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The dangerous populist science of Yuval Noah Harari

#1
C C Offline
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/t...oah-harari

EXCERPTS: Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions.

[...] among Harari’s flock are some of the most powerful people in the world, and they come to him much like the ancient kings to their oracles. ... In favor of Harari’s half-formed edicts, each subverted their own authority. And they did it not for an expert in any one of their fields, but for a historian who, in many ways, is a fraud—most of all, about science.

Times are tough, and we are—all of us—looking for answers to literal questions of life and death. Will humans survive the coming waves of pandemics and climate change? Do our genes contain the key to understanding everything about us? Will technology save us, or will it destroy us? The desire for a wise guide—a sort of prophet who boldly leaps across multiple disciplines to provide simple, readable, confident answers, tying it all together in page-turning stories—is understandable. But is it realistic?

It scares me that, to many, this question appears to be irrelevant. Harari’s blockbuster, Sapiens, is a sweeping saga of the human species—from our humble beginnings as apes to a future where we will sire the algorithms that will dethrone and dominate us. [...] Recommending the book on CNN in 2016, president Barack Obama said that Sapiens, like the Pyramids of Giza, gave him “a sense of perspective” on our extraordinary civilization. Harari has published two subsequent bestsellers—Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). All told, his books have sold over 23 million copies worldwide. He might have a claim to be the most sought-after intellectual in the world, gracing stages far and wide, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per speaking appearance.

We have been seduced by Harari because of the power not of his truth or scholarship but of his storytelling. As a scientist, I know how difficult it is to spin complex issues into appealing and accurate storytelling. I also know when science is being sacrificed to sensationalism.

Yuval Harari is what I call a “science populist.” (Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube guru Jordan Peterson is another example.) Science populists are gifted storytellers who weave sensationalist yarns around scientific “facts” in simple, emotionally persuasive language. Their narratives are largely scrubbed clean of nuance or doubt, giving them a false air of authority—and making their message even more convincing.

Like their political counterparts, science populists are sources of misinformation. They promote false crises, while presenting themselves as having the answers. They understand the seduction of a story well told—relentlessly seeking to expand their audience—never mind that the underlying science is warped in the pursuit of fame and influence.

In this day and age, good storytelling is more necessary, but riskier, than ever before, particularly when it comes to science. Science informs medical, environmental, legal, and many other public decisions, as well as our personal opinions on what to be wary about and how to lead our lives. Important societal and individual actions depend on our best understanding of the world around us—now more than ever, with the plague in all our houses, and the worst yet to come with climate change.

It is time to subject our Populist Prophet, and others like him, to serious scrutiny.

This may be surprising, but the factual validity of Yuval Harari’s work has received little evaluation from scholars or major publications. Harari’s own thesis advisor, Professor Steven Gunn from Oxford—who guided Harari’s research on “Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity, 1450-1600”—has made a startling acknowledgement: that his ex-pupil has essentially managed to dodge the fact-checking process... (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Kornee Offline
Seems YNH is just personally fulfilling his part in The Tribe's Holy Mission to lead all nations into....something:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam

Noticed this choice line under Personal Life at the Wikipedia site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah...sonal_life

"Harari is a vegan, and says this resulted from his research, including his view that the foundation of the dairy industry is breaking the bond between mother cow and calf...."

Oh my. Ethical bovine management is more than just about cowmanely curbing methane filled cow farts then - much deeper!
Anyway, with a gushing tick of overall approval from Barack Obama, who am I to cast any shadow on manifest greatness.
Without bothering to check, extremely lucrative best seller book sales, paid lecture circuits & TV interviews etc., is doubtless the case.
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