Sapiens: A Breif History of Humankind

[Anonymous No.18084706]

Is it a good book? Why does it have so many negative reviews?

[Anonymous No.18084712]

>>18084706
It was written by the most stereotypical and archetypical Jew you could possibly imagine.

[Anonymous No.18084716]

>>18084706
Just like Diamond is pop-science propaganda and a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.18084719]

>>18084706
It must be good, I see it behind so many people in videos.

[Anonymous No.18084722]

>>18084706
this goes to /basedence/

[Anonymous No.18084725]

The book glosses over the most interesting bits, there is no mention of God or magic or anything happy. It's basically the atheist Bible, incredibly simplified and boring, like atheistic beliefs.

[Anonymous No.18085027]

Reddit: The Book

[Anonymous No.18085035]

>>18084706
If you want to apologize for killing all big animals and neanderthals by prehistoric people then it's a good book.

[Anonymous No.18085051]

>>18084706
The book does introduce some ideas, that to the average well-adjusted person, might seem extreme on either aspect on the political left-right spectrum. Thus, it can be eye-opening to many who haven't even heard of these ideas or studied history before.

Then again, the book has huge generalizations. He's a worshipper at the holy altar of Science. Add to that his frequent mockery of Christianity and Europeans and it's no wonder this board hates him.

[Anonymous No.18085067]

>>18085051
>his frequent mockery of Christianity and Europeans
But when we mock Jews then we're bad bad nazis

[Anonymous No.18085081]

>>18084706
No, it's not a good book.

[Anonymous No.18085096]

If not for this book, then which one is better?

[Anonymous No.18085131]

>>18085051
>Add to that his frequent mockery of Europeans
Such as?

[Anonymous No.18085132]

>>18085096
Human Accomplishment by Murray

[Anonymous No.18085164]

>>18084706
it is only good if you are in middle school.

[Anonymous No.18085508]

>>18084706
There are roughly two types of criticisms about this book:

1. The juvenile poltard screeching about muh joos and progressive ideas. It's partly true, the book does contain some PC-reddit pandering in various parts. But not everywhere and if you read between the lines you can see that the book has some redpills too, which go against the progressive narratives.

2. The nitpicking about historic facts. Again, there's some truth to that, the book is a bit creative with interpreting history. But you need to understand that this is not a history textbook, it's a pop-intellectual book. Treat it as such and you won't need to sperg about this or that detail. Regardless of the historic accuracy, it's a book that makes people think. If you have a PhD in history and anthropology then this book is not for you, because you should already be familiar with these narratives. But for the other 99.99% of the population, it's a interesting read.

[Anonymous No.18085527]

>>18085051
This is pretty close to my views. He's pretty good at laying out entry-level anthropology for people unfamiliar with it, but he throws in a bunch of unnecessary political takes that are little more than nonsequitur soapboxes.

[Anonymous No.18085571]

>>18085508
It's not an interesting read, it's platitudes remixed and presented in most pompous way to make readers feel smart and knowledgeable. You don't have to have special education to see that author is a phony as a thinker, you only need to read good books.

[Anonymous No.18085602]

>>18085508
>read missinterpreted trash because you wouldn't know better either way
If anything that's worse than not knowing anything about the topics at hand. Just like with G,G&S all those brainlets will just spout their delusions because their favorite popsci jew said so. They are getting shielded from actual reality to a degree where those people will actively deny actual anthopological data.

Popsci was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.18085665]

>>18085602
>If anything that's worse than not knowing anything about the topics at hand.

Not at all. "Not knowing anything" for most people simply means accepting the current mainstream narratives of history—which, if you're a poltard, must think are pretty pozzed.

Besides, history is not physics. You can't really know it like you know hard science, it's always up to interpretation.
Harari offers his interpretation, which makes people think. If you claim that he just rehashes the pozzed PC talking points, you're lying or didn't read the book.

[Anonymous No.18085710]

>>18085571
Is the author only a phony thinker because of his progressives and liberal ideas? Would the book automatically be better if it were written in a conservatives context?

[Anonymous No.18085723]

>>18085665
So the choice is between poozed and soft poozed but with full disregard of future learning? And while anthropology isn't math, you can absolutely make factual statements (for example on nutritional standards due to bone analysis).

Popscience is just giving stupid people an ego to flaunt their stupidity and think they have a good and wise classical education.

[Anonymous No.18085734]

>>18085710
A conservative would just refer you to the holy Bible

[Anonymous No.18085739]

>>18085710
I haven't even started talking about the ideas. The hopelessly surface level is enough a sign.

[Anonymous No.18086242]

>>18084725
>incredibly simplified and boring, like atheistic beliefs.

Lmao. What are atheistic believes according to you?
The meaning of atheism is just rejecting religion. Simple as that. It isn't any specific set of beliefs or any specific group of people.

>>18085734

Why are you assuming that? He may as well refer to you to holy Koran

[Anonymous No.18086303]

>>18086242
> It isn't any specific set of beliefs or any specific group of people.
Imagine being so epistemologically short-sighted.

