================== First Attempt ==================
Discretion: I only made my way through the first 5 chapters of this book.
As a recent best seller that covers a topic that everyone is peculiar about at some point and even made it to the Gates Notes, I was really looking forward to reading this book.
While it starts out strong and invigorating, it quickly divulges into a series of factoids that are difficult to comprehend. The story of humankind is complicated and non-linear. There were a lot of names, dates and controversies that were jumbled in my head. I found that there was very little knowledge I was retaining, and given how many books I want to read, this one simply wasn’t worth the time investment…
Maybe I’ll pick this up again at some point the future, but probably not.
================== Second Attempt ==================
I first tried to read this book about a year ago and stopped about 20% through since it felt like a constant stream of facts that I couldnât retain. My second attempt at listening to it, after having reading Homo Deus, was significantly better. Though I like the ideas presented in Homo Deus much more, this book sets the context and acts as a prequel that provides all the necessary background to understand how humanity got to where we are.
As a much more controversial and opinionated piece, Homo Deus appeals to me much more. This book simply covers the evolution of human behaviors and interactions since the day that we were apes, through to where we are today. There is no debate or argument. It is a simple sequential presentation of interesting facts. Anyone reading this will definitely encounter a lot of repeated knowledge because it covers everything from religion, to science, economics, politics and history. However, Iâm also sure that there are at least a few tidbits that anyone can take away.
=== Cool notes/facts I took away from the book ===
Animal facts
All felines shared an ancestors 25,000 years go
Mules are the result of horses and donkeys interbreeding, and are always infertile
Saber tooth tiger, camels, sloths and a plethora of other animals were native to America before humans inhabited it
Ancient human facts
Human braise use 35% of our resting energy, whereas ape brains only use 8%
The reason humans are born âprematurelyâ by animal standards and require care for many years after birth is due to the fact that weâre upright. Being upright causes our hips to narrow, so a child must be born before theyâre fully âdevelopedâ.
Scientists didnât know whether Sapiens killed or merged with Neanderthals until 2010. Until in 2010, after a neanderthal DNA was sequence, did we discover that the average human shares 1%-4% of their DNA with them. This put the longstanding debate to a halt.
Human nature
Gossip: By nature, humans love to gossip. Yuval brought up the fact that there are plenty of magazines and websites like buzzfeed that only discuss gossip. However, even the most educated and eloquent amongst us spend a lot of time gossiping. For example, while scientists may discuss their work and experiments over lunch, sooner or later the conversation will devolve to discussing other people in their facility.
Dunbars number: The largest group of people where everyone can know everyone else without needing a complex hierarchy is 150. This means that once a startup exceeds 150 people, it becomes very difficult for everyone to know what everyone else is working on.
The reason humans are sad is because they always crave for more and are not fulfilled with what they have. This point is further discussed in the âLuxury Trapâ section below.
Cognitive dissonance: One of the differentiating features between humans and apes is cognitive dissonance. This means weâre able to maintain contradicting values in our heads at once. This has lead many anthropologists to state that the best way to study human culture is by evaluating the catch 22s in their society (religion, state, organization, etcâŠ), rather than studying the prestige values that they follow. For example, Jews are not allowed to use electricity on Saturdays but still find ways to eat warm meals ;)
Human society
- State and companies: Yuval had a relatively long and interesting discussion comparing state and companies to religions. Theyâre all equally made up, with their own set of rules, being enforced by some party or set of individuals, adhered by some set of people, and rejected or questioned by others. This really made me question a few of my own beliefsâŠ.
- Luxuries:
Any piece of luxury a human receives eventually turns into a necessity. The telephone, internet washing machines, dishwaters, etc, were all luxuries at some point in the past.
Yuval discussed how a lot of people have a dream of getting their dream job around 35, but first choose to accept a typical mainstream job to get the experience and earn the living they need to support themselves at 35. However, once they reach that age, there are kids, a mortgage, a higher standard of living theyâve grown accustomed to, an expectation of being able to afford a vacation a few times a year, etc⊠Having a car is a luxury when youâre 20, but becomes a necessary that most canât give up when theyâre 35. This is a trap a lot of people fall into, and once Iâm afraid I might fall into myself unless I make changes in the near future.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions were agricultural traps in themselves.
