Why humans run the world | Yuval Noah Harari | TED

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Seventy thousand years ago, our human ancestors were insignificant animals, just minding their own business in a corner of Africa with all the other animals. But now, few would disagree that humans dominate planet Earth; we've spread to every continent, and our actions determine the fate of other animals (and possibly Earth itself). How did we get from there to here? Historian Yuval Noah Harari suggests a surprising reason for the rise of humanity.

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"Take a human being, cut him open, look inside, and you will find no human rights there."
Well this went pretty dark pretty fast

latezksi

this talk is basically a summary of his book.

shani

Why humans run the world | Yuval Noah Harari
00:13
Seventy-thousand years ago, our ancestors were insignificant animals. Today, we are the rulers of planet Earth.
00:51
Usually, we look for the difference between us and other animals on the individual level, but the truth is that we're all embarrassingly similar. If you put me and a chimpanzee together on a lonely island, the chimpanzee would survive much better.
01:50
Humans are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly and in huge numbers. Other animals, like the social insects, the bees, and the ants, can cooperate in large numbers but not flexibly.
03:03
I would need to know you personally to work with you. Are you a friendly chimpanzee?
03:21
Humans are the only animals that can combine the two abilities, cooperate flexibly, and still do so in huge numbers. Chimpanzees cannot cooperate at all, and if you cram 100, 000 chimpanzees into Oxford Street, you will get chaos. I don't know the people who organized this event, the people who brought me to London, the people who invented this microphone and these cameras, or those who are watching this talk over the Internet.
05:36
Even though we don't know each other, we can work together to create this global exchange of ideas, which is something chimpanzees cannot do. Chimpanzees don't have slaughterhouses, prisons, or concentration camps.
06:36
We control the world because we can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, and we can cooperate flexibly with countless numbers of strangers because we can create and believe fictions fictional stories.
07:30
All other animals use their communication system to describe reality, but humans use their language to create new, fictional realities. Only humans can do this, which is why we control the world.
08:46
Humans cooperate by believing in the same fiction in the religious field, but the exact mechanism underlies all other mass-scale human cooperation.
09:23
Human rights are just a story we invented, just like God and heaven. They're not an objective reality; they're just stories we've spread over the last few centuries.
10:15
The most critical factors in modern politics are states and nations, but these are just stories we invented.
10:46
The most critical actors in the global economy are companies and corporations. These are legal fictions invented and maintained by the powerful wizards we call lawyers. A green piece of paper, the dollar bill, has no value, but master storytellers tell us it is worth 10 bananas. We can trade this worthless paper for real bananas if we believe them. Money is the most successful story ever invented and told by humans because everybody thinks it. Even Osama Bin Laden believed in money and was fond of American dollars.
13:38
We humans live in an objective reality, but we have constructed a second layer of fictional reality on top of it. This fictional reality has become increasingly powerful, so today, the survival of rivers, trees, lions, and elephants depends on these fictional entities.
15:05
In the industrial revolution, a new class of urban proletariat was created, and much of the political and social history of the last 200 years involved what to do with this new class.
15:46
Computers will eventually outperform humans in most tasks, making humans redundant.
16:23
The growing evidence of significant economic inequality is just the beginning of creating a new class of useless people or dividing humankind into different biological castes.

PricelessAudiobooks

Got chills when he said, New Delhi 😮😮 as I am sitting and watching him over the Internet in new delhi

monikar

Sapiens: A brief History of Human Kind, the best book i have read....

KatwereJames

“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion” ~ Daniel Dennett

MosesRabuka

1. Communication
2. Collaboration at Scale
3. Stories
4. Belief Systems
5. Great Story Systems
6. Dual Reality

carlitosvodka

Kudos to the interviewer at the end .
His first question was revealing.

Matt-ktnm

I like and am glad that he says "human and other animals" instead of "human and animals"

jovanndzaky

HIs "Sapiens" book brought me back to life from depression as it answered so many "Why" and "what for" questions and put all the things straight and clear. This has to be a mandatory history book to read in school, not all the crap that confuses people.

LanaGram

I quote him literally: "What do we do with all these useless people?"
That man is pure evil.

I_am_Raziel

This ted talk is literally his book in 17 minutes.

hayaafareen

His book, Sapiens, literally cured my depression.

inayahcee

"If they took anyone of you, and placed you alone with a chimpanzee on an island, the chimpanzee would do better"
Bear Grylls: Hold my piss...

TheAssassin

If you ask me: Nobody is useless, rich became rich because someone from his/her family belonged to useless class and worked hard for it. I think what we need to do is not to create division but a world which is more fairer, just and loving for one another. I don't need money, I need life. Every human born in this world should deserve to live till the end of his life. Everyone deserves a good life. Please.

goodandzloi