Nexus Quotes

“The rise of intelligent machines that can make decisions and create new ideas means that for the first time in history power is shifting away from humans and toward something else. Crossbows, muskets, and atom bombs replaced human muscles in the act of killing, but they couldn’t replace human brains in deciding whom to kill. Little Boy—the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—exploded with a force of 12,500 tons of TNT,[4] but when it came to brainpower, Little Boy was a dud. It couldn’t decide anything.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“If history had been shaped solely by material interests and power struggles, there would be no point talking to people who disagree with us.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Christians, merely raising the possibility that the real person was different from the story is blasphemy.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“of many humans but also the power of computers. Just as it is often best to set a thief to catch a thief, so we can use one algorithm to vet another. This raises the question of how we can be sure that the vetting algorithm itself is reliable. Ultimately, there is no purely technological solution to this recursive problem. No matter which technology we develop, we will have to maintain bureaucratic institutions that will audit algorithms and give or refuse them the seal of approval. Such institutions will combine the powers of humans and computers to make sure that new algorithmic systems are safe and fair. Without such institutions, even if we pass laws that provide humans with a right to an explanation, and even if we enact regulations against computer biases, who could enforce these laws and regulations?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“As emphasized repeatedly in the following pages, history is not deterministic, and the future will be shaped by the choices we all make in coming years.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Instead, what holds human networks together tends to be fictional stories, especially stories about intersubjective things like gods, money, and nations. When it comes to uniting people, fiction enjoys two inherent advantages over the truth. First, fiction can be made as simple as we like, whereas the truth tends to be complicated, because the reality it is supposed to represent is complicated. Take, for example, the truth about nations. It is difficult to grasp that the nation to which one belongs is an intersubjective entity that exists only in our collective imagination. You rarely hear politicians say such things”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“A “brand” is a specific type of story. To brand a product means to tell a story about that product, which may have little to do with the product’s actual qualities but which consumers nevertheless learn to associate with the product. For example, over the decades the Coca-Cola corporation has invested tens of billions of dollars in advertisements that tell and retell the story of the Coca-Cola drink.[6] People have seen”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“stories provided Homo sapiens with a new type of chain: human-to-story chains. In order to cooperate, Sapiens no longer had to know each other personally; they just had to know the same story. And the same story can be familiar to billions of individuals. A story can thereby serve like a central connector, with an unlimited number of outlets into which an unlimited number of people can plug. For example, the 1.4 billion members of the Catholic Church are connected by the Bible and other key Christian stories; the 1.4 billion citizens of China are connected by the stories of communist ideology and Chinese nationalism; and the 8 billion members of the global trade network are connected by stories about currencies, corporations, and brands.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Information doesn’t necessarily inform us about things. Rather, it puts things in formation. Horoscopes put lovers in astrological formations, propaganda broadcasts put voters in political formations, and marching songs put soldiers in military formations. As a paradigmatic case, consider music. Most symphonies, melodies, and tunes don’t represent anything, which is why it makes no sense to ask whether they are true or false. Over the years people have created a lot of bad music, but not fake music. Without representing anything, music nevertheless does a remarkable job in connecting large numbers of people and synchronizing their emotions and movements. Music can make soldiers march in formation, clubbers sway together, church congregations clap in rhythm, and sports fans chant in unison.[11]”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“matter what we think about the accuracy of astrological information, we should acknowledge its important role in history. It has connected lovers, and even entire empires. Roman emperors routinely consulted astrologers before making decisions. Indeed, astrology was held in such high esteem that casting the horoscope of a reigning emperor was a capital offense. Presumably, anyone casting such a horoscope could foretell”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“one-to-one map may look like the ultimate representation of reality, but tellingly it is no longer a representation at all; it is the reality.”
― 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. History teaches us what remains the same, what changes, and how things change. This”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“A church typically told people to trust it because it possessed the absolute truth, in the form of an infallible holy book. A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“A church typically told people to trust it because it possessed the absolute truth, in the form of an infallible holy book. A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself. It was these self-correcting mechanisms, not the technology of printing, that were the engine of the scientific revolution.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Let’s return now to the question I posed at the beginning of this book: If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? We are at one and the same time both the smartest and the stupidest animals on earth. We are so smart that we can produce nuclear missiles and superintelligent algorithms. And we are so stupid that we go ahead producing these things even though we’re not sure we can control them and failing to do so could destroy us.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Refusing to reduce all human interactions to a zero-sum power struggle is crucial not just for gaining a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the past but also for having a more hopeful and constructive attitude about our future. If power were the only reality, then the only way to resolve conflicts would be through violence. Both populists and Marxists believe that people’s views are determined by their privileges, and that to change people’s views it is necessary to first take away their privileges—which usually requires force. However, since humans are interested in truth, there is a chance to resolve at least some conflicts peacefully, by talking to one another, acknowledging mistakes, embracing new ideas, and revising the stories we believe.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“This historical lesson should strongly encourage us to pay more attention to the AI revolution in our current political debates. The invention of AI is potentially more momentous than the invention of the telegraph, the printing press, or even writing, because AI is the first technology that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“One lesson is that the invention of new information technology is always a catalyst for major historical changes, because the most important role of information is to weave new networks rather than represent preexisting realities.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The rise of AI, then, poses an existential danger to humankind not because of the malevolence of computers but because of our own shortcomings.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Bureaucracy and mythology are both essential for maintaining order, and both are happy to sacrifice truth for the sake of order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“más información significa mayor precisión.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA

“Free conversation must not slip into anarchy. Especially when dealing with urgent and important problems, the public debate should be conducted according to accepted rules, and there should be a legitimate mechanism to reach some kind of final decision, even if not everybody likes it.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“That’s why when faced by complex issues—whether a loan request, a pandemic, or a war—we often seek a single reason to take a particular course of action and ignore all other considerations. This is the fallacy of the single cause.[”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“This is the fallacy of the single cause.[”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Surveillance is not the only danger that new information technologies pose to democracy. A second threat is that automation will destabilize the job market and the resulting strain may undermine democracy.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“A fourth democratic principle is that surveillance systems must always leave room for both change and rest. In human history, oppression can take the form of either denying humans the ability to change or denying them the opportunity to rest.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“A third democratic principle is mutuality. If democracies increase surveillance of individuals, they must simultaneously increase surveillance of governments and corporations too.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The second principle that would protect democracy against the rise of totalitarian surveillance regimes is decentralization. A democratic society should never allow all its information to be concentrated in one place, no matter whether that hub is the government”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“The first principle is benevolence. When a computer network collects information on me, that information should be used to help me rather than manipulate me.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“While experts should spend lifelong careers discussing the finer details, it is crucial that the rest of us understand the fundamental principles that democracies can and should follow. The key message is that these principles are neither new nor mysterious. They have been known for centuries, even millennia.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI