Author:: [[Yuval Noah Harari]] Rating:: 9 # Sapiens A Brief History Of Everything # Linked Book Notes - [[Imagined versus natural orders]] - [[Alternative histories]] - [[Predicting the future with 100 percent accuracy is impossible]] - [[Luxuries tend to become necessities and spawn new obligations]] - [[A need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction]] **Part Two: The Agricultural Revolution** 6. Building Pyramids > Page 111 · Location 1759 - A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative. 6. Building Pyramids > Page 113 · Location 1798 - Three main factors prevent people from realizing that the order organizing their lives exists only in their imagination: 8. There is No Justice in History > Page 143 · Location 2261 - Such vicious circles can go on for centuries and even millennia, perpetuating an imagined hierarchy that sprang from a chance historical occurrence. Unjust discrimination often gets worse, not better, with time. Money comes to money, and poverty to poverty. Education comes to education, and ignorance to ignorance. Those once victimized by history are likely to be victimized yet again. And those whom history has privileged are more likely to be privileged again. **Part Three: The Unification of Humankind** 13. The Secret of Success > Page 240 · Location 3684 - History is what is called a ‘level two’ chaotic system. Chaotic systems come in two shapes. Level one chaos is chaos that does not react to predictions about it. The weather, for example, is a level one chaotic system. Though it is influenced by myriad factors, we can build computer models that take more and more of them into consideration, and produce better and better weather forecasts. Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions about it, and therefore can never be predicted accurately. 13. The Secret of Success > Page 241 · Location 3703 - So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine. 13. The Secret of Success > Page 243 · Location 3744 - No matter what you call it – game theory, postmodernism, or memetics – the dynamics of history are not directed towards enhancing human well-being. There is no basis for thinking that the most successful cultures in history are necessarily the best ones for Homo sapiens. Like evolution, history disregards the happiness of individual organisms. And individual humans, for their part, are usually far too ignorant and weak to influence the course of history to their own advantage. **Part Four: The Scientific Revolution** 17. The Wheels of Industry > Page 344 · Location 5315 - This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction. The tragedy of industrial agriculture is that it takes great care of the objective needs of animals while neglecting their subjective needs.