21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari · first published 2018
30% recommend57% neutral13% critical
Why HN recommends it
A broad, accessible tour of current challenges, including technology, politics, and identity. It serves as a useful follow-up to Sapiens for readers who want to understand the present.
Common criticism: Some find it weaker than Sapiens and its title off-putting.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power. Censorship works not by blocking the flow of information, but rather by flooding people with disinformation and distractions. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century cuts through these muddy waters and confronts some of the most urgent questions on today’s global agenda. Why is liberal democracy in crisis? Is God back? Is a new world war coming? What does the rise of Donald Trump signify? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news? Which civilisation dominates the world – the West, China, Islam? Should Europe keep its doors open to
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…World by Hans Rosling - Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl - Deep Work by Cal Newport - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari - The Phoenix Project by D.M. Cain - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari - Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Tia T. Farmer - Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson - Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink -…
on “Analyzing Hacker News book suggestions in Python” ↗I'm struggling to find anything meaningful in this article. But it does remind me of a few chapters within Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" book which I'd recommend everyone read. But essentially he talks about how we're currently seeing a large influx and requirement for digital or technology related jobs, which will over time take some…
on “Work peak and professional decline (2019)” ↗Yuval Harari - Sapiens Yuval Harari - Homo Deus Yuval Harari - 21 lessons for the 21st century Frank Schätzing - The Swarm Peter Drucker - The Effective Executive Stephen Hawking - A Short History Of Time
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗I read 12 books in 2018 and these are my favorites from 1 to 4: - Being Mortal by Atul Gawande - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - So good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗…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
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗But facebook can shrink, and dramatically so. The main asset that facebook has is data. I've been reading "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", and I agree with Dr. Harari's argument that we need a regulatory environment for data, and the way that the cultural/political swing is going, all it takes is one election to completely upend the value…
on “Powerless investors vote overwhelmingly to oust Mark Zuckerberg as chairman” ↗“21 Lessons for the 21st Century”, by Yuval Harari. I am blown away. His first book, “Sapiens” clarified a few cultural concepts which made the world a little easier to understand. This book is a firehose of more of that. Harari explains…
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?” ↗…Frank's diary). Without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read, just through how supremely human it is. Other books are: -The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson -Sapiens by Yuval Yuval Noah Harari -21 Lessons for the 21st Century -Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feyn man!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman -Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson -Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗…musician Nick Cave, because I think he explains it more eloquently than I could. --- From: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/considering-human-imaginatio... In Yuval Noah Harari’s brilliant new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes…
on “YouTube to automatically label AI-generated videos” ↗…brainwash you for one hour every day, and in exchange, I will not charge you anything for this service.’ Now the deal suddenly sounds tempting to hundreds of millions of people. Don’t follow their example." 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari In my opinion, the business press WSJ, and Finacial Times (both expensive) are among the best places for news. Both try hard to be accurate. A lot of rich people read them and make…
on “If you have something important to say, don't say it in a paywalled publication” ↗…The data, along with ML/AI, and our contemporary understanding of the human mind, means that this is a major step towards control that we can't understand. Dr. Harari explains it better than I do in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", but this tool is part of a suite of data collection utilities that will be dissected and used in order to further subjugate our mental energies to the will of the tech giants running our phones. If…
on “Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra” ↗I'm in my 30ties and after reading Harari idea of the future https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yuval-noah-harari-extract-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century I have started thinking about what would make sense to learn now that even if made obsolete in 2050 would help me along the way. Any Ideas of that's worth learning in the time scale of 10, 20 and 30…
on “Ask HN: What is worth learning for 2050?” ↗…find to be absolutely unacceptable behaviour for a writer who talks about the dangers facing our liberal societies: "Last summer, he was criticized when readers noticed that the Russian translation of “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” had been edited to make it more palatable to Vladimir Putin’s government. Harari had approved some of these edits, and had replaced a discussion of Russian misinformation about its 2014 annexation of…
on “Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone” ↗…kind of made me think of the following quote > “The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference.” ― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century I took a couple of extra socks and shirts from software vendors to give out, but man... Heroin is an ugly drug. There was alot of talk about hoping the new mayor would do something. Like set up safe…
on “Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco” ↗I think this is the same point that Harari makes in "21 lessons for the 21st century" i.e democracy became important simultaneously with the work of people being important along with the industrial revolution. Nations needed a happy population as a happy population was the ultimate source…
on “U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich” ↗