Fans of dystopian fiction hold up George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” as two classics of the genre. Both show potential futures where humanity has largely lost their freedom. But it’s interesting to note that each shows a very different way in which mankind can lose their freedom.

In “1984,” a dictatorial government brainwashes and threatens the populace into submission and loyalty to “Big Brother.” In “Brave New World,” freedom has been, ironically, handed away freely in exchange for pleasure and comfort. More people are likely attuned to the first threat, but the second threat, in our modern context, sometimes seems more likely.

Last June, I took note when Elon Musk shared comments by Jack Dorsey, who ran Twitter/X before Musk, discussing how free will, rather than freedom of speech, is most in danger, saying, “Jack is right.”

Dorsey said “we are being programmed” by the online algorithms, which are a mysterious “black box” even to people like Musk and Dorsey. And the only way to maintain people’s freedom, he says, is to “give people choice” on which algorithm is programming them, to choose our master.

Then again, this month, Musk shared Dorsey speaking about the topic on another occasion, with Musk adding, “Will we actually choose the algorithm?” Both men, who know the inside secrets of tech and social media far beyond the average person, continue to be troubled about this topic.

Dorsey again said, “It’s less about free speech and more about do we get to choose how the algorithms are programming us. Because the algorithms are definitively programming us.”

His goal, as he states it, is to maintain human agency by giving us freedom to choose how our brain gets wired. It seems, as we’re seeking novelty and entertainment, many of us are being slowly manipulated into new ways of thinking and acting that we wouldn’t likely have agreed to at the outset.

For a couple quick examples, do we think if we sat the young rapper Kanye West down that he would have agreed to be slowly programmed into believing all kinds of conspiracy theories favoring Nazis over Jews? West was one of many who got sucked down the algorithm wormhole in recent years and suddenly began sharing dubious conspiracy theories about Jews. Thankfully, actor Adam Sandler was able to give him a friendly call and convince him that Hitler was actually a bad guy.

What Dorsey is saying is that the question about whether these people have a right to speak is important, and I believe they should have that right, but a more interesting question is: Are many people being slowly turned into puppets for beliefs they would have thought despicable before the process began?

If somebody wants to throw their mind into the chaos of the algorithm and hope for the best, maybe that’s a decision they should be able to make. But they likely should at least be aware they’re making a choice to slowly be programmed into somebody else, and, according to Dorsey, given the option of choosing not to be.

Of course governments don’t only control with force and have also controlled human behavior with entertainment and comforts. The Roman Republic’s attempt to do so is where we get the term “bread and circuses.” But those who advocate for more freedom in people’s lives should recognize that governments aren’t the only ones who can subtly manipulate this way.

When researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research asked 1,000 college students how much money they’d need to be paid to quit apps like Instagram and TikTok, the average answer was $50. But when the question was about nobody in the whole school being allowed to use these apps, students actually said they would PAY an average of $30.

They don’t actually want to be spending so much time on there, but it’s a social expectation and an addiction.

For a non-tech example, after Oregon legalized drug possession in 2020, the state saw a massive spike in opioid overdose deaths, the opposite of what they’d expected to see. After a few years of greater and greater chaos and death in places like Portland, they voted last year to recriminalize drugs. Some libertarian friends may disagree with me here, but the “freedom” to do highly addictive deadly drugs is a contradiction in terms. By definition, an addicted person is not making a free decision.

Because I’m also wary of government impingments on freedom, I don’t think the answer is to just ban everything that can conquer the will. (Exceptions should obviously be made for products that kills most of their users, like fentanyl; or when one private entity physically imposes its will on another, like slavery.) But at the very least, government should empower people’s agency and not contribute to whittling it away.

The bill banning cell phones and other digital devices during classtime in North Carolina public schools, which just passed a key committee, is a good example of this. We can’t micromanage how parents monitor their child’s screen use at home, but we should prevent these addicting and distracting devices from getting in the way of their education.

The same goes for food assistance. US Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a bill this month to prevent SNAP food assistance being used on junk food. If people want to use their own money to buy unhealthy food for their families, that’s their own (bad) decision. But using taxpayer money to buy food that leads to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in lower-income people is a double hit, since taxpayer money is then spent to treat these conditions, which are among the largest costs and the largest causes of preventable death every year.

Like fentanyl or social media, to obviously different degrees, junk food is addictive and can trap one in an unhealthy loop of doing something one knows is wrong and wants to change, but can’t.

As we enter a world with more and more comforts and pleasures never seen before, our agency will have to deal with more and more challenges and subtle manipulation. It’s not clear to me that the human will is strong enough in the average person to maintain control of their decisions. So, as individuals and a wider society, we should all be vigilant against attacks on our freedom and agency.