Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

- Hpmor, from Yudkowsky the guy who created the ML Research Institute, simply one of the funniest and smartest book I ever read. - Martin Eden, a great tragic adventure from the late 19th century about a poor smart guy from the slums who tries to make his riches as a writer - The Moon is Harsh Mistress, Elon’s favorite sci-fi books - Foundation by Asimov - Homo Deus by Harari - Principles by Ray Dalio

Some books I've enjoyed in the past year: Wish to laugh? * Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah * Yes please! by Amy Poehler Think? * Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell * Where Good Ideas Come from, by Steven Johnson * The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History both by Mukherjee Siddhartha Learn (more) about great thinkers? * Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci or Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson * Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight Yuval Noah Harari 3 good ones: * Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow * Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind * 21 lessons for the 21st century From time to time, I try to put some good ones over here: https://greenido.wordpress.com/?s=book

I loved Sapiens. It has a couple of ideas that help explain so much of our world - really powerful ideas. Once you know them they seem so obvious and you feel like you should have thought of that yourself. For example, (spoilers for human history ahead), our civilations are based on agriculture and very few hunter gatherers remain. But that doesn't mean that people consciously chose one over the other. It's just that for various reasons, agriculture is a more "viral" idea that spread more efficiently than the alternative. Ditto with monotheistic vs polytheistic religions. Homo Deus... less so. It rehashes a lot of Sapiens and I found it a bit of a drag. The introduction is worth reading though. He recounts all the progress we've made as a species, which would surprise people who think our world is growing worse by the day. Chasing the Scream was amazing. Nothing more to be said.…

Here are the best books I've read over the last few months: - Lost and Founder - the founder of Moz shares his advice and experience from building a 40M/year company. I found the things he says about building a startup extremely insightful and practically useful. Reading it feels like having a dinner with a friend who shares with you the things he has learned in a very honest, down to earth way. Highly recommend it. - Rationality from AI to Zombies - probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality. (recently they've released an an audio version by the way). - "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and "Our Mathematical Universe" - two general popular science books I'm enjoying a lot. Haven't finished reading them yet, but so far they're brilliant(and very easy to understand, authors do an amazing job explaining complicated things in a simple, accessible way).…

Yuval Noah Harari's books, 'Sapiens' and 'Homo Deus' really changed the way I look at things.

I felt like Homo Deus was largely a retread of Sapiens. Some of his speculations about the various forms of humanism that have arisen in the 20th century were interesting, but for most of the book it felt like he was treading very familiar ground. It seemed like Harari was in a rush to release another book after the runaway success of Sapiens, and because of that he didn't take his time writing it. Sapiens was very concise and felt like the product of years of careful thought. Homo Deus felt like it was rushed in comparison. Still a good read, don't get me wrong. For a similar type of book I would recommend Howard Bloom's Lucifer Principle and Global Brain. They both take a similarly broad scientific perspective on human history and behavior, and both are fun reads.

It might not be read much only because it was recently released but Homo Deus by Yuval Harari is off the chain. This dude can explain grand ideas encompassing human civilization in (relatively) simple, brief, and entertaining language and I can't get enough of it. I think Homo Deus's forward focus will appeal to the HN crowd more than his more famous Sapiens.

Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam - Sapiens / Homo Deus

Homo Deus - A Brief Bistory of Tomorrow