Bill Gates on stopping climate change, building robots, and the best books he's read

This book surveys the history of humankind from the Stone Age to the 21st century, focusing on Homo sapiens. It divides human history into four major parts: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Unification of Humankind, and the Scientific Revolution. Harari argues that Homo sapiens dominate the world due to their unique ability to cooperate in large numbers through beliefs in imagined realities such as gods, nations, money, and human rights. The book also examines the impact of human activities on the global ecosystem and speculates on the future of humanity, including the potential for genetic engineering and non-organic life.

In this book, Steven Pinker presents a detailed argument that violence has significantly decreased over the course of human history. He uses extensive data and statistical analysis to demonstrate this decline in various domains, including military conflict, homicide, genocide, torture, and the treatment of children, homosexuals, animals, and racial and ethnic minorities. Pinker identifies four key human motivations – empathy, self-control, the moral sense, and reason – as the 'better angels' that have oriented humans away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism. He also discusses historical forces such as the rise of the state (which he terms 'Leviathan'), the spread of commerce, the growth of feminist values, and the expansion of cosmopolitanism, which have contributed to this decline in violence.