Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

HUMANIORA
VOLUME 30

Number 3 October 2018

Page 342–344

BOOK REVIEW
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC
...
ac
...
These three books seemingly form a
trilogy although each of them can be read individually
...
He introduces 21
Lessons by comparing it with the other two
...
This leaves 21
Lessons with the task of explaining the present
...
Being a historian he has a
penchant for details
...
Many of
us will be familiar with the examples that he chooses
in order to prove his point
...
Reading his book I
cannot help but ask myself, why did it not occur to
me to see them from Harari’s point of view when all
this time the social phenomena have been staring at
me in the eye
...

21 Lessons consists of 21 chapters
...
According to Harari, our present mind
is an accumulation of the cultural journey of sapiens
for 2
...
So the human brain is biological,
but the mind is cultural
...
Hence it will affect the way
we see ‘truth’
...
5 million years,
are we getting smarter? Apparently not
...
He warns that, “We should never
doi
...
22146/jh
...
39310

underestimate human stupidity
...
179)
...

The second product is a string of twisted human logic
...
On the contrary, it
is quite intelligent as the name suggests
...
The human
mind is so smart that it is able to create something
even smarter than humans themselves
...
Maybe this is stupid
...
A mindful
suicide, in every sense of the word
...

The reason for this is that humans surrender their
power to make decisions to Artificial Intelligence
...
This
recommendation is algorithm, which is basically AI
subtly making decisions on my behalf
...
”
In the present, “… the masses fear irrelevance
...
8)
...
People are
being laid off their jobs because of the decisions made
by their AI bosses who can calculate work efficiency
more accurately than human bosses
...
Again, this is our own fault and stupidity for
creating something so fast like the computer
...
22)
...
ugm
...
id/jurnal-humaniora

Suzie Handajani - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

and update ourselves, despite the fancy names that
we give to these two skills, which are socialization
and education
...
This takes a lot of time
and patience, especially to gain other people’s trust
...

A formal education from playgroup to doctorate
program takes an average of 26 years
...
It will connect itself
with other AI and absorbs data in seconds
...

No fuss
...
Compared to AI, humans are just a
bundle of inefficient nerves
...

After AI, the second one on the list of human
stupidity is twisted logic
...
5 million years worth of
practicing being humans
...
Harari is more than happy to provide us with
cases to demonstrate this
...

The first sentence of the first chapter in 21
Lessons says that, “Humans think in stories rather
than in facts” (p
...
This opening statement is simple
yet powerful as it echoes throughout the book
...

I think the most striking example that Harari gives to
prove this point is the one that pertains to religious
practices
...
I hope his book does not
get banned because of this
...
Unfortunately according to Harari,
truth and belief are inversely related
...
204)
...
The less data
people have, the more stories people create
...
Does this
sound familiar? Doesn’t this dangerously sound like
the practice of religion?

Eventually we can safely extrapolate that the
less data people procure about God, the higher level
of belief is required in order to maintain the existence
of God
...
197)
...
197)
...
We never run out of
ideas to do this, because humans are creative beings
...
If we are taught to be humble,
then telling people that they are sinful is not humble
at all because that means we are taking over God’s
job in passing judgment
...
Harari
argues that, “Most people tend to believe that they
are the centre of the world, and their culture is the
linchpin of human history” (p
...
181 – 196)
...
This rings a bell in my tiny mind
...
Harari’s comment is blunt yet on point:
our ancestors are dead therefore we cannot ask them
...

And how far back do we want to trace our ancestors?
Harari’s point is that this is the condition of post-truth,
where the power of stories decides the truth for us
...
Could it be that their fear is
associated with losing power because the new digital
culture is alien to them? The image of young and
digitally savvy generation rendering them obsolete
like digital dinosaurs must be daunting
...
After discriminating other
people based on their religion, humans’ stupidity
continues
...
Racism is on the way to become outdated

343

Humaniora, Vol
...
Biology is not your destiny
...

People claim that they are not racists anymore
but they morphed into something called culturists (p
...
These new breed of culturists are the result of
high level of human mobility and migration
...
However the process is far from innocent
...
Who should
change? I was here first, you go change
...
And the fight continues
...
He
says that war, “… makes people far more interested
in one another” (p
...
The US learned so much
about Russian culture during the Cold War (p
...

Similarly, I think people overseas want to learn about
Indonesia, because some of them silently agree that in
the case of Indonesia going through another episode
like the Bali Bombing, they could at least anticipate
it
...
In a way this makes the Indonesians
culturists
...
Education, according
to Harari, is not about providing information
...
Education is about choosing bits
of information and making decisions based on a wellinformed mind (p
...
Education institutions should
also be at the forefront in teaching and demonstrating
that changes happen all the time
...
259)
...

Our mind has been neglected for a long time since
AI has done a lot of thinking for us
...
However, since I am not keen on
meditation I beg to conclude his book with a different
interpretation of meditation
...
313)
...
I think that is how Harari
wrote this eye-opening and enlightening book
...
Other research might present a fresh
set of data as part of its novelty
...
He provides examples of social phenomena and
historical events that we know already
...




---