Why More Information is Bad for Us
Yuval Noah Harari's history of information shows how much more important the use of information is than producing more of it.
The information-rich world we live in seems new, and in many ways, it is. More information has never been more available to more people than it has in the Internet age.
However, more information hasn’t made us smarter. The abundance of information has made it easier for ideological groups to join insular tribes with their own facts.
Yuval Noah Harari’s book Nexus is a history of information networks in human societies. He launches out of the gate with criticism of the mass of information available to us, observing that it has been weaponized by political movements, most recently, populists. His comparison to Marxists may surprise some readers:
“Just as Marxism claimed that the media functions as a mouthpiece for the capitalist class, and that scientific institutions like universities spread disinformation in order to perpetuate capitalist control, populists accuse these same institutions of working ot advance the interests of the ‘corrupt elites’ at the expense of ‘the people.’”
Harari has good reason to pan political movements that rely on information warlords to corral supporters. He describes information as “something that creates new realities by connecting different points into a network.” Facts—or “facts”—about economic conditions or who’s pulling a society’s strings form the basis of many political movements.
But the content of those facts and the story they’re used to tell can lead to any conclusion. So, more information doesn’t lead to more informed societies. It must be filtered.
Information isn’t Truth
Information can include true facts, like the amount of economic growth a country has experienced or the number of people who voted in an election. But stories are information, too, as Harari laments:
“…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.”
If I hear a rumor that a giant peach has floated into New York, then I’m given information. But I don’t necessarily have a credible account of what happened in New York. The person sharing the rumor could have included pictures and reporting that proved the peach’s flight and very existence.
However, information about the giant peach could have also come from a raving man who imagined the whole thing and wanted someone to tell about it while he came out of his latest delusion. It’s an important lesson that Harari hopes to impart:
“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.”
Truth vs. Order
Harari identified a tension between information systems. Some are uniquely able to cancel errors to arrive at what is most likely true. Great news organizations do this when editors demand better sourcing or clearer connections between a story’s ideas. Other systems tell a story that brings order to a group, but order doesn’t make such a system a truth machine.
“We have now seen that information networks don’t maximize truth, but rather seek to find a balance between truth and order. Bureaucracy and mythology are both essential for maintaining order, and both are happy to sacrifice truth for the sake of order.”
Inspirational stories or founding myths can give meaning to information and organize people around a shared goal. However, these organizing stories may not only be false, but may even inspire large groups of people to harm others or stifle reasonable dissent.
The outcomes that systems produce need to matter more to us than the amount of information they make available. All the information in the world isn’t valuable if it is used to inflict new cruelties based on falsehoods.