What was I working on before I encountered the reflections of
Yuval Noah Harari in “Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI”?
- What is truth?
- Why do we argue about it?
- Why is it so difficult for human collectives to arrive at a single truth?
For several years, I was alone in my reflections, until the day I read “Nexus.” Thanks to Professor Yuval Noah Harari, I found—unexpectedly—two different answers to the questions that had been troubling me.
● The first answer concerned truth and its determinants. My observations found confirmation in the Professor’s understanding of information.
This does not mean that I consulted my definition of Broad Synthetic Truth with the author of “Nexus.” Only the publication of this page is an attempt to establish contact with the Professor.
● The second answer explained the reasons for our human quarrels over so-called truth and the role of truth in the mechanism of collective cooperation. People assign many meanings to the concept of truth. It turned out that neither quarrels nor cooperation have much to do with truth understood in a scientific sense. My hypothesis—that the cause of our antagonisms was solely the problem that some of us fail to perceive truth—was disproved.
Of course, we all know that it is our worldviews that divide us, but this general statement explains very little. Only while reading “Nexus” did I begin to understand the mechanism by which a person’s worldview is formed. I think that our worldviews are the result of many intersubjective realities in which our minds are immersed.
Differences of opinion in the way we perceive issues important to all of us may, of course, result from ignorance, but above all they stem from a lack of demand for knowledge. We usually seek support for our views and worldviews in various intersubjective realities in which science is no longer needed.
I am not sure whether my idea of an ACTIVE INTEGRATED INFORMATION STRUCTURE can change this.
I hope that even if my technology does not work for all people, it will work for a significant part of society.
There is a chance that our information network will then begin once again to process truth efficiently and smoothly create a new—better—order, and that public discourse will regain its meaning.