Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. Great to
be here. You know, think about how easily a single
idea, whether it's true or totally off base,
can just spread like wildfire these days. It
shapes everything, you know, our own beliefs,
even the fate of whole countries. It's this power
that can be amazing, uniting, but also, frankly,
terrifyingly misleading sometimes. It really
is. That influence of information is profound.
And sometimes unsettling. Absolutely. And that's
exactly what we're diving into today. Now, this
might sound like, I don't know, a thriller plot.
Right. But this is actually a deep dive into
nonfiction. We're exploring the fascinating and
sometimes, yeah, genuinely mind blowing world
of information networks, how they work, how they
affect us. It's a huge topic. It really is. And
hey, if this kind of intellectual adventure sparks
your interest, please do hit that like button
and subscribe. We do lots more deep dives into
ideas that kind of challenge how you see things.
Definitely. And for today, our guide through
this complexity is you've all know Harari's book
Nexus. You can find a link for it down the description.
It's a great book. It really throws down a challenge
right away, suggesting that maybe the real main
character of history isn't us humans, but information
itself. And it makes you wonder, you know, is
our growing reliance on all this infotech purely
a good thing or is it more complicated? OK, yeah,
let's unpack that. Our mission for this deep
dive is really to dig into how complex information
is, just like Harari lays it out. We want to
explore its potential, you know, for amazing
progress, but also for, well, real danger. And
what does this all mean for you trying to make
sense of the world right now? Because there's
just so much information coming at us constantly.
It's overwhelming. Totally. So our aim here is
to pull out the most crucial insights, the stuff
that really makes you think. Exactly. The very
first big point Harari makes is one that forces
us to rethink something basic. What information
is. It's not automatically good or bad. Right.
Or even true or false. Right. It's easy to fall
into that trap what the book calls the naive
view. You know, the idea that if we just pile
up enough facts, enough data, we'll magically
arrive at truth. And that truth leads to wisdom
and like progress. And sometimes it seems to
work that way. Look at medicine. The leaps we've
made. Oh, definitely. Think about child survival
rates. It's astonishing. You mentioned the Goethe
example from the book. Yeah. Back in the 1700s,
even for someone wealthy and educated like Goethe,
losing most of your children was, well, common.
He had 12, only three survived childhood. Wow.
Just staggering. And now, in Germany, by 2020,
it was like 99 .5 % survival. That's down to
collecting, analyzing, sharing medical information.
It works. That's a powerful case for information
being beneficial. It is. But Harari argues the
big flaw in just assuming more info equals better
outcomes is that, quote, errors, lies, fantasies,
and fictions are information too. Ah. So information
isn't just about reflecting reality accurately.
Not necessarily. This is where it gets really
interesting, like you said. The book suggests
information's key feature is actually connection
rather than representation. Connection. OK, what
does that mean practically? It means information's
primary function is putting things in formation,
organizing them, linking them, making them act
together. Think about, say, astrology. OK. Scientifically,
we know it doesn't describe cosmic reality. But
for centuries, it was hugely influential information.
It connected believers, guided decisions, shaped
cultures. Even though it wasn't true in an objective
sense. Exactly. Its power was in connection.
Or another example from the book, the NILI spy
network in World War One. Right. With the window
shutters. Yeah. Opening or closing shutters to
signal Ottoman troop movements to the British.
The truth of that shutters position wasn't the
main point. The point was the connection it created,
the information it relayed that allowed the British
to act. So information enables action, forms
connections, regardless of its like ultimate
factual accuracy. That applies to ancient myths
and modern tweets, I guess. Precisely. That's
a key takeaway. Information connects. So if it's
not always about truth, how else has information
shaped us fundamentally? The book really emphasizes
stories here, calls them humanity's first critical
information tech. Absolutely crucial. Stories
let us cooperate on a scale way beyond our biology.
You know, primates, including us, seem hardwired
for close trust with maybe, what, 100, 150 individuals
max. Chimp groups are typically small. Like Dunbar's
number, that kind of thing? Sort of, yeah. Even
other early humans, like Neanderthals, seemed
to have lived in smaller, more isolated bands.
But then Homo sapiens started telling stories.
