
Why We Dominate the Earth - feross
https://fs.blog/2019/01/yuval-noah-harari-dominate-earth/
======
lordnacho
> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate
> other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions.

I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can
operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions.

When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race,
sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are
songs and stories that bind you together. Work for the same company and
there's internal culture as well as the glorious leader you both work for.
Support the same football team and you both remember that night in Istanbul.
You were sitting at home in Liverpool, he was in Malaysia.

Hard to tell as with anything historical whether this is the most convincing
explanation though. I'm sure there's other things that separate us from the
animals? But a compelling enough story and he tells it well.

~~~
felipemnoa
>>> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate
other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions.

Shared fictions seems to just be a euphemism for culture. I wonder why he
doesn't just call it that.

~~~
x3tm
Social construct is closer to what he talks about. As for why he had to use a
non standard formulation for this ... I believe it's marketing.

~~~
InitialLastName
I actually like the way he uses "intersubjective truth"(on a spectrum with
"objective truth" and "subjective truth) to describe things that are only true
because enough people agree that they're true.

~~~
pesmhey
We’re being seduced into believing in social constructs. His language is much
more palatable.

For the record, I’m fine with it.

------
chkaloon
Reading the book right now. What's concerning to me is that we are currently
seeing the dissolving of myths across the board, whether it be religion, faith
in public institutions, or facades that we kept before social media existed.
Is the breakdown of social cohesion a consequence? Letting go of myths seems
like an inherent good, but can we survive it?

~~~
86carr
You should check out RS Bakker or Peter Watts.
[https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/](https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/)
[https://www.rifters.com/](https://www.rifters.com/)

~~~
nyolfen
bakker has some thoughts of his own on harari:

[https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/visions-of-the-
sem...](https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/visions-of-the-semantic-
apocalypse-a-critical-review-of-yuval-noah-hararis-homo-deus/)

[https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/were-fucked-so-
now...](https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/were-fucked-so-now-what/)

> The biological origins of narrative lie in shallow information cognitive
> ecologies, circumstances characterized by profound ignorance. What we cannot
> grasp we poke with sticks. Hitherto we’ve been able to exapt these
> capacities to great effect, raising a civilization that would make our
> story-telling ancestors weep, and for wonder far more than horror. But as
> with all heuristic systems, something must be taken for granted. Only so
> much can be changed before an ecology collapses altogether. And now we stand
> on the cusp of a communicative revolution even more profound than literacy,
> a proliferation, not simply of alternate narratives, but of alternate
> narrators.

> If you sweep the workbench clean, cease looking at meaning as something
> somehow ‘anomalous’ or ‘transcendent,’ narrative becomes a matter of super-
> complicated systems, things that can be cut short by a heart attack or
> stroke. If you refuse to relinquish the meat (which is to say nature), then
> narratives, like any other biological system, require that particular
> background conditions obtain. Scranton’s error, in effect, is a more
> egregious version of the error Harari makes in Homo Deus, the default
> presumption that meaning somehow lies outside the circuit of ecology.
> Harari, recall, realizes that humanism, the ‘man-the-meaning-maker’
> narrative of Western civilization, is doomed, but his low-dimensional
> characterization of the ‘intersubjective web of meaning’ as an ‘intermediate
> level of reality’ convinces him that some other collective narrative must
> evolve to take its place. He fails to see how the technologies he describes
> are actively replacing the ancestral social coordinating functions of
> narrative.

------
m0skit0
Define "dominate". IMHO bacteria dominate the Earth, but of course, they don't
know. They don't even need to know to dominate.

~~~
EpicEng
>dom·i·nate

>verb

>have a commanding influence on; exercise control over.

>be the most important or conspicuous person or thing in.

Bacteria have a huge effect on all life, but they don't "exercise control" as
they are not self aware. Their influence is comprised solely of externalities.
Humans by comparison exert far more control over the environment around them.
We shape the world to our purpose. I think humanity wins here.

~~~
evv
Humanity may win here, but you should be careful about how you define it.
Individual humans don't control much more of our environment than animals do.
Like animals in a zoo, we are often born into very constrained situations that
wildly limit our actual control. We are usually caged by our economic
situation.

What I'm saying is, the "human" does not dominate the earth. The corporation
does. We shouldn't be afraid of loosing control to an AI that will rule our
world, because we have already let the companies do whatever they want.

