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It's that Noah Yuval Harari book, isn't it? What's separates humans is we can construct common fictions that we actually believe in, eg "my job is to maximize
by lordnacho 2y ago
It's that Noah Yuval Harari book, isn't it?
What's separates humans is we can construct common fictions that we actually believe in, eg "my job is to maximize shareholder value" where both the corporation and the responsibilities towards it are made up but generally believed.
There's of course a rather large elephant in this room, too, that decides a lot of things about our lives.
- calepayson 2y agoHarari’s book is awesome but I think he gets stuck too far up the hierarchy. Trying to describe culture with stories feels like trying to describe biology with proteins. It gets us most of the way there but also adds a whole ton of complexity because it misses the fundamental nature of the system. Humans are great at general and accurate imitation. This probably seeded a runaway evolutionary process, the result of which was tools, fire, and language.