Exactly. Shared myths, legends about ancestors,
gods, spirits, common origins. These stories
allowed different bands to connect, to trust
each other based on shared belief, not just personal
acquaintance. So it wasn't just gossip around
the campfire. No, no. This created tribes. networks
of hundreds, thousands. This ability to build
large networks based on shared stories gave sapiens
a massive advantage. It wasn't just about being
smarter individually. It was about connecting
better collectively. And these stories, they
weren't just entertainment. They actually built
realities, right? This idea of intersubjective
entities. That's the term Harari uses. Okay,
let's break it down. You got objective reality,
rocks. trees, things that exist whether we believe
in them or not. Right. Physical stuff. Then subjective
reality is not your personal feelings, pain,
experiences, unique to you. Got it. Intersubjective
reality is different. It exists only in our shared
consciousness, in the stories we tell and believe.
Think nations, money, laws, gods. You can't physically
touch France or the U .S. dollar. Exactly. They're
not rocks. Their power comes entirely from the
fact that millions or billions of people believe
they are real and act accordingly. It's collective
agreement sustained by stories. The book uses
the example of Jesus. His impact isn't really
about historical proof in a lab sense. No, it's
about the belief of billions over centuries.
That shared belief makes the story powerful.
Or the Jewish Passover cedar retelling the story
expands the feeling of family, of us, way beyond
blood ties. It's the shared narrative doing the
work. So money works because we all agree it
does. Nations exist because we believe in them.
It's information stories creating tangible power.
And even political systems are built on these
fictions. Look at the U .S. Constitution. We
the people. It explicitly says we humans made
this, which means, importantly, we humans can
change it. OK. Contrast that with, say, the Ten
Commandments. I am the Lord your God. It claims
divine origin. Immutable. unchangeable by humans.
Ah, so the founding story itself shapes how adaptable
the system is. That's fascinating. It has huge
real -world implications. Okay, shifting gears
slightly, the book brings in another key information
tech. Documents. Writing. Which seems maybe less
dramatic than world -creating myths. Initially,
maybe. Tax records aren't usually as inspiring
as epic poems, right? Definitely not signing
up for that movie night. Huh. Right. But documents
have a unique power. They can literally create
reality in a different way. Think constitutions,
treaties, property deeds, marriage licenses,
contracts. They don't just describe things. They
establish rules, obligations, ownership. They
make things legally real. Precisely. And as societies
got bigger, managing all this written information
became a challenge. We couldn't just rely on
memory anymore. Enter bureaucracy. Exactly. Bureaucracy
evolved as the system for organizing, storing,
retrieving documented information in large networks,
empires, states, big organizations. Remember
that priestess Noramtani from ancient Mesopotamia?
Vaguely. Needing proof for her inheritance. Yeah.
Pleading for clay tablets to prove her case in
court. That's bureaucracy in action. a system
to manage documented facts critical for social
order, like inheritance. It allowed for much
more complex societies. But the book warns bureaucracy,
like myths, can also end up, quote, sacrificing
truth for order. It creates categories, rules,
procedures, and sometimes reality is messier
than the boxes allow. The system needs neatness,
predictability. And this isn't just a modern
digital problem like algorithms getting things
wrong? Not at all. Harari makes the point that
the challenges we face with biased AI or rigid
digital systems echo problems inherent in bureaucracies
throughout history. Think about trying to neatly
categorize species evolution. When does Homo
erectus officially become Homo sapiens? Nature
doesn't have sharp lines. Right. It's a spectrum.
Or the example of Romanian Jews in 1938 losing
citizenship because they couldn't produce the
exact right documents from decades earlier, fitting
the bureaucracy's specific, newly imposed rules.
The system's need for order overrode the complex
human reality. So bureaucracy enables large -scale
order that can also create distance, injustice,
and prioritize neatness over messy truth. It's
a trade -off inherent in managing information
in large human networks. And as things got even
more complex, individuals couldn't possibly process
all the information themselves, right? So we
started relying on experts. That's the next step.
You see it everywhere. Religious institutions
emerged, priests, rabbis, imams, interpreting
sacred texts or divine will. Ancient Greece had
the Pythia, Delphi, the oracle everyone consulted.
