Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In the end external reality matches their bureaucratic fantasies, but only because they forced reality to do so.

Today, the global average is only 1.5 per cent, taking war and crime together. During the twentieth century, only 5 per cent of human deaths resulted from human violence – and this in a century that saw the bloodiest wars

Whereas social and political systems previously endured for centuries, today every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place.

SEVENTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO, HOMO sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem.

Sin embargo, el crecimiento económico no salvará al ecosistema global; justo lo contrario, porque es la causa de la crisis ecológica. Y el crecimiento económico no resolverá la disrupción tecnológica: esta se afirma en la invención de tecnologías cada vez más disruptivas.

Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions. Ever since the Stone Age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives. Indeed, Homo sapiens conquered this planet thanks above all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions.

Esta es la mejor razón para aprender historia: no para predecir el futuro, sino para desprendernos del pasado e imaginar destinos alternativos. Desde luego, esto no supone la libertad total: no podemos evitar estar moldeados por el pasado. Pero algo de libertad es mejor que ninguna.

What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This

??levsizli?e kar?? mücadele sömürüye kar?? mücadeleden çok daha zordur.

An objective phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs. Radioactivity, for example, is not a myth. Radioactive emissions occurred long before people discovered them, and they are dangerous even when people do not believe in them.

que nadie imaginaba ni deseaba.

Russia has a population of 150 million people and a GDP of $4 trillion. In both population and production it is dwarfed by the United States (325 million people and a $19 trillion GDP) and the European Union (500 million people and a $21 trillion GDP).6 Together, the United States and the European Union have five times more people than Russia, and ten times more dollars.

Such questionnaires are used in order to correlate happiness with various objective factors. One

The second answer is that we just need more patience – paradise, the capitalists promise, is right around the corner. True, mistakes have been made, such as the Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of the European working class. But we have learned our lesson, and if we just wait a little longer and allow the pie to grow a little bigger, everybody will receive a fatter slice.

La maggior parte dei mammiferi escono dal grembo come la terracotta smaltata esce dal forno – ogni tentativo di rimodellarla manderebbe tutto in frantumi. Gli umani escono dal grembo come la pasta di vetro dalla fornace. Possono essere rigirati, stirati e modellati con un sorprendente grado di libertà.

Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.

A consistência é o parque de diversões das mentes entorpecidas.

when a landlord, a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs to maintain his own family, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants, in order to further increase his profits. The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows that an increase in the profits of private entrepreneurs is the basis for the increase in collective wealth and prosperity.

The more we know, the less we can predict

For thousands of years the answer to this question remained unchanged. The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list.

Like a child thinking that his parents are fighting because of him, the monotheist is convinced that the Persians are fighting the Babylonians because of him.

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation. (page 36)

O bien uno cree en un Dios único y omnipotente o bien cree en dos poderes opuestos, ninguno de ellos omnipotente. Aún así los humanos poseen una maravillosa capacidad para creer en contradicciones.

The second cognitive revolution, dreamed up by techno-humanists, might do the same to us, producing human cogs who communicate and process data far more effectively than ever before, but who can hardly pay attention, dream or doubt. For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees. In the future, we may become oversized ants.