Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

• Harari claims that partial scripts cannot be used to write poetry.
• This seem true enough. But it would be interesting if someone could prove him wrong.
• An ideal empire should be salient.
• Harari presents a model he has dubbed the imperial cycle.
• Small group establishes empire. Imperial culture is formed. Imperial culture is adopted by subject peoples. Subject people demand equal status in the name of common imperial values.
• The fourth stage in this model leads to collapse of the empire and causes the cycle to repeat. An empire that wants to be eternal would need to reach all prior stages. However somehow avoid the fourth one since that is the failure point.
• Power leads to resources, leads to research, repeat.
• The atomic bomb was the only weapon invented, that lead to more peace then war as it’s output.

[I]n order to understand macro-historical processes, we need to examine mass statistics rather then individual stories.

~ Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens