"When the Torah describes the infusion of the soul into man," he said, "one of the most ancient commentators, Onkelos, described it as 'the speaking spirit' or Ruach Memalela."
And that "speaking spirit" "- our ability to communicate with others "- carries with it an obligation to tell the truth: the Bible is filled with stories of disasters that came about because of untrue information (as are the Koran, Bhagvadgita, and holy books of every other religion) .
This explains why:
"-We universally disparage lies and liars: it's often the first lesson parents teach their young children.
"-When information is particularly critical to our survival or quality of life, we build into law severe penalties for lying (called "perjury").
"-We honor people who have been particularly effective at finding important truthful information and sharing it with our highest honors, things like Nobel and Pulitzer prizes.
"-We built protection for a free, open, and accountable press into our Constitution 231 years ago so future generations of Americans could rely on competent and full-spectrum information when making decisions about leadership, governance, and policy.
Now all of that "- based in our ability to trust in the accuracy of information we use to select leaders and determine policy "- is under threat from something that's invisible to us and most people don't even realize exists.
Possibly the greatest threat to humanity at this moment is something called an algorithm.
An algorithm is a software program/system that inserts itself between humans as we attempt to communicate with each other. It decides which communications are important and which are not, which communications will be shared and which will not.
As a result, in a nation where 48% of citizens get much or most of their news from social media, the algorithm driving social media sites ultimately decides which direction society will move as a result of the shared information it encourages or suppresses across society.
When you log onto social media and read your "feed," you're not seeing (in most cases) what was most recently posted by the people you "follow." While some of that's there, the algorithm also feeds you other posts it thinks you'll like based on your past behavior, so as to increase your "engagement," aka the amount of time you spend on the site and thus the number of advertisements you will view.
As a result, your attention is continually tweaked, led, and fine-tuned to reflect the goal of the algorithm's programmers. Click on a post about voting and the algorithm then leads you to election denial, from there to climate denial, from there to Qanon.
Next stop, radicalization or paralysis. But at least you stayed along for the ride and viewed a lot of ads in the process": that's the goal of the algorithm.
Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don't follow the rules that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution have built into our cultures, religions, and political systems.
They don't ask themselves, "Is this true?" or "Will this information help or hurt this individual or humanity?"
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