What Are You Reading Now?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Of all the things to disagree with you highlight his point that throughout history it’s been better to be a man than a woman?That’s funny. That’s gotta be the least controversial thing in the whole book.

Huh? You didn't read my post carefully. I specifically said that that passage sounded goofy and speculated that it may have been due to translation (book was written in Hebrew). You don't think this sounds funny?

“People everywhere have divided themselves into men and women..."

And I’m sure you understand that “myth” isn’t perjorative. I liked the comparison of the myth of religion to the myth of the corporation. Just because it’s a myth doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial or even necessary for a civilized society.

Absolutely. He made some good points about collective myths benefiting the human condition, but I thought he got carried away. A corporation is a myth? Yes, it is basically an agreement between humans and requires the capacity for abstract thought, but calling it a myth seems like a gimmick to me.

Here is another thing about the book: Harari went on and on and on about how the forager (hunter/gatherer) period was like a garden of eden. Humans were happy, healthy, and balanced with the environment. Life was a big happy adventure. But he also stated that one feature of forager societies is that they routinely kill babies, children, old people, ill people, or anyone who is going to slow down the group. Infanticide and murder are just a part of life necessary for the tribe to survive. He argues that the advent of agriculture was bad because people lived boring lives and didn't get a balanced diet. But it also caused a population explosion because they no longer had to routinely murder family members. This idolization of forager life is made more baffling by his insistence that killing animals for food is evil.

[Pelado]

Huh? You didn't read my post carefully. I specifically said that that passage sounded goofy and speculated that it may have been due to translation (book was written in Hebrew). You don't think this sounds funny?

“People everywhere have divided themselves into men and women..."



Absolutely. He made some good points about collective myths benefiting the human condition, but I thought he got carried away. A corporation is a myth? Yes, it is basically an agreement between humans and requires the capacity for abstract thought, but calling it a myth seems like a gimmick to me.

Here is another thing about the book: Harari went on and on and on about how the forager (hunter/gatherer) period was like a garden of eden. Humans were happy, healthy, and balanced with the environment. Life was a big happy adventure. But he also stated that one feature of forager societies is that they routinely kill babies, children, old people, ill people, or anyone who is going to slow down the group. Infanticide and murder are just a part of life necessary for the tribe to survive. He argues that the advent of agriculture was bad because people lived boring lives and didn't get a balanced diet. But it also caused a population explosion because they no longer had to routinely murder family members. This idolization of forager life is made more baffling by his insistence that killing animals for food is evil.

So you're upset about his lack of consistency?

If consistency is the goal, maybe he prefers the forager era murders because those killings weren't necessarily to consume the flesh of the victim.

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[Jeff Lebowski]

What Are You Reading Now?

So you're upset about his lack of consistency?

If consistency is the goal, maybe he prefers the forager era murders because those killings weren't necessarily to consume the flesh of the victim.

Ok, you got me there. The forager era murders were because there wasn’t enough wooly mammoth flesh to go around.

[clackamascoug]

Just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, a historian from Israel. NYT bestseller that has been discussed here. SeattleUte referenced it a couple of times.

I both loved and hated this book at the same time. It is a history of homo sapiens. Starts out with a great history of evolution, breaking down the various human species. There were five "human" species and homo sapiens were the only ones to survive (we probably wiped out the others, and there was some interbreeding). Then it gets into the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture then to the industrial revolution. Very interesting discussion of the development of money and how that changed everything.

Overall, it was a fascinating overview of human history, but the book has some flaws. On on page he would write something that was deep and insightful and on the next page he would write something that makes your eyes roll. For example, he repeatedly claims that moral codes, religions, etc are all myths. At one point he states:



Everything is molecules and biology and chance, and nature doesn't care about anything and nothing has any long-term meaning whatsoever. Then at the same time, he repeatedly hops up on a soapbox to condemn the way humans treat animals. He says the modern animal industry could be "the greatest crime in the history of the world".

He also stated that scientists have proven that there is no human soul.

Traditional roles for men and women such as fighting in wars, raising children, etc. have nothing to do with biology and are purely based on cultural myths.