Some of us are lucky enough to participate in this world, by forming and
working for world-changing corporations, but everybody else is closer to the
bacteria side of the spectrum.

~~~
EpicEng
Tell that to the folks who invented agriculture. We were shaping the planet
long before corporations existed. It's amazing how some people can turn any
discussion into some version of a discussion on /r/LateStageCapitalism.

~~~
evv
Of course individuals shaped the planet long before corporations existed, but
once people could organize and compete, individual farmers lost control..
right? These days, farmers are beholden to governments, banks, and agro
companies, who use economical pressure to force specific behavior and crops.
How much control do modern farmers really have over their farm?

I haven't spent much time on that subreddit, but it sounds like I would feel
at home there! It is incredibly important that we have each-other's backs..
humanity may technically be thriving, but most people are just trying to make
ends meet.

~~~
EpicEng
>Of course individuals shaped the planet long before corporations existed, but
once people could organize and compete, individual farmers lost control..
right?

They didn't "lose control"; we discovered that, if we specialize, we can get
more done and increase our standard of living. It's not all just farming
either. You can see city lights from space. We have sculpted mountainsides. If
I'm forced to go back to your angle, none of those things are possible with
division of labor and a healthy economy.

>These days, farmers are beholden to governments, banks, and agro companies,
who use economical pressure to force specific behavior and crops. How much
control do modern farmers really have over their farm?

You're going off on some socioeconomic tangent when the discussion here is
simply "which organism is most dominant." I don't see how anything you're
saying is relevant.

>humanity may technically be thriving, but most people are just trying to make
ends meet.

As they have been for all existence. The difference is that these days it's
much easier than it used to be. For everyone.

>I haven't spent much time on that subreddit, but it sounds like I would feel
at home there!

Ugh, enjoy.

------
jpadkins
I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws
are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts
(beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that
their brains can't process.

~~~
akvadrako
Of course not, at least in any practical sense. Even plants use the
mathematical properties of fractals to make effective structures. If we
encountered aliens that are as alien as possible, they would agree on the
ratio of the radius to the circumference of a circle on a flat plane.

~~~
jpadkins
I'm not debating whether math exists or governs our reality. My question was
can other species understand math concepts? Or is this a unique sapien genetic
mutation.

AFAIK, plants don't communicate or use math concepts (even if they grow using
them).

~~~
pnongrata
As the author puts it, it's not about genetic mutations. Sapiens have the
ability to share fictions, stories, in which we can all agree in order to live
in a functioning society. So, in this sense, mathematics, laws and private
companies are all 'fictions'. It only works if people believe in it.

------
scoot
Unrelated to the article, but the headline raised the question in my mind - is
intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing?

If the human race had not, would another species eventually rise to a similar
position? And would it have caused the same destruction?

On the flip side, what purpose would natural life serve if there was no
species sufficiently cognizant to recognize it?

~~~
malvosenior
> _is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing?_

Without intelligence, there is no good or bad. You can't begin to overlay a
moral framework on the world if there are no sentient beings to create it.

~~~
dota_fanatic
Without intelligence, there is no red or blue. You can't begin to overlay a
color framework on the world if there are no sentient beings to create it.

Maybe universal morality does exist, we're just too simple minded to see it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Without eyes, there's no _red_ or _blue_. There are wavelengths of light, but
no colors. Colors are the names we give to _sensations_.

Similarly, morality is a property of mind. It's like color, not like
wavelength. And unlike light, we didn't find any objective source in the
outside world, nor do we know of a process that would tune our perception of
morality with fundamental laws of physics.

