Marieta Murg’s Reviews > Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI > Status Update
Marieta Murg
is 65% done
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. Unfortunately, while...
— 9 hours, 2 min ago
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Marieta’s Previous Updates
Marieta Murg
is 60% done
The survival of human civilization too is under threat. Because we still seem unable to build an industrial society that is also ecologically sustainable, the vaunted prosperity of the present human generation comes at a terrible cost to other sentient beings and to future human generations
— 13 hours, 3 min ago
Marieta Murg
is 47% done
As fish live in water, humans live in a digital bureaucracy, constantly inhaling and exhaling data. Each action we make leaves a trace of data, which is gathered and analyzed to identify patterns.
— Jul 10, 2026 09:10AM
Marieta Murg
is 37% done
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.”
— Jul 06, 2026 02:52PM
Marieta Murg
is 26% done
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..
— Jul 05, 2026 08:15AM
Marieta Murg
is 11% done
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?
— Jul 01, 2026 01:55PM
Marieta Murg
is 7% done
If the main job of information had been to represent reality accurately, it would have been hard to explain why the Bible became one of the most influential texts in history.
— Jun 29, 2026 02:20PM
Marieta Murg
is starting
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.
— Jun 28, 2026 01:54PM
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9 hours, 2 min ago
Unfortunately, while charismatic leaders certainly have their advantages, no single human, however inspiring or brilliant, can single-handedly decipher how the algorithms that increasingly dominate the world work, and make sure that they are fair. The problem is that algorithms make decisions by relying on numerous data points, whereas humans find it very difficult to consciously reflect on a large number of data points and weigh them against each other. We prefer to work with single data points. 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.
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