Current Affairs31 Heinä 2022

A Neuroscientist Critiques the Dangerous "Populist" Pseudoscience of Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian whose books have been major bestsellers, praised by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama. Harari not only offers a sweeping chronicle of the human past, but makes confident predictions about the human future. His visions of a future in which technology creates godlike humans has turned him into a kind of prophet, especially in Silicon Valley, though Harari insists he is a mere objective chronicler.

Darshana Narayanan is a neuroscientist and journalist whose Current Affairs article "The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari," available in our March-April 2022 issue, shows that Harari's claim to broad-ranging expertise is dubious and the stories he tell often lack sufficient factual foundation. Narayanan argues that belief in these unsupported prophecies is dangerous and experts need to do a better job of spreading the true findings of their academic fields so that populist pseudoscientists don't become our go-to explainers of reality.

Today, Darshana joins to discuss her article and Harari's work. We talk about:

Why deterministic visions of the human future are both wrong and harmful, because they inhibit our sense of the possible
How many of Harari's statements become meaningless upon scrutiny, such has the idea that lions are more "self-confident" than humans
The comparison between Harari and Jordan Peterson, both of whom fill a void where a true culture of public intellectualism should be (the Jordan Peterson article can be read here)
How experts are strangely resistant to critiquing and engaging with "popular" books, meaning those books don't get rigorously fact-checked or refuted

The Sapiens diagram explaining the "economic history of the world" that Nathan makes fun of during this episode looks like this:

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(600)

Neoliberal Economics Has Always Been Bogus

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Eric Beinhocker is a professor at the University of Oxford and executive director of the Institute...

16 Heinä 44min

How an AIPAC Smear Campaign Works

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership The Israel lobby’s attempt to destroy Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is a disturbing example of how mone...

14 Heinä 17min

Kshama Sawant Is Taking On a Pro-War Democrat

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Kshama Sawant is a socialist organizer, former Seattle City Council member, and candidate for Cong...

9 Heinä 32min

Trump Might Really Invade Cuba

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership There’s barely any pretense that Trump cares about Cuban democracy. This is about privatizing Cuba...

6 Heinä 13min

Of Course The Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Trump

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership They rejected kings and were sincerely concerned about the possibility of a dictatorship. But we ne...

3 Heinä 15min

Charles Booker Has a Plan to Win Kentucky

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Charles Booker is a former Kentucky state representative and the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate...

2 Heinä 41min

The Internet Is Being Erased

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Mark Graham is the director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, and Chris Freeland is t...

30 Kesä 49min

A Trillion Dollars Isn’t Worth It If You Have to Be Elon Musk

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Elon Musk is a miserable deadbeat whom no amount of money can make loved, cool, or happy. 🌹 Full a...

27 Kesä 45min