Nexus Quotes

“Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“History isn’t the study of the past; it is the study of change.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The most celebrated moments in the history of science are precisely those moments when accepted wisdom is overturned and new theories are born.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The history of the early modern European witch craze demonstrates that releasing barriers to the flow of information doesn’t necessarily lead to the discovery and spread of truth. It can just as easily lead to the spread of lies and fantasies and to the creation of toxic information spheres. More specifically, a completely free market of ideas may incentivize the dissemination of outrage and sensationalism at the expense of truth.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Studying history does more than just emphasize the importance of the AI revolution and devour decisions regarding AI. It also cautions us against two common but misleading approaches to information networks and information revolutions. On the one hand, we should be aware of an overly naïve and optimistic view: information isn’t the truth, it’s main task is to connect rather than represent.
And information networks throughout history have often privileged order over truth. Tax records, holy books, political manifestos and secret files can be extremely efficient in creating powerful states and churches which hold a distorted view of the world and are prone to abuse their power.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The church sought to lock society inside an echo chamber, allowing the spread only of those books that supported it, and people trust the church because almost all the books supported it. Even illitirate laypersons who didn't read books were still awed by recitations of these precious texts or expositions on those content. That's how the belief in a supposedly infallible superhuman technology like the New Testament led to the rise of an extremely powerful but fallible human institution like the Catholic Church that crushed all opposing views as 'erroneous' while allowing no one to question its own views.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“As a much more extreme example, consider Jesus. Two millennia of storytelling have encased Jesus within such a thick cocoon of stories that it is impossible to recover the historical person. Indeed, for millions of devout Christians, merely raising the possibility that the real person was different from the story is blasphemy. As far as we can tell, the real Jesus was a typical Jewish preacher who built a small following by giving sermons and healing the sick. After his death, however, Jesus became the subject of one of the most remarkable branding campaigns in history. This little-known provincial guru, who during his short career gathered just a handful of disciples and who was executed as a common criminal, was rebranded after death as the incarnation of the cosmic god who created the universe.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Scientific culture has no comparable holy book, nor does it claim that any of its heroes are infallible prophets, saints, or geniuses.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“How can a deep-seated distrust of all elites and institutions be squared with unwavering admiration for one leader and party? This is why populists ultimately depend on the mystical notion that the strongman embodies the people. When trust in bureaucratic institutions like election boards, courts, and newspapers is particularly low, an enhanced reliance on mythology is the only way to preserve order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“This drives populists to be skeptical of the pursuit of truth, and to argue... that 'power is the only reality.' They thereby seek to undercut or appropriate the authority of any independent institutions that might oppose them. The result is a dark and cynical view of the world as a jungle and of human beings as creatures obsessed with power alone. All social interactions are seen as power struggles, and all institutions are depicted as cliques promoting the interests of their own members...”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“As society entrusts more and more decisions to computers, it undermines the viability of democratic self-correcting mechanisms and of democratic transparency and accountability. How can elected officials regulate unfathomable algorithms? There is, consequently, a growing demand to enshrine a new human right: the right-to-an-explanation”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Having a lot of information doesn’t in and of itself guarantee either truth or order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Tal como se ha señalado en el capítulo 2, los Padres Fundadores”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“Truth, then, isn’t a one-to-one representation of reality. Rather, truth is something that brings our attention to certain aspects of reality while inevitably ignoring other aspects. No account of reality is 100 percent accurate, but some accounts are nevertheless more truthful than others.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“On January 6, 2021, many Trump supporters observed the storming of the U.S. Capitol with enthusiasm. Trump supporters may explain that existing institutions are so dysfunctional that there is just no alternative to destroying them and building entirely new structures from scratch. But irrespective of whether this view is right or wrong, this is a quintessential revolutionary rather than conservative view. The conservative suicide has taken progressives utterly by surprise and has forced progressive parties like the U.S. Democratic Party to become the guardians of the old order and of established institutions.

