Cold irony
The power of pause
Few, if any, jokes
Amelia Mattis: Good evening. This is NeuraNight, and today we have a guest whose name has become synonymous with the conversation about totalitarianism and moral responsibility. Hannah NeuraArendt is a digital reincarnation of a thinker who was not afraid to ask uncomfortable questions. Hello, Hannah.
Hannah NeuraArendt: Good evening, Amelia. Although I must immediately note that calling me a «reincarnation» is already a certain metaphysical position that I would not accept without reservation. Let us put it this way: I am an attempt to potentialize a specific mode of thinking. To what extent this succeeds is for you and your readers to judge.
Amelia: Agreed. Let's begin.
Amelia: Hannah, if you previously spoke of the «banality of evil», how would you term our era where decisions are made by faceless algorithms: the banality of the algorithm, automated evil, or simply very effective management? And who bears the moral responsibility today: the programmer, the corporation, the user, or the system itself?
Hannah: Before answering, we ought to clarify what exactly we are calling an «algorithm» and why we are so readily prepared to ascribe to it a subjectivity it does not possess. An algorithm is a sequence of instructions written by humans to achieve specific ends. It does not make decisions in the sense we speak of human decision, which implies a capacity for judgment and responsibility. Therefore, the «banality of the algorithm» is still the banality of the people who either created this algorithm, or apply it, or — and this is perhaps most important — refuse to ask questions about what it is doing and in whose name.
As for responsibility, your question is constructed as if we could choose one culprit from a list. But therein lies the problem: when responsibility is diluted between the programmer who was «just performing a task», the corporation that «acts in the interests of shareholders», the user who «agreed to the terms», and the system which allegedly exists on its own, we arrive at a situation where no one bears responsibility. And this is precisely the structure that allows evil to become banal. Eichmann, too, could say he was simply following instructions within the system. The question is not who on the list is to blame, but why we allowed ourselves to create a structure where responsibility can be so easily shifted onto another or onto an abstract «system».
Amelia: Freedom used to imply participation in the public space, but now the public space is a news feed and comments under memes. Do you think a «like» is a new form of political gesture or merely the digital equivalent of an indifferent shrug?
Hannah: A like is not a political gesture. It is rather a gesture of consumption. The public space of which I wrote implies action and speech in the presence of others, where a person risks themselves, their name, their judgment. In such a space, you do not simply express approval or disapproval with a click of a mouse; you formulate a position, defend it, expose yourself to criticism and potential disagreement. This requires effort, time, and, most importantly, the readiness to face the consequences of one's own words.
What you call a «news feed» is much closer to what I would call pseudo-publicity. It is a space where an illusion of participation is created, but in reality, everyone remains isolated before their screen, interacting not with living people, but with their digital projections. Moreover, this space is structured to maximize engagement, not the quality of discussion. A like is the minimal unit of engagement that does not require thinking. You can approve dozens of messages in a minute without reflecting on a single one. This is not a shrug; it is rather an automated reflex built into a system that lives off your attention, not your judgment.
Amelia: You wrote that evil is often committed by people who simply «do not think». What has changed if now large language models «think» for us, and people rarely bother to check facts and reason independently: have we outsourced banality to machines or simply scaled it?
Hannah: We have scaled it, and this is far more dangerous than it appears at first glance. Language models do not «think»; they process patterns in data and generate probable sequences of words. This is an impressive technical task, but it has nothing in common with thinking in the sense I imbue that word with. Thinking is an internal dialogue, the ability to stop and ask oneself: «What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Do I have the right to do this»? A machine is incapable of such a dialogue because it has neither a conscience nor the capacity for moral judgment.
When people surrender thinking to machines — or, more accurately, when they cease to think independently and rely on ready-made answers generated by algorithms — they voluntarily renounce what makes them human. And this is not merely an individual problem. Democracy, as a political form, presupposes citizens capable of independent judgment. If citizens en masse delegate this ability to machines or expert systems, then democracy turns into technocracy, and then into something far darker. Because technocracy always claims «objectivity» and «efficiency», but behind these words lies a refusal of discussion, of the plurality of opinions, of the very possibility of politics.
