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Yuval Noah Harari

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#Tags
Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in our collective imagination, but everybody believes in the dollar bill. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Collective
#Dollar
#Imagination
#Value
If you take 10,000 chimpanzees and cram them together into Wembley Stadium or the Houses of Parliament, you will get chaos. But if you take 10,000 people who have never met before, they can co-operate and create amazing things. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Amazing
#Chaos
#Create
#People
#Together
If you don't like the word 'religion,' you can replace it with 'ideology' - it's largely the same thing. At the heart of both religion and ideology is the question of authority and where authority is coming from. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Authority
#Heart
#Question
#Religion
As beavers build dams and bees build hives, human beings have spears. Or take the high intelligence of human beings, the ability to make plans, to transmit information - that was also there before, but that, together with the tools, was not enough to make man special. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Information
#Intelligence
#Man
#Together
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Change
#Human
#Intelligence
#Own
#Power
How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy, or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Believe
#Capitalism
#Democracy
#People
Those who refuse to liberalise and globalise are doomed to failure. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Doomed
#Failure
#Refuse
#Those
#Who
What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness? - Yuval Noah Harari
#Consciousness
#Intelligence
#Valuable
In Judaism or Christianity and so forth, you invent rules that don't exist anywhere except in your imagination. You spend your life trying to gain points and to avoid all kinds of things that detract from your points. And if by the time you die you gather enough points, then you pass on to the next level, in Heaven. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Die
#Imagination
#Life
#Rules
#Time
The feelings of the individual are the prime authority in ethics. 'If it feels good, do it' is the basic ethical ideal of humanism. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Authority
#Ethics
#Feelings
#Good
#Ideal
People already have bionic arms and legs that work by the power of thought. And we increasingly outsource mental and communicative activities to computers. We are merging with our smartphones. Very soon, they will just be part of the body. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Body
#Computers
#People
#Power
#Work
The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Bird
#Chicken
#Earth
#Numbers
#Success
As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might themselves become the owners. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Hands
#Political
#Power
#Push
#Wealth
I met my husband Itzik when I got back home to Israel from Oxford in 2002. He is my Internet-of-all-Things. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Back
#He
#Home
#Husband
#Israel
Every day, I absorb countless data bits through emails, phone calls, and articles; process the data; and transmit back new bits through more emails, phone calls, and articles. I don't really know where I fit into the great scheme of things and how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Computers
#Day
#Great
#New
#Process
Nothing should be taken for granted, even if everybody believes it. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Even
#Everybody
#Nothing
#Should
#Taken
Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon, this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Game
#Learning
#Life
#Way
#Will
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Ability
#Destination
#Losing
#Time
#Way
As a historian, I'm sceptical about conspiracy theories because the world is far too complicated to be managed by a few billionaires drinking scotch behind some closed doors. But I do think that the voters are correct in sensing that they're really losing power. And in reaction, they give the system an angry kick. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Angry
#Conspiracy
#Losing
#Power
#World
We are all living together on a single planet, which is threatened by our own actions. And if you don't have some kind of global cooperation, nationalism is just not on the right level to tackle the problems, whether it's climate change or whether it's technological disruption. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Change
#Nationalism
#Problems
#Together
Modernity is a deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Agree
#Deal
#Meaning
#Modernity
#Power
The basic human reaction to pleasure is not satisfaction, but rather craving for more. Hence, no matter what we achieve, it only increases our craving, not our satisfaction. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Achieve
#Matter
#Pleasure
#Satisfaction
The key to victory lies more in manipulation and cooperation than in exceptional personal skills. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Key
#Manipulation
#More
#Skills
#Victory
There is a saying that if you get something for free, you should know that you're the product. It was never more true than in the case of Facebook and Gmail and YouTube. You get free social-media services, and you get free funny cat videos. In exchange, you give up the most valuable asset you have, which is your personal data. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Free
#Funny
#Product
#True
#YouTube
Censorship no longer works by hiding information from you; censorship works by flooding you with immense amounts of misinformation, of irrelevant information, of funny cat videos, until you're just unable to focus. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Censorship
#Focus
#Funny
#Information
Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Make
#Sense
#Think
#Try
#World
For many centuries, even thousands of years, patriotism worked quite well. Of course, it led to wars an so forth, but we shouldn't focus too much on the bad. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Bad
#Focus
#Patriotism
#Too Much
#Well
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things and have subjective experiences. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Ability
#Feel
#Intelligence
#Problems
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, whereas consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. Throughout history, intelligence always went hand in hand with consciousness. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Anger
#History
#Intelligence
#Love
#Pain
Money is the probably the most successful story ever told. It has no objective value... but then you have these master storytellers: the big bankers, the finance ministers... and they come, and they tell a very convincing story. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Big
#Finance
#Money
#Story
#Value
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Authority
#Computers
#Power
#Universe
The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities. Of course, not all fictions are shared by all humans, but at least one has become universal in our world, and this is money. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Communication
#Money
#Reality
#World
Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in contradictory things. For example, to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God but somehow excuse Him from all the suffering in the world. Or our ability to believe from the standpoint of law that humans are equal and have free will and from biology that humans are just organic machines. - Yuval Noah Harari
#Amazing
#God
#Law
#Suffering
#World
I'm vegan, though not completely religious about it. While writing 'Sapiens,' I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. - Yuval Noah Harari
#About
#Animals
#Meat
#Treat
#Want
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