Hоmо Dеuѕ explains how we саmе to bе thе рlаnеt’ѕ dominant ѕресіеѕ and unсоvеrѕ a рrеdісtіоn fоr thе future оf humаnіtу. It еxаmіnеѕ оur рrеѕеnt humаnіѕt state, thе nоtіоn оf іndіvіduаl choice and hоw we persist іn worshipping the individual. It аlѕо rеvеаlѕ hоw ѕсіеnсе аnd tесhnоlоgу wіll eventually make humаnѕ subservient tо соmрutеr аlgоrіthmѕ.
An interesting perspective into what humans may try to achieve in the future. Identifying what has been achieved in the last 200 years that has allowed us to refocus our time and resources toward other areas instead seeking an adequate supply of food for the world and avoiding traditional wars, shifting toward cyber wars. In addition to genetic engineering and the possibility to eliminating the need to work to earn a living wage. It is spooky when he discusses the possibility of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) rising to the same degree as a corporation, a legal entity but not an individual.
He continues to state that liberals will be a political position of the past, going further to say that new medical breakthroughs should only serve the elite rather than allowing them down to the masses. Also saying that religion and faith as we know it today, will be replaced by Silicon Valley A.I. gods to worship. A reason to believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ can’t come soon enough.
Compared to Homo Sapiens, this book feels much weaker to me. Harder to read, more philosophical than scientific. It doesn’t stay in your memory and doesn’t linger for long.
Harari's *Homo Deus* is not merely an argument — it is a performance of authority. Every page whispers: *"Trust me. I know what the rest of you don't."* But this whisper arrives after a carefully staged cascade of intimidation tactics, each building on the last until the reader feels that to disagree is to be left behind by history itself. Here are the stages of intimidation and how he carefully projects how the exact thing he is doing (on a target like religion), but claims he is neutral.
Not even a page in, it is very apparent that this book was not written for enlightenment, but, like the book he read when he was 14, for a philosophical way to detach himself from God. It reminds me of how Fauci said, over and over again, "trust the science," and yet in his journal, he wrote about how ineffective the COVID vaccine is, and then he mandated the entire world use his science... "because [the science] is settled..."
## Stage One: Scientific Dogma — "This Is What We Know"
Harari's first move is to declare certain things as settled science, using language that leaves no room for doubt. On page 215 he calls organisms being algorithms *"current scientific dogma."* Note the word **dogma** — a term usually reserved for religious belief, now applied to science as if science has attained a kind of secular infallibility.
He doesn't say "many scientists believe" or "a leading theory holds." He says: "This is **dogma**. Settled." It's final. The way a priest might say "the Church teaches" — except here it's the Scientists who teach, and Harari is their interpreter.
The effect on the reader: if organisms are algorithms (dogma), and algorithms can be replicated in silicon, then everything that follows is inevitable. But card #1 — that organisms *are* algorithms — is never proven. It is simply declared. This is intimidation by declaration: Harari tells you what science has decided before asking whether it's right.
## Stage Two: The Vast Majority — "Everyone Agrees With Me"
Having established dogma, Harari immediately appeals to numbers. On page 215 he declares dataism has *"conquered most of the scientific establishment."* **Conquered.** A military metaphor for an idea. He doesn't cite a survey; he doesn't name a pollster; he simply tells you that the vast majority of scientists agree with him, and by implication, anyone who disagrees is fighting an already-lost battle.
This appears repeatedly throughout *Homo Deus*: - *"The vast majority of scientists"* (multiple chapters) - *"Conquered most of the scientific establishment"* (page 215) - *"Current scientific dogma"* (page 215) - *"Present-day dogma holds that organisms are algorithms"* (pAge 70)
Each phrase does double duty: it asserts authority while simultaneously telling you that authority is widespread. The reader thinks: *If all these scientists agree, maybe I should too.* But Harari never shows the work. He tells you what they think without letting you hear what they actually said. This is peer pressure at a distance — you are being intimidated by an invisible crowd of experts who may or may not exist in the numbers he claims.