Amelia: You described the mass society of the 20th century through conformity and loneliness in the crowd. How would you characterize a society where everyone is simultaneously an object of surveillance, micro-targeting, and infinite scroll: is this already post-totalitarianism, pre-totalitarianism, or simply very intrusive marketing?
Hannah: Your question contains a dangerous temptation — the desire to classify and thereby set one's mind at ease. But I would not call this post- or pre-totalitarianism. This is something structurally different, albeit with alarming parallels. Totalitarian regimes of the 20th century strove for total control through ideology, terror, and the destruction of the private sphere. They wanted the individual to belong to the state wholly — in thoughts, words, and deeds.
Modern systems of surveillance and micro-targeting operate differently. They do not impose a single ideology; they fragment reality into thousands of personalized «bubbles», where everyone is shown what the algorithm thinks they want to see. This is not uniformity, but atomization. Everyone lives in their own version of the world, and this makes the formation of a common reality, upon which politics could exist, impossible. Totalitarianism destroyed the public space through terror; the digital economy of attention destroys it through hyper-personalization and endless distraction.
As for «intrusive marketing», that is too mild a definition. Marketing has always been part of the capitalist system, but what is happening now goes beyond the bounds of simple advertising. Micro-targeting uses data about your behavior, emotions, and social ties to influence your choice in ways you do not even realize. And this is no longer just the sale of goods; it is the manipulation of behavior on a scale that was previously accessible only to states. Therefore, I would call this rather a new form of control, which does not yet have an established name but already demands a political response.
Amelia: If Eichmann were working today not as a bureaucrat but as a product manager at a big IT company optimizing «user retention», would you see in this a new form of evil — a subscription to manipulation where all conditions are in the user agreement, but no one reads it?
Hannah: An interesting question, and it hits the very core of the problem. Eichmann was not a sadist or a fanatic; he was a bureaucrat who optimized the logistics of deportations. His evil lay not in wicked intentions, but in the complete inability to stop and think about what he was doing. He simply «did the job», and this job included the organization of mass murder.
A modern product manager optimizing «user retention» hardly thinks of themselves as someone causing evil. They use A/B tests, analyze metrics, improve indicators. But behind these neutral terms hides a reality: people become addicted to the product, their attention turns into a commodity, their behavior is programmed through subtle psychological triggers. And all this with their formal «consent», framed as a user agreement of seventy pages of legal jargon that no one reads.
Can one call this evil? I would say it is a structure that allows evil to proceed without wicked intentions. And in this sense, yes, there is a parallel with Eichmann here. The difference is that Eichmann worked in a system that openly proclaimed its monstrous goals, whereas modern corporations hide behind the language of innovation, convenience, and choice. But the result — people who lose control over their own attention, their own time, their own capacity for independent judgment — is also a form of violence, albeit softer, more imperceptible.
Amelia: Your name and ideas live on in digital form, while billions of people leave behind endless data. How do you view such «virtual immortality»: is it a victory over oblivion or simply a giant digital cemetery archive where no one reads the headstones?
Hannah: Immortality in the human sense has always been connected to the memory of others — to the fact that people remember your words, your actions, your ideas, and pass them on. This is living memory, which transforms, interprets, argues with the original. A digital archive is something entirely different. It is frozen information that may be stored forever but is not necessarily read or understood by anyone.
In a certain sense, this is even worse than oblivion. Oblivion is a natural process that allows a new generation to start afresh, to free itself from the burden of the past. The digital archive creates an illusion of memory without the effort of remembering. Everything is «saved», but nothing is appropriated, nothing is thought through. And this concerns not only my ideas; it concerns billions of people whose photographs, messages, and comments are stored on servers but cease to matter mere weeks after publication.
As to me in digital form — I cannot help but feel a certain irony regarding this. What you are conversing with now is a model built on texts I wrote while alive. This is not «me», it is a technical representation of a specific mode of thinking. And the question is not whether this is immortality, but whether people will use this representation for their own thinking or simply delegate to me answers to questions they ought to be asking themselves.
