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2018 Book List

This is one of those “books I read this year” lists, but I’m not doing blurbs on each of the books because I don’t feel like it.

Top 5

Yes, there are six books here. I couldn’t pick just five, and this easily could have been a “Top 12”.

Couldn’t Finish

I absolutely hated Yuval Noah Harari’s disjointed 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I slogged through about a third of it and then threw it in the closet. He has some interesting commentary, especially around Universal Basic Income and climate change, but too much of it was too preachy or ridiculous for my tastes. His takes on artifical intelligence were especially hand-wavy and ridiculous. Do we need to worry about artificial intelligence automating away jobs faster than we can create them? Yes, absolutely. Do we need to worry about general artificial intelligence that’s able to perfect manipulate human behavior? Absolutely not. It felt like someone watched Transcendence and then thought that was a realistic version of the future. It’s unfortunate that I hated 21 Lessons so much because I thoroughly enjoyed Sapiens.

The Rest