I'm trying to find some imagery under the search phrase "sapiens for sale" and what do I get?
Nothing but this stupid book, which has ultimately usurped the word Sapiens.
Go ahead, try and use those Boolean operators, ah remember when they actually worked? Pepperidge Farms remembers back when the internet was actually called the Internet, and even though most websites you visited were at a .com address, it wasn't a full-on consumerist orgy. Boolean operators don't do advertising well (and in fact could be a great example of the shortcomings of the advertising economic model for the internet overall). So when I type "sapiens for sale" -yuval -noah -harari -book, the first fistful of advertiser-sponsored results are for his book, Booleans-be-damned.
Personally I think the author's an idiot and does nothing but a disservice to the public by selling them a story that's been made simple (and at time outright false) at the cost of losing reality.
If you want a good idea of why humans do what they do, and written by a well-respected, well-studied and straight-up good writer, check out Robert Sapolsky's Behave (2017). In fact, check out his entire 24-course lecture series on Human Behavior over at Stanford's free courses. Then you'll understand the true disservice committed by Mr. Harari.
And if nothing else, remember Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, Rule #1: Check you source.
Image credit: Wakali, Charly Amani, 2021
Due Dilligence aka Handpicked Confirmation Bias:
A speculative reconstruction of human evolution ... The book is fundamentally unserious and undeserving of the wide acclaim and attention it has been receiving. But it is worth considering the book’s blind spots and flaws — the better to understand the weaknesses of the genre and the intellectual temptations of our age.-A Reductionist History of Humankind: The trouble with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. John Sexton, graduate student in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society. Number 47, Fall 2015, pp. 109–120.
Harari has seduced us with his storytelling, but a close look at his record shows that he sacrifices science to sensationalism, often makes grave factual errors, and portrays what should be speculative as certain.-The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari: The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors. Darshana Narayanan, Consumer Affairs. Jul 2022.
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