The not-so-smart books of Yuval Noah Harari

To be the master, that’s all

People making assumptions about me, then getting puzzled as they get to know me a little better, is the story of my life. One of those puzzled friends is a world-renowned scientist, who just couldn’t get over the fact that he was not able to convert me to a good little leftist with his obviously superior intellect, clearly signaled virtue and the accompanying left-liberal propaganda clichés. At some point he (must have) concluded that my problem is that I am under the influence of bad ideas, I am reading the wrong things on the internet. I actually found his patronizing condescension quite amusing.
Before giving up on me completely, he sent me an email suggesting that maybe, I should try reading some “smart books”, like Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens”.
“That’s quite funny,” I replied, “I just got all three of his books a few days ago, I will let you know what I think once I finished them.” A finished them in a few weeks, but did not get back to him.

That was six years ago, just after “21 lessons” came out. The task of writing this post was on my to-do-list ever since. What was holding me back, was the burden placed on me by my friend’s recommendation. The books of Harari, all three of them, are just so spectacularly stupid and sleazy at the same time, that I find it difficult to talk about them without implying some sort of moral and/or mental deficiencies on the part of any person recommending them.

I cannot avoid it any longer, as it will be an essential part of the arguments I started making with my first post in this series.

Let me start with the ‘praise’: Harari is by far the most successful popularizer of post-modernist relativism, the idea that narratives define our reality, not the other way around.

It is a big step beyond Marx, who only said that reality does not matter, only our will does.
Marx behaved very much like a postmodernist, conjuring up ideas without any real understanding of how the real world works, but he still insisted that his narrative is a true reflection of reality.
He firmly believed that there is only ONE correct interpretation: HIS. Everybody else was just wrong.

Harari believes that reality equals collective imagination. He believes that reality does not matter, only our shared narratives do. For Harari, everything is a story;

• “The story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry.”

• “The story of organisms is called biology.”

• “The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.”

There is no science, economy and politics, there are only “stories.” Choosing this word is very important. It suggests that nothing is real, that it is all in our heads and therefore it implies that all we need to change the world is changing our minds about it. Yes, he is that stupid. If we see the world differently, the world will be different.
Harari is also one of the most vocal advocates of globalized, liberal welfare socialism with a generous amount of totalitarian thought control sprinkled on it.

The problem with postmodernism is the fact that in a theoretical, philosophical level it is correct. In an infinitely complex universe, any observation, any discovery, any theory, any explanation is limited by definition. Nothing is absolutely true. (I wrote several posts on the subject, linked below)

On a pragmatic level, however, we have no choice but to go with the best explanation, the best theory, the best argument we have, while being constantly aware of our limitations and the fact that a better explanation, theory or argument can replace it at any time.
NOT because it is more popular (as Harari would want us to believe), but because it may have greater utility or a better correspondence with reality than the one it replaces.

Reality should be humbling, but the fact that we are not Gods, does not mean that we are nothing.
Our mastery of the world depends on our ability to understand it properly. That ability evolves, it does not just change like spring fashion.
Harari wants us to believe that this concept of his – truth by popular acceptance - can be applied to the economy, society and just about anything else.

Harari is a dangerous man. He is a Master Bullshitter with a grand agenda. As I am reading him, listening to him and watching his speeches and interviews, the picture that emerges is scary. I don’t know whether the World Economic Forum found him or the other way around, but the fit is perfect. Harari is the perfect Mini me to Schwab’s Dr. Evil.

As I am watching him, I also must wonder - just like with any other bullshitter I know - about his self awareness, about the ratio between the sleazy lies and the utter stupidity. The question I always have to ask is: does he believes his own bullshit?

As I am looking at his sentences, I must wonder whether he understands any of the words that he is using.
I feel like Alice, wondering how can his empty words mean so many different things.

Harari loves to talk about ‘hacking humans’ without ever actually attaching any concrete meaning to the word. The word hacking is used just to show how cool he is and how much he is down with the lingo of the geek squad. The word ‘hack’ means ‘gaining unauthorized access to computer systems’. The way he is using it means whatever he chooses it to mean at that moment.

“The Cognitive Revolution is accordingly the point when history declared its independence from biology.”

How exactly does ‘history’ declare its ‘independence’ from the story of biology? What does this anthropomorphized pompous metaphor actually mean?

“For example, in the sixteenth century, kings and bankers channeled enormous resources to finance geographical expeditions around the world but not a penny for studying child psychology.”

…..psychology did not exist as a discipline until the mid-nineteenth century, but does it matter?
Not in Harari’s delusions.

Or a little more serious question:

“Peugeot belongs to a particular genre of legal fictions called ‘limited liability companies’. The idea behind such companies is among humanity’s most ingenious inventions.
Homo sapiens lived for untold millennia without them.”

