21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY with Yuval Noah Harari | The James Altucher Show

Yuval Harari is the expert on human evolution. I've recommended his book "Sapiens" more than any other book in the past 5 years. And now Yuval has a brand new book, "21 Lessons for The 21st Century," which covers so many topics: he tells us what you start can doing now to feel more comfortable and prepared for all these changes🔥

In 21 Lessons For The 21st Century, Yuval explore so many topics: “the myth of free will,” the rise of robots, algorithms, hackers, how the Automation Revolution will impact the economy, your job, your quality of life and so on.

Plus, he also gives solutions. And they’re all worth contemplating. This interview is probably the most thought-provoking interview I’ve ever aired.

Here’s 3 things Yuval Noah Harari made me question:

A) Are we actually better off?

Yuval says “Life was much more colorful and rich 10,000 years ago.”

We foraged. We climbed trees. We weren’t sitting at desks or managing cash register machines. We were moving.

But history books have branded the Agricultural Revolution as a good thing. A “revolution.” But Yuval argues that farming and harvesting wheat was actually a negative to the species in many ways.

It’s both.

Positive: we can feed more people.

Negative: our diet changes to wheat-based instead of plants, vegetables, etc. And our brains might have shrunk as a result of us only be aware of the space around us and not the greater landscape, which lead to city-states and kingdoms and war. Because we fought each other for resources.

And Yuval says life as a hunter-gatherer is far more interesting than some of the mundane jobs of the 21st century.

And Yuval has other examples.

How many “revolutions” are actually net-negatives?

B) What happens if I’m not the main character?

Everyday, I think about my day. What am I going to do? What do I want to eat? Where am I going?

Yuval said, “Every time you change your perspective, you see a completely different world.”

“Don’t look at from the viewpoint of the king. look at from the viewpoint of the peasant. Don’t look at from the viewpoint of the human. Look at it from the viewpoint of the cow.”