Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, a writer, and a popular 'public intellectual'. He rose to fame with Sapiens (2014), his popular science book that sought to outline a 'History of Humankind' and followed this up with a more future-focused sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016). More recently, he's been converting his insights into a format targeted at younger people with Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World (2022). In general, Harari is a go-to public intellectual for people looking for big ideas, thoughts on global events, and how we might avoid catastrophe. He has been a consistent figure on the interview and public lecture circuit and, with his secular message, seems an ideal candidate for Gurometeratical analysis.
Harari also has some alter egos. He is a high-ranking villain in the globalist pantheon for InfoWars-style conspiracy theorists, with plans that involve us all eating bugs and uploading our consciousness to the Matrix. Alternatively, for (some) historians and philosophers, he is a shallow pretender, peddling inaccurate summaries of complex histories and tricky philosophical insights. For others, he is a neoliberal avatar offering apologetics for exploitative capitalist and multinational bodies.
So, who is right? Is he a bug-obsessed villain plotting to steal our precious human souls or a mild-mannered academic promoting the values of meditation, historical research, and moderation?
Join Matt and Chris in this episode to find out and learn other important things, such as what vampires should spend their time doing, whether money is 'real', and how to respond respectfully to critical feedback.
Links
Douglas Murray: Can indulgent dinner conversation save OUR civilisation?
Special Episode: Calibrating the Gurometer
Contrapoints: Making Philosophy Fabulous Again
Special Episode: Entering the Portal
Scott Adams: Chris and Matt Go to Hell
Russell Brand: Spiritual Transcendence and Anarchic Revolution is Praxis
Rutger Bregman: Piglets vs. Toddlers
Special Episode: Is Eric Weinstein Feynman-Negative?
JP Sears: Get Ultra Spiritual, Resist the Government, and Promote Coronavirus Conspiracies
Jordan Peterson: The Alchemical Lemon explains the Crystalline Structure of Logos
James Lindsay: The monkey is out of the box and it HATES liberalism
Eric and Bret Weinstein: A Dark Horse Gallops through the Portal
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