Kent Fackenthall

Tag: Yuval Noah Harari

  • Lessons from a Year of Covid

    No surprise, Yuval Noah Hurari does an excellent job of summarizing this year of Covid pandemic in his article: Lessons from a Year of Covid. Some key takeaways for me: “If it is not too complicated to start monitoring what you do — it is not too complicated to start monitoring what the government does.” […]

  • Know the Workings of Your Own Mind

    In a recent New Yorker article Yuval Harari commented on the prospect of the possible nefarious uses of AI by governments, corporations or others to intrude on personal freedoms. “Harari argues that, though there’s no sure prophylactic against such future intrusions, people who are alert to the workings of their minds will be better able […]

  • Dollars for Data

    Do you ever stop to think about how much data is being collected on you daily by everyone from Google to your bank? Did you ever give them permission to do so? Well, in some cases you may have via the checkbox at that massive ‘Terms of Service’ document that no one reads, but the […]

  • Summum Bonum

    Some months back I loaned my copy of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens to a friend-of-a-friend. He messaged me awhile ago and said that he ‘owed me a book’. I asked for clarification and apparently his dog, a Vizsla that goes by the moniker Frank Tempo, had ‘dispatched’ the book with due prejudice. I laughed and […]

  • Capitalist-Consumerist Ethics

    As someone who is by no means innocent with regard to the following tendencies, yet has been working to be more self-reflective and step out of the cycle, this passage from a book I am reading struck me last night and though long and slightly out of context, I thought merited transcribing. It’s relevance to […]