Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari

There’s a section early in Nexus where Harari points out that the Bible is not the most accurate account of ancient Jewish history. He argues that it is, however, the most successful information network in that history because it coordinated the beliefs, behaviours, and identities of millions of people across centuries, not because it was true but because it was shared. The distinction is the whole book in a nutshell and what makes it quite fascinating.

We’ve always built civilisations on information networks, not truth. This central idea is true and one that philosophers have circles around for centuries. Money isn’t valuable because of anything intrinsic to it, rather it’s valuable because enough people agree it is, and the agreement is self-reinforcing. Bureaucracy isn’t efficient because it maps accurately onto reality. It’s powerful because it creates a shared language between strangers who would otherwise have no basis for cooperation. The institutions we trust most are coordination mechanisms, not truth-delivery systems.

This is a genuinely unsettling observation and Harari does this with a lens for the present moment and for what’s to come.