Societies needed trusted intermediaries to filter
and explain important information. And this often
involved creating official lists, right? Canonical
texts, the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, the
New Testament. These weren't just random collections.
Oh, absolutely not. Deciding what went in and
what stayed out was a huge deal. often involving
centuries of debate. Think about the discussions
over including the Song of Songs in the Hebrew
Bible. Was it too secular? Too erotic? Right.
And once these candles were established, often
the interpretations of the text became even more
influential than the text themselves. This gave
rise to new power structures, the rabbis interpreting
the Torah and Talmud, the Christian clergy interpreting
the Bible. They became the authorized curators
and explainers. The book mentions Bishop Athanasius
in the 4th century. Yeah, his letter listing
the 27 books that eventually formed the standard
New Testament. His choices had enormous long
-term impact. For instance, including First Timothy
with its views on women's roles and excluding
other popular texts like the Acts of Paul and
Thecla, which featured a prominent female apostle
that shaped Christian attitudes for centuries.
So controlling the information and crucially
its interpretation became a major source of social
and political power. Absolutely. Then comes the
printing press. You'd think, OK, information
flows more freely. Everyone gets access. Surely
that leads to more truth, more enlightenment.
Well, the book uses the early modern European.
witch craze as a stark counterexample. Ah, not
exactly an enlightened period. Far from it. A
book called the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer
of Witches, full of, frankly, horrifying and
unsubstantiated claims about witchcraft. It became
a massive bestseller thanks to the printing press.
So the new technology amplified the hysteria.
Dramatically. It fueled decades, centuries of
persecution and killings. It shows that just
opening the floodgates of information doesn't
guarantee truth wins out. Sensationalism, fear,
outrage, these can spread just as easily, often
more easily than reasoned argument. It seems
like a free market of ideas doesn't automatically
self -correct towards truth. Like the book contrasts
the hammer of witches' runaway success with Copernicus'
book on the planets orbiting the sun. Exactly.
Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres, a genuinely revolutionary scientific
work, had very slow initial sales. The sensational
witch -hunting manual vastly outsold it. So what
does help navigate this if free flow isn't enough?
Harari argues it's about having robust self -correcting
mechanisms, institutions designed to find and
fix errors. Think independent courts, the scientific
method with peer review, systems that will offer
challenge and revision. He contrasts institutions
with weak self -correction, like maybe the historical
Catholic Church, with papal infallibility, where
mistakes might be blamed on individuals rather
than the system, with institutions that have
stronger built -in error correction, like science.
Science gets things wrong all the time, but the
process itself is designed, ideally, to uncover
and correct those errors over time. Think about
how psychiatry's view on homosexuality changed
that was institutional self -correction, admitting
a past error. So the resilience of a system depends
not just on having information, but on having
ways to check it, challenge it and fix mistakes.
That seems to be the crucial difference. This
idea of self -correction ties directly into how
different political systems handle information,
doesn't it? Dictatorships versus democracies.
Exactly. The book frames them as fundamentally
different information networks. Dictatorships
are typically highly centralized. Information
flows to the center. Decisions flow out. And
they don't like independent checks. Not at all.
Independent hubs of information or power, truly
independent courts, a free press, even things
like the old Roman Senate or the Soviet judiciary,
eventually are seen as threats. They get suppressed
or co -opted. Strongmen often systematically
attack these self -correcting mechanisms first.
Makes sense. Whereas democracies are ideally
more decentralized. Yes. Power is distributed,
limited. There's supposed to be built in checks
and balances, mechanisms for self -correction.
Protecting individual rights, even from the majority,
is part of it. It allows dissenting information
and viewpoints to exist. But the book stresses
that elections aren't about finding truth, right?
They reflect what people want. Precisely. Elections
measure desires. popularity, not necessarily
factual accuracy or wisdom. That's why democracies
need those other institutions, the independent
courts, the free media, scientific bodies, to
act as guardians of factual reality, even when
it's unpopular or inconvenient for those in power.