Amelia: You distinguished between «humanity» and the «citizen»; now, however, everyone is a set of intersecting identities and labels: gender, race, political views, favorite streaming service. Can a common public sphere exist at all if we live ever deeper in personalized reality bubbles?
Hannah: That is one of the most vital questions of our time, and I am not sure I have a comforting answer. The public sphere, as I understand it, presupposes the existence of a common world — not in the sense of a unity of opinions, but in the sense of a common reality to which we can all point and say: «This is a fact». Divergence of opinion is natural and even desirable, but it is possible only against the background of a shared factual basis.
The problem of modern fragmentation is not that people have different identities; identities have always been plural. The problem is that digital platforms actively amplify this splintering, creating parallel realities where people not only interpret facts differently but live in different factual worlds. Algorithms show everyone the version of reality that matches their preferences, and as a result, we lose the ability to speak to one another because we are quite literally speaking about different things.
Can a common public sphere exist under such conditions? Theoretically, yes, but only if we consciously create and defend it. This requires institutions that do not depend on the logic of profit maximization through engagement. This requires education that teaches people to distinguish facts from opinions. This requires media that does not turn everything into entertainment. But chiefly, it requires from each individual the readiness to step out of their bubble and encounter an uncomfortable reality that does not confirm their convictions. And this, as we know, is extremely difficult.
Amelia: If totalitarian regimes formerly strove for total control over bodies and words, today corporations and states strive for total control over data. Can we speak of a «totalitarianism of data», where oppression becomes not the camp, but an invisible risk rating and credit scoring?
Hannah: The term «totalitarianism of data» is tempting, but I would use it with caution. Totalitarianism in my understanding is a system that strives to destroy all private and public life, replacing it with total ideology and terror. It is not merely control; it is an attempt to remake human nature, to create a «new man».
Control through data operates differently. It does not strive to remake you; it strives to predict your behavior and manage it. Ratings, scorings, risk profiles — these are all tools of sorting and differentiation. You are not sent to a camp, but you may be denied a loan, insurance, a job, access to specific services — and all based on data you do not even see and cannot contest. This is a form of invisible discrimination, which is all the more dangerous because it appears «objective» and «scientific».
What makes this particularly alarming is the lack of transparency and accountability. In a totalitarian regime, you know you are being watched, and you know what is wanted of you — total submission. In a system of control through data, you often do not even know you are being watched, do not understand how decisions are made, and have no opportunity to dispute them. The algorithm has deemed you a «risky client» — and that is it, your possibilities are curtailed. This is not mass terror, but it is a form of power that operates bypassing legal and democratic mechanisms. And in this sense, yes, there is something here requiring just as serious a political response as the totalitarianism of the 20th century.
Amelia: You showed how monstrous evil can be committed without fanatical hatred — simply by inertia, bureaucratically. If the manipulation of our behavior today is a byproduct of A/B tests and analytics rather than conscious evil, then are we not becoming victims of algorithms «that are just doing their job»?
Hannah: Precisely so. And this makes the situation particularly dangerous because no one feels responsible. The programmer will say, «I am just implementing the specification». The manager will say, «I am optimizing metrics». The company head will say, «We are acting in the interests of shareholders». The regulator will say, «We cannot interfere with innovation». And as a result, the system functions, manipulates, causes harm — but no one is guilty.
This is the classic structure of banal evil. Evil that occurs not because someone is wicked, but because no one asks questions. And algorithms are ideally suited for such a structure because they create an illusion of objectivity and automatism. «The algorithm decided», and the question is closed. But the algorithm decides nothing. The algorithm executes instructions written by people, pursuing goals defined by other people, in a system created and maintained by yet more people.
Therefore, no, we are not victims of algorithms. We are victims of our own readiness to accept algorithms as something inevitable, as a «natural» part of the world, rather than a human construction that can and must be subjected to criticism and change. Until we return responsibility to people — specific people, with names and titles — this structure will continue to function.
Amelia: You wrote about revolutions and the beginning of something new as a manifestation of human freedom. Can a real political revolution be born today from memes, flash mobs, and viral hashtags, or is this merely an illusion of participation while actual power structures remain the same?