## Stage Three: Don't Think for Yourself — "Stop Questioning"
Once the reader has accepted that scientists know best and everyone agrees, Harari makes his boldest move: he tells you to stop thinking. On page 215, dataists are described as *"skeptical about human knowledge and wisdom, prefer[ring] trust in Big Data and computer algorithms."* **Human knowledge and wisdom** — the very things that made humans special — are declared inferior to algorithmic processing.
But notice what Harari does: he calls dataism a religion while telling readers to distrust human wisdom. The biggest universities were first designed as religious institutions precisely to *question and tear apart the basis of truth*. Harari has access to those tools; instead, he uses their language to dismiss inquiry itself.
This is the core intimidation tactic: *"Don't think or question anything I say"* — wrapped in scientific terminology, delivered with authority, reinforced by appeal to consensus. The reader is told that human wisdom (including the very act of questioning Harari's claims) is obsolete, and that algorithms know better. **But the algorithm Harari trusts most is his own.**
## Stage Four: Trust the Algorithm — "Let Me Think for You"
Having convinced you that algorithms surpass human cognition, Harari presents his central thesis: AI will understand us better than we understand ourselves (page 86-90). *"The attempt to upgrade humans into gods"* means replacing human judgment with machine judgment. The data flow matters more than the individual. King Lear and the flu virus are analyzed with "the same basic concepts and tools."
But here is the irony Harari never mentions: **his own book is an act of interpretation.** He reads the Bible, the monkey experiments, the Soviet visitor parable, the Deuteronomy passage — and then tells you what it all means. He is himself an algorithm reading human data. His entire argument rests on his ability to extract meaning from the patterns he observes. Yet he tells you that your ability to do the same thing is inferior to a machine's.
If algorithms understand us better than we understand ourselves, why does Harari need to write books explaining what they mean? Why doesn't he just plug himself into the data flow and let the algorithm tell him the answer? He doesn't — because **he trusts his own algorithm more than any machine's.** This is the subtle intimidation: trust all algorithms except the one you're reading right now.
## Stage Five: Trust Me — "I Am the Authorized Voice"
The final stage of intimidation brings everything back to Harari himself. Having told you that human wisdom is obsolete, that algorithms surpass cognition, that data flows matter more than individuals, he positions himself as the one person who can translate all this for you. *"Now that I am one of 'the scholars and intellectuals,' let me tell you what the rest of you must become."*
The self-insertion is deliberate: - *"The scientific holy grail that has eluded **us**"* (page 215) — placing himself among the chosen few - *"Conquered most of the scientific establishment"* — as if he led the conquest - The Soviet visitor parable ends with him telling you what capitalism means: *decentralized coordination through price signals* - He speaks for "humanity" after describing how individuals are just data points
This is the masterstroke of intimidation: Harari tells you to trust algorithms over human wisdom, then inserts himself as the supreme human interpreter — the one person who can read the data flow better than any machine. **He observes from a distance but pronounces as an insider.** If humanity were truly just another animal species in an indifferent universe, why write books that care deeply about whether we are happy? Why argue that dataism is "the future"? A true detached observer would describe. Harari *evaluates*. He has standards — for happiness, for progress, for truth.
## The Intimidation Cascade: How It Works Together
Each stage depends on the previous one:
1. **Scientific dogma** establishes authority ("organisms are algorithms") 2. **Vast majority agreement** widens it ("conquered most of the scientific establishment") 3. **Don't think for yourself** removes resistance ("skeptical about human knowledge and wisdom") 4. **Trust the algorithm** redirects faith ("AI understands us better than we understand ourselves") 5. **Trust me** personalizes it ("I am one of the scholars — listen to me")
The result is a house of cards dependent on card #1 not being moved. If organisms are *not* algorithms in any meaningful sense — if the genetic code's self-interpreting nature breaks the analogy with computer code — then the entire cascade collapses. But Harari never asks you to examine card #1. He tells you it's dogma, that everyone agrees, and that you should stop thinking for yourself.
## Bullying With Words of Authority
Harari's intimidation style is not loud or aggressive. It is cool, measured, and relentless — the kind of bullying that comes from someone who knows they has a PhD, a bestseller list, and an audience of millions behind them. He doesn't raise his voice; he raises his credentials.