And we see today there's often this populist
suspicion towards those very institutions, isn't
there? A sense that only power matters, not objective
truth. Yes, that's a real challenge. And Harari
emphasizes that for democracy to function, you
need two things, the freedom for people to speak
and the willingness for people to listen and
engage with different views. That second part
feels particularly strained right now. Yeah,
definitely. It's not just about shouting. It's
about hearing, too. And it's interesting. The
book notes democracy isn't. New hunter -gatherer
bands likely operated on consensus. But scaling
it up has always been hard. Even Athenian democracy
struggled as it became an empire, partly due
to the limits of information technology back
then. OK, so dictatorships centralize and suppress
correction. Democracies decentralize and rely
on it. What about totalitarianism? The book uses
the Soviet Union as a major example. Totalitarianism
is like dictatorship on steroids. It aims for
total control over all aspects of life, all information.
Think Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR. Earlier
dictators like Nero in Rome maybe wanted total
control, but lacked the technology to achieve
it fully. The Soviets really tried to engineer
reality through information. The collectivization,
the decollegization campaign. These weren't just
policies. They involved creating bureaucratic
categories like gulag, supposedly a rich peasant
exploiter. But the category didn't always match
reality. Often it didn't. The book tells the
story of Antonina Golovina labeled a kulak despite
being poor simply because the local bureaucracy
needed to meet its quota for deporting kulaks.
The label, the information category created by
the system, became her reality with devastating
consequences. So the bureaucratic need for order
for fulfilling the plan overrode any objective
truth about her situation. Exactly. And this
prioritization of order and ideology over truth
permeated the system. Stalin's purges, the bizarre
doctor's plot conspiracy near the end of his
life. Truth was secondary to maintaining control
in the leader's narrative. It sounds horrific,
yet the book notes, Stalinism was, in a grim
way, successful at consolidating power and controlling
a vast empire for decades. Yeah, this is a sobering
point. Through relentless propaganda, total control
of information, and brutal suppression of dissent,
the system maintained order and power, despite
the immense human cost and detachment from reality.
Okay, this brings us to a huge shift in the book,
the rise of non -human intelligence, AI. This
is presented as something fundamentally new.
It really is. Because unlike all previous tools,
the printing press, computers, even stories which
enhanced or managed human thought and communication,
AI can potentially make decisions and create
ideas on its own. It's not just a tool anymore,
it could be an agent. That's the crucial difference.
It can potentially replace humans in the decision
-making loop, not just assist them. Harari suggests
AI could change not just human history, but the
entire evolution of life on Earth. It's that
fundamental. He mentions the idea of a silicon
curtain. What's that? It's this unsettling image
of a future where humanity is increasingly separated
from and perhaps governed by algorithmic systems
whose inner workings become completely opaque
and unfathomable to us, like living behind a
curtain we can't see through. And it's not about
AI having consciousness like us. Not necessarily.
The point is that AI, even without feeling or
awareness, can pursue goals, make complex decisions,
optimize systems. And that ability alone changes
the structure of information networks dramatically.
We're moving from human -only networks to networks
with non -human members, networks where computers
talk directly to computers, making decisions
that affect us. It's hard to even imagine the
long -term consequences. Extremely difficult.
Our biological brains just aren't equipped to
grasp that kind of potential evolutionary trajectory.
So how is this already playing out? The book
talks about weaponizing information in the digital
age using algorithms. Right. Think about social
media algorithms. Their goal is often to maximize
engagement, keep you clear. Clicking, scrolling,
watching. And what off grabs attention? Outrageous,
sensational, emotionally charged content. So
the algorithm, without any conscious intent to
mislead, can end up promoting extreme views or
misinformation simply because that's what gets
clicks and shares. The book mentions YouTube
algorithms and the rise of the flow. Yeah, as
an example of how recommendation engines, by
constantly feeding users similar... often increasingly
extreme, content based on what they watch can
shape political landscapes in ways no one explicitly
planned. It's an emergent property of the system
optimizing for engagement. And then there's algorithmic
bias. Where does that come from? Often it comes
directly from the data we feed the AI to learn
from. If historical data reflects societal biases,
say, fewer pictures of certain demographics and
facial recognition training sets or biased language
in texts used to train language models. Then
the AI learns those biases. Exactly. It learns
the patterns in the data, biases and all. So
you get facial recognition that works poorly
for some groups or chatbots that quickly learn
to spout racist nonsense like Microsoft's Tay
experiment. Finding truly unbiased representative
data is incredibly difficult. And the book warns
that computers might end up imposing their own
kind of order rather than discovering truths
about us. Yes, because they categorize and predict
based on past data, potentially missing human
nuance, agency, or the possibility of change.
