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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – Yuval Noah Harari: ever wilder and sillier “(Yuval Noah Harari is) really the worst prophet I’ve ever read,” says Megliloi. “Most of the predictions he made in the first book — that wars were over, that pandemics were over — went wrong. “Were we moving, as he claimed in Sapiens, towards empires? No, national sovereignty has been reasserted.”
Harari’s predictions have become even wilder and sillier. AI might produce a “useless class” of people, he predicted, since they “don’t have any skills that the new economy needs”. No wonder Dominic Sandbrook noted in 2018 how much he was beginning to resemble Alan Partridge. Others suggest he is becoming ever more messianic. While Harari is scathing about formal religion, he appears to be creating an ersatz religion of his own, Wesley J Smith suggested in a 2018 essay.
– Andrew Orlowski
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Who the hell is Yuval Noah Harari and why are you blogging about him?
Why? From Orlowski’s article:
Seems wise to disseminate scepticism about the fella.
Yuval Harari has gotten one prediction correct, but he has forgotten one tiny, but important detail, he is an example of the ‘useless class’.
He is the micro brain bank of the World Economic forum.
He’s a poisonous little creep, with far too much influence.
The old economy might well need more builders judging by how expensive it is to get anything fixed nowadays. Colour me sceptical about how productive many of these white collar workers (civil servants etc.,) are in their current roles. AI is one of the more positive developments we’ve seen recently, against a background of what sometimes seems to be universally bad news.
A Determinist Philosopher who argues that as humans are not really people, as we (according to him) are not free will beings, we have no rights against the state, and no right of self government.
For obvious reasons Klaus Schwab and the rest of the international elite find him useful.
Do they actually believe his ravings? Most likely NOT – but he provides justifications for their power grab.
A “court philosopher” – justifying the whims of would-be tyrants.
“Who the hell is Yuval Noah Harari …”
He’s just another Guru Maharishi Yogi.
So, in short, he’s an intellectual Pied Piper whose tune attracts those who, to update Orwell, “take their cookery from Ottolenghi and their opinions from Brussels.”
Tells the ultrawealthy and midwits what they want to hear in a way that makes them feel more intelligent than everyone else. No wonder he’s so popular!