Summary

Yuval Harari guides us through the cognitive, agricultural, and scientific revolutions in anthropological history as a lens through which to analyze humanity and culture. The cognitive revolution introduces social constructs and imagined realities. The agricultural revolution is “history’s biggest fraud” as we get caught in the luxury trap with an emphasis on the development of shared order, norms, and values through religion and government. The scientific revolution introduces science, capitalism, ballooning energy consumption, specialization, and prolonged peace. Finally, Harari touches on the existential question of wholistic human happiness and our trouble in uncovering the truth in what makes us happy and fulfilled.

Key Takeaways

• Myths / abstractions / Imagined realities are mankind’s greatest feat
  • Religion is shared myth
• Cognitive revolution: (70k YA) formation of social constructs, imagined realities
• Agricultural revolution: (12k YA) “history’s biggest fraud”, the luxury trap, artificial selection
  • Historical trend towards unity, increasing complexity of imagined hierarchies, more global problems
  • Religion: founded on 1) a superhuman natural order 2) binding values and norms
  • Governments as religions
• Scientific revolution: (500 YA) science, capitalism, energy consumption, specialization, peace
  • Capitalist revolution: trust-based, future will be better than present, positive-sum game, hierarchical
• Happiness isn’t intuitively based on current status but rather expectations, comparison*
• Main question: do people know the truth about what makes them happy, fulfilled?

Notes

1: The cognitive revolution

1: The animal of no significance

• Physics → chemistry → biology → history
• Cognitive revolution (70k years ago)
• Agricultural revolution (12k YA)
• Scientific revolution (500 YA)
• Brain: 2-3% body weight but 25% energy
• Fire 300k YA:
  • Shot us to top of food chain (force multiplier)
  • Improved food + health + nutrition
  • Source of light to overcome natural schedule

2: The tree of knowledge

• Studies support cognitive revolution arising from need to gossip - communicate about others rather than environment
• Max size of social, gossiping, hierarchy-less group ~150 members
• Most unique feature of Sapiens is speaking in abstract terms (eg. God, LLCs)
• Social construct / imagined reality: ↑

3: A day in the life of Adana and Eve

• Early Sapiens had tribes under 500, highly nomadic, all with very distinct cultures
• Dogs + humans have co-evolved for 15k+ Y
• Almost certainly religious aspects to pre-agricultural society but no artifacts / physical possessions
• Unsure of role of human violence in pre-agricultural age: evidence both ways

4: The flood

• Humans began travel across water 45k years ago, notably inhabiting Australia
• Caused first mass extinction events then
• Currently part of 3rd mass extinction

2: The agricultural revolution

5: History’s biggest fraud

• Started in 9k-8k BC in southeast Turkey
• Agrarian societies sprung up independently
• Agricultural societies not necessarily better - worse diet and more hours spent laboring
• “History’s biggest fraud”: ↑
• “We did not domesticate wheat, it domesticated us” due to labor, proliferation
• Permanent nature of ↑ societies led to more strife over territory, conflict, deaths
• Not until social constructs like government did conflict subside (30% → 1.5% now)
• Did allow for ↑ food / territory, pop growth
• The luxury trap: Luxury becomes norm, only path to ascendance is working harder
• Start of artificial selection: domestication_ _

6: Building pyramids

• Property became increasingly important
• Occupied 2% most habitable of land
• Hammurabi’s code: First strict law set - value, punishment attributions
• Imagined reality is now woven in to material of real world
• Increased privacy / possession of modern life leads to valuing intrinsic self worth over extrinsic factors like social class

7: Memory overload

• Unique: collective knowledge of society far supersedes individual brain capacity
• First texts of 5k YA exclusively for record keeping - no philosophy etc.
• Sumerian script is a partial script: specific to usage (eg. math notation) (vs. full script)
• Religion / bible etc. started entirely orally
• Cataloging of 4k YA first deviation from brain’s natural processing (free association)

8: There is no justice in history

• Societies based on imagined hierarchies
• Black slaves justified as being less intelligent, “pollution”
• CRT: Self-reinforcing stereotypes
• Women seen as piece of property
• Rights have been improving

