Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION IS ONE the of the most controversial events in history. Some partisans proclaim that it set humankind on the road to prosperity and progress. Others insist that it led to perdition.

Feelings guide not just voters but their leaders as well.

Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions.

From a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition natural

The most interesting emerging religion is Dataism, which venerates neither gods nor man – it worships data.

All the above-mentioned distinctions – between free persons and slaves, between whites and blacks, between rich and poor – are rooted in fictions. (The hierarchy of men and women will be discussed later.) Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.

Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans, they ended up as the slaves of European masters! Due to these circumstantial factors, the burgeoning new societies of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white Europeans and a subjugated caste of black Africans.

Throughout this book we have repeatedly asked what makes humans superior to other animals. Dataism has a new and simple answer. In themselves, human experiences are not superior at all to the experiences of wolves or elephants. One bit of data is as good as another. However, a human can write a poem about his experience and post it online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes his bits count. A wolf cannot do this.

When considering automation, therefore, it is wrong to compare the abilities of a single human driver to that of a single self-driving car, or of a single human doctor to that of a single AI doctor. Rather, we should compare the abilities of a collection of human individuals to the abilities of an integrated network.

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff like healthcare and pollution.

The fact is, it's not a deception, but rather a tribute to the amazing abilities of the human imagination. What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.

Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including the conditions of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and so even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.

In the early twenty-first century, politics is consequently bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration. It manages the country, but it no longer leads it.

To satisfy both optimists and pessimists, we may conclude by saying that we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction.

individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network

Many neo-liberal economists and political scientists argue that it is best to leave all the important decisions in the hands of the free market. They thereby give politicians the perfect excuse for inaction and ignorance, which are reinterpreted as profound wisdom. Politicians find it convenient to believe that the reason they don't understand the world is that they need not understand it.

Yet since these triumphs actually result from mass cooperation, it is far less clear why they should make us revere individual humans.

In the end, it's a simple empirical matter: if the algorithms indeed understand what's happening within you better than you understand it, authority will shift to them.

In the long run, algorithms may learn how to compose entire tunes, playing on human emotions as if they were a piano keyboard. Using your biometric data, the algorithms could even produce personalized melodies, which you alone in the entire universe would appreciate.

as people live longer and have fewer children, care of the elderly will probably be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the human labor market.

Generation für Generation beteten die Menschen zu jedem Gott, jedem Engel, jedem Heiligen, und sie erfanden unzählige Instrumente, Institutionen und Gesellschaftssysteme – trotzdem starben sie weiter millionenfach an Hunger, Epidemien und Gewalt. Viele Denker und Propheten kamen zu dem Schluss, Hunger, Krankheit und Krieg seien eben fester Bestandteil von Gottes kosmischem Plan oder unserer unvollkommenen Natur, und erst am Ende aller Zeit würden wir davon befreit werden.

If there is no cosmic plan, and we are not committed to any divine or natural laws, what prevents social collapse? How come you can travel for thousands of miles, from Amsterdam to Bucharest or from New Orleans to Montreal, without being kidnapped by slave-traders, ambushed by outlaws or killed by feuding tribes? Look

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism?

A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.