Why the Social Media algorithms are not the most important algorithms in your life

Why the social media algorithms are not the most important algorithm running in your life.

Hi, and welcome to Philosopher Insights. My name is Herb Lamba. Today I wanted to share an insight inspired by 'Homo Deus' by Yuval Noah Harari. He's talking about why algorithms are the number one skill we need to learn in the 21st century. What he's not talking about is what most people are focused on today. They're focused on how to boost the social media algorithms because they figured out if you spend some time liking other people's posts, whether you really liked them or not, you'll get more people seeing your posts and you'll get more, likes, more comments.

Some people are completely addicted to this behavior. It's an addiction. Facebook created a great tool - all the social media platforms to get us addicted. We're trying to feed that algorithm, boost that algorithm to hopefully get more results. All we're really doing is we're feeding our Ego.

Let's talk about a far more important algorithm.

Now, let's look at the algorithms that really matter. Let's forget about the social media algorithm and try to apply this concept to our lives, bettering our lives and improving our daily activity. What's an algorithm? An algorithm is nothing more than an if-then statement. How many, if-then statements are running throughout your day? How many of those are affecting you positively and how many are suboptimally affecting your day?

Just think about these if-then statements. Let me just give you a few examples. If the alarm clock goes off at five o'clock in the morning, then I wake up. Suboptimal is - if the alarm clock goes off at five in the morning, I hit the snooze button 10 times. Most people are hitting the snooze button, unfortunately, and that's not the optimal way to get your day started on the right track.

If I committed to exercising at six-thirty in the morning, then at six-thirty, I put on my shoes and I start to exercise. That's not optimized in most people's lives. They're not aware of these algorithms that are running. If I go to the bathroom, then I wash my hands. Those are algorithms. A lot of them are running on autopilot.

Detect them, list them and figure out which ones are actually helping you. When I use social media, I know that if I support other people's posts, it's going to help my posts. That's helping the algorithm. How can you do that in your own life? How can you take a look at the algorithms running in your own life and say, I could optimize that one. I could change that one. I could improve that one. This is a very simple concept, but it's very powerful. If you want to establish habits, if you want to have a better day, a more productive day, you need to understand the algorithms that are running in your life.

You've been listening to Philosopher Insights. My name's Herb Lamba.

Talk to you soon. Have a great day. Take care.