Rich people having nicer homes and living a nicer neighborhoods and getting better education is equivalent to racial discrimination.

Sometimes I wonder if some of these things just sound goofy due to translation. A direct quote:



He also predicts that humans will be replaced by cyborgs in the next 100 years. Some merit to his hypothesis, but it is a real stretch overall.

So this is the same guy that wrote Homo Deus. Some of you (PAC?) have read this. I have it in my queue on Audible, but now I am wondering if I want to bother with it.

I'm on chapter 12... drove to Astoria and back yesterday and it's a bit of a chore keeping up with it while driving. I did like that language was developed because people wanted to gossip to each other about other people in the band.

[wuapinmon]

Also, the audio book is read by Whil Wheaton; I wonder how much my view is tangled up in not liking him as the reader.

Probably quite a lot. He's not a very likable adult.

[PaloAltoCougar]

Just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, a historian from Israel. NYT bestseller that has been discussed here. SeattleUte referenced it a couple of times.
...

So this is the same guy that wrote Homo Deus. Some of you (PAC?) have read this. I have it in my queue on Audible, but now I am wondering if I want to bother with it.

The quick answer to your question is "Probably not." I liked Sapiens a lot, esp. the discussion of the three revolutions (cognitive, agricultural and scientific) that were turning points in the history of humankind. Homo Deus picks up where that book left off, and projects where the human race is heading given his belief that God was only a useful myth and that man, having essentially conquered (or at least having shown the ability to conquer) the three threats to human existence (war, famine and disease) is becoming god-like and what that means for the future.

I liked the first part of the book better than the second half which became for me a bit tedious. On the last page, he summarizes his presentation with three points:

1. Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms and life is data processing.
2. Intellligence is decoupling from consciousness.
3. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.

He hopes (having spent the previous 400 pages explicating the foregoing) that three questions will stick in the reader's mind:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What's more valuable--intelifence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves.

If the foregoing questions interest you, then read it, but I suspect you'll find your time better spent elsewhere. I found his prediction that humans will be replaced with, at best, a combination of machines and organisms, rather depressing. BTW, Da Vinci and Grant are both proving to be lengthier but more entertaining reads.

[Topper]

The quick answer to your question is "Probably not." I liked Sapiens a lot, esp. the discussion of the three revolutions (cognitive, agricultural and scientific) that were turning points in the history of humankind. Homo Deus picks up where that book left off, and projects where the human race is heading given his belief that God was only a useful myth and that man, having essentially conquered (or at least having shown the ability to conquer) the three threats to human existence (war, famine and disease) is becoming god-like and what that means for the future.

I liked the first part of the book better than the second half which became for me a bit tedious. On the last page, he summarizes his presentation with three points:



He hopes that (having spent the previous 400 pages explicating the foregoing, that three questions will stick in the reader's mind:


If the foregoing questions interest you, then read it, but I suspect you'll find your time better spent elsewhere. I found his prediction that humans will be replaced with, at best, a combination of machines and organisms, rather depressing. BTW, Da Vinci and Grant are both proving to be lengthier but more entertaining reads.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll pass.

[Jeff Lebowski]

The quick answer to your question is "Probably not." I liked Sapiens a lot, esp. the discussion of the three revolutions (cognitive, agricultural and scientific) that were turning points in the history of humankind. Homo Deus picks up where that book left off, and projects where the human race is heading given his belief that God was only a useful myth and that man, having essentially conquered (or at least having shown the ability to conquer) the three threats to human existence (war, famine and disease) is becoming god-like and what that means for the future.

I liked the first part of the book better than the second half which became for me a bit tedious. On the last page, he summarizes his presentation with three points:


He hopes (having spent the previous 400 pages explicating the foregoing) that three questions will stick in the reader's mind:


If the foregoing questions interest you, then read it, but I suspect you'll find your time better spent elsewhere. I found his prediction that humans will be replaced with, at best, a combination of machines and organisms, rather depressing. BTW, Da Vinci and Grant are both proving to be lengthier but more entertaining reads.

