

Basically, they are giving pirated third class paper quality version. This is expected from Flipkart but not Amazon.People might argue that expectations should be low for a low price, but I say that the Big discounts displayed on products should also be according to similar quality stuff, and not the original publication.

Unlike Sapiens (about the past) and Homo Deus (the future), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a series of commentaries, thoughts and meditations on the present. Some of the main themes are ones which readers of the earlier books will be familiar with – for example, how what separates man from our ape cousins is our ability to believe in and live by stories. We are able to believe in things (religion, democracy, money) which have no objective reality or independent existence, or be part of communities (nations, corporations, online) of people we don’t know. A historian, polymath, atheist and cynic, Harari is capable of insights of dazzling simplicity yet which are backed by deep reading and thought. Here are just a few, taken out of context but I promise it’s worth following up the context:The revolutions in biotech and infotech are made by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions…Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese will take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border. He never warned voters that algorithms will take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.Humans have two abilities – physical and cognitive. The former have been partly supplemented by machines. Artificial Intelligence is challenging the latter…. Communism has no answer to automation, as the masses lose their economic value and become irrelevant.Artificial Intelligence and human stupidity – if we concentrate too much on AI and not enough on human consciousness, AI will end up merely empowering the stupidity of humans.Globalisation has resulted in growing inequality – the richest 100 own more than poorest 4 billion – and might in time lead to speciation. [People and species are opposite - species split, whereas people coalesce into larger groups, though mergers change.] Challenges are now supra-national – there are no national solutions to global warming. Nations have no answer to technological disruption. The nationalist wave [which he attributes in some measure to nostalgia] cannot turn the clock back to 1939 or 1914. Europe is a good example of supra-national solutions [he thinks Brexit is a bad idea]. Early humans faced problems which local tribes couldn’t handle (for example, Nile floods). Nowadays problems are supra-national.Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations. Consider the Christian story. It has the flimsiest of foundations…. Yet enormous global institutions have been built on top of that story, and their weight presses down with such overwhelming force that they keep the story in place.This is another intellectual tour de force from Harari, though as other reviewers have said it’s essential to have read the other two books first.

Essential reading. Quality of ideas, opinions and writing in line with his earlier books.A note to Penguin and its imprints. Please stop printing with Replika. The quality of print is abysmal and this is the second such experience for me (Devlok 2). I know of others who have felt the same. If this continues, readers will complain in droves and/or stop buying your books printed with Replika. So change the quality of printing or the Press in question.

I had to stop reading a quarter In the book as I could not bear finishing it. This is utter garbage, biased opinions without any scientific back up narrated in the most condescending tone. I m glad I haven’t read his other 2 book as I can imagine they are similar