Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

We can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, 'What exactly is so sacred here?

Facebook AI can not only identify 'meaningful communities', but also 'strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer together'.

Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease and fatigue than men.

It is one thing to continue smoking despite general statistics that connect smoking with lung cancer. It is a very different thing to continue smoking despite a concrete warning from a biometric sensor that has just detected seventeen cancerous cells in your upper left lung. And if you are willing to defy the sensor, what will you do when the sensor forwards the warning to your insurance agency, your manager, and your mother?

most importantly, this prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. What's the point of making predictions if they cannot change anything?

Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, and Sapiens could develop tighter and more sophisticated types of cooperation.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfed and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?

Tesla will produce two models of the self-driving car: the Tesla Altruist and the Tesla Egoist. In an emergency, the Altruist sacrifices its owner to the greater good, whereas the Egoist does everything in its power to save its owner, even if it means killing the two kids.

Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.

This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things—for example, about the sources of your own power—that will anger allies,

The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least six different species of man. It's

Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless, of course, we are willing to admit that we usually follow the lead of the bad guys.

In the minds of the illiterate peasants, who did not speak Latin, "Hoc est corpus!" got garbled into "Hocus-pocus!" Thus was born the powerful spell that can transform a frog into a prince and a pumpkin into a carriage.6

Above all, if we want to combat terrorism effectively, we must realize that nothing the terrorists do can defeat us. We are the only ones who can defeat ourselves, if we overreact in a misguided way to their provocations.

Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience. In the following chapters we will see time and again how a dramatic increase in the collective power and ostensible success of our species went hand in hand with much individual suffering.

Una de las pocas leyes rigurosas de la historia es que los lujos tienden a convertirse en necesidades y a generar nuevas obligaciones.

How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is biology enables, culture forbids. Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It's culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others.

Turing knew from personal experience that it didn't matter who you really were – it mattered only what others thought about you. According to Turing, in the future computers would be just like gay men in the 1950s. It won't matter whether computers will actually be conscious or not. It will matter only what people think about it. The

If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.

For millions upon millions of years, feelings were the best algorithms in the world. Hence in the days of Confucius, of Muhammad or of Stalin, people should have listened to their feelings rather than to the teachings of Confucianism, Islam or communism. Yet

Writing was born as the maidservant of human consciousness, but is increasingly becoming its master. Our computers have trouble understanding how Homo sapiens talks, feels and dreams. So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel and dream in the language of numbers, which can be understood by computers. And

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myth.

American generals told President Harry S. Truman that an invasion of Japan would cost the lives of a million American soldiers and would extend the war well into 1946. Truman decided to use the new bomb. Two weeks and two atom bombs later, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the war was over.