Forbidden vs enabled: Human society (i.e. culture) decides what is forbidden and was is not, while human biology determines what can be enabled and what cannot. Homosexual intercourse is a prime example of this.
There was a pretty extensive explanation of how everything in our world is driven by consumerism. The things we want, the things we do, the things we aspire for. Itâs extremely sad, but is extremely true if you think about it. One of the things that really bothers me is the addiction to traveling nowadays. Everyone thinks that travel will âchange my mindset and open my eyesâ, while in reality, that is simply what consumerism forces us to believe. It is romanticized beyond belief, while in reality, people just need a change of mindset every once in a while.
Human History
Yuval drew a comparison between the set of rules that king Hammurabi set for the Babylonians and the American declaration of independence. It makes sense that these two sets of rules are similar in very ways, but they diverged when Yuval pointed out that Americans are all treated equally, whereas the Babylonians had different rules depending on the class the individual belonged to. For example, if a man cut another manâs arm off, there was a fee one had to pay depending on the class of the victim.
The numbers we know today (0-9) are known as the âArab numeralsâ, but were actually developed by the hindus
Homosexuality was very common and accepted in Ancient Greece
Rape was very much accepted in the olden days. If a man were to rape a young girl, all he had to do was pay her father a certain amount depending on the victimâs class. Furthermore, rape is still okay in the majority of the cultures in the world today.
It is fair to say that humanâs primary goal is to reproduce - itâs in our nature. Thousands of years of evolution have lead to females becoming submissive caretakers and men become aggressive âbring home the baconâ protectors. This is a relatively outdated sexist view, but it is a basic result of evolution.
Religious/Political history
Communism: The goal of communism was that âeveryone works according to their abilities and receives according to their needsâ, but the result of communism turned out to be that âeveryone works as little as they can get away with and receive as much as they can grab"
Modern day synagogue
Jews like to believe that their culture has remained pristine over thousands of years, but it is nothing today like it was before
Yiddish is a German dialogue, whereas Hebrew was the actual language spoken back in the day
Modern day jews discuss and dispute the meaning of Talmud (Babylonian scrolls), whereas they did not exist in the early days of Judaism
If King David were to walk into a modern day synagogue, heâd be confused by what modern day Orthodox are wearing.
Global Empire: The world is governed by three primary pillars: money, government and religion. Everything is just a derivative of these three things.
Local monotheism: A non-forcing (no missionaries) religion with a single god.
Global monotheism: A forcing (many missionaries) religion with a single god.
In the olden days, religion was non forcing. Global religion, however, though with many downsides, the cause of many wars, many deaths and the dark ages, was key in uniting the whole world together.
Zoroastrianism: one of the world’s oldest religions that remains active. It is a monotheistic faith, centered in a dualistic cosmology of good and evil and an eschatology predicting the ultimate destruction of evil.
Buddhism: Life is all about reality without necessarily accepting, craving or challenging it. For example, if something in life went south, we should definitely try to fix it, but we should not fixate on the negativity that resolves around it.
Nirvana: Â transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. It represents the final goal of Buddhism. It also literally translates to âextinguishing the fireâ, which makes me think of the âthis is fineâ meme and how Nirvana can be achieved if I can extinguish (or accept) the fire around me.
Politics and political ideologies are extremely similar with a few subtle differences. Islam has an omnipotent God. Karl Marx was the âfatherâ of Communism. Buddhism doesn’t have a God. In all other ways, these ideologies are extremely similar.
Economic History
Those who know history best have the hardest time explaining why a decision or event was reached. This is due to the fact that they know of all the alternatives. âHowâ is easy but âwhyâ is hard.
There was a long section written about the scientific revolution. There was nothing new for me there, but it was beautiful and touched really close to heart. In fact, it really made me appreciate the times we live in today.