[Anonymous No.18086421]

>>18086242
>it isn't a specific set of beliefs or any specific group of people

This is evidently not true. Yes, in individual cases I'm sure there's atheists who do not do X thing that i attribute to the general community but of course they are the exceptions, aberrations even. Most atheists have some very simplified views on the world, if you remove religion that is if you completely disregard it, ironically enough, you remove all complexity from the world since our investigation of the universe is still in incredibly early stages. We are too preoccupied with war, famines, diseases and disagreement to in the foreseeable future answer anything at all with complete certainty. Tell me anon, physics in its simplest form is a set of laws right? Laws that govern the universe? How did these laws come about? Do we perhaps have laws that explain these more immediate laws or maybe someone created these laws? Which is more likely? If the former, you say, then what created those preceding laws? Even more laws? Unless there is a creator or God, the regression is infinite and illog
illogical or maybe logic is bullshit. How did we even come about logic? What's human conscience? Why can neuroscience not explain consciousness? Why is the world just so perfectly designed? Even if evolution is true and it probably is, how does evolution stack up against the problem of induction? All evidence points to evolution being a thing but after all, it's still a theory, a verifiable theory, you verify it of course by noticing it happening in the present but what makes you sure it happened in the past? What is the past? What is time really? Motion? What if motion can be frozen permanently? The decay might stop, then would time stop being a thing then? See, there are questions, infinite questions that cannot be answered. Of course I'm not asking you to go "Aha a man in the sky created it!" but do not be so arrogant as to assume everything we see is the only "correct" thing. We have senses, our senses can only observe a limited part of the world. Our brains are only so intelligent. Has it occurred to you that maybe, perhaps, we cannot really even comprehend the true nature of a creator? Books like Harari's discourage critical thinking in favor of a dogma that is embarrassingly enough called "science", the investigation of the world dismisses investigation about things they don't like. Are you a jew? Because why else would you subscribe to a dogma that refutes itself?

[Anonymous No.18087039]

>>18086421
I disagree strongly with this post.
>Most atheists have some very simplified views on the world, if you remove religion that is if you completely disregard it, ironically enough, you remove all complexity from the world since our investigation of the universe is still in incredibly early stages
That's funny because from what I observed (and I came from the country which is mostly catholic and there is religion at school etc) I can say that most of catholics have very simplified view of the world. They are raised as catholics as kids and don't question their own believes. They usually use very simple arguments like "oh if you are not catholic you are not patriotic", "oh how can you have morality without catholicism", "how can you be atheist? your life has no meaning", "you attack the church? you are lefitst anti-patriot". But if you ask them they don't have much knowledge about philosophy, history and teachings of church, the bible etc. Generally they have very vague idea about what they believe in.
>See, there are questions, infinite questions that cannot be answered. Of course I'm not asking you to go "Aha a man in the sky created it!" but do not be so arrogant as to assume everything we see is the only "correct" thing. We have senses, our senses can only observe a limited part of the world. Our brains are only so intelligent. Has it occurred to you that maybe, perhaps, we cannot really even comprehend the true nature of a creator? Books like Harari's discourage critical thinking in favor of a dogma that is embarrassingly enough called "science", the investigation of the world dismisses investigation about things they don't like.
I mean you sort of think in good direction, but you miss the point in my opinion at least. In my eyes the religion is for a lot of people that definite answer to bunch of difficult questions, so the don't need to think about them much. I'm not one of this people who would tell you "science explains everything and proves that god doesn't exist". Actually I started to get into philosophy lately and I think that most of the questions about human existence will remain unknown and we can't say much that is 100% objectively true. But I'm still interested in discovering ideas of different people trying to explain this things, even if I know that I will never know any answers.
Does some god or some form of absolute exists? Maybe. But why have you chosen to be christian and not buddhist, muslim or any other religion that exists in this world? I'm just rejecting one more religion than you, this isn't a big difference. I know Christianity quite well since I was raised in it, going to church for many years etc. etc. and I still have zero reasons to believe that this is true., especially considering the history, contradictions in the Bible etc. But I know that people have perfectly good reasons to INVENT religion and it just makes a lot more sense to me.

[Anonymous No.18087113]

>>18086421 >>18086303

And I find it very funny when people assume a lot of things about atheists and talk about "atheist nihilism" and things like that. Guess what I still can have values and believes (most people would call me quite conservative). I just don't feel the need to pretend that I have some unimaginable divine power that makes me objectively correct. Also it's not like there were hundreds of years of non-christian philosophy that tries to answer the questions about human existence.

[Anonymous No.18087131]

>>18086421
>>18087039
So many words and such weak defenses to both sides of the argument.

[Anonymous No.18087137]

>>18087131

No you are weak

[Anonymous No.18087355]

>>18084706
I haven't read it. but I know from 5 minutes of research that it's not a history book or a history of humankind, it's superficial pop trash with another banal political message about environmentalism and capitalism. The kind of book that you will learn nothing from if you're at all interested in this area because of the superficial treatment of the subject. The kind of book social media whores carry around as a fashion statement. The last one of these pop shit books I almost read was Dominion. Big fucking mistake. These two dimensional writers have no interest in writing real history but use history as a backdrop for their twitter tier political takes.

