Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

Hammurabi's Code was based on the premise that if the king's subjects all accepted their positions in the hierarchy and acted accordingly, the empire's million inhabitants would be able to cooperate effectively. Their society could then produce enough food for its members, distribute it efficiently, protect itself against its enemies, and expand its territory so as to acquire more wealth and better security.

The subjective is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of a single individual. It disappears or changes if that particular individual changes his or her beliefs.

principal tenet is that economic growth is the

La búsqueda de la humanidad de una vida más fácil liberó inmensas fuerzas de cambio que transformaron el mundo de maneras

Según Harris, islamistas, liberales y nacionalistas no tienen ningún conflicto ético: tienen una discrepancia fáctica acerca de cómo alcanzar su objetivo común.

Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has molded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner or later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations.

Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln's principle that "you can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Assim, o monoteísmo explica a ordem, mas não o mal. O dualismo oferece uma explicação para o mal, mas não para a questão da ordem. Há uma maneira lógica de resolver essa charada: afirmar que há um único Deus onipotente que criou o universo inteiro – e Ele é um Deus maligno. Mas ninguém, em toda a história, teve estômago para tal crença.

modernity needs to work hard to ensure that neither human individuals nor the human collective will try to retire from the race, despite all the tension and chaos it creates.

Después de haber reducido la mortalidad debida al hambre, la enfermedad y la violencia, ahora nos dedicaremos a superar la vejez e incluso la muerte. Después de haber salvado a la gente de la miseria abyecta, ahora nos dedicaremos a hacerla totalmente feliz. Y después de haber elevado a la humanidad por encima del nivel bestial de las luchas por la supervivencia, ahora nos dedicaremos a ascender a los humanos a dioses, y a transformar Homo sapiens en Homo Deus.

On December 7, 2017, a critical milestone was reached, not when a computer defeated a human at chess—that's old news—but when Google's AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program.

We are conquering you for your own benefit,' said the Persians.

A globalização tornou os habitantes de um país extremamente dependentes de mercados situados noutros pontos do mundo, mas a automatização pode desfazer grandes porções desta rede comercial, com consequências desastrosas para os elos mais fracos.

The mental renovations of the first Cognitive Revolution gave Homo sapiens access to the intersubjective realm and turned them into the rulers of the planet; a second cognitive revolution might give Homo deus access to unimaginable new realms and make them lords of the galaxy.

the world manipulates you, in the end you realize that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.

Mother Nature does not mind if men are sexually attracted to one another. It's only human mothers steeped in particular cultures who make a scene if their son has a fling with the boy next door. The mother's tantrums are not a biological imperative. A significant number of human cultures have viewed homosexual relations as not only legitimate but even socially constructive,..

It didn't disturb the Sumerians that their script was ill-suited for writing poetry. They didn't invent it in order to copy spoken language, but rather to do things that spoken language failed at.

Un gran número de extraños pueden cooperar con éxito si creen en mitos comunes. Cualquier cooperación humana a gran escala (ya sea un Estado moderno, una iglesia medieval, una ciudad antigua o una tribu arcaica) está establecida sobre mitos comunes que solo existen en la imaginación colectiva de la gente.

The big beasts of Africa and Asia learned to avoid humans, so when the new mega-predator – Homo sapiens – appeared on the Afro-Asian scene, the large animals already knew to keep their distance from creatures that looked like it. In contrast, the Australian giants had no time to learn to run away. Humans don't come across as particularly dangerous.

Yet can the economic pie grow indefinitely? Every pie requires raw material and energy. Prophets of doom warn that sooner or later Homo Sapiens will exhaust the raw materials and energy of planet Earth. And what will happen then?

Cooperation' sounds very altruistic, but is not always voluntary and seldom egalitarian. Most human cooperation networks have been geared towards oppression and exploitation. The peasants paid for the burgeoning cooperation networks with their precious food surpluses, despairing when the tax collector wiped out an entire year of hard labour with a single stroke of his imperial pen. The famed Roman amphitheatres were often built by slaves so that wealthy and idle Romans

La cultura tiende a aducir que solo prohíbe lo que es antinatural. Pero, desde una perspectiva biológica, nada es antinatural. Todo lo que es posible es, por definición, también natural. Un comportamiento verdaderamente antinatural, que vaya contra las leyes de la naturaleza, simplemente no puede existir, de modo que no necesitaría prohibición.

El consumismo nos dice que para ser felices hemos de consumir tantos productos y servicios como sea posible.

All wealth and power might be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, while most people will suffer not from exploitation, but from something far worse - irrelevance.