Tao Te Ching
Nexus
By Yuval Harari
In Harari's words, "The whole point of writing this book is that by making informed choices, we can prevent the worst outcomes."
He does a great job in this regard by putting current events and challenges in their historical context in a way that doesn't either minimize the negative consequences or maximize the positive ones.
He also says, "The main argument of this book is that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely."
He uses Goethe's (and Disney's) story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" to symbolize the attraction and benefits of new networks created with artificial intelligence as well as the dangers. He calls the "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" view overly pessimistic and the more common and naive view of technology overly optimistic.
Today's political, environmental, and information technology world confronts us with probably the biggest challenge to human survival since the last ice age. We don't have to agree with all (or any) of his thesis here to still use it as a foundation for understanding and working with the unprecedented and existential challenges we face in our day-to-day lives.
He describes AI as the "first technology capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself" and the goal of this book as providing "a more accurate historical perspective on the AI revolution." One middle-of-the road conclusion might be that Mickey Mouse's mistake wasn't empowering the broomsticks to do his work; but, to go to sleep and not watch over what they were doing until it was almost too late (the sorcerer also was gone because of taking a nap). The word cocoon summarizes this theme and he uses it frequently. It describes our Homer Simpson tendency to create comfortable but delusional environments that can create order but also self-destructive illusions leading to wars, the killing of others and willingness to be killed, as well as the sacrifice of personal freedom and the destruction of our environment.
So perhaps the answer to wisely dealing with AI is simple, just two words, Waking Up.
Themes
Quotes from Nexus
“"We live cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism.”
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“According to Catholic dogma... even though individual members of the church may err and sin the Cathoc church as an institution is never wrong.”
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“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... rebranded as the incarnation of the cosmic god who created the universe.”
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“Blake's "dark Satanic mills" ended up producing the most affluent societies in history [but]... the vaunted prosperity of the present human generation comes at a terrible cost to other sentient beings and to future human generation... the jury on Blake's satanic mills is still out.”
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“Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology. the computer-based network is a new type of bureaucracy far more powerful and relentless than any human-based bureaucracy we've seen before... The potential benefits of this network are enormous. The potential downside is the destruction of human civilization.”
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“Cocooned by a web of unfathomable algorithms that manage our lives, reshape our politics and culture... a division into separate information cocoons that could lead not just to economic rivalries and international tensions but also to the development of very different cultures, ideologies, and identities.”
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“democracy is not the same thing as majority dictatorship... democracy doesn't mean majority rule; rather, it means freedom and equality for all.”
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“different digital cocoons might adopt incompatible approaches to the most fundamental questions of human identity.”
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“Every smartphone contains more information than the ancient Library of Alexandria... Yet humanity is closer than ever to annihilating itself.”
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“For thousands of years prophets, poets and politicians have used language to manipulate and reshape society. Now computers are learning how to do it. And they won’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. They could manipulate human beings to pull the trigger.”
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“historically, the most important function of religion has been to provide superhuman legitimacy for the social order.”
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“History is full of rigid caste systems that denied humans the ability to change, but it is also full of dictators who tried to mold humans like clay.”
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“History isn't the study of the past; it is the study of change... what remains the same, what changes, and how things change.”
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“Human life is a balancing act between endeavoring to improve ourselves and accepting who we are.”
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“Humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use the power unwisely.”
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“hyper-efficiency can easily pave the way for totalitarianism. For the survival of democracy, some inefficiency is a feature, not a bug.”
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“If a government doesn't kill anyone, but also makes no effort to protect citizewns from murder, this is anarchy rather than democracy.”
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“If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? We are at one and the same time both the smartest and the stupidest animals on earth.”
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“In 1928, the Nazi Party won less than 3%... just prior to the Wall Street crash of 1929, the German unemployment rate was about 4.5% percent, by early 1932 it had climbed to almost 25%... If 3 years of up to 25% unemployment could turn a seemingly prospering democracy into the most brutal totalitarian regime in history, what might happen to democracies when automation causes even bigger upheavals?”
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“In Nero's Rome, freedom was not an ideal but a by-product of the government's inability to exert totalitarian control.”
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“In the coming decades we might find ourselves living inside the dreams of an alien intelligence.”