Thanks. Yes, I liked the discussion of the three revolutions as well. And at times I thought Hurari could be incredibly insightful, as evidenced by the quote in this post:

http://www.cougarstadium.com/showthr...=1#post1352772

At the same time, his speculations on the future seemed dubious. For example, in discussing computer viruses, he said that all someone would have to do is program a computer virus to change itself and it would evolve and become unstoppable and take over the computer world. That really made me laugh. I don't think he has a clue how programming works. Made me wonder how far off he is on other topics. Nevertheless, predicting the future is incredibly hard and people always tend to overstate things. Where's my jet pack!

[Uncle Ted]

At the same time, his speculations on the future seemed dubious. For example, in discussing computer viruses, he said that all someone would have to do is program a computer virus to change itself and it would evolve and become unstoppable and take over the computer world. That really made me laugh. I don't think he has a clue how programming works. Made me wonder how far off he is on other topics. Nevertheless, predicting the future is incredibly hard and people always tend to overstate things. Where's my jet pack!

LOL... I guess he has never heard of polymorphic computer viruses.

Maybe he is thinking more along the lines of genetic programming. It seems that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is starting to get hot again. I guess everyone forgot how much money was wasted on it in previous attempts.

[SteelBlue]

National Book Critics Circle Award finalists announced today:

FICTION:

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (Riverhead)

Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Knopf)

Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner)


NONFICTION:

Jack Davis, Gulf: The Making of An American Sea (Liveright)

Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Scribner)

Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)

Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (Graywolf)

Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (The Experiment)

[Pelado]

National Book Critics Circle Award finalists announced today:

FICTION:

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (Riverhead)

Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Knopf)

Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner)


NONFICTION:

Jack Davis, Gulf: The Making of An American Sea (Liveright)

Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Scribner)

Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)

Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (Graywolf)

Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (The Experiment)

Very timely. I was just in the library looking for more books. Now I've got holds on three of the fiction books.

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[happyone]

I finished A Column of Fire

Amazingly quick read for a 900+ page book (just over 3 days). It is basically the story Elizabeth I reign as told through the eyes of one of her (fictional) Intelligence Agents. The time frame is from 1558 (just before Elizabeth comes to the throne) to 1605 and the Gunpowder Plot against her successor, James I and VI. All the major events of Good Queen Bess' reign are in the novel - the various Catholic plot's to remove her, Mary, Queen of Scots imprisonment and eventual execution, the Spanish Armada, infiltration of Catholic Priests from Catholic States (mainly France) and the gov't reaction, English piracy in the Caribbean Sea etc are all plot points. In addition the politics of the French court and how the Catholic/Protestant divide affected them are all there. Many of the famous real life people make appearances - Elizabeth herself, many of her advisors including William and Robert Cecil, Francis Walsingham ( her spy master), Francis Drake, Mary Queen of Scots, Various French Kings and Queens, various members of the De Guise family (one of the elite families of France arch Catholic/Anti Protestant - according to Follett the author of many of the Anti Protestant programs in France including the St. Bartholomew Massacre.

I enjoyed it. It's both a spy and an adventure novel along with some romance/sex thrown in. There is an uncomfortable (for me) rape/incest scene (local Earl rapes DIL, not particularly explicit but the theme...). Solid 4 stars on GR, If you read any Follett, you'll know what to expect. This is vintage Follett and I think better than some of his recent offerings

Currently reading the book PAC recently finished, Walter Isaacson's bio of Leonardo da Vinci, titled amazingly enough Leonardo da Vinci

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...nardo-da-vinci

[SteelBlue]

Next up: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow. Wish me luck.

How did you like it, KL? I'm working through it now. Pynchon is up there with with Joyce when it comes to making me feel like an idiot. Sometimes I find myself re-reading a paragraph 3,4, 5 times.

[Pelado]

Just started listening today to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness read by the author. There's a lot I'm not catching because of her Indian accent and the names of people and locations. Hoping it gets easier to follow soon.

[BigPiney]

Just started listening today to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness read by the author. There's a lot I'm not catching because of her Indian accent and the names of people and locations. Hoping it gets easier to follow soon.

Have that on the Kindle. Read about ten pages and then moved in to something else. I am generally reading three books at a time so this is not unusual, but I haven't gone back to it a few months. I may get there eventually.