Reddit Reddit reviews Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

We found 3 Reddit comments about Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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3 Reddit comments about Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind:

u/Themandalin · 4 pointsr/worldnews

Nah, we evolved from those days. We are very much still frightened apes who are naturally prone to violence when faced with many situations.
I suggest reading 'Sapiens', to help come to terms with it.

u/hosmovi · 4 pointsr/vancouver

I really appreciate your willingness to learn about this issue, I would like to admit that I am not the most knowledgable person in this regard, there are a lot of books on this matter, but I would recommend Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari as a must read if you wanna learn more about Human Organization.

In layman terms of what I understand, the Government is basically how the community wants to manage itself, throughout time these concepts have changed and how the tribe likes to be managed (inner group outer group, where to live, how to stay safe, how to hunt...) have changed as well.

Modern Government is an evolutionary system born from the former, it is by no means the end game but a step along the way.

People need to work together to survive, we are a creature that depends on others in our tribe/clan/community for safety, food, knowledge....

The purpose of Government is to do the above but on a millions of people scale.

Unfortunately, as humans we have inherent flaws that bleed in to biases, preferences, selfishness... . Our current systems of Government are not human proof, meaning that our biases and selfishness can get through and affect the way we govern.

Therein lies the problem with why our governments fail us

u/ShiftedClock · 2 pointsr/DSPD

> Have any of you hit this crossroads and had to completely uproot what you envision for your future?

Yes, multiple times. And each time it's been hard for me to find new goals that I can both achieve and be happy with.

It's hard to even write a response to this. I'm not the best example to go from, since I also have multiple sclerosis and other health problems. But even right now I'm still trying to find a way forward.

Which is better than willfully accepting being stuck in a rut. I did that for a few years too, and let myself get addicted to games and social media. That phase is mostly gone now, but finding ways to make money that is compatible with my many health problems is a lifelong challenge.

I've been reading a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It's been very eye-opening to see just how different our current world is from the world of our evolutionary ancestors.

DSPD is part of our genetic heritage. The mutations formed possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago and were passed down from parent to child, in an unbroken chain, until they were passed on to you and me.

But for all those tens of thousands of years, those genetic mutations impacted their carriers very little. It's been less than one hundred years since the widespread adoption of electric lighting. So we're among the first generation of carriers to suffer for it. (Although some of us may have inherited a spontaneous mutation that causes our DSPD, in which case we're the first carrier in our lineage.)

Additionally, the imperative to acquire money in our society is really very different from the food-gathering imperative of our hunter gatherer forebearers. Our genomes were shaped over tens of thousands of years to primarily succeed in finding food and socializing. So we find ourselves in control of a body and mind crafted for very different circumstances than what society demands of us now.

Even just forty years ago people were financially rewarded more for physical ability than being smart. But our society has quickly shifted to rewarding intellectual ability, primarily because of Moore's Law (not just the invention of computers, but the fact we can keep making them faster).

There's a possible universe out there where people with our particular genetic mutation happen to be the winners in the economy. But this isn't it. And like /u/eachna said, we're also not necessarily the losers. There is demand here and there for people who are unusually alert in the late evening hours.

Anyhow, none of the evolutionary past matters. We find ourselves in this situation, and complaining about it doesn't get you or me any closer to our goals. But perhaps it provides context, which can be invaluable.

Sorry for the rambling, but I want to end on a positive note. There is a chance that within the next 30 years we'll be able to cure DSPD. Gene therapy is becoming more feasible every year, and drawing lots of investment money. And companies are creating "Gene Therapy in a Box" to reduce the costs and increase the availability to end consumers.

To me, that means it makes sense to start saving money. The cost of getting your genome sequenced is dropping every year. It might be $100 in a few years, to give you an idea.

But that's just the first step of the process. Once the price is low enough, more people will get their genomes sequenced, which will lead to an explosion of genomic data. We're on the precipice of this happening, and companies like 23andMe are willfully trying to make it happen.

After that, for every genetic disorder there will need to be a specific fix created for it. This will need to be tailored to the individual. And so there will be companies offering genetic fixes for a large range of disorders. The prices will be high at first, as with all tech adoption.

I said thirty years, but it might take longer for the prices to come down for your average DSPD sufferer to afford it. I don't know when it'll be affordable, but at this point it's when, not if.

Rambling again, sorry. The point is, we may be able to fix our DSPD in the future, and it may not even cost that much. If anything, to me this greatly increases the importance of saving up maybe $10k over the next decade. Which works out to about $2.74 a day, every day, for the next 10 years.

> Have any of you hit this crossroads and had to completely uproot what you envision for your future?

Yes, and my new goal is to save up money, above and beyond anything else.