Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari

 

• On a path to thousand dreams, we are looking for reality.

Prologue

• spell: sort
• to heed: écouter
• to summon: appeler
• hubris: démesure
• deluded: qui se fait des idées
• delusional: délirant
• to posit: avancer
• deceitful: déloyal
• to waft: flotter
• to pilfer: voler
• momentous: historique
• to spew: cracher
• peppered: poivré
• to conjure: faire apparaître
• clump: motte
• elusive: insaisissable
• ploy: stratagème
• staple: de base
• to plague: ronger
• a modicum: un minimum
• unfathomable: énigmatique

• Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.
• Power always stems from cooperation between large numbers of humans.
• Science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.

Part 1 Human Networks

Chapter 1 What Is Information?

• oblivious: inconscient
• mishap: incident
• falsehood: mensonge
• hallowed: sacré
• tellingly: efficacement
• to squirm: se tortiller
• awe: émerveillement
• stirring: émouvant
• overblown: exagéré
• quaint: au charme désuet
• nexus: connexion
• tattered: en lambeaux
• delusional: délirant
• to tilt: pencher
• Pro-British Jews living in Palestine set up a spy network code-named NILI to inform the British about Ottoman troop movements.
• This accurately pointed to a certain aspect of reality, but it neglected other aspects.
• Ultimately, each individual has a difference perspective of the world, shaped by the intersection of different personalities and life histories.
• We can expect the flow of information to expose the occasional lies and errors and to ultimately provide us with a more truthful understanding of the world. On this crucial point, this book strongly disagrees with the naive view.
• The Bible makes many serious errors in its description of both human affairs and natural processes.
• Information sometimes represents reality, and sometimes doesn't. But it always connects. This is its fundamental characteristic.
• "How well does it represent reality? Is it true or false?" then the more crucial questions are "How well does it connect people?" What new network does it create?"

Chapter 2 Stories: Unlimited Connections

• to concur: être d'accord
• berate: réprimander
• enmeshed: emmêlé
• recount: raconter
• winged: ailé
• saviour: saveur
• to mince: hacher
• kin: famille
• hurtling: avancer à toute allure
• ache: douleur
• oxymoron: exemple : silence assourdissant
• utterly: complètement 
• eel: anguille
• to enshrine: conserver précieusement
• mesmerizing: fascinnant
• avert: éviter
• foster: encourager
• spell: sort
• unblemished: sans tâches
• to covet: convoiter
• gambit: phrase d'ouverture
• What holds human networks together tends to be fictional stories, especially stories about intersubjective things like gods, money and nations.
• Fiction can be made as simple as we like, whereas the truth tends to be complicated, because the reality it is supposed to represent is complicated.
• The truth is often painful and disturbing.
• They just had to know the same story.
• The 8 billion members of the global trade network are connected by stories about currencies, corporations and brand.
• The social media accounts are usually run by a team of experts, and every image and word is professionally crafted and curated to manufacture what is nowadays called a brand.
• To brand a product means to tell a story about that product, which may have little to do with product's actual qualities but which consumers nevertheless learn to associate with the product.
• In 2020, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins.
• The financial value of bitcoin is an intersubjective reality that changed dramatically during the same period, depending on the stories people told and believed about bitcoin.
• Intersubjective things like laws, gods and currencies are extremely powerful within a particular information network and utterly meaningful outside it.
• The need to balance truth and order more urgent.