Yuval Noah Harari’s book – A Brief History of Humanity

I haven’t read his entire book. From what I have read, I have seen that it contains quite a few errors and a lot of unfounded assumptions, assumptions of what is wanted, and so on.
I remember a review article by Tomer Persico that presents some of these points:

https://tomerpersico.com/2012/11/26/harari_brief_history
And about the sequel:
https://tomerpersico.com/2015/05/10/harari_critique
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Young Rabbi:
There is an excellent review article by Nadav Shnerb: http://woland.ph.biu.ac.il/?download=1325
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Rabbi:
Really excellent (and not just because we’re friends). There are a few minor inaccuracies, but this is not the place.
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iodine:
I read the book in question carefully and even enjoyed it quite a bit, and I must admit that I did not connect with Nadav Shnerb’s blatant criticism of the book. Noah Harari’s choice of words is indeed defiant, and the use of an imaginary word does indeed arouse antagonism, but in my understanding this is exactly what Noah Harari wanted to do. Beyond making the book interesting and readable, I think the main message from the words and statements is that “there is no rational or moral social order, but only one that stems from myth and charisma.” This statement does not necessarily preach anarchism or nihilism of one kind or another, but rather the fragility of our social orders on the one hand and the criticality that we are required to approach them on the other. An example that comes to mind is that the money we use is also based (starting in 1970-1971, when Nixon, in order to finance the war in Vietnam, abolished the dollar’s peg to the US gold reserves) solely on people’s belief in its value and is not anchored in anything material or physical. Both on the issue of fragility and on the issue of the required criticality, the fascism that swept Europe in the early 20th century and gave birth to Nazism saw little internal criticism. One can, of course, take this in the direction of anarchism and perhaps self-supremacy, as reflected in the teachings of Nietzsche and Weber, but I don’t remember finding this in the book, and I understand that Nadav’s approach stems from this implied concern, as well as perhaps from a genuine criticism that results from this of “world orders” and the weight of tradition and custom in the conduct of the world. Personally, I prefer as an approach the expression of doubt, the study and adoption of choice and criticism, rather than the assumption that what has been valid and worked so far Indeed, it is true and relevant even now. In matters of worldviews, although I connect with Nietzsche at the level of the philosophical idea, in my understanding, a human society by definition requires compromises in order to make itself possible, and hence this idea cannot be realized and is even forbidden to be an aspiration, because in its formation it will cut off society as a society, and yet in itself and in the view of the local individual optimum it is indeed a muscle. In the context of Nadav’s criticism, I refer you to Michael Avraham’s recent publication on the subject of sacred lies, which, as he puts it, serve as a cover to prevent discussion and true criticism of things. I really liked his interpretation of the word halakhah, in which the fact that we are dealing with sacred lies and a myth from ancient times obliges us to address and be honest and courageously critical, and not necessarily to automatically internalize them. In my opinion, in “A Brief History of Humanity,” Harari conveyed the same message precisely and elegantly.
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Rabbi:
I disagree. Harari’s view is not critical or skeptical. It is the complete opposite of critical and skeptical. Harari firmly establishes (completely unfounded) positions on a number of issues, and links his normative assertions to historical facts. Some of his facts are speculation, but even if they were true, the norms do not arise or are derived from them (as Nadav wrote). Harari’s book is seriously flawed by the naturalistic fallacy (of deriving norms from facts), and gives the impression that he is not at all aware of this fallacy. His entire book is nothing but one big naturalistic fallacy. Furthermore, he builds causal theses on factual correlations, and in doing so he fails in another well-known statistical fallacy, see my comments here (what I mentioned in relation to another interesting post ).

If these are indeed deterministic and materialistic processes, as he says, and everything is the result of arbitrary constructions, then his position is also such and therefore not worth considering. And in general, if man is not allowed to be separated from the cat or the stone, then what is the place for criticism and self-examination? These concepts are empty of content in the picture he presents. They are also the result of blind and arbitrary mechanisms. In such a world, there is no morality and morality is impossible. Therefore, Harari’s moral criticisms (such as against carnivores and many others) seem meaningless to me in his picture. We do what our nature and various constructions cause us to do. It is true that Harari’s nature causes him to criticize, but by nature his criticism does not really interest me. You understand that such discourse loses its meaning, and becomes mechanical lip service.
I think Harari’s book is riddled with a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings of this and other types. It is well written and very interesting, but in terms of content it is clearly contradictory, and especially very, very unskilled in philosophy. Persico, to whom I also linked, also emphasized some of this.
See my comments on another article by Harari here .
A distinction must be made between provocations that are meant to provoke and present criticism in a tangible and thought-provoking way, and provocations for the sake of it. His book is clearly of the latter type. It seems to me that if it is thought-provoking (and it is), it is really not intentional.

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Rabbi:

Attached is an excellent (albeit partial) article on his sequel (“The History of Tomorrow”). The article has some minor inaccuracies, but it makes several important points. It also links to the post on intelligence . What this again teaches is that even being a hysterical bestseller is not necessarily a guarantee that it contains tasteful things, and certainly not that all or even most of its words are tasteful things.