CONCEPT
Intersubjective Reality
The order of existence comprising entities—money, nations, corporations, human rights—that exist because multiple minds collectively believe in them, maintained through ongoing participation.
Harari distinguishes three orders of reality: objective (gravity, neutrons), subjective (the taste of coffee, private pain), and intersubjective—things real because communities believe in them. Intersubjective realities have enormous practical power: a dollar buys a meal, a passport opens borders, a corporation signs contracts. Yet they vanish if belief collapses. Unlike objective reality (which persists regardless of belief) or subjective reality (which requires no community), the intersubjective exists only through active maintenance—argument, ritual, legislation, conversation. It is civilization's invisible architecture.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The intersubjective is not hallucination or illusion. It is a distinct ontological category with causal power rivaling physical reality. A general orders a division forward; soldiers obey because they share the fiction of military hierarchy. Remove the fiction—through mutiny, revolution, or the dissolution of state authority—and the general's words carry no more force than any stranger's. The physical arrangement of bodies is identical; the intersubjective arrangement has collapsed. Harari's paradigmatic example is money: intrinsically worthless paper or metal that commands genuine goods and services because millions