Nexus Yuval Quotes

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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.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
In order to cooperate, Sapiens no longer had to know each other personally; they just had to know the same story.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
... democracy doesn't mean majority rule; rather, it means freedom and equality for all. Democracy is a system that guarantees everyone certain liberties, which even the majority cannot take away.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Knives and bombs do not themselves decide whom to kill. They are dumb tools, lacking the intelligence necessary to process information and make independent decisions. In contrast, AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
As we have seen again and again throughout history, in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose. To tilt the balance in favour of truth, networks must develop and maintain strong self-correcting mechanisms that reward truth telling. These self-correcting mechanisms are costly, but if you want to get the truth, you must invest in them.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Why are we so good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at acquiring wisdom?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Silicon chips can create spies that never sleep, financiers that never forget, and despots that never die.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
One of the recurrent paradoxes of populism is that it starts by warning us that all human elites are driven by a dangerous hunger for power, but often ends by entrusting all power to a single ambitious human.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Contrary to what the naive view believes, Homo sapiens didn’t conquer the world because we are talented at turning information into an accurate map of reality. Rather, the secret of our success is that we are talented at using information to connect lots of individuals. Unfortunately, this ability often goes hand in hand with believing in lies, errors, and fantasies.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
The increasing unfathomability of our information network is one of the reasons for the recent wave of populist parties and charismatic leaders. When people can no longer make sense of the world, and when they feel overwhelmed by immense amounts of information they cannot digest, they become easy prey for conspiracy theories, and they turn for salvation to something they do understand—a human.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Silicon chips can create spies that never sleep, financiers that never forget and despots that never die.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
But why would human societies choose to entrust power to their worst members? Most Germans in 1933, for example, were not psychopaths. So why did they vote for Hitler?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
One of the chief lessons of history is that many of the things that we consider natural and eternal are, in fact, man-made and mutable.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
the networks have also learned how to use information to maintain stronger social order among larger populations, by using not just truthful accounts but also fictions, fantasies, propaganda, and—occasionally—downright lies.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
What the example of astrology illustrates is that errors, lies, fantasies, and fictions are information, too. Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a preexisting reality. Rather, what information does is to create new realities by tying together disparate things—whether couples or empires. Its defining feature is connection rather than representation, and information is whatever connects different points into a network.
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)
As in previous eras, information networks will struggle to find the right balance between truth and order.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
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)
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)
Chatbots and other AIs may not have any feelings of their own, but they are now being trained to generate feelings in humans and form intimate relationships with us.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. The main argument of this book is that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Our problem, then, is a network problem.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
The cultural obsession with purity originates in the evolutionary struggle to avoid pollution. All animals are torn between the need to try new food and the fear of being poisoned. Evolution therefore equipped animals with both curiosity and the capacity to feel disgust on coming into contact with something toxic or otherwise dangerous. Politicians and prophets have learned how to manipulate these disgust mechanisms.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Populists have sought to extricate themselves from this conundrum in two different ways. Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.
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)
that AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions and create new ideas by itself.
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)
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)
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)
Novel technology often leads to historical disasters, not because the technology is inherently bad, but because it takes time for humans to learn how to use it wisely.
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)
¿Por qué somos tan buenos a la hora de acumular más información y poder pero tenemos mucho menos éxito a la hora de adquirir sabiduría?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Indeed, each soldier was a unique human being, with different parents and friends and individual fears and hopes.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
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)
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)
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)
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)
The populists claim that the articles you read in The New York Times or in Science are just an elitist ploy to gain power, but what you read in the Bible, the Quran, or the Vedas is absolute truth.[
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
How can you tell, then, whether someone is part of the people or not? Easy. If they support the leader, they are part of the people. This, according to the German political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller, is the defining feature of populism.
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)
construyen dichas redes las predispone a hacer un uso imprudente del poder. Nuestro problema, por lo tanto, tiene que ver con las redes. Más concretamente, es un problema de información. La información es el pegamento que mantiene unidas las redes.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
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)
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)
What turns someone into a populist is claiming that they alone represent the people and that anyone who disagrees with them—whether state bureaucrats, minority groups, or even the majority of voters—either suffers from false consciousness or isn’t really part of the people.[
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
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)
Homo Deus, a book that highlighted some of the dangers posed to humanity by the new information technologies. That book argued that the real hero of history has always been information, rather than Homo sapiens, and that scientists increasingly understand not just history but also biology, politics, and economics in terms of information flows.
