> “Whenever his facts are broadly correct, they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously,” the anthropologist wrote in a scathing review […] When a computer scientist sees that Mark Zuckerberg is calling not him, but Harari, to consult on the effects of technology on humanity, he’s understandably mortified, just as an epidemiologist likely is, when he finds out that UNESCO has asked Harari about the effects of Covid on international scientific cooperation. For a long time now, Harrari hasn’t been a simple essayist: he has become the Oracle of Delphi.
There was a post here the other day titled “A blog post is a long and complex search query to find people”. [0]
Well, perhaps a book is a long and complex motivation letter to get public speaking engagements and a career promotion.
Like the article author, I have always found Harari's work and ideas, if not facile, then uninsightful, and the size of his following unwarranted. But a passage in the article stood out to me:
> According to this notion, our mastery of the world is due to our talent for fiction, for constructing (and believing) stories about things that only exist in our imagination. It’s undoubtedly a simple and easy idea to buy into. But the question is whether this idea is also another one of those stories about things that don’t exist [emphasis mine].
To me, what the author is complaining about here would, in light of the size of his reception and following, in fact be a recursive demonstration of Harari's thesis.
Not quite so - Harari’s thesis makes specific anthropological claims (for example, about the development of cities, agriculture). Downstream of the central conceit of stories, but confident and specific nonetheless.
I think the author is making a cute, ironic parallel, and perhaps suggesting that it may have warranted more reflection from Harari.
I recently read Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence" and it's the most speculative and abstract piece I've ever encountered. Seemingly intelligent people can be so shallow and disconnected from reality it's not even funny. He defines his own analytical models sitting on abstract, intangible terms and then carries on with wild speculations and extrapolations, picturing a sci-fi dystopia.
There was a post here the other day titled “A blog post is a long and complex search query to find people”. [0]
Well, perhaps a book is a long and complex motivation letter to get public speaking engagements and a career promotion.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38137377