Comment by cb321 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cb321 | Hacker News Reader

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I think it is important to understand Harari's rhetorical style. He likes to "flip the script", tell long stories (without necessarily dotting every i) and end in a punchline.

So, for example, in his book _Sapiens_ he got a warm reception to a "zinger": Humans did not tame wheat - wheat tamed humans! It's essentially a "punch line" to a long, analytical story he develops. There are several other such punch lines in that book.

So, when he concludes AI has done anything, keep in mind that he thinks that because we are (mostly) addicted to carbohydrates and this is not great for our lifestyle that a plant with no ability to cognate has "tamed" our species.

A funnier example of this is a Usenix Keynote delivered by Van Jacobson in - I think 1996. He tells an involved story about language acquisition in humans and Unix and networks and ends with a "conclusion" that using Windows makes you literally brain damaged. I wish I could find an online video of that talk, if anyone knows of one. (I'm not sure it was even recorded.)

Harari's next zinger: the internet does not empower clickbait -- clickbait empowers the internet!

Hilarious! And an almost literal paraphrase of something a friend of mine says routinely.

That Van Jacobson talk got uproarious laughter from the audience at the end, as one might predict { surely VJ had an inkling... ;-) }. It's a way to do a long story and a punchline/zinger without anthropomorphically flipping the script "selfish-gene" style.

FWIW, I think Harari knows this is "his brand" and might avoid "off brand" articles, much as much as Christopher Nolan probably thinks doing a simple, linear movie would be off brand for him. (Or they both could just love their developed styles. It is oft overlooked, but in the world of humans "all of the above" is often a better answer than any single explanation.)

Gotta love the state of “philosophy” that makes it to publication these days.

“Baffle non-phenomonologists with this One Weird Trick!”

I certainly do not know, but it would be unsurprising if the origins of this article were Harari asking ChatGPT to "Tell me a long, involved, analytical story about <X> that ends with a punchline inverting anthropomorphized agency". Maybe he thought "Erm.. Maybe I am about to be replaced by AI!"

There has been an increasing laymanization of philosophy by academics who should know better. Harari is teleological technobabble personified.

Seriously. I feel like we’re weeks away from “This is the ONE Vegetable that Hegel is BEGGING you to Cut Out Of Your Diet!” being published in The Atlantic or whatever

Looks like this is it? https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenix-1996-annual-technic...

I couldn't find any of the content online.

That is absolutely the keynote/talk, @dang. Even just the slides would be nice, but Van did a great delivery as well, and "knew his audience". Ah well. I could try a more expansive summary from memory, but this may not be the place for it.

It's like the basis of that old meme:

In Soviet Rusia, wheat tames you!

Next up - "the Oxygen molecule has hacked metabolism on Planet Earth!". ;-)

There may be an entire cottage sub-industry of jokes like this, much like Chuck Norris jokes. [1]

[1] https://parade.com/968666/parade/chuck-norris-jokes/

> wheat tamed humans

I’ve also noticed Slavoj Zizek and Byung-Chul Han use this inversion device. It’s an easy way to grab attention.

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