In his book Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari claims that in the early 2010’s Facebook and YouTube created AI algorithms to suggest content to users. These algorithms were given the same goal – to maximise user engagement. That is, to maximise the time that people spent on YouTube and Facebook. The algorithms quickly learned that this is best done with sensationalised content. Mainstream media dropped in popularity on both platforms, to be replaced by fringe lunatics often pushing outright lies and misinformation.

They were warned about the negative consequences. Not beforehand, but as they were unfolding. Harari provided both internal and external documentation showing that they knew their algorithms were contributing to the Rohingya massacre for example. When they did finally speak publicly about this in the late 2010s, they issued a “sort of” apology where they denied actual responsibility for what happened. They did say they would make improvements, but it is unclear what actually changed and what the results are.

Harari also credits these social media AI driven algorithms with the rise of Jair Bolsanaro, a far right Brazilian politician. And several other problems.

Content creators soon learned that they could reach a far wider audience, and earn a large amount of money by sensationalising their content in various, including outright lies. So the algorithms changed the behaviour of the people making YouTube videos as well as the behaviour of people viewing them.

One thing I noticed about this is that the problem seems to be worse in places where people rely more heavily on mobile phones than computers for their news. While it does not make it impossible, mobile phone make it far less convenient to fact check what you are being told on Facebook and YouTube. For the same reason, I tend to ignore videos and memes that people post here as a substitute for their own words. On the most basic level, it means you cannot copy and paste the claim into google and see where it came from and who agrees or disagrees with it. I am pretty sure that people in western countries who get get most of their media on their mobile phone are, as a consequence, more susceptible to conspiracy theories and various bullshit artists. If you surveyed the people who took part in storming the US capital, I expect people who spend a lot of time on their phones, but not making phone calls, will be over-represented.

Harari does point out that this is not an entirely new problem, and as usual he provides a lot of enlightening historical examples. He sees shared stories as the defining characteristic of our species – what enabled us to function together in larger groups and thus outcompete and otherwise displace other hominid species (and in later times a lot of other species as well). Think the Aboriginal dreamtime as a social glue that allowed Aboriginal tribes to cooperate internally, as well as come together in large collectives.

The first forms of writing such as clay tablets enabled the first bureaucracies that enabled the first city states. They also concentrated power in the hands of the people who controlled the bureaucracy. The Christian and Jewish Bibles were codified into books at around the same time, several centuries after the time of Jesus. This went hand in hand with a concentration of power in the hands of the religious institutions. Fortunately they remained to a large extent separated from political institutions. Harari credits the inclusion of the first epistle of Timothy and the exclusion of the acts of Paul and Thecla as making Christianity a far more misogynistic religion than it otherwise might have been. A few centuries later and Islam destroyed the separation of church and state and turned rape and pillage into a nation-building enterprise with a divine imperative.

Next came the printing press. It is usually regarded as a boon for humanity. But it also enabled the witch hunts. It enabled fringe lunatics who were previously ignored to reach a wide audience and spread outlandish conspiracy theories about a global cabal of witches. It allowed those conspiracy theories to take on a life of their own, as more people got in on publishing them. Tens of thousands of people were tortured, burned at the stake or otherwise killed as a result. Harari credits the self-correcting mechanisms of scientific publications (that is, the institutions behind them) with the power of modern science to uncover truth, rather than the information technologies they employ.

Some direct quotes from the book:

Nexus, by Yuval Noah Harari.

https://www.hedweb.com/private/nexus.pdf

p xiv

Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. 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. Our problem, then, is a network problem.

Even more specifically, it is an information problem. Information is the glue that holds networks together. But for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens built and maintained large networks by inventing and spreading fictions, fantasies, and delusions...

p37

Contrary to the naive view, information isn’t the raw material of truth, and human information networks aren’t geared only to discover the truth. But contrary to the populist view, information isn’t just a weapon, either. Rather, to survive and flourish, every human information network needs to do two things simultaneously: discover truth and create order. Accordingly, as history unfolded, human information networks have been developing two distinct sets of skills. On the one hand, as the naive view expects, the networks have learned how to process information to gain a more accurate understanding of things like medicine, mammoths, and nuclear physics. At the same time, the networks have also learned how to use information to maintain stronger social order among larger populations, by using not just truthful accounts but also fictions, fantasies, propaganda, and—occasionally—downright lies.

p102

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. For truth to win, it is necessary to establish curation institutions that have the power to tilt the balance in favor of the facts. However, as the history of the Catholic Church indicates, such institutions might use their curation power to quash any criticism of themselves, labeling all alternative views erroneous and preventing the institution’s own errors from being exposed and corrected. Is it possible to establish better curation institutions that use their power to further the pursuit of truth rather than to accumulate more power for themselves?

Early modern Europe saw the foundation of exactly such curation institutions, and it was these institutions—rather than the printing press or specific books like On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres—that constituted the bedrock of the scientific revolution....

...When a paper was submitted to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the lead question the editors asked was not “How many people would pay to read this?” but “What proof is there that this is true?”

At first, these new institutions seemed as flimsy as cobwebs, lacking the power necessary to reshape human society. Unlike the witch-hunting experts, the editors of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society could not torture and execute anyone. And unlike the Catholic Church, the Académie des Sciences did not command huge territories and budgets. But scientific institutions did accrue influence thanks to a very original claim to trust. A church typically told people to trust it because it possessed the absolute truth, in the form of an infallible holy book. A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself. It was these selfcorrecting mechanisms, not the technology of printing, that were the engine of the scientific revolution.

