Another fabulous book of Yuval Harari, giving us 21 lessons for the 21st century.
I want to highlight a few ideas of him. As usual he describes his thoughts so clearly and gives very often well matching examples.
Maybe it’s not his best book compared to the two other ones, Homo sapiens and Homo deus, but definitely much worth to read.
Rationality and feelings
In a democracy people are asked „What do you think?“. But it’s not about what they rationally think, it’s about what they feel. And very often it’s not good to ask the crowd, what to do. Just remember the recent brexit election, or if the passengers in a plane would be asked on which runway the airplane should land. There are usually some experts in specific areas, are normally they know their area much better than anybody else.
The secular ideal
Such kind of people are distinguishing between believe and truth. In fact, you have to have a strong believe if a story is not true.
Algorithms
They are watching you right now, and there will be more surveilance. Just look which system china is currently implementing. Big data and machine learning will manipulate us, as the movies „The matrix“ or „The truman show“ already has shown us. They will know more about us as we.
Suffering
If you are suffering for a story you believe much easier in it, because suffering is real. This works not only for religions, but also in the commercial world. You will very likely complain if a 2k€ car is not working, but praise the 80k€ car, also if it has some problems.
Beauty
Nothing is beautiful or ugly, just our human feelings make it like that. Put away these feelings and only atoms exist.
Conclusion
This small abstract are not 21 lessons for the 21st century, but hopefully I have extracted some highlights so that you are tempted to read the book.