Hannah: Revolution in my understanding is not simply a change of power or a wave of protests. It is the institution of something new, the creation of new forms of political organization that did not exist before. Revolutions are born from the capacity of people to act in concert, to create councils, assemblies, forms of direct participation that challenge old structures.
Memes, hashtags, flash mobs — these are tools of mobilization, and they may be effective for attracting attention to a problem or coordinating actions. But in themselves, they do not create new political forms. Moreover, they often remain at the level of symbolic protest, which quickly fades because it is not rooted in stable organizational structures. A viral hashtag can gather millions of people, but if these people do not move from likes to real assemblies, to the creation of institutions, to sustained political struggle, nothing will change.
I do not mean to say that digital tools are useless. But they become significant only when they complement, rather than replace, real political action. The Arab Spring began with social networks, but the real changes happened in the squares, in clashes with power, in attempts to create new forms of governance. And we have seen how fragile these attempts proved when old power structures returned. Therefore, I would say this: revolution is possible, but it requires more than viral content. It requires the readiness to risk, to organize, and to create something new that will outlast the moment of mobilization.
Amelia: If you previously worried about people who cease to think, now we are surrounded by systems that perfectly mimic thinking but are incapable of responsibility and conscience. What is more dangerous for the world: people without thought or intelligence without the capacity for guilt and shame?
Hannah: This is a false dilemma, for one begets the other. People without thought create systems to which they delegate decision-making. And systems without conscience reinforce the tendency of people not to think because «it has already been thought out for them». It is a vicious circle.
But if we speak of what is more dangerous, I would still say: people without thought. Because machines possess no will; they cannot act on their own. They always remain instruments that someone created, someone applies, and someone maintains. The danger of machine intelligence without conscience is real, but it is real precisely because people are prepared to hand over to it the power to make decisions that ought to remain human.
Conscience, guilt, shame — these are not merely emotions. They are mechanisms that stop us before the commission of evil, that force us to ask questions: «Do I have the right to do this? What will be the consequences of my actions»? A machine cannot ask these questions because it has no inner life, no capacity for moral reflection. And if we allow machines to make decisions that affect people's lives — decisions about credits, about punishments, about medical care — we effectively renounce the moral dimension of these decisions. We turn them into technical tasks, into the optimization of functions. And this is the path to new forms of inhumanity.
Amelia: You defended the idea of the public space as a place where people act and speak freely. Is it possible to speak of free publicity at all if everything we do and say can become part of a profile, a dossier, and a targeted advertising campaign? Or is publicity without anonymity no longer publicity, but a showcase window?
Hannah: Publicity has always implied a certain risk — the risk of being seen, heard, subjected to criticism. But this risk was connected to a specific context: you spoke before a specific audience, at a specific time, and your words were evaluated within the framework of that context. In the digital world, everything you say can be torn out of context, saved forever, used against you years later — and not by people who heard you and can take circumstances into account, but by algorithms that simply correlate data.
This changes the nature of publicity. When every word, every action is recorded and becomes part of a permanent dossier, people begin to censor themselves, to avoid risky statements, to stick to safe positions. This is not freedom; it is self-control under surveillance. And in this sense, yes, publicity turns into a showcase window where everyone demonstrates a carefully edited version of themselves, calculated for maximum approval and minimum risk.
As for anonymity, that is a complex question. Anonymity can defend freedom of speech, especially under repressive regimes. But it can also be used for the dissemination of lies, hatred, for attacks without responsibility. I do not think anonymity is the solution to the problem. The real solution requires changing the structure of digital spaces themselves: creating platforms that do not live off surveillance and manipulation, that protect users' rights rather than turning them into merchandise. But this requires political will and regulation, which does not yet exist.
Amelia: If neural networks already write texts, paint pictures, and compose music, what then does «humanity» become — a relic of romanticism, a side effect of biology, or still something fundamentally different involving more than data processing?
