:INFO
The History Book That Made Me Question Every Institution
Sapiens does not tell the story of history. It tells the story underneath history: why human beings can cooperate at a scale that no other animal can, and what the cost of that cooperation has been. Harari's central argument, that money and religion and nations are all shared fictions we choose to believe in, felt unsettling the first time I read it. Three readings later it feels like the most accurate thing I have encountered about how human society actually works.


:NOTE
Harari is most convincing in the first half and most provocative in the second.


:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Yuval Noah Harari]
Large-scale human cooperation is based on myths only humans can create and believe.


:JOURNEY
Reading Sapiens
5 Changed my thinking
4 Most counterintuitive
5 Harari at his best
3 Speculative

:CHECKLIST
Ideas From Sapiens That Changed How I Think
[x] That money is a shared fiction that works because everyone agrees it does
[x] The agricultural revolution may have been bad for individuals and good for species
[ ] That the Scientific Revolution began with admitting we do not know everything
[ ] That happiness may not have increased with the size of human societies

:POLL
Did Sapiens change how you think about the institutions you participate in every day?
Yes profoundly and immediately
Somewhat, some ideas landed more than others
Not much, I was already skeptical of these institutions
No, I found the arguments overstated or oversimplified