Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 4

Let's review: There were three revolutions: cognitive, agricultural, scientific.

Part 4: The Scientific Revolution

Chap 14: The Discovery of Ignorance

Our ancestors put a great deal of time and effort into trying to discover the rules that govern the natural world. But modern science differs from all previous traditions of knowledge in three critical ways:

1. The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science... assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things that we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge.

2. The centrality of observation and mathematics. Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge. It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive theories. 

3. The acquisition of new powers. Modern science is not content with creating theories. It uses these theories in order to acquire new powers, and in particular to develop new technologies.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 3

Part 3: The Unification of Humankind

Chap 9: The Arrow of History

Cultures are giant memeplexes, but since the memeplex could have memes that don't play well together, they could compete and struggle, and this causes a culture to change.

For example, in medieval Europe, Christianity advocated humility and meekness, but the nobles also valued glory and honour and fame and stuff. To reconcile these contradictions, they went on crusades and stuff trying to make a compromise, and culture changed as a result.

Western politics after the French Revolution is based on equality and freedom, but they don't play well together. To be equal, the better-off are forced to help the worse-off, that is, to infringe on the freedom of the better-off.

discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.

The tendency of history is that cultures merge and memeplexes get more universal. There are three ways:

1. Economically, by universal use of money.
2. Politically, by imperialism.
3. Religiously, by universal religions.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 1

Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution

Chap 1: An Animal of No Significance

In this book, "humans" denote all creatures in the homo genus. The modern human, Homo Sapiens, are called "Sapiens" in particular.

2 million years ago, humans started having more brain power, but they were still in the middle of the food chain. 100k years ago, Sapiens appeared and they rose to the top of the food chain.

There used to be many species of humans, but only Sapiens remain now. The others got killed off or outbred. There are two theories: Interbreed (the humans interbred and merged into one species) and Replacement (Sapiens outcompeted the other humans who went extinct).

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 2

Part 2: The Agricultural Revolution

Chap. 5: History's Biggest Fraud

At Year 9000BC, humans started farming. The main farming creatures were under human control before 3500BC. 90% of modern human calories come from species domesticated during that time. Modern human diet is ancient.

Farmers were on average worse off: they got sick from backbreaking (literally) labor, they suffered malnutrition from the monotonic diet, they were far more vulnerable to famines, bad health from bad diet, diseases from crowdedness, violence from defending their farmlands against other farming communities (unlike hunter-gatherers, they couldn't just run away, since they need their land and granaries to live).

Humans started farming from a series of small "improvements" that end up trapping them into a worse life. A bit more productivity -> a bit more to eat -> a bit more people -> a bit less to eat -> etc. 

It's like how emails made people more anxious, and productivity gains made people work more. Perspective makes people never satisfied.

Farmers suffered, but farming communities gained power and conquered the world by sheer population density. 

Farm animals suffered even more greatly, even though after domestication, they spread all over the world and can be considered "successful", for most individuals, their domestication was a disaster. 

What makes a species successful can be completely unrelated to what makes an individual's life good.