Personally, I currently believe the only somewhat-objective source of morality
is path dependence: all humans share the same brain architecture. I think all
the base shared moral instincts we have come from that.

~~~
dota_fanatic
Semantics methinks. Without minds, there is light, but no wavelengths.
Wavelengths are the names we give to aspects of a _shared formalism_ which is
applied to light. Do wavelengths _exist_, or are they an extremely convenient
system of formalism that "matches" enough to be useful? Much like Newtonian is
useful, but not "real". Color, wavelength, photons, waves, all useful fictions
to lesser and greater degrees for intelligent agents, but do they "exist"?
When one person sees red, another person also sees red, and not instead blue.
Because it is the same wavelength. Because it is the same light.

Personally, I think there's good evidence towards the truth of a universal
morality as laid out by Christopher Alexander in his texts "The Nature of
Order", an interpretation that looks to the order of all matter in the
universe... not just consciousness. Ie it's not "on top of", it just looks to
what is, and wonders how we can learn from this and apply it to "our" ends.
Interestingly, if humans were more in tune with the order of nature, there
would certainly be a lot less suffering on this planet, and a much much better
outlook for the future. ;)

------
_bxg1
I've previously thought about the idea that Humans are the first species with
software, instead of just hardware. When a bug exists in a chip, you have to
wait for the next generation to have it fixed. But a programmer can fix a bug
or add functionality to the same physical machine; this is why software exists
in the first place.

The decision-making of other animals may develop generationally, but it has
very limited capacity for change within a single organism's life. On the other
hand, a human can endlessly rewrite her software on top of the same hardware.
We can evolve without waiting for our DNA to change.

------
rdiddly
_" There is no parallel in other species for these quick, large-scale shifts.
General behavior patterns in dogs or fish or ants change due to a change in
environment, or to broad genetic evolution over a period of time."_

Aha! This passage made me realize why we can't seem to get a grip on, for
example, climate change (but also that we soon, easily could). Humans can
undergo a quick, large-scale shift in behavior having nothing to do with an
environmental change; therefore it's also true that humans can staunchly and
stubbornly adhere to the _same_ behavior, _despite_ an environmental change.

------
dustinmoris
Sapiens is a must read for anyone who wants to better understand the fabrics
of humanity. It's one of my most favourite books and reading it definitely has
opened up my eyes to the world.

An example:

Humans are the "creators of the world", the most dominant species on the
planet and at the top of the food chain by a long distance and yet we are the
most jumpy/scary species of all.

If a tiny spider would crawl up the leg of a lion they wouldn't give a bit of
a shit. A lion would remain calm, knowing that the spider cannot do anything
and it wouldn't even bother to entertain the spider for a split second.

However if the same tiny spider would crawl up the leg of a human there's a
real chance that this person would start jumping up and down, perhaps trying
to kill the spider or maybe even rush out of the room until the spider is
gone.

This is completely irrational for someone like us - the species who literally
dominates everything on this planet - and yet so common. Why is that? Because
lions had millions of years to climb the ladder to the top of the food chain
and therefore had the time to develop a nature which reflects their strength,
whereas humans have jumped to the top so quickly that we still have the fears
and behaviour of someone who is extremely weak and vulnerable. It's actually
quite scary and also explains why humans often respond to tiny issues with
violence, bombings and other out of proportion threats when things could _just
be ignored_.

~~~
gnulinux
>If a tiny spider would crawl up the leg of a lion they wouldn't give a bit of
a shit. A lion would remain calm, knowing that the spider cannot do anything
and it wouldn't even bother to entertain the spider for a split second.

> However if the same tiny spider would crawl up the leg of a human there's a
> real chance that this person would start jumping up and down, perhaps trying
> to kill the spider or maybe even rush out of the room until the spider is
> gone.

I think there is a chance this might be a bad comparison. Do non-human
primates not fear spiders?

Some interesting read:

[https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman....](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman.cfm)

[https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-07628-001](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-07628-001)

[https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-05872-001](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-05872-001)

~~~
tim333
In my experience house cats certainly react to tiny spiders but often by
eating them.

~~~
gnulinux
But cats both naturally evolved to hunt small prey and artificially selected
by humans to hunt vermin. They have advantage.

------
Symmetry
_Sapiens_ was a pretty decent book but if you want take that's both deeper and
more scientifically informed I'd go for _The Secret of Our Success_ instead.

------
devmunchies
I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most
native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native
American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc).

The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the
planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we
"dominate" the earth.

~~~
krapp
>Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native
American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc).

The reason there were so many bison in the US when the settlers arrived is
that the native Americans had already hunted the rest of the megafauna to
extinction. While I think there is a kernel of truth to your comment, I also
think the premise that primitive people's were more "in tune" with nature than
their Western counterparts in some deep cultural or spiritual sense is a
revisionist myth predicated on the "noble savage" archetype. The truth is more
likely that being "in tune" with nature was simply a matter of survival for
such people. Obviously, if your culture survives primarily on deer, you don't
kill all of the deer. But primitive people were quite capable of destroying or
harming their environment, as long as they could survive it, just not _as_
capable as more advanced societies.

~~~
pokeymcsnatch
The theory of natives wiping out American megafauna is well-disputed. It was
probably a combination of factors (possibly including hunting).