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)
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)
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)
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)
People often confuse intelligence with consciousness, and many consequently jump to the conclusion that non-conscious entities cannot be intelligent. But intelligence and consciousness are very different. Intelligence is the ability to attain goals, such as maximising user engagement on a social media platform. Consciousness is the ability to experience subjective feelings like pain, pleasure, love and hate. In humans and other mammals, intelligence often goes hand in hand with consciousness.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
escoba encantados, sobre la IA y sobre muchas otras cosas. Mientras que cada individuo humano suele interesarse por conocer la verdad acerca de sí mismo y del mundo, las grandes redes ponen en contacto a sus miembros y crean orden al generar dependencia en ficciones y fantasías. Así es como, por ejemplo, vimos surgir el nazismo y el estalinismo. Estas eran unas redes poderosísimas sostenidas por ideas excepcionalmente equivocadas. Tal como afirmó con acierto George Orwell, la ignorancia es fuerza.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Like the Soviet leaders in Moscow, the tech companies were not uncovering some truth about humans; they were imposing on us a perverse new order. Humans are very complex beings, and benign social orders seek ways to cultivate our virtues while curtailing our negative tendencies. But social media algorithms see us, simply, as an attention mine. The algorithms reduced the multifaceted range of human emotions—hate, love, outrage, joy, confusion—into a single catchall category: engagement. In Myanmar in 2016, in Brazil in 2018, and in numerous other countries, the algorithms scored videos, posts, and all other content solely according to how many minutes people engaged with the content and how many times they shared it with others. An hour of lies or hatred was ranked higher than ten minutes of truth or compassion—or an hour of sleep. The fact that lies and hate tend to be psychologically and socially destructive, whereas truth, compassion, and sleep are essential for human welfare, was completely lost on the algorithms. Based on this very narrow understanding of humanity, the algorithms helped to create a new social system that encouraged our basest instincts while discouraging us from realizing the full spectrum of the human potential.
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)
How many pizzas can you purchase for a dollar, or for a bitcoin? In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. It was the first known commercial transaction involving bitcoin – and with hindsight, also the most expensive pizza ever. By November 2021, a single bitcoin was valued at more than $69,000, so the bitcoins Hanyecz paid for his two pizzas were worth $690 million, enough to purchase millions of pizzas.14 While the caloric value of pizza is an objective reality that remained the same between 2010 and 2021, the financial value of bitcoin is an intersubjective reality that changed dramatically during the same period, depending on the stories people told and believed about bitcoin.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
The scientific project starts by rejecting the fantasy of infallibility and proceeding to construct an information network that takes error to be inescapable. Sure, there is much talk about the genius of Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein, but none of them is considered faultless. They all made mistakes, and even the most celebrated scientific tracts are sure to contain errors and lacunae. Since even geniuses suffer from confirmation bias, you cannot trust them to correct their own errors. Science is a team effort, relying on institutional collaboration rather than on individual scientists or, say, a single infallible book. Of course, institutions too are prone to error. Scientific institutions are nevertheless different from religious institutions, inasmuch as they reward skepticism and innovation rather than conformity. Scientific institutions are also different from conspiracy theories, inasmuch as they reward self-skepticism. Conspiracy theorists tend to be extremely skeptical regarding the existing consensus, but when it comes to their own beliefs, they lose all their skepticism and fall prey to confirmation bias. The trademark of science is not merely skepticism but self-skepticism, and at the heart of every scientific institution we find a strong self-correcting mechanism. Scientific institutions do reach a broad consensus about the accuracy of certain theories—such as quantum mechanics or the theory of evolution—but only because these theories have managed to survive intense efforts to disprove them, launched not only by outsiders but by members of the institution itself.
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)
Even at the present moment, in the embryonic stage of the AI revolution, computers already make decisions about us—whether to give us a mortgage, to hire us for a job, to send us to prison.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
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)
What exactly is information?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Nazism and Stalinism were two of the strongest networks humans ever created.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
exploring
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Most Germans in 1933, for example, were not psychopaths. So why did they vote for Hitler?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
AI is already capable of producing art
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
En el centro de toda religión se halla la fantasía de conectar con una inteligencia sobrehumana e infalible. Este es el motivo por el que, como exploraremos en el capítulo 8, estudiar la historia de la religión es tan importante para los debates actuales acerca de la IA.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
information sometimes represents reality, and sometimes doesn’t. But it always connects. This is its fundamental characteristic
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
We have already driven the earth's climate out of balance and have summoned billions of enchanted brooms, drones, chatbots, and other algorithmic spirits that may escape our control and unleash a flood of unintended consequences. What should we do, then? The fables offer no answers, other than to wait for some god or sorcerer to save us. This, of course, is an extremely dangerous message. It encourages people to abdicate respon-sibilitv and put their faith in gods and sorcerers instead. Even worse, it fails to appreciate that gods and sorcerers are themselves a human in-vention-just like chariots, brooms, and algorithms. The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or Al but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
La historia no es el estudio del pasado, sino el estudio del cambio. La historia nos enseña lo que se mantiene inmutable, lo que cambia y cómo cambian las cosas. Esto es tan relevante para las revoluciones de la información como para cualquier otro tipo de transformación
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens built and maintained large networks by inventing and spreading fictions, fantasies, and mass delusions—about gods, about enchanted broomsticks, about AI, and about a great many other things.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
All human political systems are based on fictions, but some admit it, and some do not. Being truthful about the origins of our social order makes it easier to make changes in it. If humans like us invented it, we can amend it. But such truthfulness comes at a price. Acknowledging the human origins of the social order makes it harder to persuade everyone to agree on it. If humans like us invented it, why should we accept it?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
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 and heard the story so often that many have come to associate a certain concoction of flavored water with fun, happiness, and youth (as opposed to tooth decay, obesity, and plastic waste). That’s branding.[7
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
contrast, the financial value of money—and pizzas—depends entirely on our beliefs. How many pizzas can you purchase for a dollar, or for a bitcoin? In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. It was the first known commercial transaction involving bitcoin—and with hindsight, also the most expensive pizza ever. By November 2021, a single bitcoin was valued at more than $69,000, so the bitcoins Hanyecz paid for his two pizzas were worth $690 million, enough to purchase millions of pizzas.[14] While the caloric value of pizza is an objective reality that remained the same between 2010 and 2021, the financial value of bitcoin is an intersubjective reality that changed dramatically during the same period, depending on the stories people told and believed about bitcoin.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Así como los marxistas afirmaban que los medios de comunicación funcionan como un portavoz de la clase capitalista y que instituciones científicas como las universidades difunden desinformación con el fin de perpetuar el control capitalista, los populistas acusan a estas mismas instituciones de trabajar para promover los intereses de las «élites corruptas» a expensas del «pueblo».
