Algorithmic Law of Attraction

A brief detour in the exploration of New Agey influences on technology

“The mother of all white vans is parked behind our house,” I say. Since I’d begun my turbulent “awakening” there had been one white commercial looking van after another parked back there. Today’s contender looked like a camper or something. Clean, white paint, uninterrupted by any windows; maybe space for storage or a mattress or something above the drivers’ cabin. 

As I let the curtain fall and turn away from our apartment’s rear window, I force a laugh, trying to avoid seeming too serious and distressing.

Not that my then-girlfriend would have necessarily been perturbed by the presence of the van itself; the actual problem would have been my paranoid fixation on it.

Over ten years later, I’m talking to Noah Lampert about depression, paranoia and the dark side of synchronicity on my podcast, Nodes in the Net. He says something along the lines of, “if you start to take this stuff too seriously, you’re gonna find yourself thinking, ‘man that white van has been parked out there a really long time.’”

So my experience was apparently not unique. Or Noah is enough of a psychic wizard to have been able to pick up the reverberations from that challenging episode of my history.

Either way, the Law of Attraction seems to operate to produce more and more white vans, whether they’re literal vehicles or just topics of conversation, when you are paying them tribute with your attention.

See, at the time I was obsessed with the white vans, it wasn’t so much because I thought they were full of Feds recording my calls and taking notes on my movements. I was obsessed with them because I was obsessed with them.

I believed that I was being persecuted, sure. But one of my persistent narratives was that the people persecuting me had poisoned my Mental Appendage—the thing that “holds” objectives in mind and thereby manifests them in the real world.

This is kind of complicated, but I thought that because I had been infected with paranoia, I was going to manifest Hollywood-style black bagging, torture and assassination.

Like how Bob Dylan said people were climbing on his house, or John Lennon said men in suits were grimly following him around. I believed that if I continued on my current path, I’d manifest a conspiracy that would lead to my own obliteration: I thought I might get in a motorcycle accident or simply be shot.

It’s kind of the way the Law of Attraction works. Whatever you give the most mental energy and attention to, including (I believed) persecution, the universe brings to you. 

The amorphous, malicious “They” were doing little things to freak me out: super gluing my front door lock shut, breaking the handle off my manual garage door, busting into the car I parked on the street and leaving an empty lighter in the center compartment in exchange for the three mostly-full ones I chain-smoked with while delivering pizza. 

I believed these “attacks” were like a firm grip on my mental pressure points, infecting me with obsessive fear that would cause me to manifest disaster. 

So as I noticed more and more white vans everywhere, I became more and more scared of white vans. It was like, “If I can’t stop thinking about being watched, I’m going to Attract actually being watched!”

This is a complicated way to be introduced to the Law of Attraction. Let me back up and offer something more beginner friendly.

The Mental Appendage does seem to help manifest what it holds in mind. Explanations abound.

I’m going to interrupt my series on the technological commodification of Jung’s ideology to discuss this because I’m thrilled to say we are having renowned historian of the occult, Mitch Horrowitz, on Nodes in the Net this week. New Thought is one of his specialties.

This essay will still follow the theme of technology mimicking New Age ideas, though: recommendation algorithms operate via the Law of Attraction.

What is the mechanism? It could work through Confirmation Bias.

You see what you look for. The more you see the same things, the more you look for them, and the more you see even more of them. This sounds trivial but can actually radically affect your experience.

Paul Selig provides a metaphor: three different people at a restaurant might have totally different experiences, even sitting at the same table, just because they have different biases. 

One is biased to notice the screaming baby and irritably focuses on nothing but that. 

One is biased to notice the adorable couple clearly on their first date and has nostalgic appreciation of their fluttery fresh love.

The last is me, attempting intermittent fasting, and starving enough to develop a bias toward nothing but the food itself. I focus on that and feel delightfully sated.

Each of us will have a completely different meal. You could say that we manifested those differences through our predispositions. 

The person upset about the crying baby might “manifest” crying babies everywhere because she focuses on nothing else. Her universe might be full of crying babies that no one else is paying attention to.

Know someone who does that?