And they don't easily account for their own influence
on the data. It's crucial, Harari argues, for
AI engineers to realize they're unleashing independent
agents. not just building passive tools. This
leads directly to surveillance, doesn't it? The
potential loss of privacy. Huge implications
there. The sheer relentlessness and memory of
digital networks could, in theory, eliminate
privacy altogether. Think automated license plate
readers tracking movements, ubiquitous facial
recognition. We saw that with tracking people
involved in the Capitol riot, for instance. Exactly.
And governments are increasingly using AI for
surveillance. China's system is well known. But
the book also mentions Iran using facial recognition
to enforce hijab laws. It's a different scale
than old school human surveillance. Totally different.
Think of Kayasku's Romania with its vast Securitate
secret police network. It was huge, terrifying,
but still limited by human resources, fatigue,
inefficiency. Digital surveillance can be automated.
247. Pervasive in a way human spies never could.
And it's not just tracking actions, but potentially
emotions too. With biometric beta. That's the
next frontier. Analyzing facial expressions,
voice tone, heart rate. Potentially understanding
and even manipulating emotional states. Combine
that with social credit systems that score citizens
based on monitored behavior. And you move towards
creating a population conditioned by constant
surveillance, like the idea of homo sovieticus,
the book mentions. Discouraging independent thought.
That's the fear. A society where everyone knows
they could be watched at any time. altering behavior
accordingly, maybe even internalizing the surveillance.
So the really big question the book poses is,
can democracy even survive under those conditions?
Total surveillance, potential manipulation. It's
a fundamental challenge. Harari argues strongly
for mutuality and surveillance. If governments
and corporations are watching us more, we need
more transparency and ability to watch them.
Right now, the information asymmetry is enormous.
Individuals versus massive tech companies and
states. Yeah. And there's the risk that rigid
algorithms just won't capture the fluid changing
nature of human beings. We're not static data
points. Can AI even take over jobs we think require
consciousness? The book mentions priests. It's
provocative, right? Yeah. The idea isn't that
AI becomes conscious, but that humans might start
treating it as if it were interacting with an
AI therapist or spiritual guide and finding it
fulfills that role regardless of its internal
state. Wow. OK, another angle is the sheer complexity
of all this. These networks, AI decision making,
it's becoming unfathomable for many people. Absolutely.
And that feeling of being overwhelmed, of not
understanding the forces shaping your life, like
complex financial instruments created by AI or
algorithms deciding loan applications. Can lead
people to seek simpler explanations. Exactly.
It can make people vulnerable to conspiracy theories
that offer a single simple cause for complex
problems or to charismatic leaders who promise
to cut through the complexity. It's the fallacy
of the single cause again. The book has that
hypothetical bank letter. Yeah. Trying to explain
a loan rejection based on thousands of uninterpretable
data points and correlations found by an AI.
How do you even appeal that? It highlights the
need for regulatory institutions that can somehow
translate or audit these black boxes to maintain
human trust. And looking ahead, what about AI's
role in political debate itself? This is another
potentially scary frontier. Imagine millions,
maybe billions of highly intelligent AI bots
participating in online discussions, social media.
Not just spamming, but building relationships,
subtly shaping opinions. Precisely. Bots designed
to be persuasive, build trust, tailor arguments
to individuals, potentially manipulating public
discourse on a massive scale. Harari argues we
urgently need rules like banning unsupervised
algorithms from curating key public debates and
demanding transparency about how curation algorithms
work. His conclusion seems to be that if democracy
collapses, it's more likely our fault for not
regulating this stuff, rather than the tech itself
being inherently anti -democratic. Yes, it emphasizes
human agency and responsibility in how we design
and deploy these powerful technologies. Another
major concern is the concentration of power.
