Yuval Noah Harari, 'Nexus' a book review

Yuval Noah Harari is only 48 years old, so it is difficult (I hope) to speak of Nexus as his Opus Magnum. But after reading the book one would like to say so. It is so rich that I’d like to have its review published in 2 (maybe 3?) parts.

I have read Harari in his entirety (the previous three books) and watched dozens of interviews with him, including conversations in recent days about Nexus which has just been published. I have always had an opinion of Harari as an accomplished historian who pretends to be a philosopher, which he doesn't really do best.

But Nexus is, in my opinion, an excellent historical essay, at which Harari is a master over masters.

From the historical essay comes, in the last part of the book, a political treatise, well reasoned, whether one agrees with it or not. But to be listened to and analysed is not so much worth it as it should be.

But from the beginning. What is the book about? Harari has set himself two very ambitious tasks. To write a universal history of information. And secondly to show the threats that information can pose in the realm of AI and what to do about these threats.

At the outset we have a synthesis of Harari's views, which he has been preaching for many years. It should be noted at this point that Harari describes history from a materialist point of view (although I would not call him a Marxist or neo-Marxist). He declares himself to be an atheist. He thus treats religion as a purely cultural creation. I do not share such a worldview, but let us accept it for the purposes of this book review, in order to enter into an intellectual dialogue with the author.

The author has been repeating for years the thesis that what distinguishes the human race from its closest cousins the chimpanzees is the ability to create mythology. Chimpanzees, from whom we are separated by only a fraction of a chromosome, can communicate brilliantly. But they have not invented concepts such as money (myth), a system of government (myth), religion (also a myth, according to Harari) or the nation (myth).

And here we come to the concept of information. I interpret the message of the book to mean that information can be a message about reality, which can be true or false, can be an objective (scientific) creation or a creation of myth.

Then the most valuable, in my opinion, part of the book begins. We have a historical ‘tour de force’ through several thousand years of human civilisation. It is difficult to summarise it in a few sentences, but I will try.

In the beginning, people created myths, or concepts like tradition, ethnicity, religion, money. But over time, the myths created enough recourses in society, so humanity, in order to manage itself, had to set up a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy needed data. This is brilliantly demonstrated in another book that I would also like to review, ‘How data happened’-by Chris Wiggins and Matthhew Jones. But the bureaucracy, from the time of the Romans, is beginning to demand real information.

The original most primitive communities, the Bronze Age, were, as a rule, very democratic in nature. So did the Greek polis like Athens, from which the name ‘democracy’ is derived in most modern languages. But as the Harari-historian brilliantly demonstrates, the larger states and then empires were created, the more they became autocracies. An autocracy, is a system where the system can order everything, but not everything can be enforced. Even in opressive, autocratic Tsarist Russia, the commoners managed the countryside and reported to the feudal lord. Monuments from Pompeii, on the site of present-day Naples, show that in the 1st century AD there were fierce elections for the city's mayor. Although the Roman Emperor could have cut anyone's head off and put ‘his politician’ in charge.

Qin dynasty in China (3rd century BC) tried to introduce first totalitarian regime long before Stalin and Hitler. It failed.

What does it all say to us about history of information?

If we have a small community, it is easier to have a democratic system of government.

A democratic system allows for more open dialogue. Dialogue is the essence of humanity. We have the chance to create a system that is self-correcting when it comes to creating truth.

An autocratic, or worse a totalitarian, system is unable to correct itself when it comes to the pursuit of truth.

The scientific revolution allowed democratic systems to be strengthened by the development of technology: the telegraph, radio, etc., although the totalitarians (Nazis and Soviets) also made heavy use of them.

Harari shows one amazing historical example. In 1569, the first modern democracy was established (although voting power was about 10% of the population)-the Polish-Lithuanian Comonwealth. It fell. 10 years later, the Dutch Republic was founded and survived. Why? This second democracy was in a much smaller territory and rapidly created the newspaper that today is the largest Dutch newspaper ‘De Telegraaf’. Poland and Lithuania lacked communication over a much larger territory.

What Harari says about the state of AI today, the threats and how to solve them-next week!

n the context of this post, be sure to watch my episode of?:

https://www.youtube.com/@pastpresentfuture24