A brief history of information networks from the stone age to AI

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Information as connection vs. representation

Information’s primary function is to create networks and connections rather than merely represent reality. This fundamental insight challenges traditional views of information as truth-seeking.

Key quote (p. 35):

What the example of astrology illustrates is that errors, lies, fantasies, and fictions are information, too. Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a preexisting reality. Rather, what information does is to create new realities by tying together disparate things —whether couples or empires. Its defining feature is connection rather than representation, and information is whatever connects different points into a network. Information doesn’t necessarily inform us about things. Rather, it puts things in formation. Horoscopes put lovers in astrological formations, propaganda broadcasts put voters in political formations, and marching songs put soldiers in military formations.

Harari argues that information’s power lies not in its accuracy but in its ability to forge human networks. Even false information can be highly effective at creating social formations.

AI as unprecedented technology

AI represents the first technology capable of making autonomous decisions and creating ideas independently of human control.

Key Quote (p. 17):

Given the magnitude of the danger, AI should be of interest to all human beings. While not everyone can become an AI expert, we should all keep in mind that AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions and create new ideas by itself. All previous human inventions have empowered humans, because no matter how powerful the new tool was, the decisions about its usage remained in our hands. *Knives and bombs do not themselves decide whom to kill. They are dumb tools, lacking the intelligence necessary to process information and make independent decisions. In contrast, AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool*—it’s an agent.

This distinction between tools and agents marks a fundamental shift in human-technology relations. Previous technologies extended human capabilities while keeping humans in control of decisions.

Alien intelligence concept (p. 208):

Original quote

Traditionally, AI has been an abbreviation for ‘artificial intelligence.’ But for reasons already evident from the previous discussion, it is perhaps better to think of it as ‘alien intelligence.’ As AI evolves, it becomes less artificial (in the sense of depending on human designs) and more alien. It should also be noted that people often define and evaluate AI through the metric of ‘human-level intelligence,’ and there is much debate about when we can expect AIs to reach ‘human-level intelligence.’ The use of this metric, however, is deeply confusing. It is like defining and evaluating airplanes through the metric of ‘bird-level flight.’ AI isn’t progressing toward human-level intelligence. It is evolving an entirely different type of intelligence.

Historical magnitude (p. 360):

The invention of AI is potentially more momentous than the invention of the telegraph, the printing press, or even writing, because AI is the first technology that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself.

Intelligence vs. Consciousness (p. 194):

People often confuse intelligence with consciousness, and many consequently jump to the conclusion that nonconscious entities cannot be intelligent. But intelligence and consciousness are very different. Intelligence is the ability to attain goals, such as maximizing user engagement on a social media platform. Consciousness is the ability to experience subjective feelings like pain, pleasure, love, and hate. In humans and other mammals, intelligence often goes hand in hand with consciousness. Facebook executives and engineers rely on their feelings in order to make decisions, solve problems, and attain their goals.

Unfathomability (p. 304):

Original quote

Second, move 37 demonstrated the unfathomability of AI. Even after AlphaGo played it to achieve victory, Suleyman and his team couldn’t explain how AlphaGo decided to play it. Even if a court had ordered DeepMind to provide Lee Sedol with an explanation, nobody could fulfill that order. Suleyman writes, ‘Us humans face a novel challenge: will new inventions be beyond our grasp? Previously creators could explain how something worked, why it did what it did, even if this required vast detail. That’s increasingly no longer true. Many technologies and systems are becoming so complex that they’re beyond the capacity of any one individual to truly understand them…. In AI, the neural networks moving toward autonomy are, at present, not explainable. You can’t walk someone through the decision-making process to explain precisely why an algorithm produced a specific prediction. Engineers can’t peer beneath the hood and easily explain in granular detail what caused something to happen. GPT-4, AlphaGo, and the rest are black boxes, their outputs and decisions based on opaque and impossibly intricate chains of minute signals.’

Information networks and social reality

Human societies operate on three levels of reality: objective, subjective, and crucially, intersubjective reality created through shared stories.