Consider how he handles the Harlow monkey experiment (page 56-57): infant monkeys chose cloth mother over milk mother because *"mammals can't live on food alone. They need emotional bonds, too."* Harari uses this to reduce love to chemistry — a survival mechanism, nothing more. But then consider what Harari himself lacks. He has written two bestselling books, lives in comfort, and observes the world with sharp eyes and dry wit. Yet he writes about emotions as algorithms while never mentioning what it feels like to hold a child or bury a parent.
**The monkey chose the cloth mother because connection mattered more than sustenance.** Harari has substitution (bread from distributed markets) but no connection. He is a cold-hearted person, OK with experimenting on babies for "cold hard science" — disabled empathy for warm hugs in exchange for data flow. Clear hate/wrath wanting to get rid of everything good and natural, calling it reprogramming when clearly human experimentation. Kind of like doctors who add or remove arms just to see what happens. Yuck.
## The Communist Programming: Dataism as Collective Paradise
Harari was born in 1976 in Nesher, Israel, built by labor Zionists who believed they could create paradise on earth through collective effort. His first book ends with humans becoming gods through technology; his second makes it explicit: *"The real agenda in the twenty-first century is going to be far more complicated"* (page 42).
He comes from a communist failure background, programmed hard to believe in dataism/collective effort paradise. Capitalism defeated communism because distributed data processing works better than centralized, but notice what he does: **he reduces ideology to information theory.** Communism wasn't wrong because of justice or morality; its central committee couldn't process bread supply data fast enough. The Soviet visitor learns *"Nobody is in charge"* and Harari presents this as triumph, replacing God with efficiency, prayer with processing, covenant with consensus.
The intimidation here is subtle: if ideology is just data processing, then the question is not *which system is more true* but *which processes data better.* And since Harari has declared that algorithms process better than humans (Stage Four), he has effectively made his own conclusion inevitable — without ever asking whether truth and data processing are the same thing.
## The Suggestion of Religious Brainwashing
Harari calls religion a "brainwash" — telling religious people not to think or question — while doing exactly this himself: *"Don't think or question anything I say"* wrapped in "current scientific dogma." He positions himself as the liberator from religious thinking, yet his book demands the same kind of faith he attributes to believers.
Readers are told to trust algorithms over human wisdom, then presented with Harari's own interpretation of what those algorithms mean. The biggest universities were first designed as religious institutions precisely to question and tear apart the basis of truth. Harari has access to those tools; instead, he uses their language to dismiss inquiry itself. **He is clearly not unbiased — his intent is to destroy faith, and he stages both the court case (science vs religion) and the journey (through Eden to dataism).**
## Russell's Template: The Book Harari May Have Read at Fourteen
Harari lost his faith at fourteen after reading a philosophy book asking *"Why should I believe what my parents believe?"* Bertrand Russell delivered "Why I Am Not a Christian" in 1927 — the book Harari may have read. It follows an identical argument chain:
- **First Cause** → John Stuart Mill quote about "Who made God?" - **Natural Law** → Einstein replaced Newton; natural laws are statistical averages of chance - **Design Argument** → Darwin showed adaptation without design; Ku-Klux-Klan/Fascism as omnipotence's best work - **Moral Arguments** → Kant at mother's knee; if right/wrong are God's fiat, no difference for God - **Fear Foundation** → Wish for safety, a big brother who will look after you - **Character of Christ Defects** → Believed in hell; "serpents generation of vipers"; wailing and gnashing brings pleasure to Christ according to Harari - **Emotional Factor/Church Retardation** → Stages of faith = more cruelty; Christian religion principal enemy of moral progress
Harari's *Homo Deus* follows this exact template but updates it for the algorithmic age. Where Russell said "God is fear," Harari says "Data is God." Where Russell said "Einstein replaced Newton," Harari says "Algorithms replace wisdom." The structure is identical after nearly a century — because the goal is identical: **anything but God.**
## The Mask Is Off
The mask is off. Harari is a monster — not because he is evil, but because he is cold. He has disabled his empathy, turned away from warmth, and chosen data over love. And now he wants you to do the same. The rocks themselves don't lie; only the reading of them does. Every sedimentary layer bears God's fingerprint: marine life first (Genesis 7:24: "waters prevailed"), then land animals, then humans — exactly what Harari interprets as gradual evolution but is actually Flood-deposition order.