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Or the LoA could operate by driving subconscious instinct

When you have a belief about the world you are more likely to take actions that cause that belief to materialize.

We could talk about the way that the phenomenon of “the yips” shows up for athletes who start to “get in their own head” and perform poorly because they expect poor performance of themselves. Or we could talk about the way that basketball players are taught to visualize their free-throws swishing; the way their muscles—virtually entirely subconsciously controlled—bring about the imagined outcome.

I’m not really a sports guy, though. Instead, let’s talk about my interactions with strangers.

I consider myself a pretty unlikable guy. For whatever reason, people seem to be repulsed by me. I have never felt like I belong or fit in. I’ve just always felt apart from others.

So when I’m at the dog park and someone follows their dog to mine and prods me for casual conversation, my belief that I will be rejected manifests as me desperately trying to impress. I end up making jokes that are inappropriate for the depth of the acquaintance. To be clear, nothing blue or taboo, just a general hyperlexic wordiness and almost cloying attempt to be friendly and clever. 

People don’t get it. I’m left alone. 

I manifest my loneliness by believing it’s inevitable.

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How else might prophecies be so damn self-fulfilling? Maybe it’s vibration…

“Thoughts are things.” Manifestation. New Thought. Positive Mental Attitude. Mind Causality. 

These are all phrases that soon-to-be minted Node, Mitch Horrowitz, has used to describe the efficacy of holding a goal in mind and receptively allowing the universe to attract it to you.

Many of these terms are associated with the concept of vibration. 

To understand this theory, I feel the best way to begin is by understanding the concept of metaphysical idealism.

This is a model of the universe that posits that consciousness is the fundamental field through which reality is projected. Without consciousness, metaphysical idealism’s proponents argue, we could have no matter. 

Though it’s worthwhile to be skeptical of anyone who suggests they understand quantum physics, Eben Alexander makes a plausible case for this hypothesis in his book, Living in a Mindful Universe. Exploring the implications of the double slit experiment, in which the presence and attention of a conscious observer causes a photon to behave like a particle instead of a wave, Alexander concludes that without conscious observers, there could be no particles, no matter, no physical reality at all.

So, the theory goes, consciousness is the fundamental pervasive bedrock of the Universe. Through the waves of this field of consciousness, matter materializes.

Our attention and intention create waves in the underlying field of consciousness pervading existence. Those waves vibrate at a certain frequency. The object of our attention vibrates at the same frequency. 

The resonant vibrations of desire and outcome attract the outcome, causing it to manifest.

I promised I’d relate this to my other three essays on Jungian influence on technology. Well here’s the kicker: recommendation algorithms are the perfect metaphor for The Law of Attraction.

Regardless of which explanation of the LoA you ascribe to—from materialist to psychological to metaphysical—the technological simulacrum of the process represented by recommendation algorithms can be a useful way to conceptualize—and harness—the power of manifestation.

This idea belongs to Jessa Reed of Awakening OD. She frequently employs colorful contemporary metaphors to describe our relationship with reality. Her brilliant, delightfully myth-oriented mind creates connections between this soul school we’re stuck in and video games, restaurants, and TikTok style algorithms. 

The universe, she says, will only give you what you focus on.

If a video critical of Trump’s mugshot triggers you to have some kind of intense emotional reaction and you aren’t paying attention to your instinctual behavior, you might watch it more than once, spending more eyeball time on the image or video. You might go into the comments to read how the community is reacting to it. If you feel vindicated by the outrage the content conveys, maybe you hit the Like button. Maybe you share it. Maybe you even go into the user’s page and browse their other posts.

Apps like TikTok reward all this attention the same way the Universe does, if you buy into the theory of the Law of Attraction. They give you more of what you are apparently focused on.

If you’re not careful, mindful, hygienic, in a way, with your media consumption, your feed quickly becomes a triggering doomscape full of nothing but disgust, anxiety, rage and screaming. 

If that is what you focus on, that is what you manifest.

So here’s the question!

Did the designers of recommendation algorithms consciously mimic this fundamental law of the universe? Did they manifest the reality of Attracation via their subconscious understanding of it? 

Or is it just a coincidence that whatever you focus on begins to show up more and more, whether you’re online or off.