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“Just as the law of the jungle is a myth, so also is the idea that the arc of history bends toward justice.”
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“Leaders like Stalin and Hitler argued that the Industrial Revolution had unleashed immense powers that only totalitarianism could rein in and exploit to the full.”
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“Marx argued that power is the only reality, that information is a weapon, and that elites who claim to be serving truth and justice are in fact pursuing narrow class privileges... This binary interpretation of history implies that every human interaction is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed.”
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“Medieval Europeans were cocooned inside that information sphere, their daily activities, thoughts, and emotions shaped by texts about texts about texts.”
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“Most people don't view themselves as one-dimensional creatures obsessed solely with power. Why, then, hold such a view about everyone else?”
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“Nazi Germany created a highly efficient military machine and plaed it at the service of an insane mythology... Due to the privileging of order over truth, human information networks have often produced a lot of power but little wisdom.”
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“One of the recurrent paradoxes of populism is the it starts by warning us that all human elites are driven by a dangerous hunger for power, but often ends by entrusting all power to a single ambitious human.”
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“Plato told the famous allegory of the cave, in which a group of people are chained inside a cave all their lives, facing a plain wall. A screen. On that screen they see projected various shadows. The prisoners mistake the illusions they see there for reality.”
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“populists claim that the articles you read in the New Your Times or in Science are just an elitist ploy to gain power, but what you read in the Bible, the Quran, or the Vedas is absolute truth.”
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“print allowed the rapid spread not only of scientific facts but also of religious fantasies, fake news, and conspiracy theories.”
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“the acquisition of power allows a network to deal more effectively with threats coming from outside, but simultaneously increases the dangers that the network poses to itself.”
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“The Bible not only sanctified slavery in the Ten Commandments and numerous other passages but also place a cures on the offspring of Ham—the alleged forefather of Africans—saying that 'the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers'”
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“the church fell into the infallibility trap... it wasn't a few wayward priests who launched the Crusades, imposed laws that discriminate agains Jews and women, or orchestrated the systematic annihilation of indigenous relitions throughout the world.”
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“the Hindu caste system was based on myths that said the gods divided humans into rigid castes, and any attempt to change one's status was akin to rebelling against the gods and the proper order of the universe.”
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“The history of information networks has always involved maintaining a balance between truth and order. Just as sacrificing truth for the sake of order comes with a cost, so does sacrificing order for truth.”
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“The history of print and witch-hunting indicates that an unregulated information market doesn't necessarily lead people to identify and correct their errors, because it may well prioritize outrage over truth.”
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“the scientific revolution was launched by the discover of ignorance... by rejecting the fantasy of infallibility and proceeding to construct an information network that takes error to be inescapable.”
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“The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the tea engine or AI but with the invention of religion.”
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“Traditional religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism have typically characterized humans as untrustworthy power-hungry creatures who can access the truth only thanks to the interveiton of a divine intelligence.”
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“Until very recently, the cultural cocoon we lived in was woven by other humans. Going forward, it will be increasingly designed by computers.”
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“we cannot predict which jobs and tasks will disappear and which ones will emerge... it is easier to automate chess playing than, say, dish washing... people who want a job in 2050 should perhaps invest in their motor and social skills as much as in their intellect.”
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“We live cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism.”
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“We live cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism.”
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“What we normally are to be 'reality' is often just fictions in our own minds. People may wage entire wars, killing others and willing to be killed themselves, because their belief in this or that illusion.”
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“While each individual human is typically interested in knowing the truth about themselves and the world, large networks bind members and create order by relying on fictions and fantasies... for example Nazism and Stalinism.”
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Related Lineages (0 lineages)
Quotes about Nexus (3 quotes)
“Parts of 'Nexus' are wise and bold. They remind us that democratic societies still have the facilities to prevent A.I.’s most dangerous excesses, and that it must not be left to tech companies and their billionaire owners to regulate themselves.”
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“"Nexus' operates primarily as a diagnosis and a call to action, and on those terms it’s broadly successful. If it sells anywhere near as well as Sapiens did, we’ll be that bit better equipped as a species to deal with the rise of the machines.”
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“Although Harari is a good guide to how future technologies might destroy democracy (or humanity), he's less helpful on the present-day economics bringing those technologies forth.”
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