Evil Has an Algorithm

Your Greatest Defense Against the Evils of the World Can Be Your Own Mind

" People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies. "

Tweet this

How confident can any of us feel that we are seeing the real truth that can help us not only define evil but fight against it? Every social media scroll you indulge in is designed to show nothing but your own desires, creating a distorted view of “truth” through the eyes of a machine. Evil, as it turns out, has an algorithm, and it extends from the screen and so often leads to falsified truths in our hearts.

It Is Up to You to Avoid Becoming Evil

In the following book excerpt, I explore the concept of evil as an algorithm—an uncaring machine that shows us only what it believes we want to see and, all too often, what we ourselves educate the algorithm to show us. 

Excerpt From the Eyes

The algorithms have figured us out. They can measure what I really want to see in my scrolling feed from that millionth of a second difference between that unholy desire and a picture of my neighbor’s landscape. And it feeds me more of what I desire but don’t want, though it knows I’m fighting it off by swiping it away. 

Evil has an algo as well. And it’s not confined to any screen or even eyes.

Desires enter through our eyes to reach our heart.

It’s said the only resource man has is time; time is more valuable than money or power. But the interesting thing about humans is that we can only invest our time well if we give attention to one thing at a time. And therein lies a significant weakness. 

Each moment can only hold one attention. 

Each moment will get all of me or none of me. My family as well. 

In other words, I reasoned, the moments I spend are directionally proportional in quality to that which I pay attention. 

Epictetus, that Greek Stoic, said it well.

" You become what you give your attention to…If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will. "

Tweet this

So not only do my eyes guard my heart and prevent temptations and ill desires, but that on which my eyes focus, or give attention, changes me. That could be scary or good.

And because I only have one attention, it doesn’t transform me fractionally, but wholly. Therein lies the urgency.

Devoting much time to my digital devices, I become a dystopian dopamine addict. I lose sleep because blue light triggers neurotransmitters (like dopamine), which then causes my internal circadian rhythm to nearly cease because it is not producing enough melatonin. I became addicted to dopamine and insomnia. 

Then, if I cannot sleep without my device within reach or look at my phone while at those sacred family dinners (I’m not an emergency room doctor on call) I am most certainly an addict of this sort. I know this because I will attack back when a loved one comments about my phone use. I will claim a selfish motive on their part for my selfish unjust attacking of their care. 

I am now willing to sacrifice love for a dopamine hit.

I will destroy those I love most when my attention is misguided. The greater and longer my attention is off-target, the deeper my depraved desires plunge. Those desires are rooted in depraved goodness. 

Yes, I used the word “destroy” purposely. Since I only have one attention to give I delete everything else out of my awareness necessarily. 

The good element gives me the excuse to do what I desire. The bad element gives me the gnostic authority I alone know best and am unique in my understanding of justice. In other words, the symmetry of pornography makes a man consider himself an upstanding admirer of beauty to cloak his low debasement. Goods are always the excuses for evil. In fact, you can never have any evil with a bit of the good. 

Evil is always cloaked by good because evil must always be deceptive. That is its nature.

" In the end, I will defend the bad at the expense of what I purport to love the most. "

Tweet this

Three Takeaways

First Takeaway – Don’t Let Another Choose Your Thoughts

Epictetus understood the dangers of algorithmic evil long before the term even existed in the way we know it today. He cautions us to not simply believe what others show us via a screen or through their own stories. Submitting solely to an algorithm of somebody else’s design means allowing another to choose your thoughts, meaning that “other” can lead you in any direction they see fit.

Second Takeaway – You Only Have One Attention

It is not possible to divide your attention between multiple things, as much as some may try to claim otherwise under the guise of multitasking. This is as true of what you see and absorb as it is of any physical task. You have only one attention to give, so allowing that attention to focus on what somebody else wishes you to see – with no conscious thought given over to questioning what the algorithm delivers – is a danger you must avoid.

Third Takeaway – Beware the Dopamine Hit

While evil as an algorithm exists in almost all aspects of life, it is most present via our screens but is also in our politics, pulpits, and pricing. Our social media feeds deliver what the pieces of code created by heartless and sightless ethics rats at the techopolies choose to deliver – a recipe for falling away from the path of truth. Beware the dopamine hit these algorithms provide. The thrill that comes with the affirmation of entrenched beliefs and only seeing that which you already think to be true – regardless of actual fact – can only lead you closer to evil.

This has to do with the books you read, the preachers you prefer, and the ways you shop.

Evil is always cloaked by good because evil must always be deceptive. Technology has been set aside as the good accelerator and future-builder of our society for the past fifty years.

The dopamine dystopia is alive and well until you actively choose to unplug.

Aim your attention higher.