But what would be malfunctioning for a machine is, for us, the very definition of thriving. This is what we relinquish when we turn over the constitution of our tastes, interests, and opinions to dumb algorithms. Even at our laziest and most passive, we know they are dumb – when for example they put Coldplay in the queue with Jimi Hendrix because both are “rock” – just as we know something is off when a bot begins expressing its political opinions. And we make ourselves dumb, and betray our real nature, which is rooted in our free subjectivity, when we entertain the idea that algorithms are not just external crutches, but reflections of our true selves.