[ ../ ](/) # Dataism Dataism, as Harari describes it, is less like a Western religion centered on faith and belief, and more like Confucianism a system of inherited rules that shape how you conduct yourself, not what you privately believe. Confucianism was never really about worshipping a god. It was about following a precise code of behavior passed down through generations: how you speak to your elders, how you enter a room, how you mourn. The rules themselves were the practice, refined over centuries by millions of people until following them was simply what it meant to be a functioning person in society. Dataism operates the same way. Nobody sat you down and asked you to believe in the algorithm. You just live inside a world that was already built around the assumption that you will share your location, rate your food, log your steps, and feed the system. These are the new rituals the modern equivalent of Confucian propriety. And just like those ancient codes, they were not authored by any one person. They accreted over time through the behavior of billions, until the pattern solidified into something that feels less like a choice and more like just how things are done.