He's So Random

Imagine entrusting every one of your daily choices – from where to dine to what clothes to wear – to an algorithm that rolls a die. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Max Hawkins, a software engineer at Google, actually did it. And he didn't do it because he lacked ideas, but because his life had become so predictable that it seemed anything but free. Every day, the same coffee selected by Yelp, the same bike route calculated to the second, the same friends, the same places. One day, Max reads a study that tracks the movements of 100,000 people: human habits are surprisingly predictable, almost programmed. This worries him. If the choices we make are always the same, how free are we really? So Max begins to delegate decisions to a series of apps that he himself writes: an Uber takes him to a random spot in the city, another app selects restaurants, even tattoos. The result? He finds himself in places he would never have discovered – from a planetarium to a hidden brewery, from an unknown bowling alley to a neighborhood bar. In a short time, he turns randomness into a kind of shock therapy against routine: "By choosing randomly," he says, "I found freedom." But the question remains: is it true freedom, or just a new cage? Is surrendering choices to an algorithm really an act of courage or just a way to avoid the responsibility of making mistakes? Psychology professor Michel Dugas has studied precisely this: those who do not tolerate uncertainty behave in two ways: either they seek out all possible information or they make impulsive decisions. Choosing randomly, according to him, is not a sign of courage, but a way to escape the fear of making mistakes. But the central point comes with the so-called "prison of your preferences." The more you optimize your life for what you like, the more you risk missing out on the rest. An algorithm that only uses what you already know you love – like Spotify, which always plays the same song – stops surprising you, and you stop changing. But if you explore too much, you risk not building anything solid. Max takes this logic to the extreme: he leaves Google, writes an algorithm to decide where in the world to live each month, and visits fourteen events in a single day in Berlin – from courses for truck drivers to group saunas to photography sessions for newborns. He even ends up in a small town in North Carolina where he doesn't know anyone. And here comes the blow: living only blindly makes you see a thousand things, but it risks taking you nowhere. So, after years of algorithmic nomadism, Max returns to America and settles in Los Angeles, but he continues to leave some choices to chance: the restaurant where he eats, the clothes he wears, even the orders he places with the waiter. At dinner with the journalist, he lets the phone choose: curried chicken wings and vegetable soup, two dishes he would never have ordered. Yet, between bites, Max says: “I realized how much my identity was based on arbitrary circumstances. When you have a fixed plan, you risk being trapped in a prison of your own preferences.” True freedom, he says, is not knowing where you will go, but accepting that you will be fully present wherever you go. But there is one detail that Max's story does not address: randomness can work for those who already have privileges, time, and security. If you are in trouble, taking risks is not a game; it is a gamble with survival. Not everyone can afford to let chance decide. The phrase that remains with you: "The more you pursue the security of your habits, the more you risk ending up a prisoner of what you already know." If the idea that your identity is just an algorithm of arbitrary choices has struck a chord with you, you can indicate it on Lara Notes with I'm In: it's not a like, but a way of saying that this perspective is now yours too. And if in a few days you find yourself telling someone the story of Max or his "prison of preferences", you can come back here and tag whoever was with you with Shared Offline — on Lara Notes, it's the gesture that says that conversation really mattered. This journey between algorithms and freedom comes from The Atlantic and has saved you 6 minutes of your day.