How do you cause people to believe in an imagined …– Yuval Noah Harari
How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy, or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.
I don’t like the word ‘abstractions’ very much …– Yuval Noah Harari
I don’t like the word ‘abstractions’ very much because most people don’t think in abstractions. That is too difficult for them. They think in stories. And the best stories are not abstract; they are concrete.
Every day, I absorb countless data bits through …– Yuval Noah Harari
Every day, I absorb countless data bits through emails, phone calls, and articles; process the data; and transmit back new bits through more emails, phone calls, and articles. I don’t really know where I fit into the great scheme of things and how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of […]
Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in …– Yuval Noah Harari
Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in our collective imagination, but everybody believes in the dollar bill.
Having raised humanity above the beastly level of …– Yuval Noah Harari
Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.
I’m vegan, though not completely religious about …– Yuval Noah Harari
I’m vegan, though not completely religious about it. While writing ‘Sapiens,’ I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.
Take Google Maps or Waze…– Yuval Noah Harari
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability – you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems…– Yuval Noah Harari
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things and have subjective experiences.
The truly unique trait of ‘Sapiens’ is our ability …– Yuval Noah Harari
The truly unique trait of ‘Sapiens’ is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities. Of course, not all fictions are shared by all humans, but at least one has become universal in our world, and this […]
Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in …– Yuval Noah Harari
Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in contradictory things. For example, to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God but somehow excuse Him from all the suffering in the world. Or our ability to believe from the standpoint of law that humans are equal and have free will and from biology that humans are […]