Marieta Murg’s Reviews > Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI > Status Update

In 2019, I went on a tour of Chernobyl. The Ukrainian guide who explained what led to the nuclear accident said something that stuck in my mind. “Americans grow up with the idea that questions lead to answers,” he said. “But Soviet citizens grew up with the idea that questions lead to trouble.”

A common misconception is that in a democracy everything is decided by majority vote. In fact, in a democracy as little as possible is decided centrally, and only the relatively few decisions that must be made centrally should reflect the will of the majority. In a democracy, if 99 percent of people want to dress in a particular way and worship a particular god, the remaining 1 percent should still be free to dress..

Religions, for example, always claim to be an objective and eternal truth rather than a fictional story invented by humans. In such cases, the search for truth threatens the foundations of the social order. Many societies require their populations not to know their true origins: ignorance is strength. What happens, then, when people get uncomfortably close to the truth?

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 repeatedly summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but ended up flooding the world with blood.