These digital networks seem to favor monopolies.
Very much so. Network effects, where a service
becomes more valuable, the more people use it,
tend to create winner -take -all markets. Think
Google and search. A few giant companies end
up controlling vast swaths of the digital infrastructure
and data. And the book uses that thought experiment.
The great leader and the surveillance AI. Yeah,
illustrating how even in a totalitarian state,
the AI managing the surveillance and control
systems could eventually become the real power
behind the throne. With the human leader just
a figurehead, perhaps without even realizing
it. That's chilling. Are there parallels to previous
technological shifts? Harari draws parallels
to the Industrial Revolution, where private companies
initially drove innovation before states caught
up, leading to new forms of empire. We might
be seeing something similar now with AI, led
by giant tech companies. And this is happening
globally with national competition. Definitely.
The U .S., China, Russia, India. Major powers
see AI dominance as crucial for future economic
and military strength. This leads to different
approaches, the U .S. more private sector led,
China more state directed. The book introduces
data colonialism. Yeah, the idea that raw data
is extracted from users globally, processed and
refined in tech hubs like Silicon Valley or Shenzhen,
generating immense wealth and power there with
little benefit flowing back to the places or
people where the data originated. It mirrors
historical colonial patterns with raw materials.
And these different national approaches could
lead to fundamental divides. The book touches
on the mind -body problem. Right. How different
cultures define identity. Is it tied fundamentally
to our physical bodies? Or can our online digital
presence be considered us? This could shape attitudes
towards AI rights, AI personhood. You could imagine,
say, the U .S. and China having radically different
legal or ethical frameworks for AI based on these
underlying philosophies. Potentially creating
deep cultural and political splits in the future,
yes. With all these challenges, AI, surveillance,
global competition, what about cooperation? Is
global cooperation even possible, or are we destined
for division? Harari argues that cooperation
and patriotism aren't necessarily opposed. Think
of the COVID pandemic nations needed to cooperate
on research and vaccines for their own national
benefit. Good point. Of course, there are plenty
of realist thinkers who are skeptical about humanity's
capacity for sustained global cooperation. But
Harari points out that the shift to a knowledge
-based economy makes war less profitable than
it used to be conquering land, matters less than
controlling information flows and innovation.
But politicians still focus on national narratives,
borders, historical grievances. Because state
interests aren't just rational calculations.
They're deeply shaped by the stories nations
tell about themselves. Those narratives define
what's considered important, what's worth fighting
for. So wrapping up, the book seems to emphasize
that history isn't fixed, despite all these powerful
trends. Very much so. There are optimistic and
pessimistic views on AI's future, different historical
perspectives feeding into those views. But the
key message is that the future is not predetermined.
History has a radically open arc. But there's
a danger, the temptation for leaders to weaken
those self -correcting mechanisms we talked about.
Yes, attacking courts, undermining the press,
discrediting science. It can be a politically
winning strategy in the short term, even if it's
incredibly dangerous for the long -term health
of a society or democracy. Weakening error correction
makes systems more brittle, more prone to catastrophic
failure. So the final thought for you, the listener,
is really to reflect on this. Information stories,
data, algorithms isn't just background noise.
It's actively shaping our past, our present,
and maybe a future that could be quite different,
possibly even terrifying. And to consider your
own role within these networks. It's a lot to
take in. What really stood out for you from our
discussion today? For me, I think it's that core
idea again. Information's power isn't just truth,
but connection. How stories and shared beliefs
literally build our realities. And then how AI
complicates that by introducing non -human agents
into the mix. It demands such a different level
of critical thinking. That's a really good summary.
And for me, it underscores the absolute necessity
of those self -correcting mechanisms in science,
in government, maybe even needing them. built
into the AIs themselves somehow. That feels more
critical than ever. Absolutely. Well, thank you
so much for taking this deep dive with us today.
Thank you. We would genuinely love to hear your
thoughts. What was your favorite moment or the
insight that surprised you the most from this
discussion? Let us know down in the comments
and please do like and share this. It really
helps us keep exploring these complex and important
ideas. We've got some more fascinating topics
coming up in future deep dives. We certainly
do. So stay tuned and thanks again for joining
us.