Humans and Networks

Before beards were cool.

Yuval Noah Harari theorizes why humans run the world

Yet how come humans alone of all the animals are capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers, be it in order to play, to trade or to slaughter? The answer is our imagination. We can cooperate with numerous strangers because we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of strangers to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.

This condition is clearly not sufficient to explain our dominance, but its necessity is an interesting thought. I am not fond of the terminology "stories", as telling someone else a "story" nearly always connotes deception. Although in some cases, perhaps that is the accurate description.

I read the narrative as being the following: humans create social abstractions to generalize clumsy physical or social practices, the abstractions evolve non-deterministically over time, driven by strong network and inter-generational effects, and are eventually (rightly or wrongly) elevated to the status of commandments from above. There shalt be currency. Thou shalt not cross borders without documents. Thou shalt get married. Ye shalt serve thy military.

P. S. Still working on my Old English.