#477: Yuval Noah Harari on The Story of Sapiens, The Power of Awareness, and The Brilliance of Bone-Conduction Headphones

I don't think I could have written 'Sapiens' or 'Homo Deus' or any of these other books without the practice of meditation because you need a tremendous amount of focus to do something like that ... You try to summarize the whole of human history in 500 pages, the most important button on the keyboard is delete.

I strongly believe that given the technologies we are now developing, within a century or two at most, our species will disappear. I don't think that in the end of the 22nd century, the Earth will still be dominated by Homo sapiens.

The big question is not the meaning of life, and the big question is not how you satisfy some god or how you achieve this or that goal; the big question is how you liberate yourself and others from suffering.

What enables us to cooperate in very large numbers—this is our ability to invent and believe in fictional stories and fictional entities. All the big heroes of history, almost all of them, are fictional entities that exist only in our imagination, only in the stories that we create. Nations, gods, money, corporations, states—the only place they exist is in the stories that we invent and tell.

As a species, we are very good [at] acquiring more power, but we are not good at all in translating power into happiness ... It's obvious we are thousands of times more powerful than people in the Stone Age, but it's not clear whether we are at all happier than they were. Maybe we are happier a bit, but not thousands of times more happier.

Given the immense power of the technologies we are developing, there are two scenarios only. One scenario, which is that the technology will destroy humanity—and I think it's less likely but still possible. The more likely scenario is that it will change humanity in a profound way—that we will use AI and bioengineering to change Homo sapiens and to create new kinds of beings that will be much more different from us than we are different from Neanderthals or from chimpanzees.

99% of the species that evolved on planet Earth are gone for one reason or another. Homo sapiens, also, are not eternal. Even in the best scenario, I don't think Homo sapiens will be around in two or three hundred years. The best scenario is that Homo sapiens will disappear but in a peaceful and gradual way and be replaced by something better.

If you can't focus on the simple reality of your breath coming in and out of your nostrils without being overwhelmed by some story generated in your mind, then how can you hope to understand... the financial system of the world, the geopolitical system, what's happening in Israel [or] the Middle East—much, much bigger things ... No matter what I try to do, these stories generated by my own mind get between me and reality.

The main way that humans gain power is through collective cooperation. As individuals, we are not particularly powerful animals. In a match between a human and chimpanzee, the chimpanzee will easily win. The big advantage of humans: We can cooperate basically in unlimited numbers... Chimpanzees can't cooperate more than say 50 or 100—that's about the limit.

I usually prefer to talk about suffering or misery because happiness is far more difficult to nail down. When you're miserable, you know it. When you think you're happy, you're quite often just deluding yourself.

Most of the time, people don't have very painful experiences. Most of the time, if you're dissatisfied, it's because you are missing or craving for some very pleasant experience, which is just not there, and you're not willing to settle for the kind of ordinary boring thing that you do have.

Charles Taylor, the Canadian philosopher, really influenced me a lot. His book, 'Source of the Self,' I think, is one of the most important books I've read in life—one of the most difficult books, also. If people take this as a kind of reading recommendation, they should be warned. It's really tough going. It's very, very dense. But if you make it, it's really worth it.

In essence, money is just trust. It's the most successful and universal system of mutual trust that humans came up with.

When I plan my day or I plan my year, it's the first thing I put in the calendar—the meditation retreats, and everything else has to find space around that.

I can explain to you why terrorism gets so much attention. It's basically theater. These people are experts in theater, not in war, and they are very good at it, so they get so much attention. But you don't need to worry that the terrorists will take over the world; it's not going to happen.

The moment that your smart refrigerator knows you better than your husband is not very far in the future.