The idea of primitive people being more in tune with the earth doesn't _have_
to go hand-in-hand with the "noble savage" romanticization. There's evidence
that North America was essentially a well-managed game reserve. For people
that didn't have much in the ways of truly domesticated livestock, it makes
sense that they worked towards food security in a different way than societies
that had cattle and pigs. By necessity, they would have had to develop
practical and efficient methods for managing their food source. So sure, they
were probably much more in tune with nature their contemporary Europeans or
modern Americans, if "in tune" means having the know-how to bend and shape the
natural world for their benefit.

------
socrates1998
My unscientific guess is that the mutation allowed for greater group
dependence and cohesion. This article and Harari's book sort of dance around
this, but I think it's some type of emotional gene that we are emotionally
hard wired to NEED to connect with people. Like a tiger stalks with your back
turned to it, people emotionally need to be connected to other people in a
deep, meaningful way.

Humans are not only unique in their abilities like problems solving and
language, but also in their 100% dedication to the tribe.

I think it is this combination that allows for us to work together in such
large groups and successfully.

Harari calls it "fictions" that bind us together, but that doesn't quite seem
to work for me.

The question I ask is WHY do these "fictions" work so well?

Why would a Nebraska farmer go half way across the world and climb French
beaches with German guns shooting at him?

Why are we so compelled to identify with a group?

A comedian has a great joke about this. Essentially, the WORST thing you can
do to a person is put them in solitary confinement. Even being surrounded by
criminals and prison guards is infinity better than being forced to be alone
in a room. We desperately need to connect with people. It seems hard wired
genetically to me.

I think culture helps serve this purpose of binding us together.

Art, music, theatre, and even sports are all a part of the process of group
cohesion.

Group cohesion and dependency is so powerful that it's often the number one
factor in determining which societies/countries/groups come out victorious
with intergroup conflict.

A great book called "War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin is a fantastic
book to read if this concept interests you.

Another one, "Tribe" by Sebastion Junger also explores this topic.

~~~
Phenomenit
"A comedian has a great joke about this. Essentially, the WORST thing you can
do to a person is put them in solitary confinement. Even being surrounded by
criminals and prison guards is infinity better than being forced to be alone
in a room. We desperately need to connect with people. It seems hard wired
genetically to me."

My unscientific response to this is that it's more a personality dependency.
Our personality or individuality is dependent on other individuals so when you
your all alone your ego starts to disolve and all your skills and attributes
that depend on ego start to fade. Most people would experience this as going
insane.

Cohesion in large groups are aided by strong personalities that create and
sustain larger groups(hierarchies) and than in turn enables larger groups.

~~~
socrates1998
Sure, they are some people who are okay with being alone and would be okay
with living on a desert island without other people around, but I think these
are much fewer people than most people think.

Even people who claim to hate other people find it very difficult to work in
environments where their work is unappreciated or useless.

Almost no one in the world would be happy digging a ditch and refilling it the
next day and repeating it even if they were paid $1000 a day to do it.

Why is that? Why would a programmer who isn't very social want only work on
stuff that is useful to other people?

It's because the vast majority of us are hard wired to be useful to society
and other people. We desperately need to feel some connection to others.

The only way digging a ditch and filling it in would be satisfying is if you
knew you were taking care of your family by doing it.

>Cohesion in large groups are aided by strong personalities that create and
sustain larger groups(hierarchies) and than in turn enables larger groups.

I completely disagree. Cohesion is stronger in small, less hierarchal groups.

The key is grouping groups together.

Why did the American states unite and form the USA and the Greek city states
before the rise of Macedonia not?

It's not an easy question to answer, but strong man personalities doesn't seem
like it's an answer.

------
devoply
Why we dominate the earth is not an interesting question. An interesting
question is should we and is it a net positive? I personally don't think so.
We as a species is completely incapable of managing the earth... or we have
not yet evolved systems to do so and until we do we should stop dominating the
earth.

------
eanzenberg
It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but
more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some
massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups

>>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of
strangers.

Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the
vast vast majority of that time has not only still dominated the world but
sects of people were uncooperative and competing with each other all the time,
wiping out people here and there without a though otherwise.

If the main thesis is that a common language lead to cooperation and therefore
world dominance, that's false too. People have dominated the earth for a
while, and with a language, and without much cooperation but through fighting
and spilled blood.

~~~
Retric
Trade routes have demonstrated cooperation across vast areas for thousands of
years. This is not selfless cooperation, but was dependent on multiple nations
and cultures.