Key Quote (p. 46):

The two levels of reality that preceded storytelling are objective reality and subjective reality. Objective reality consists of things like stones, mountains, and asteroids—things that exist whether we are aware of them or not. An asteroid hurtling toward planet Earth, for example, exists even if nobody knows it’s out there. Then there is subjective reality: things like pain, pleasure, and love that aren’t ‘out there’ but rather ‘in here.’ Subjective things exist in our awareness of them. An unfelt ache is an oxymoron. But some stories are able to create a third level of reality: intersubjective reality. Whereas subjective things like pain exist in a single mind, intersubjective things like laws, gods, nations, corporations, and currencies exist in the nexus between large numbers of minds. More specifically, they exist in the stories people tell one another. The information humans exchange about intersubjective things doesn’t represent anything that had already existed prior to the exchange of information; rather, the exchange of information creates these things.

This three-level framework explains how human cooperation scales beyond personal relationships through shared narratives that create binding social realities.

Populism and information warfare

Information as Weapon Populist movements view information primarily as a tool for power rather than truth-seeking, undermining democratic discourse.

Original quote

gather information and discover truth are simply lying. Bureaucrats, judges, doctors, mainstream journalists, and academic experts are elite cabals that have no interest in the truth and are deliberately spreading disinformation to gain power and privileges for themselves at the expense of “the people.” The rise of politicians like Trump and movements like QAnon has a specific political context, unique to the conditions of the United States in the late 2010s. But populism as an antiestablishment worldview long predated Trump and is relevant to numerous other historical contexts now and in the future. In a nutshell, populism views information as a weapon. The populist view of information In its more extreme versions, populism posits that there is no objective truth at all and that everyone has “their own truth,” which they wield to vanquish rivals. According to this worldview, power is the only reality. All social interactions are power struggles, because humans are interested only in power. The claim to be interested in something else—like truth or justice—is nothing more than a ploy to gain power. Whenever and wherever populism succeeds in disseminating the view of information as a weapon, language itself is undermined. Nouns like “facts” and adjectives like “accurate” and “truthful” become elusive. Such words are not taken as pointing to a common objective reality. Rather, any talk of “facts” or “truth” is bound to prompt at least some people to ask, “Whose facts and whose truth are you referring to?”

This weaponization of information creates a crisis of trust in institutions and shared reality, making democratic consensus increasingly difficult.

Binary worldview (p. 20)

This binary interpretation of history implies that every human interaction is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed. Accordingly, whenever anyone says anything, the question to ask isn’t, “What is being said? Is it true?” but rather, “Who is saying this? Whose privileges does it serve?”

Balanced view (p. 23)

If we wish to avoid relinquishing power to a charismatic leader or an inscrutable AI, we must first gain a better understanding of what information is, how it helps to build human networks, and how it relates to truth and power. Populists are right to be suspicious of the naive view of information, but they are wrong to think that power is the only reality and that information is always a weapon. Information isn’t the raw material of truth, but it isn’t a mere weapon, either. There is enough space between these extremes for a more nuanced and hopeful view of human information networks and of our ability to handle power wisely.

Mystical people (p. 136)

A fundamental part of this populist credo is the belief that “the people” is not a collection of flesh-and-blood individuals with various interests and opinions, but rather a unified mystical body that possesses a single will—“the will of the people.” Perhaps the most notorious and extreme manifestation of this semireligious belief was the Nazi motto “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” which means “One People, One Country, One Leader.” Nazi ideology posited that the Volk (people) had a single will, whose sole authentic representative was the Führer (leader)

Populist definition (p. 136)

The term “populism” derives from the Latin populus, which means “the people.” In democracies, “the people” is considered the sole legitimate source of political authority. Only representatives of the people should have the authority to declare wars, pass laws, and raise taxes. Populists cherish this basic democratic principle, but somehow conclude from it that a single party or a single leader should monopolize all power. In a curious political alchemy, populists manage to base a totalitarian pursuit of unlimited power on a seemingly impeccable democratic principle.

