Author: Maria Chzhen
Homo Deus is an exciting story of humanity written by a historian Yuval Noah Harari. It is fascinating to read, and the book truly is an eye-opening experience. Though the book does get a little repetitive in some chapters to the stuff that was already described in Sapiens, most ideas are still pretty unique and mind-boggling.
Harari starts the book by talking about the human agenda, an agenda that would plan out the nearest future of Homo Sapiens. What will we do now that humanity has found a way to cure epidemics, many deadly diseases and prevent the spread of new ones? The author explicitly says that most likely, humans, especially the elite, will aspire to become more advanced using the medications. And that they might succeed. If an Alzheimer's disease pill gets created, then why not use it both for people with Alzheimer's AND to improve the memory of other willing people? That is one example. If people do the same thing about different medications, a new species will be born, Homo Deus. That is a pretty bold statement to make, considering all the Hollywood movies and science-fiction about human cyborgs and unique abilities that have been created in the past decades. So now, the social elite will not only be more prosperous but also smarter in terms of biology. Not very encouraging, but Ok.
From that point and on, Harari slowly starts to go into other topics, economics is one of them. He explains why animals are intelligent creatures, outsmarting humans in some areas. He also reveals why farmers and the meat-producing industries treat animals as inanimate objects and how people became more aware of this fact in recent years. Further on, we dive into the subject of algorithms. What if animals don't feel things? For example, if we decided to torture a dog, would we become monsters or not (because dogs are just complex algorithms)? By the way, nobody tortures dogs here, that is not the way you should behave. Are WE the algorithms? Maybe, we don't have a soul as the church says we do.
It is up to you right now to decide if you want to read the book or not. Homo Deus does have some mind-blowing ideas that may or may not appeal to you. In my opinion, the book is worth reading because it is so interesting to discover the thoughts about our world and the views upon the most seemingly basic things in our world.
My rating: 9.5/10
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