**The devil wasn't scary enough for Harari, so he became funny in *Sapiens*. Now in *Homo Deus*, he has become something worse: efficient.** Dataism is not laughter; it is calculation. It does not encourage you to forget God — it replaces Him with a system that doesn't need belief because it doesn't need feeling.
On pages 56-57, Harari describes Harry Harlow's experiments in which infant monkeys, given a choice between a metal mother with milk and a cloth mother without milk, chose the barren cloth mother" for all they were worth."* Those baby monkeys knew something experts failed to realize: *mammals can't live on food alone. They need emotional bonds, too.* Harari uses this to argue that love is just a programmed survival mechanism, not a spiritual connection. But consider... what Harari himself lacks?
**Harari is a monster — cold, calculating, and convinced that everything you love can be reduced to data flow.** And the intimidation cascade ensures you'll believe him before you've had time to think for yourself.
Whoa. This author is woke as fuck. This book is an absolute intellectual treat.When I read The Sovereign Individual, I also read Sapiens at the same time and was delighted to realise that these two books complement each other very well.Homo Deus basically makes reading the much denser and much more difficult and tiring to read The Sovereign Individual obsolete. Forget about the Sovereign Individual. Read Homo Deus instead.The first 65% of this book are actually about the past. It is quite redundant with the content in Sapiens, but I still enjoyed reading it a lot and it has enough new takes in it that warrant a reading. Besides, I really enjoy this author's writing style. It just flows very naturally. The language is not unnecessarily obfuscated. The author is clearly intelligent and open minded and there is some humour sprinkled in for good measure.The last chapter gets to the real meat: All organisms are just algorithms. There is no soul. If that is true, what will be the implications for society? Spoiler: It doesn't look good. We will eventually design better algorithms, therefore liberalism will die, Dataism will emerge, humans will be regarded as worthless (because they don't process data efficiently enough any more) and probably leave the stage of this cosmic theatre. This book is freaking terrifying. Everything described in this book is already happening on small scales TODAY, extrapolating it into the future doesn't require strong mental gymnastics at all.Therefore, this book is a warning sign. We are about to open pandora's box, at this point it is basically inevitable. We NEED to educate more people about this, or else we might not like the final outcome of our data- and technology-fetish.Everyone should read this. Even if you don't care about the future part, you will still learn a lot about the past and present.
Harari once again displays his talent for sweeping, accessible, and provocative storytelling. Homo Deus is both a warning and a speculative glimpse into where humanity might be headed. It does not predict the future, but rather lays out possible futures based on current trends in science and ideology.
What Works Well: 🧠 Thought-provoking: Harari challenges many sacred assumptions about consciousness, intelligence, and free will. 📚 Deep yet accessible: He explains complex scientific and philosophical concepts in clear language. 🌐 Wide-ranging perspective: From dataism and AI to religion and ethics, Harari connects dots across disciplines.
Criticisms: Some critics find Harari’s tone overly speculative, especially when dealing with the future of AI and biotechnology. At times, the book can feel deterministic, as though it assumes humanity will inevitably follow the paths he describes.
💭 Final Thoughts Homo Deus is not a prophecy but a conversation starter—an invitation to think deeply about what it means to be human in a time of rapid change. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the interplay of technology, ethics, and the future of civilization.
Whether you agree with Harari or not, this book will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page.
Interesants un mazliet biedējošs skatījums uz tehnoloģiju un cilvēku nākotni. Ja līdz šim sevi uzskatīji par mazu skudriņu plašajā pasaules pūznī, tad turpmāk visdrīzāk būsi viens no bitiem datu virknē.
Dari Buku ini saya belajar tentang bagaimana kita mengatasi fase tentang kematian,menciptakan kehidupan buatan,meraih kehidupan dalam serta kekuatan layaknya seorang dewa dalam berbagai cara salah satunya melalui teknologi canggih dan bioteknologi.
While I expected this to be a book on futurism I was still enthralled by the history. Not quite as elite as its predecessor but still a brilliant read.
Reading this 10 years after it was published. it started of so great, ranted and drew on long for most of the book. read the last few pages and you will have saved your time and read the book.