Elite opposition (p. 137)

However, many populist parties and politicians deny that “the people” might contain a diversity of opinions and interest groups. They insist that the real people has only one will and that they alone represent this will. In contrast, their political rivals—even when the latter enjoy substantial popular support—are depicted as “alien elites.”

Authority monopoly (p. 138)

Populism undermines democracy in another, more subtle, but equally dangerous way. Having claimed that they alone represent the people, populists argue that the people is not just the sole legitimate source of political authority but the sole legitimate source of all authority. Any institution that derives its authority from something other than the will of the people is antidemocratic. As the self-proclaimed representatives of the people, populists consequently seek to monopolize not just political authority but all types of authority and to take control of institutions such as media outlets, courts, and universities. By taking the democratic principle of “people’s power” to its extreme, populists turn totalitarian.

Simplification appeal (p. 139)

Original quote

In all, it’s a rather sordid view of humanity, but two things nevertheless make it appealing to many. First, since it reduces all interactions to power struggles, it simplifies reality and makes events like wars, economic crises, and natural disasters easy to understand. Anything that happens—even a pandemic—is about elites pursuing power. Second, the populist view is attractive because it is sometimes correct. Every human institution is indeed fallible and suffers from some level of corruption. Some judges do take bribes. Some journalists do intentionally mislead the public. Academic disciplines are occasionally plagued by bias and nepotism. That is why every institution needs self-correcting mechanisms. But since populists are convinced that power is the only reality, they cannot accept that a court, a media outlet, or an academic discipline would ever be inspired by the value of truth or justice to correct itself.

Democratic principles and challenges

Democracy vs. Populism Democracy requires complex institutional checks rather than simple majority rule, distinguishing it from populist conceptions of “the will of the people.”

Of course, if the central government doesn’t intervene at all in people’s lives, and doesn’t provide them with basic services like security, it isn’t a democracy; it is anarchy. In all democracies the center raises taxes and maintains an army, and in most modern democracies it also provides at least some level of health care, education, and welfare. But any intervention in people’s lives demands an explanation. In the absence of a compelling reason, a democratic government should leave people to their own devices.

True democracy balances central authority with individual freedom through institutional safeguards and self-correcting mechanisms.

Fallibility Principle (p. 129)

Another crucial characteristic of democracies is that they assume everyone is fallible. Therefore, while democracies give the center the authority to make some vital decisions, they also maintain strong mechanisms that can challenge the central authority. To paraphrase President James Madison, since humans are fallible, a government is necessary, but since government too is fallible, it needs mechanisms to expose and correct its errors, such as holding regular elections, protecting the freedom of the press, and separating the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

Strongman tactics (p. 130)

Of course, most assaults on democracy are more subtle. The careers of strongmen like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, and Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrate how a leader who uses democracy to rise to power can then use his power to undermine democracy. As Erdoğan once put it, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”

Genocide example (p. 130)

Suppose that in a free and fair election 51 percent of voters choose a government that subsequently sends 1 percent of voters to be exterminated in death camps, because they belong to some hated religious minority. Is this democratic? Clearly it is not. The problem isn’t that genocide demands a special majority of more than 51 percent. It’s not that if the government gets the backing of 60 percent, 75 percent, or ev A democracy is not a system in which a majority of any size can decide to exterminate unpopular minorities; it is a system in which there are clear limits on the power of the center.

Rights baskets (p. 131)

Original quote

But in a democracy, there are two baskets of rights that are protected from the majority’s grasp. One contains human rights. Even if 99 percent of the population wants to exterminate the remaining 1 percent, in a democracy this is forbidden, because it violates the most basic human right—the right to life. The basket of human rights contains many additional rights, such as the right to work, the right to privacy, free. These rights enshrine the decentralized nature of democracy, making sure that as long as people don’t harm anyone, they can live their lives as they see fit. The second crucial basket of rights contains civil rights. These are the basic rules of the democratic game, which enshrine its self-correcting mechanisms. An obvious example is the right to vote. If the majority were permitted to disenfranchise the minority, then democracy would be over after a single election. Other civil rights include freedom of the press, academic freedom, and freedom of assembly, which enable independent media outlets, universities, and opposition movements to challenge the government. These are the key rights that strongmen seek to violate.