What does the last sentence have to do with the first two? What is the point of the irrelevant, dismissive snarl? I am writing this on a computer. Homo sapiens lived without computers for untold millennia.
Does that make the computer I am working on a figment of my imagination?

When you create a limited liability company, you have to create and file what is called “articles of incorporation” in which you define the reason d’être and the modus operandi of the company. Is that document imaginary? Are the legal obligations of the company fictitious? 

“Peugeot, for example, is not the imaginary friend of Peugeot’s CEO. The company exists in the shared imagination of millions of people. The CEO believes in the company’s existence because the board of directors also believes in it, as do the company’s lawyers, the secretaries in the nearby office, the tellers in the bank, the brokers on the stock exchange, and car dealers from France to Australia.”

Again, what the hell does that mean? Is it really beyond the ability of Harari to understand that the company is all of those things that he names?  That the name ‘Peugeot’ is just an aggregate category referring to the entity with its myriad very real parts and components? Is he a language-denier?

Of course he understands, but he is Humpty Harari and when he uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean – neither more nor less.

Sapiens has a whole chapter about money, yet another subject he understands nothing about.
All he would need to do is asking some simple questions. Why do we choose one type of money over any other? How does money relate to value? What is driving monetary policy?

“In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind. But why does it succeed? Why should anyone be willing to exchange a fertile rice paddy for a handful of useless cowry shells? Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper?

People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.”

What you get for your exertion, is a representation of its value, which you can exchange for any other thing you value that it may also represent in different quantities. And I have absolutely no need to trust the person who serves me a dinner in exchange for my money.
The only thing that you and I need to trust when using money, is not each other, but the issuer, which – on the other hand - we cannot freely choose. I have no choice but to use what is available to me. I am supposed to trust the government, which I know to be betraying my trust, making the money I have worth less every day.

I could continue with examples, but they couldn’t add much more to the points already made.

I could challenge anybody to refer me to a single page of ANY of the Harari books without some revolting BS on it.

In the end, we have to ask: what makes him so successful? He is clearly in tune with the zeitgeist, he is clearly satisfying some needs.
Harari exemplifies not only a trend where anybody can decide what their words mean, but an even more importantly, one where anybody can claim the right to decide what YOUR words mean. Because:
“The questions is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all”
In the end, it’s all about power.

Let me give you one last example to illustrate:

“I think with climate change, at first sight, it's quite surprising that there is a very close correlation between nationalism and climate change. I mean, almost always, the people who deny climate change are nationalists. And at first sight, you think: Why? What's the connection? Why don't you have socialists denying climate change? But then, when you think about it, it's obvious -- because nationalism has no solution to climate change. If you want to be a nationalist in the 21st century, you have to deny the problem.”

What do you ‘deny’ when you deny climate change? What is nationalism? Should nationalism have a ‘solution’ to climate change? Does gynecology have a solution for climate change? Does the lack of a gynecological solution to climate change make gynecologists climate change deniers?
Some of the biggest critiques of climate change policy come from the left – Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Moore, Michael Shellenberger.
‘Nationalist’ (whoever they are) want local solutions and adaptation.
The story that Harari is telling to himself is just a bunch of assumptions, groundless assertions, baseless accusations and outright lies. He just wants to be the master, that’s all.

But there is good news: when you look at the comments to this Youtube video:

…they are universally negative. Of course, they have something to do with the channel, but it is more than that. The narratives represented by Harari’s work are collapsing. Even the AI fear-porn that he is championing lately, aggressively pushing the idea of global governance, is on its way out.

His presentations are getting more shrill and more political.

“Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies?

He is right, bullshitting is easy. selling it to critical thinkers is what’s difficult.

I hope that the world will return to favoring the truth, logic, evidence, explanations, knowledge and understanding. We should leave fictions, imagination and stories to the fairy tales, novelists and screen-writers.

Humpty dumpty eventually fell of the wall…

Further reading (more from me)

The nature of truth #1

… with further links to related posts

Worthwhile reading (more from Others)

This is an excellent dissection of the Harari problem:

Sapiens, maybe; Deus, no: The problem with Yuval Noah Harari - ABC Religion & Ethics
 (If it strikes you as odd that a historian should labour so hard to root our species absolutely in biology and environment, only then to uproot us and our history completely as soon as we cross this “imaginative threshold,” you are on to something.)

Once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, “Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin.” It’s a prediction that makes Francis Fukuyama’s famous dream about the end of history look positively sober.

Yuval Noah Harari: Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide | TED Talk

Yuval Noah Harari - Transhumanism and Eliminating Free Will