The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
currentaffairs.orgOther academics can get bitter and envious, when one of them achieves success in publishing popular science. For an outsider, it can be difficult to tell the difference when criticism of popular science is based on bitterness and envy, and when it has solid base.
This. Basicaly academics being butthurt over "if you're so smart then why aren't you rich/successfuly and why am I instead stuck at this little shitty job where I get no recognitition".
The author is a bit nitpicky in bringing up errors, but he's right on when talking about a tech-bro worldview. It's no accident that Musk, Zuckerberg, et. al. lionize this guy. He preaches a world where the algorithm is supreme, AI is just around the corner and an existential threat, and the nuances of actual reality as studied by scientists can be reduced to a few pithy sentences. It's a reductionist philosophy that sells well but doesn't really do justice to the complexities all around us.