Democracy: Core definition (p. 131)

However, 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.

Network changes (p. 311)

Original quote

#+begin_quote Before the advent of newspapers, radios, and other modern information technology, no large-scale society managed to combine free debates with institutional trust, so large-scale democracy was impossible. Now, with the rise of the new computer network, might large-scale democracy again become impossible? One difficulty is that the computer network makes it easier to join the debate. In the past, organizations like newspapers, radio stations, and established political parties acted as gatekeepers, deciding who was heard in the public sphere. Social media undermined the power of these gatekeepers, leading to a more open but also more anarchical public conversation. Whenever new groups join the conversation, they bring with them new viewpoints and interests, and often The rules of discussion must be negotiated anew. This is a potentially positive development, one that can lead to a more inclusive democratic system. After all, correcting previous biases and allowing previously disenfranchised people to join the public discussion is a vital part of democracy. However, in the short term this creates disturbances and disharmony. If no agreement is reached on how to conduct the public debate and how to reach decisions, the result is anarchy rather than democracy. #+end_quote

AI Manipulation (p. 312)

Original quote

If I engage online in a political debate with an AI, it is a waste of time for me to try to change the AI’s opinions; being a nonconscious entity, it doesn’t really care about politics, and it cannot vote in the elections. But the more I talk with the AI, the better it gets to know me, so it can gain my trust, hone its arguments, and gradually change my views. In the battle for hearts and minds, intimacy is an extremely powerful weapon. Previously, political parties could command our attention, but they had difficulty mass-producing intimacy. Radio sets could broadcast a leader’s speech to millions, but they could not befriend the listeners. Now a political party, or even a foreign government, could deploy an army of bots that build friendships with millions of citizens and then use that intimacy to influence their worldview.

Totalitarian information control

Totalitarian systems concentrate information flow through central hubs, while democratic systems encourage distributed information processing.

Key quote (p. 174):

Original quote

We see then that the new information technology of the late modern era gave rise to both large-scale democracy and large-scale totalitarianism. But there were crucial differences between how the two systems used information technology. As noted earlier, democracy encourages information to flow through many independent channels rather than only through the center, and it allows many independent nodes to process the information and make decisions by themselves. Information freely circulates between private businesses, private media organizations, municipalities, sports associations, charities, families, and individuals—without ever passing through the office of a government minister. In contrast, totalitarianism wants all information to pass through the central hub and doesn’t want any independent institutions making decisions on their own. True, totalitarianism does have its tripartite apparatus of government, party, and secret police. But the whole point of this parallel apparatus is to prevent the emergence of any independent power that might challenge the center. When government officials, party members, and secret police agents constantly keep tabs on one another, opposing the center is extremely dangerous.

Chernobyl example (p. 175)

For example, when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, Soviet authorities suppressed all news of the disaster. Both Soviet citizens and foreign countries were kept oblivious of the danger, and so took no steps to protect themselves from radiation. When some Soviet officials in Chernobyl and the nearby town of Pripyat requested to immediately evacuate nearby population centers, their superiors’ chief concern was to avoid the spread of alarming news, so they not only forbade evacuation but also cut the phone lines and warned employees in the nuclear facility not to talk about the disaster.

Questions and trouble (p. 176)

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.’

Soviet Kulak campaign (p. 167)

Original quote

When their efforts to collectivize farming encountered resistance and led to economic disaster, Moscow bureaucrats and mythmakers took a page from Kramer’s Hammer of the Witches. I don’t wish to imply that the Soviets actually read the book, but they too invented a global conspiracy and created an entire nonexistent category of enemies. In the 1930s Soviet authorities repeatedly blamed the disasters afflicting the Soviet economy on a counterrevolutionary cabal whose chief agents were the ‘kulaks,’ or capitalist farmers. Just as in Kramer’s imagination witches serving Satan conjured hailstorms that destroyed crops, so in the Stalinist imagination kulaks beholden to global capitalism sabotaged the Soviet economy.