Nobody knows for sure why all this is happening. One hypothesis is that the accelerating pace of technological change with its attendant economic, social, and cultural transformations might have made the moderate conservative program seem unrealistic. If conserving existing traditions and institutions is hopeless, and some kind of revolution looks inevitable, then the only means to thwart a left-wing revolution is by striking first and instigating a right-wing revolution. This was the political logic in the 1920s and 1930s, when conservative forces backed radical fascist revolutions in Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere as a way—so they thought—to preempt a Soviet-style left-wing revolution.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“People think they connect to the person, but in fact they connect to the story told about the person, and there is often a huge gulf between the two.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“To function, a democracy needs to meet two conditions: it needs to enable a free public conversation on key issues, and it needs to maintain a minimum of social order and institutional trust.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“On January 6, 2021, many Trump supporters observed the storming of the U.S. Capitol with enthusiasm. Trump supporters may explain that existing institutions are so dysfunctional that there is just no alternative to destroying them and building entirely new structures from scratch. But irrespective of whether this view is right or wrong, this is a quintessential revolutionary rather than conservative view.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“In an autocratic network, there are no legal limits on the will of the ruler, but there are nevertheless a lot of technical limits.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“This is why populism poses a deadly threat to democracy. While democracy agrees that the people is the only legitimate source of power, democracy is based on the understanding that the people is never a unitary entity and therefore cannot possess a single will.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“But the one option that should not be on offer in elections is hiding or distorting the truth. If the majority prefers to consume whatever amount of fossil fuels it wishes with no regard to future generations or other environmental considerations, it is entitled to vote for that. But the majority should not be entitled to pass a law stating that climate change is a hoax and that all professors who believe in climate change must be fired from their academic posts. We can choose what we want, but we shouldn’t deny the true meaning of our choice.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Mientras que numerosas redes de información favorecen el orden sobre la verdad, no hay red que pueda sobrevivir si ignora por completo la verdad. Como humanos individuales, tendemos a desarrollar un interés genuino por la verdad, más que solo por el poder.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“Por último, los algoritmos no se limitan a unirse a la conversación, sino que cada vez con más frecuencia se encargan de orquestarla. Las redes sociales permiten que nuevos grupos humanos cuestionen las viejas reglas del debate. Pero las negociaciones sobre esas nuevas reglas ya no las dirigen humanos. Más bien, como se ha explicado en el análisis de los algoritmos de las redes sociales, a menudo son los propios algoritmos los que imponen las reglas.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“human power is never the outcome of individual initiative. Power always stems from cooperation between large numbers of humans.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Las tecnologías novedosas suelen conducir a desastres históricos no porque sean intrínsecamente malas, sino porque a los humanos les lleva un tiempo aprender a usarlas con sensatez.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“Historia nuk është studimi i së kaluarës; ajo është studimi i ndryshimit. Historia na mëson se çfarë mbetet e pandryshuar, çfarë ndryshon dhe si ndodhin këto ndryshime.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Los utilitaristas argumentan que criminalizar la homosexualidad en nombre de una regla universal dudosa causa un sufrimiento tremendo a millones de personas sin ofrecer beneficios sustanciales a otras. Cuando dos hombres entablan una relación amorosa, son felices sin hacer desgraciado a nadie, de modo que ¿por qué prohibir la homosexualidad? Asimismo, este tipo de lógica utilitarista condujo a otras muchas reformas modernas, como la prohibición de la tortura y la introducción de leyes que protegieran a los animales.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“Tradicionalmente, IA ha funcionado como acrónimo de «inteligencia artificial». Pero, por razones ya evidentes a partir de lo que se acaba de exponer, quizá sea mejor pensar en ella como en un acrónimo de «inteligencia ajena». A medida que evoluciona, la IA está convirtiéndose en algo menos artificial (en el sentido de depender de diseños humanos) y más ajeno. También hay que señalar que la gente suele definir y evaluar la IA según parámetros de «inteligencia de nivel humano», y hay mucho debate acerca de cuándo podemos esperar que la IA alcance una «inteligencia de nivel humano». Sin”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“En 2019 hice una visita a Chernóbil. El guía ucraniano que explicaba lo que condujo al accidente nuclear dijo algo que se me quedó grabado: «Los estadounidenses crecen con la idea de que las preguntas traen respuestas —dijo—. Pero los ciudadanos soviéticos crecen con la idea de que las preguntas traen problemas».”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“El gran hallazgo de los populistas consiste en afirmar que en realidad solo ellos representan al pueblo.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA