Mark Kwesi

“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

“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

“... 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

“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