I highly recommend following it up with Homo Deus. I feel sure you won't be disappointed.

@ejbman Thank you for the suggestion, I just put it on hold at my library.

Agreed. The intersubjectivity discussion was very profound. I also found the perspective on "religion" very fascinating. I believe I'm increasingly becoming a Dataist, despite myself (or should I say, 'my selves', with respect to the section on us be 'dividuals'.

I'm sorry to say, don't get too hopeful. Harari casts some skepticism on the current world religions (i.e., liberal humanism). For one thing, he points out that the sacrosanctity of the individual is an illusion. We are not individuals, we are a collection of subsystems which act in concert most of the time. Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that the subjective perspective is authoritative of anything, since it can be shown time and again that objective data is superior to subjective data, even (especially) on matters concerning yourself. He suggests that the next candidate for a dominant world religion might be called "dataism", or the faith in data. His case is very compelling. Already people are more apt to trust their devices (and the datasets behind them) than other people. Same goes for data about your body and experience. The question of "how well did I sleep" might be better answered by your FitBit readout that how you feel in the moment. Many of us would much rather use and trust the GPS in our phone than some person's directions, for another example. It's a fascinating, if somewhat bleak and mechanistic, perspective.

Ed Wilson has some profound things to say about the human animal too: [smithsonianmag.com]

He has a lot of good insight into human nature, where we came from and what we now are.

@DaveSchumacher Oh cool.

[goodreads.com]
[goodreads.com]