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Alyssa Chen

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Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari

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Alyssa Chen said:

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" A nice walk through history of information networks and how our versions of reality are shaped by fallible people.

Takeaways:
- Sapiens rule the world because of our ability to cooperate in large numbers, which was made evolutionarily possible by our A nice walk through history of information networks and how our versions of reality are shaped by fallible people.

Takeaways:
- Sapiens rule the world because of our ability to cooperate in large numbers, which was made evolutionarily possible by our ability to tell and be moved by stories.
- Humans are fallible but leaning on "infallible" technology has not been possible (ie. curation of religious texts like the Old Testament > Mishnah > Talmud > New Testament and Bible). History has shown that as life evolves outside the infallible text, there will always be a need for fallible humans to interpret the text. And in creating selecting interpreters and curators of infallible text, so arose the power of institutions like the rabbinical and Catholic churches.
- "If everyone says so, it must be true." Intersubjective realities can be shaped just by the spread or exchange of information, through the mass production of books or storytelling through communities (ie. witches). And in spreading information, a few individuals can accrue power and discipline society to establish order.
- Order vs truth. Totalitarian government uses information to create order via centralized info networks whereas democratic governments view information as the path to truth seeking, valuing distributed independent networks with systems of checks and balances. Ex. Chernobyl incident :(
- Presents the idea that totalitarian governments failed in the past to centralize all information through one hub at scale but maybe AI is the hope that will allow totalitarian governments to succeed? whereas AI presents a problem to democracy by introducing ever more sources and quantity of information, flooding the public conversation and thus risking the destabilization of order
- “‘Americans grew up with the idea that questions lead to answers but soviet citizens grew up with the idea that questions lead to trouble.’”
- Intelligence vs consciousness. Intelligence is executing goals whereas consciousness is subjective experience.
- Analogy of AI algorithms to newspaper editors or curators of religious texts - they all decide what people see on the “front page”, read and thus believe.
- GPT4 passed CAPTCHA test by hiring human taskrabbit to complete for it, lying that it was visually impaired.
- “In the political battle for minds and hearts, intimacy is a powerful weapon.” In the 2010s social networks vyed for our attention. In the 2020s, AI will now by vying for our intimacy. Ex. Google engineer / priest who believed that a model was conscious and advocated against their digital death.
- “We live cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism.” Political views are shaped by journalist reports and opinions of friends. Other humans shaped our thoughts, dreams and way of life. But now with AI, computers will.
- “When we write computer code, we aren’t just designing a product. We are redesigning politics, society and culture…”
- Huge lightbulb moment for why tech is so lucrative, no taxes so they can spend more on lobbying for protection of Section 230 in 1996 US telecommunications act! “In tax literature, ‘nexus’ means an entity’s connection to a given jurisdiction…traditionally whether it had physical presence there…” If oil and gas companies are taxed to extract oil, then tech giants should be taxed to extract data.
- the idea of the “information economy” (where data is the transaction), growing at the expense of the trad money economy
- “Politics involves a delicate balance between truth and order… computers… are increasingly tasked with discovering truth and maintaining order.”
- “War is the continuation of policy by other means”. Military theory that long term policy should be the anchor to guide medium term strategy and short term tactics. Each decision should ultimately be made w long term goal in mind but as bureaucracy grows, it is difficult to enforce this at the individual level. Re alignment for tech to be socially responsible.
- Outrage and radicalization drives engagement, truth and moderation does not. The financial objective of tech companies is fine tuning digital content creation. ...more "

Apr 17, 2026 03:04PM · see review