[Anonymous No.18087394]

>>18086421
>>18087039
>Nuh uh
>Uh huh
>Nuh uh
>Uh huh
Nobody is reading this shit

[Anonymous No.18087472]

>>18087394
Shut up faggot, are you upset those two anons aren't dissing out buzzwords and insults?

[Anonymous No.18087511]

>>18087039
Well anon, i think I sort of lost it halfway there. I think my argument was more for why reading pop science presented as dogma is bad for society and of course the outright rejection of God that leads to a hedonistic culture that's only concerned with "feeling good". Ironically feeling good all the time leads to feeling like shit. Society needs God, he may or may not exist. That's besides the point. Having a sort of ethics and something to hope for, to talk to is incredibly helpful. This doesn't work in practice because people are stupid and churches take power but these pop science progenitors are just as bad and maybe even worse since all they have led to is decline of culture and art. The demystification of the world has practically ruined human beings. Since nothing fantastic can ever exist, the world has lost its magic and charm and the more knowledge you gain, the less happy you become. This might work for you but wait till the generation that's growing up on video games and rap actually reaches adulthood. It will be pretty bad

[Anonymous No.18087514]

>>18084706
The alt righter chuds hate it. I love it and read it every year

[Anonymous No.18087528]

Good thread everyone. I for one was very ignorant about prehistory before I read this book. It got me interested in the subject. i didn't take it as gospel though just as a bit of fun, which I thought it was. It's not a serious, rigorous peer-acclaimed book.
Anyways, any anthrobros want to discuss any specific problems and arguments in Haraarsarai's fluff piece?

[Anonymous No.18087529]

>>18087472
Oh the irony

[Anonymous No.18087778]

>>18087394
>Nobody is reading this shit

I know :) doesn't bother me

[Anonymous No.18087788]

>>18084706
Really pseud shit. Read it if you want to read the advent of man as written by Malcolm gladwell.

[Anonymous No.18087849]

>>18084706
>Is it a good book?
It was decent. It had some good sections about the life of hunter gatherers, Göbekli Tepe, and why European nations discovered and went on to dominate the world. Decently interesting, written for laymen.

This Kurzgesagt video is made over the chapter about hunter gatherers. It gets you a decent idea about the book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGiQaabX3_o

>Why does it have so many negative reviews?
It has a chapter defending imperialism which makes leftists seethe. Considering it is written by an Israeli Jew it is surprisingly based.

[Anonymous No.18087959]

>>18087511
>I think my argument was more for why reading pop science presented as dogma is bad for society
I agree.
>>18087511
>and of course the outright rejection of God that leads to a hedonistic culture that's only concerned with "feeling good". Ironically feeling good all the time leads to feeling like shit. Society needs God, he may or may not exist. That's besides the point. Having a sort of ethics and something to hope for, to talk to is incredibly helpful.
Well I understand this kind of argument and there is some truth to that, but I'm not convinced that it is impossible to build well-functioning society on other foundation other than religion. And like you wrote in your own post, religious societies also have big problems.
>This doesn't work in practice because people are stupid and churches take power but these pop science progenitors are just as bad and maybe even worse since all they have led to is decline of culture and art. The demystification of the world has practically ruined human beings. Since nothing fantastic can ever exist, the world has lost its magic and charm and the more knowledge you gain, the less happy you become. This might work for you but wait till the generation that's growing up on video games and rap actually reaches adulthood. It will be pretty bad
Well I don't understand the leap from pop science to decline of art and culture. Also I don't think that lack of religion is really the only factor that can cause "decline" of society, I think that you miss a lot by looking at world like that. For example think of rapid technological development, rise of big corporations and other things that people call late stage capitalism - maybe people behave like that because it brings profit?

[Anonymous No.18088082]

>>18087959
interestingly, (maybe,) Harrarini posits in his book that large societies cannot exist without religion. i don't know about that other stuff.

[Anonymous No.18088108]

>>18084706
A local bookclub wants to read it.

I might just check it out, but I have no high hopes.

[Anonymous No.18088113]

>>18087959
You know anon, I agree with the last part. It's partly capitalism's fault too I've always said that but this "scientific" attitude does kill or at least erodes tradition and technological advancement takes away skills. As for societies existing without God and religion, I think Japan is a good example. There, the culture binds them. You need some kind of binding force and God is the strongest one. The fear of hell does prevent many people around me from beating up that poor stray dog or killing that cat.

[Anonymous No.18088270]

>>18088113
Well anon I think that I know what attitude you talk about but I wouldn't call it "scientific", because there is nothing wrong with science itself.
And for Japan: religions such as shinto and buddhism exist in Japan. But yes, they have their own culture and tradition which is good, but also many problem exist in Japan: people being overworked to death, depression etc.
>The fear of hell does prevent many people around me from beating up that poor stray dog or killing that cat.
Well, real world experience shows as that both atheists and Christians can be good or bad people.

[Anonymous No.18089402]

>>18084706
His name looks like harakiri