An entire chapter of the Hammer is dedicated to the ability of witches to steal men’s penises. Kramer discusses at length whether the witches are really able to take away the male member from its owner, or whether they are only able to create an illusion of castration in men’s minds. Kramer asks, “What is to be thought of those witches who in this

A story can thereby serve like a central connector, with an unlimited number of outlets into which an unlimited number of people can plug. For example, the 1.4 billion members of the Catholic Church are connected by the Bible and other key Christian stories; the 1.4 billion citizens of China are connected by the stories of communist ideology and Ch

Merely increasing the quantity of information in a network doesn’t guarantee its benevolence, or make it any easier to find the right balance between truth and order. That is a key historical lesson for the designers and users of the new information networks of the twenty-first century.

What the example of astrology illustrates is that errors, lies, fantasies, and fictions are information, too. Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a preexisting reality. Rather, what information does is to create new realities by tying together di

Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a preexisting reality.

At the heart of every religion lies the fantasy of connecting to a superhuman and infallible intelligence.

can just as easily lead to the spread of lies and fantasies and to the creation of toxic information spheres. More specifically, a completely free market of ideas may incentivize the dissemination of outrage and sensationalism at the expense of truth.

Elon Musk announced, “I’m going to start something, which I call TruthGPT or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”[2] We will see in later chapters why this is a dangerous fantasy. In previous eras, such fantasies took a different form—religion.

the past, organizations like newspapers, radio stations, and established political parties acted as gatekeepers, deciding who was heard in the public sphere. Social media undermined the power of these gatekeepers, leading to a more open but also more anarchical public conversation.