Harari is a charlatan. I tried to read his Sapiens but could not finish it. There is only so much bullshit I can stomach at once. It's inaccurate, full of idiotic extrapolations and analogies all based on, and to fit, his personal biases. In other words, complete rubbish. Makes me wonder how uneducated must be all those famous people who praise him beyond heaven and earth.
This also highlights the problem with academia. Most of the academics never bring anything new to the table. They just embrace the scientific status quo they've learned during their studies and that's it. Their whole curriculum then revolves around repeating and “rediscovering” the same things over and over again. All in order to build an academic career, advance within the ranks, gain titles, and, as is the case also with Harari, write likable bestsellers – you get the point.
But – considering academia as such as “training people to believe a particular set of myths about reality masquerading as ‘objective’ science” is another kind of bullshit. As I said above, the problem is not that objective science is a myth. It is not. Whether you like it or not, e.g. your pet peeve, theory of evolution as per Darwin et al, is correct, albeit still incomplete. The problem is that vast majority of academics don't have interest in actual science and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. And those folks who come with alternative views more often than not either have their own set of biases (mostly stemming from bad understanding of all things “spiritual”), lack basic education and expertise in the area of interest, or are simply outright frauds cashing on the gullible (Hararis in reverse).
Thus, even though I really could not care less about Harari and his idiotic takes on human history, he is correct in that there is no meaning and no transcendent God. After all, God is consciousness and there's nothing transcendent or supernatural about consciousness. And as I said many times, you may turn whole universe upside down and you won't find any particular meaning. Well, except the one you arbitrarily choose and, of course, 42 :D