The very first insurance fund ever created was designed by a group of ministers from court who wanted a way for widows to live comfortably in the case that their husbands pass away. What started as an honest effort turned into one of the largest industries in the world today.
Yuval spent some time discussing the importance of credit and the concept of reserve ratios in banks. It is interesting but there was nothing new for me here.
Recent History
Healthcare and human survivability has really increased in recent past. The mother of King Edward the 2nd had 16 kids, only 3 of whom lived past 40.
Scurvy was a very common cause of death for sailors. James cook managed to save most of them by empirically finding out that simply eating more vitamin C (from dried fruits) saved their lives.
Neil Armstrong once met with a native tribe prior to his mission on the moon. When he told the tribe of what heâs embarking on, they taught him a phrase in their native language and had him memorize it. The natives asked him to repeat it once he got to the moon. Before going on his mission, he asked a translator what the phrase meant, and it was: âDon’t believe a word these people say, they’ve come to steal your landââŠ.
Adam Smith, who is known as the father of Modern Economics, famously wrote âThe Wealth of Nationsâ in the 1700s. In it he stated that rich people are the ones responsible for driving the economy. Some people refer to it as the âcapitalism manifestoâ.
Before the modern days of tech startups, sailing and discovery was a form of ancient startups. Columbus famously spent years for someone to fund his voyage. Once he got sufficient funding, he conquered America and made many people very rich through the discovery of new gold and silver mines. When this happened, a lot of other sailors and investors tried to repeat the success Columbus had achieved. Unfortunately, most voyages ended in no results or death, causing investors (like VCs) to lose their entire investment.
The Mississippi bubble: In the 1800s, during the founding of New Orleans, the Paris exchange started selling equity in the new state being developed. Each share reached an astonishing price of 10,000 leveret before crashing all the way back down to zero.
French Revolution: Louis the 16th realized at one point that the country had taken on so much debt, that half of the countryâs annual budget went solely towards paying off their interest payments in the 1780s. This was obviously not sustainable for long and was ultimately one of the catalysts for the French Revolution.
Gun powder: While the Chinese managed to discover gun powder in the 9th century for fire crackers, it took almost 600 years for Western Europe to adapt that technology to guns.
Modern World Wars: There are many reasons why there havenât been any world wars in the past 70 years. One of the main reasons brought up by Yuval is that it is not economic. Ever since atomic bombs were discovered, the price of war soared, but the profits declined. In the worst gave, we spent billions of dollars and annihilate each other. In the best case, we can take over another countryâs land and agriculture. However, unlike in olden times, the global economy is setup for it to be more lucrative for each nation to simply operate in peaceful trade rather than distressful war.
Biological innovations
Project Gilgamesh: Project Gilgamesh, formally established on 3rd May 2014, is an initiative devoted to educating the public about radical life extension and cryonics as scientific possibilities and moral imperatives. Before the blog, Project Gilgamesh took the form of face-to-face presentations delivered among a cadre of friends and to anyone with interest in an introduction to life extension and/or cryonics.
Genetic engineering: There were a lot of cool genetic engineering experiments Yuval referenced in the book.
A rabbit was injected with jellyfish genes such that it glowed in the night
The genes of a human ear were injected on the back of a mouse such that it grew a new year. This can be very useful for âbody regenerationâ
E coli was used to produce cheap insulin
The genes of an arctic fish were injected into potatoes so they are more first resistant
Pigs were injected with fish genes such that they produce healthy omega 3 fats instead of unhealthy omega 6 fats
Cows were genetallicaly engineered such that they donât get sick
There have been many studies and a lot of evidence that things donât make us happy, but hormones do. This is why placebo works, and why money does not necessarily lead to happiness. There have been thought experiments studies simulated do the following:
Ask 2 people what their level of happiness is
One person wins the lottery and another person gets into a car crash (that does not injure their health) on the same day
Two years later, it is very likely that both of them will have the same level of happiness