The Free and Willing Algorithm
Do or do not. You do not have a choice.
Being born in Puerto Rico during the late 70s meant that you were going to be a Christian. I was baptized as Catholic, a version of Christianity best known for fun things like the crusades. For reasons I never understood, the local church required my presence every Saturday morning. That’s when the catechism classes my aunt taught took place. The whole thing took about an hour and was mostly boring discussions about how much god loves us. My little boy mind didn’t quite grasp the concept of god’s love towards homo sapiens. It was confusing to understand given it was being taught in a place that displayed statues of god’s own son being nailed to a cross. It didn’t seem like a normal thing for a parent to have their own child murdered. It also made me worry a lot about making my father a little too mad.
During one of these wonderful Saturday mornings, my aunt explained that god made and gave us the choice to follow him or burn in hell. Much like the two party electoral system. The discussions surrounding the subject always circled the same circular logic. God made you because he loves you. He/She/It also gave you the choice to love it back. But if you do not, then you will be judged negatively. I remember going as far as asking when all of this began. My aunt said it began the day god made the world. It didn’t seem fair to be given such a lousy deal without being there to file a complaint. To which my aunt explained that I’ve always existed.
Me: OK, so I existed before being born?
Aunt: No, but your soul was.
Me: Hmm, OK. What is my soul? Am I my soul?
Aunt: No, your soul is your being. The thing that makes you alive.
Me: So, my heart?
Aunt: No, that’s what pumps blood throughout your body.
Me: Can I leave early?
Aunt: Why?
Me: I’m missing some glorious 80s cartoons about planes that turned into robots.
Aunt: No.
Me: I want to leave and burn in hell
Aunt: I will not allow it. Now sit down and be quiet.
There was never anything conclusive. No point made or anything learned. The only takeaway was much stronger eye muscles.
The idea of having the freedom to choose was interesting, but it lost some luster the moment I asked if animals also had free will. My aunt answered that yes, animals do in fact have free will. Free will was explained as having the right to exist because I existed. It’s like saying a tree has a right to be made out of wood.
I’ve always maintained that the rest of the animal kingdom got a much better deal than us. They don’t have to choose whether they believe or burn in hell. Films like “All Dogs Go to Heaven” confirm it. Animals are automatically enrolled into heaven in the same way we are enrolled into taxes. Unlike the animals, humans were given the “gift” of “intelligence”. It allows us to “choose” where we plan to spend eternity. It‘s also the “gift” that gave us the ability to create such wonderful things as casinos, cigarettes, timeshares, asbestos, and multi-level marketing schemes. Intelligence also got us social media and the maniacs that post using all caps. Sometimes I wish the internet had an off switch.
Intelligence and free will are obviously overrated. We’ve never been that smart nor did we ever have the freedom to choose. Everything we do has historically been limited to a handful of choices by different parties. If it wasn’t the church, it was the government, your friends peer pressuring you to do drugs, or your wife forcing you to buy that overpriced patio furniture. Computers, and by extension phones, have allowed this to worsen. Our lives are now under the influence of invisible instructions called algorithms created by huge evil nerds. These socially inept humans spend all of their lives engineering ways to give us the illusion of options by limiting our choices. Everything we do these days and everything that happens to us is predetermined by an algorithm. Everything including that shirt my wife hates when I wear it but which she also bought for me.
Let’s say you want to watch a movie. Opening the app on the phone forces you to pick a “user”. Since you do not pay for the service, you choose your mother-in-law’s “profile”. The algorithm goes to work and loads all the movies it thinks your mother-in-law will watch. Not all the movies available to watch. No, that would be too nice. Next you find yourself endlessly scrolling through a sea of movie poster thumbnails. Each one repeating every so often under different categories. Oh, and the categories! Can anyone tell me what kind of category is “Movies to watch while your girlfriend is in labor”? No offense to those who do. You are free to choose and all. Just give it a nicer name.
As you continue scrolling through the apparently endless amount of movies you don’t want to watch, your hope of watching anything evaporates. This does not mean you are gonna stop scrolling. No sir. You are now scrolling without a purpose. Without hope of finding anything worthwhile. Trying to find something to settle with. Like the over 50 category in dating apps. They should formulate and bottle that feeling into a perfume called “Resignation”.
The movie didn’t work out and you decide to go for a drive. Little did you know that there’s a little antenna in your car sending all of the driving data to a multitude of digital peeping toms. As you make your way to the supermarket parking lot, the car is transmitting how many times you’ve almost hit the lady who enjoys walking through the middle of the parking lot with a cart full of groceries. The algorithm is taking notes to see if you are a bad driver. It will decide on its own and then send you a bill.
The insurance also influences which car you can buy because they do not want you driving that seven hundred horsepower suicide booth on wheels. It’s too risky. They don’t want to pay for your inevitable demise even if there won’t be a need for a casket. The algorithm does not want you to buy god’s chariot and prices the insurance accordingly. Giving you what people in the trades call a “stupidly high estimate”. They are counting on you being stupid enough to pay that much. Basically the whole premise of diamonds.
This is starting to sound a lot like my early experience with religious indoctrination. There’s an invisible thing controlling what I can and cannot do. Providing me with some really awful options. Either take it or regret it. No middle ground. How does it work? No one knows. What happens if you choose wrong? You will find out soon enough. Do not believe anyone who says they know how religion or algorithms work. They are lying. Either way, they do not have a choice and neither do you.