~~~
eanzenberg
Cooperation, until the next war started.

~~~
Retric
Wars would often not interrupt trade routes. It’s a revenue source, so each
side would want trade to continue such that they could get revenue from it.

------
sh4rk
Sorry but isn't it just because we innovate? We innovate without evolution.
Does any other species innovate without evolution? Something feels wrong to me
here. It almost like it's the exact opposite: shared fiction is what hold us
back (though it's probably good from a survival stand point), and innovation
is what makes us unique, and it specially happens when there is no fiction but
a real search for the truth.

~~~
cobbzilla
> Does any other species innovate without evolution?

Technically yes, but for all practical purposes no. Different clans of
primates (chimpanzees iirc) have "innovated" distinct and novel ways to get
food, specific to their clan. These are not innate, they are taught within the
clan and passed down from generation to generation. With this, they share a
common cultural knowledge and can preserve it into the future.

From a practical point of view, the speed of this "innovation" is glacial, but
not all that different from the pace of human progress for most of our
history.

So what makes us different? I'd argue that the evolution of speech/language
provided the most important initial boost. With language, all cultural
knowledge, including innovations, becomes so much easier to retain across
generations.

------
LoSboccacc
I think this is all nice and well and but we raised to the top of the food
chain because we had pointier sticks, abstract thinking came later. Much
later.

> About 70,000 or so years ago [...] the cognitive revolution

[https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/homo/homo_4.htm](https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/homo/homo_4.htm)

> about 2.5 million years ago [...] Oldowan tools

~~~
spurgu
Give a bunch of chimpanzees an unlimited supply of chainsaws and fuel, I doubt
that'll take them to the top of the food chain.

~~~
LoSboccacc
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssqb-0i2-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssqb-0i2-A)
mhm

------
est31
We are great at coordinated actions on varying scales, but I wonder whether we
can also do coordinated actions at global scales that outspan an individual's
lifespan. Like in preventing climate change. Or in making sure that we don't
nuke each other. The nuking experiment has been running for a few decades
only. Can we avoid rocking the boat so hard that it keels over?

~~~
seren
Empires or religions are great unifying forces that span centuries and
continents, so yes it is possible to have a narrative that goes beyond a
simple human life.

Regarding the global scale, even if we don't realize it, we mostly already
have a global common culture. Everyone is organizing its time in year of 365
days, split in 24 hours, counting in base 10, have mostly the same economical
policies. Even ISIS has seized and used dollars from banks in their occupied
territory, so they also believe in the dollar [0]. All of the these things
were not true 10,000 years ago, we have probably already lost thousands of
different human cultures since the start of agriculture. Sure we still have
regional preferences on sport, food, festival, etc, but mostly all humans are
running the same basic OS, so to speak.

So are we going to coordinates on the global scale, only time will tell, but
this is much more likely today that it was 1,000 years ago.

[0] IIRC this is an example taken from _Sapiens_ in the chapter about money.

------
pqhwan
I think about how language, in a utilitarian sense, is a tool for individuals
to program each other. I guess, in gaining the ability to tell convincing
fictions, we've discovered more powerful primitives, and were able to spread
consistent programming to wider groups of humans.

------
bambax
There are many problems with the thesis that _sapiens_ is oh but so special
(and of "special" being good).

One is that our species is at least 100,000 years old, most probably 200,000
and possibly a million years old. Yet, culture, history and "world dominance"
only happened very recently. Why did it take so long?

Another is that there were many "sapiens" species and they went extinct,
either because we exterminated them, or nature did, or we absorbed them by
cross-breeding. Being cognitive is no guaranty of success and even, it turns
out, no protection from extermination.

Yet another is that other species have language (dolphins for instance, which
are neither "dogs" or "fish" or "ants").

And finally, talking of our "success" is the most ironic way of putting it,
since we're in the process of destroying all mammal life on earth (including
us). Maybe ants "eat our garbage" but they are likely to survive us, unlike
anyone who's reading this.

------
iskander
These evolutionary backsplanations feel like they're saying more about our
current society, values, and biases than any group of past humans.

------
rimliu
Is it not just autoplasticity vs. alloplasticity?

------
Finnucane
We don't dominate the earth. Ants do.

~~~
WilliamEdward
I'm not sure what you think dominate means...

------
wanted2
We do not dominate Earth, we're just destroying it. Just as we think we are
intelligent beings, we're actually incredibly stupid.

~~~
Eire_Banshee
This is such an easy, garbage take on the article.

