AvonVilla@ramblingreaders.org reviewed Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
A religious tract for self-worshipping tech bros
1 star
Harari says the problems of famine, war and pestilence have been largely solved. How can he not be bothered by climate change and the threat of nuclear war? He deftly taxonomises reality into three forms - objective, subjective and inter-subjective, then fails to apply his specious system to his own dogma. He declares the ideas of techno-fascist Peter Thiel to be worthwhile simply because Thiel is rich. He equates emotions to algorithms, as if a parent's love for their child could be reproduced as a slider in a character creation page in The Sims video game.
These are the ideas of delusional trans-humanists who think they will be able to use their money to turn science fiction ideas into reality and buy immortality.
I give him one star for two reasons: his ideas on inter-subjective reality are actually quite powerful if applied judiciously. Also, there's a killer sentence: the line …
Harari says the problems of famine, war and pestilence have been largely solved. How can he not be bothered by climate change and the threat of nuclear war? He deftly taxonomises reality into three forms - objective, subjective and inter-subjective, then fails to apply his specious system to his own dogma. He declares the ideas of techno-fascist Peter Thiel to be worthwhile simply because Thiel is rich. He equates emotions to algorithms, as if a parent's love for their child could be reproduced as a slider in a character creation page in The Sims video game.
These are the ideas of delusional trans-humanists who think they will be able to use their money to turn science fiction ideas into reality and buy immortality.
I give him one star for two reasons: his ideas on inter-subjective reality are actually quite powerful if applied judiciously. Also, there's a killer sentence: the line about god being dead but believers are having trouble trying to hide the body is an atheistic sick burn. But he then goes on to praise his own religion, Vipassana meditation, which looks suspiciously like an abusive new age cult where I'm from. I might have given him two stars if it weren't for that supreme silliness.
Harari should be wearing the same hair shirt as Francis Fukuyama.
