What Algorithms Reveal

The Algorithm has become like The Matrix, including all-there-is, hasn't it? 

I have bad news and good news. The algorithms steer you, but they also reveal you. You are clicking because it figured out what lures you will take. Flash of red! Nibble. Caught. It doesn't lie. You're busted, and it is likely worth some reflection what you keep clicking and then thinking "Well that was a waste of time."

Here's the good news. That's not the real you they are catching, just your automatic responses. It is largely emotion-driven. You've been hacked. It doesn't care whether you are a better person underneath.  You probably aren't. You certainly aren't any worse. 

I get irritated that people don't get that these are fictional characters in those videos and treat them as real.  Long before social media I had complained that people treated book characters and movie characters as real and their situations as real. Philip Yancy not only took Jean Valjean as an example, but proof that a certain approach would work in interacting with others. A couple started bringing a handgun when backpacking after seeing Deliverance. It's not that those readings of reality aren't true, but that they are only true by accident of the author getting it right. If the author decides to sell you an untrue reality and you fall for it, it feels exactly the same. See also news. 

Keyword: Fiction. Or more generally, Art. Do you know what it's called when an artist gets you to care about something? Empathy. Even if it's false and propaganda, it's still your empathy being targeted. The algorithms have found ways to hack into your empathy. Which makes two levels of worry, because empathy is itself a hack, a shortcut to deciding who and what to care about. It is likely an evolutionarily useful shortcut. But you've been hacked.  Someone has discovered your passwords.