Daniel Wong thanks, but you're wong

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Greeb Aldar Albaasre alahuakbar

We haven't beaten natural selection, but we have subverted it from "hunt, kill, survive" to "Earn money, use it to maintain a house, support family, and have resources to give to their children." Essentially, it has fostered both good and bad results. While physical prowess is less required for humanity as a whole, intellect is thriving because knowledge is power in this society, but at the same time, laziness can be factored in to show some people abuse their lack of natural predators on their daily commute. Alas, thinking of the future, of new technology, new AI, and a knack for survival and adaption to new environments, *there will be those who thrive, those who survive, and those who whine.*

What I am trying to say is, he's right about the new inequality, but more factors need to be introduced to give a bigger image. There are already a class of "useless" people forming, not by a biological standard right now, but of a mentality of lazy, unhelpful, and either mentally/physically weak or both. Add body-hacking and it will be more noticeable than right now.

Manisha Katiyar he is minister in modi cabinet Sardarji Mr Hardip singh puri ji

But the implication of Harari's argument is that the political leanings of the 'useless class' can be manipulated by by the 'superintelligent' algorithms in which case the political rights of the masses would be of little importance. An alternative might be that, at some point, the 'superintelligent' will dispense with political rights since they will have the military and economic power to do so, since the 'flesh and blood' masses are no longer needed by them.

He's talking in the long term. In the short term yes, people will still have political power even if they are useless for the economy, but if they can't revolt and are useless the power will shift away from most people.

Yes, but that's not quite his point. They already do have power at the ballot box in democracies. His point is that much of our intelligence is being delegated (and has been increasingly post WW11) to machines. It's not that algorithms are "manipulating" - ultimately we programme algorithms to do what we want, which is why identity and what we want are very crucial questions. Self-driving cars and transport are proving to be far, far more safe and reliable than human-driven cars. We may vote of course against self-driving cars, but there will be other jurisdictions which will embrace them. We may in Europe legislate against genetic manipulation to cure illnesses like thalassaemia, but we can't legislate aginst the Chinese doing it (which is what has happened in this case!) Much depends on what we do and what we want to do. To that extent the vox populi matters and doesn't matter. Politicians present hoi polloi with specific historical choices - someone has to formulate what the choices are.

So they'll be even more interested to keep them poor and ignorant, and therefor more controlable

his argument is if they are useless, if they don't have any economic power, they won't have any political power as well. They probably won't form trades and won't begin strikes to demand better payment conditions or living condition or body enhancement as they won't produce anything. If you are completely dependent on state in terms of universal basic income, that could be very scary

Gladwell is a gadfly.

You might try to spell someone's correctly if you're going to trash them. Then you might think of others who've taken Harari seriously, like Jared Diamond, Peter Singer, Daniel Kahnemann, Dan Ariely, Barack Obama, Slovoj Zizek, Martin Wolf, and so many others. You can't expect someone who casts such a wide net to be perfect in every area, but his attempts at synthesis (often successful, I believe) are illuminating nonetheless, especially with his fresh and provocative phrasing. Maybe give him another chance, without prejudice.

How pompous! "Sapiens" isn't his first book. From the time he was a young mediaeval historian, Harari's work has developed significantly, with a prevailing theme: human identity. While he was at Oxford several writing his PhD, he started reading Jared Diamond more or less for pleasure. From this, and building on previous work, he developed an undergraduate course. "Sapiens" emerged from the notes for this course. It was a formidable achievement. It was published first in Hebrew, then in German, when people started taking it seriously. The subsequently in English (for the English) and Spanish, then an English edition in the USA and recently many languages. During this period he developed a MOOC, an online course via the Hebrew University and the Coursera platform. There were 20+ lectures in Hebrew and 17 lectures in English Some of his concepts are more readily understood in Hebrew, but the English version was well presented and one of the most highly-praised online courses. There were very lively discussion forums, and in the last two lectures some people dropped out - his thesis, that we construct our own religions, that we have replaced beliefs in God with ideologies centred on humans like communism, national socialism etc were offensive to many. For others, his conclusions in recognising human identity as the central problem facing us collectively in the electronic age were liberating - a clear synthesis as Mallory M. says. The forums on "A Brief History of Humankind" were very lively indeed. Many people wanted to know what his thesis implied for future identity, and it is from the questions raised on these forums and subsequently in discussions that the recent book "Homo Deus" was crafted. In Germany and the UK, at least, the book has had a heavy impact on the cultural science - it has influenced young and not-so-young programme makers and also politicians. Harari and Gladwell, who is very entertaining, isn't a very good comparison, in fact it's trivial. Intellectuals recognise Harari, who is barely 40, as a giant, as Mallory M says - they are quite in awe indeed. Prattly Ponsarello is the kind of person who will be telling us next that Karl Marx was just a German journalist (which is also true). But he changed the way we think, whether you agree with his insights or not. If you have bright and interesting kids, watch out that they don't consider you an old fogey if you haven't got your head round Harari! I myself did the course several years ago and told my kids (who are bright and hardworking) that I wasn't going to discuss with them money, empire, religion or politics over the Christmas period unless they did the course online - it would raise their IQs and level of discussion and understanding of the world in which they are living and going to have to work in the future to another level. They all did it, Instead of trashing Harari. you could set out which part of his over-arching thesis you object to. I asked many people this who have read the book superficially and it's clear they haven't read it in any depth and can't actually say what his over-arching thesis is! They pick on details with which they "don't agree", but they can't say why - it usually means it interferes with what they already believe. Indeed this is called "cognitive dissonance", and Harari has certainly caused acute ad chronic episodes of cognitive dissonance among his readers and interlocutors, which is what marks him as a great intellect. Kahnemann relates that when he saw and read the chapter "the Discovery of Ignorance" to characterise the mental shift at the time of the scientific revolution, he googled it to try to find the reference, it was so apt. The he realised it was Harari's own concept. For that alone he is distinguished.

Hariri is so very interesting and on point. It is a Pleasure to listen, think and expand on his ideas!

I am on the fence as to whether or not this is more pop entertainment than authentic academia.