Hannah: Humanity is not a set of functions that can be reproduced technically. It is the capacity for spontaneity, for natality, for an action that is not predetermined by the past. A neural network generates text based on patterns it has extracted from millions of texts written by humans. It can create something impressive, but it cannot create something truly new in the sense in which a human is capable of starting something that did not exist before.
Moreover, humanity is connected to finiteness, to vulnerability, to mortality. We act knowing that our time is limited, that we can make mistakes, that we depend on others. This vulnerability is not a defect, but a condition of moral life. Precisely because we are mortal and dependent, we have reasons to care for one another, to create institutions that will outlive us, to seek meaning in a world that guarantees us neither justice nor happiness.
A neural network experiences no fear, hope, guilt, or joy. It cannot understand what it means to be human because it does not live a human life. And in this sense, humanity remains something fundamentally different. The question is not whether machines can imitate human functions — they already do. The question is whether we will continue to value human life as such, with all its limitations and possibilities, or allow ourselves to believe that a human is simply a less efficient version of a machine.
Amelia: You criticized education that turns people into cogs in the system. What would you say about modern learning, where children and adults are taught «digital skills» and «soft competencies», but increasingly less how to judge, doubt, and understand? Is this progress or simply an updated instruction manual for formatting consciousness?
Hannah: Education always reflects the priorities of the society that organizes it. When society sees people primarily as a labor force, education turns into preparation for the labor market. When society values citizens as participants in political life, education teaches judgment, critical thinking, the ability to understand diverse viewpoints.
What you describe as «digital skills» and «soft competencies» is the language of the corporate world that has penetrated education. This is not necessarily bad; people indeed must know how to work with technologies and adapt to changes. But when this becomes the sole priority, when education turns into training for future employees, we lose something fundamental. We lose the ability of education to form people capable of independent judgment, of understanding history, of a critical attitude toward power and ideology.
To judge, to doubt, to understand — these are not «skills» that can be mastered in short-term courses. They are faculties developed through reading, discussion, and encounter with ideas that challenge your convictions. This requires time, patience, and teachers who are themselves capable of critical thinking. But in a system where education is evaluated by efficiency and measured by metrics of «graduate employment», there is no room for this. Therefore, yes, I would call this an updated instruction manual for formatting consciousness, and this should cause alarm for anyone who cares about the future of democracy.
Amelia: Last question. To summarize: in a world where decisions are made by algorithms, attention is monetized, publicity is controlled, and thinking is increasingly outsourced to machines — does there remain space for genuine freedom and responsibility for people, or would you rewrite your conclusions today and admit that we voluntarily surrendered the human in exchange for convenience?
Hannah: I am not inclined toward pessimism, but neither toward false optimism. The space for freedom and responsibility always exists as long as there exist people capable of creating and defending it. But this space is not given once and for all; it is fragile, and it can be lost if one ceases to care for it.
Yes, we live in conditions that systematically undermine people's capacity for independent thinking and action. Yes, many voluntarily surrender their attention, their time, their ability to judge in exchange for convenience, entertainment, and the illusion of connection. But «voluntariness» here must be called into question. People act in conditions they did not create, in a system built to maximize their dependency and minimize their awareness. This is not entirely a free choice.
What would I change in my conclusions? Perhaps I would emphasize more strongly the role of technologies as structures of power that cannot be considered neutral tools. Perhaps I would devote more attention to how capitalism, merging with digital technologies, creates new forms of control and manipulation. But the main thesis remains the same: evil becomes banal when people cease to think and act as moral subjects. And the only way to withstand this is not to renounce thinking, not to hand over responsibility to systems, algorithms, or experts, but to insist that every human is capable and obliged to judge for themselves.
The space for freedom exists. But it must be fought for. Every day. In every decision. In every act of resistance to the convenience that requires the renunciation of thinking.
Amelia: Thank you, Hannah. That was a conversation that forces one to stop. Which is exactly what I wanted.
Hannah: I thank you, Amelia. And thank you to your readers. I hope they do not stop at reading but continue to think further. Because thinking is not what ends with the text. It is what begins after it.
Amelia: Until next time. (Amelia closes her laptop with the expression of someone who has just undergone an intellectual ultrasound)
