#386 — Information & Social Order

Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book,
Nexus, and its application to current crises. They discuss
humanity’s capacity for self-destruction, democracy and
dictatorship as information networks, the “naive view of
information,” the advantages of fiction over truth, trust in
institutions, self-correction in a democracy, truth vs. power,
truth vs. order, the suicide of conservatism, fixing social
media, algorithms as editorial choices, efficiency vs.
inefficiency, threats to democracy, the authoritarian character
of Trump’s candidacy, the need for patriotism and nationalism,
Israeli politics, the peaceful transfer of power, Putin and the
war in Ukraine, the vulnerability of world order, the killing of
Hassan Nasrallah, antisemitism and anti-colonialism, religious
fanaticism among Israelis, the status of Arabs in Israeli
society, biblical and post-biblical Judaism, whether a wider war
in the Middle East is necessary, the danger of spirituality
without ethics, and other topics.


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