9: The arrow of history

• Cognitive dissonance: holding conflicting thoughts or viewpoints
• Historical tendency towards unity, coalescing cultures into complex mega “”

10: The scent of money

• Money used to connect experts
• Money has the advantage of abstraction, permanence, fungibility
• Money as a system of mutual trust
• Value of asset across trade partners roughly equalizes due to margin traders

11: Imperial vision

• Empires: can expand without changing rules, culture much (high diversity)
• Empires have been the dominant form of rule over past 2.5k years
• Empires often see themselves as ruling for benefit of the conquered
• Human nature of xenophobia (us vs them)
• “Authentic” cultures don’t exist - just layers
• Can’t split history into good and bad guys unless we admit we mostly follow bad guys
• Nationalism is fading, more global appeal
• More global problems (eg. Climate change)

12: The law of religion

• 3 great unifiers: money, empires, religion
• Religion: following founded on
  • a superhuman natural order
  • binding values and norms
• Must be:
  • Universal: applies to all
  • Missionary: must spread the word
• Local animism → polytheism → monotheism
• Polytheistic religions more accepting, less violent than monotheistic
• Dualism: belief in 2 opposing forces
• Zoroastrianism:
• Buddhism: stop all craving mental patterns through understanding things as they are
• ↑ train mind to experience now vs want to experience
• Monetary / gov’t ideologies can be thought of as religions
• USA: nationalist, free market capitalist, liberal humanist (inalienable rights)
• Theist vs humanist: god vs human worship
• Evolutionary humanism (Naziism): Protect evolution of human race (Aryans)

13: The success of success

• Hindsight bias: was our current path really the inevitable / most likely path?
• Black swan events happen often
• Chaos systems
  • Level 1: static but hard to predict
  • Level 2: outcome changes based on prediction
• Memetic vs post-modernism: latter more accepted but similar sentiment
• Game theory: eg. Arms race
• Was the scientific revolution inevitable?

3: The scientific revolution

14: The discovery of ignorance

• 500 years: 14x population, 240x GDP / productivity ($60T), 115x calories / energy
• Discovered association between scientific research and prosperity
• Pre-science based on ignorance: if Bible doesn’t say it’s not necessary to know
• Birth of statistics 200 years ago (Bernoulli)
• The Gilgamesh project: immortality
• Money / power, not scientists, dictate scientific research agenda

15: The marriage of science and empire

• Colonialism’s greatest contributions: science and capitalism
• Easy to argue imperialism either good or bad
• Modern day racism is more about culture than biology (eg. Aryans)

16: The capitalist creed

• Capitalism is founded on trust
• Capitalist revolution: belief that future will be better than present, positive-sum game
• ↑ makes loaning more desirable
• “Growing the pie”: ↑ global productivity
• Dutch merchants overtook Spain king system by increasing trust (loans, judges)
• Stock exchange started in 1600s for companies to finance exploration etc.
• No true “free markets”, gov’t enforces trust

17: The wheels of industry

• New sources of energy unlocked materials
• ↑ raw mined (iron) + manufactured (plastic)
• 90% → 2% of population in agriculture
• Consumerism is only a recent phenomenon

18: A permanent revolution

• 300x human, 700x farm animals, 100x all other “large wild animals”
• Time is more relevant than ever (eg. year)
• Specialization (into sub-components)
• More individualistic, less community driven (going against evolution)
• Countries have imagined histories as nationalism is a product of industrialization
• Modern day: more likely to kill yourself (suicide) than by others (war, violence)
• Peace is more profitable than war now

19: Happily ever after

• Happiness isn’t intuitively based on current status but rather expectations
• ↑ wealth, illness etc. not really important
• Evolved to hover around set point of happiness, quickly reverting to mean
• Different people have different set points
• Main question: do people know the truth about what makes them happy, fulfilled?
• Still not much research into this topic

20: The end of Homo Sapiens

• Intelligent design of organisms in past 10k years follows 4b years of evolution
• Should we resurrect old species / humans?
• Should we modify our own gene line?