Kulak identification (p. 168)

Original quote

How exactly did Soviet officials tell who was a kulak? In some villages, local party members made a conscientious effort to identify kulaks by objective measures, such as the amount of property they owned. It was often the most hardworking and efficient farmers who were stigmatized and expelled. In some villages local communists used the opportunity to get rid of their personal enemies. Some villages simply drew lots on who would be considered a kulak. Other villages held communal meetings to vote on the matter and often chose isolated farmers, widows, old people, and other ’expendables’ (exactly the sorts of people who in early modern Europe were most likely to be branded witches)

Intersubjective labels (p. 170)

Original quote

Like the ten-year-old ‘witch’ Hansel Pappenheimer, the eleven-year-old ‘kulak’ Antonina Golovina found herself cast into an intersubjective category invented by human mythmakers and imposed by ubiquitous bureaucrats. The mountains of information collected by Soviet bureaucrats about the kulaks wasn’t the objective truth about them, but it imposed a new intersubjective Soviet truth. Knowing that someone was labeled a kulak was a very important thing to know about a Soviet person, even though the label was entirely bogus.

Family control joke (p. 171)

The Soviet attempt to control the family was reflected in a dark joke told in Stalin’s day. Stalin visits a factory undercover, and conversing with a worker, he asks the man, ‘Who is your father?’ ‘Stalin,’ replies the worker. ‘Who is your mother?’ ‘The Soviet Union,’ the man responds. ‘And what do you want to be?’ ‘An orphan.’ At the time you could easily lose your liberty or your life for telling this joke, even if you told it in your own home to your closest family members.

Revolutionary parties (p. 173)

Unlike premodern churches, which developed slowly over many centuries and therefore tended to be conservative and suspicious of rapid changes, modern totalitarian parties like the Nazi Party and the Soviet Communist Party were organized within a single generation around the promise to quickly revolutionize society. They didn’t have centuries-old traditions and structures to defend. When their leaders conceived some ambitious plan to smash existing traditions and structures, party members typically fell in line.

Stalin’s death (p. 180)

Original quote

In 1951–53 the U.S.S.R. experienced yet another witch hunt. Soviet mythmakers fabricated a conspiracy theory that Jewish doctors were systematically murdering leading regime members, under the guise of giving them medical care. The theory alleged that the doctors were the agents of a global American-Zionist plot, working in collaboration with traitors in the secret police. By early 1953 hundreds of doctors and secret police officials, including the head of the secret police himself, were arrested, tortured, and forced to name accomplices. The conspiracy theory—a Soviet twist on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—merged with age-old blood-libel accusations, and rumors began circulating that Jewish doctors were not just murdering Soviet leaders but also killing babies in hospitals. Since a large proportion of Soviet doctors were Jews, people began fearing doctors in general. Just as the hysteria about ’the doctors’ plot’ was reaching its climax, Stalin had a stroke on March 1, 1953. He collapsed in his dacha, wet himself, and lay for hours in his soiled pajamas, unable to call for help. At around 10:30 p.m. a guard found the courage to enter the inner sanctum of world communism, where he discovered the leader on the floor. By 3:00 a.m. on March 2, Politburo members arrived at the dacha and debated what to do. For several hours more, nobody dared call a doctor. What if Stalin were to regain consciousness, and open his eyes only to see a doctor—a doctor!—hovering over his bed? He would surely think this was a plot to murder him and would have those responsible shot. Stalin’s personal physician wasn’t present, because he was at the time in a basement cell of the Lubyanka prison—undergoing torture for suggesting that Stalin needed more rest. By the time the Politburo members decided to bring in medical experts, the danger had passed. Stalin never woke up.