21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

This book’s full title is just 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I must say that this book is a real downer. My view is that book show how we and the earth is going to hell in a handbasket. I am always optimistic that humans and my country will somehow muddle through all our difficulties. Yuval Noah Harari has his own web site for this book here.

I am not so bleak about AI and its implications. I have worked with computers and algorithms. One problem I see is that AI has no common sense. Algorithms when they are wrong or have solutions or answers off the rails, they will not recognize this. For example, you would not want an AI to be your doctors. It can be of great help for your doctor, but you want a human being to make the final call or decide on treatment. AI’s will also never have an “ah” moments.

However, I did work in IT, now ICT, in 1980’s and 1990’s and I must admit that most of the users of our computer system in the company thought of the computer as a magic black box that always came up with the right answers. That was and is a problem.

Steve Paulson has a good interview with Yuval Harari Nautilus. This is a free newsletter with some very interesting articles. Helen Lewis does a great review on The Guardian. The reviews on Good Reads vary a lot.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, hosts Yuval Noah Harari for a conversation about his new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and about who the future belongs to. Yuval Noah Harari in conversation with Christine Lagarde is on Youtube. Yuval Noah Harari speaks at Talks on Google. His views of “free will” is interesting. Stan Grant talks to Yuval Noah Harari on ABC (Australia).

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.