In other words, the scientific revolution was launched by the discovery of ignorance.

p 136

To judge by the archaeological and anthropological evidence, democracy was the most typical political system among archaic hunter-gatherers. Stone Age bands obviously didn’t have formal institutions like elections, courts, and media outlets, but their information networks were usually distributed and gave ample opportunities for self-correction. In bands numbering just a few dozen people information could easily be shared among all group members, and when the band decided where to pitch camp, where to go hunting, or how to handle a conflict with another band, everyone could take part in the conversation and dispute one another.

Some of my other posts about Harari's previous books:

Sapiens

Homo Deus

the paradox of knowledge

three humanisms

From his book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century":

will AI take our jobs?

an outdated sense of justice

the discovery of ignorance

You mention media use as a political platform - here is my just now response to a question about the difference between the 1967 Refero and 'the voice':-

"Because it provided Equal Rights in many ways...... The Voice pursued special treatment and special privileges way over and above everyone else. It's that simple. We ARE already on the same playing field as regards 'Rights' - what is lacking is that 'rights' remain optional in the hands of 'authorities' who have yet to grow up out of the primitive neo-feudal convict colony ways - indeed, in recent years they have taken a serious set of steps and turns BACK into those ways - and that STILL includes the courts and to some extent police etc, not to mention politicians and their house carls who imagine themselves to be above the law and often above reason and decency and human consideration of others. They manage this by virtue of possessing something the people cannot - control over the vast resources of the State - and that permits any government body to impose on the people at whim - and we, the People are ONLY protected by their adherence - if it even exists - to a civilised set or code of standards. Surely by now this old world KNOWS the real dangers of any government being out of the control of its people. What actually terrifies me - leads me to feel a yawning hole of fear inside - is that OUR 'governments' view such governments as the Chinese one not with careful contempt and distance-keeping - but as absolute examples of what a government can do when it literally has control over every asset and aspect of its nation. We must always be on our guard, and we are desperately in need of Real Change here in Australia away from the disasters we have been forced to endure for forty years or more now."

Quote:


I think you misunderstood. By cooperate I did not (necessarily) mean live in peace. I meant bring down large prey. Fight off other groups of humans and non-humans. Conquer the world etc. It was not the difference between a noble and an ignoble savage. It was the difference between a family of Neanderthal vs a tribe of 200 Homo Sapiens all thinking the same thing.

Quote:


I don't think they are "trying". I suspect their behaviour merely reflects where they are getting their nonsense from - their facebook feed - a one-way regurgitation of whatever it takes to get them clicking furiously.

Quote:


I agree with you here. The best response might be no response. Though with some people even that doesn't stop them.

One thing I disagree with Harari on is his claim that democracy could work in ancient city states like Athens and Rome where voters were able to assemble and hear arguments, but not once they turned into empires, due to technical limitations such as the flow of information. Voters in the far flung regions of the empire were not capable of being aware of how the empire was run or the issues being discussed at the centre of power, and were not able to have conversations about issues with other people spread across the empire. For the most part they had no personal experience with a lot of the issues.

However, I think representative democracy could have solved a lot of these issues. They could have for example adopted a model were candidates could not hold a seat for two terms in a row, effectively forcing them to go back to their constituents for a full term.

Harari points out that prior to modern technology, even dictatorships were fairly decentralised, with a lot of decisions on local issues made locally, even on a somewhat democratic basis. Thus, Athens or Rome could have decided to deliberately export their political institutions to subject states, rather than keeping as much power as possible in Rome and Athens, and the world may have ended up a very different place today.

aquascoot wrote on Oct 8^th, 2025 at 1:02pm:


But they also exert far more control. In particular, stifling criticism of the CCP. The division and outrage you see in democracy is a fundamental self-correcting mechanism that helps our government avoid some of their colossal mistakes, such as starving 50 million people to death by trying to feed them all equally, or covering up the outbreak of covid-19, thus helping it spread unchecked in the critical early months of the pandemic. Over the last decade, the CCP has put the brakes on their transition to capitalism, and their economy has stalled as a result. Chinese citizens meanwhile are not allowed to have an open conversation about the merits of communism or capitalism, or the truth about what CCP policies even are. All they can do is swallow the line about "communism with Chinese characteristics". Social cohesion is not that different in practice from central control and micromanagement of people's lives. A heard of sheep is not going to give you the same dynamic that has driven western economies to where they are today.

CONTINUED....



RELIGION.......

Some small part, of the spirit of God,
resides inside everyone of us.

If we will acknowledge error within ourselves and in our motives,
if we are willing to repent [again, acknowledge error] and ask the angel of the spirit of God to save us,
He is able to guide us to a better place.
[....but, we ourselves, have to want to escape......the corruption,
that 'lives' in our flesh]



Psalms 14:1
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
2  The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men,
to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.
3  They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy:
there is none that doeth good, no, not one.


Jesus said.....

"I pray not for the world..."

John 17:5
And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
6  I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
7  Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
8  For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
9  I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
10  And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
11  And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.


.


James 4:8
Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.


Psalms 97:10
Ye that love the LORD, hate evil:
he preserveth the souls of his saints;
he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.


Psalms 27:8
When thou saidst, Seek ye my face;
my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.
9  Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger:
thou hast been my help;
leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.