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
It should be stressed that the creation of the Jesus story was not a deliberate lie. People like Saint Paul, Tertullian, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther didn’t set out to deceive anyone. They projected their deeply felt hopes and feelings on the figure of Jesus, in the same way that all of us routinely project our feelings on our parents, lovers and leaders. While branding campaigns are occasionally a cynical exercise of disinformation, most of the really big stories of history have been the result of emotional projections and wishful thinking. True believers play a key role in the rise of every major religion and ideology, and the Jesus story changed history because it gained an immense number of true believers.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
According to the Clausewitzian model, only once the political goal is clear can armies decide on a military strategy that will hopefully achieve it. From
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Among humans, the precondition for cooperation isn't similarity; it is the ability to exchange information. As long as we are able to converse, we might find some shared story that can bring us closer.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Rather, to survive and flourish, every human information network needs to do two things simultaneously: discover truth and create order.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Hay que insistir en que rechazar la idea ingenua de la información como representación no nos obliga a rechazar la noción de verdad ni a aceptar la idea populista de la información como arma.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Si no se toman medidas adicionales para inclinar la balanza a favor de la verdad, es probable que un aumento en la cantidad y la velocidad de la información sature las explicaciones verídicas, que son relativamente raras y caras, con tipos de información mucho más comunes y baratos.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
En conclusión, a veces la información representa la realidad y a veces no. Pero siempre
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Los relatos de la Biblia, por ejemplo, fueron esenciales para la Iglesia cristiana, pero la Biblia no habría existido si los burócratas de la Iglesia no hubieran seleccionado, editado y diseminado dichos relatos.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Los sistemas democráticos permiten que la información fluya libremente a través de muchos canales independientes, mientras que los sistemas totalitarios se esfuerzan por concentrar la información
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Los chips de silicio pueden generar espías que nunca duermen, banqueros que nunca olvidan y déspotas que nunca mueren.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Más bien, lo que hace la información es crear nuevas realidades al conectar entre sí cosas dispares, ya se trate de parejas o de imperios. Su rasgo definitorio es la conexión, y no la representación, y la información es cualquier cosa que conecte puntos diferentes en una red. La información no tiene por qué informarnos de cosas. Lo que hace, en cambio, es colocar cosas en formación.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Hitler ganó las elecciones de 1933 porque durante la crisis económica millones de alemanes llegaron a creerse el relato nazi, en lugar de uno de los relatos alternativos que se les ofrecían. Esto no fue la consecuencia inevitable de que los alemanes persiguieran sus intereses materiales y protegieran sus privilegios; fue un error trágico.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
«el Goliat del control totalitario será pronto derribado por el David del microchip»
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Pero, con tanta información circulando a velocidades impresionantes, la humanidad se halla más cerca que nunca de la aniquilación.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Es probable que en las próximas décadas adquiera incluso la capacidad de crear nuevas formas de vida, ya sea a través de la escritura de código genético o de la invención de un código inorgánico que anime entes inorgánicos.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Tactics are considered rational only if they are aligned with some strategic goal, and strategy is considered rational only if it is aligned with some political goal. Even local tactical decisions of a lowly company commander must serve the war’s ultimate political goal.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
Si no queremos ceder el poder a un líder carismático o a una IA inescrutable, primero hemos de entender mejor qué es la información, cómo ayuda a construir redes humanas y de qué manera se relaciona con la verdad y el poder.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)
Pone énfasis en el paso de las redes de información orgánicas a las redes inorgánicas. El Imperio romano, la Iglesia católica, la Unión Soviética dependían todos de cerebros compuestos de carbono para procesar la información y tomar decisiones. Los ordenadores compuestos de silicio que dominan la nueva red de información funcionan de maneras muy distintas. Para lo bueno y para lo malo, los chips de silicio están libres de muchas de las limitaciones que la bioquímica orgánica impone a las neuronas de carbono. Los chips de silicio pueden generar espías que nunca duermen, banqueros que nunca olvidan y déspotas que nunca mueren. ¿Cómo cambiará esto la sociedad, la economía y la política?
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus. Una breve historia de las redes de información desde la Edad de Piedra hasta la IA)