1 Introduction

In the present moment, when big data and artificial intelligence are deeply embedded in social governance and medical practice, an “algorithm-centred” model of health management is expanding rapidly (Ferrario et al., 2023, p.165). On the one hand, digital technologies markedly improve diagnostic efficiency and risk-prediction capacity (Biller-Andorno and Biller, 2019, p.1480); on the other hand, they are also, often unconsciously, propelling a “dehumanizing tendency”: individuals are reduced to computable indicators and risk scores, while subjective experience, ethical judgement and cultural difference are compressed outside the model’s boundaries (Zuboff , 2019, p.346). As the Dao of medical care, Traditional Chinese Medicine (hereinafter referred to as TCM) is not merely a technical system. It constitutes a high-dimensional cognitive framework centred on the concepts of the human body as a “small universe,” the inter-correspondence of Heaven and humankind, and the dynamic balancing of yin and yang, and thus has a natural affinity with the emerging field of life-management studies (Sivin, 2011, p.1; Lao et al., 2012, p.125). The Suwen (“Basic Questions”) of Huangdi Neijing articulates ideas such as the unity of Heaven and humanity, the regulation of the spirit in accordance with the four seasons, and the mutual correlation of the five viscera, and long ago put forward the preventive insight that “the sage does not treat what is already diseased, but treats what is not yet diseased; does not put in order what is already in disorder, but puts in order what is not yet in disorder” (Wang, 1997, p.11-12).

From the standpoint of the holistic vision of TCM and of life-management studies, this article analyses the “dehumanizing tendency” of algorithmic health management in the contemporary era, and demonstrates the unique advantages of TCM in dealing with emotion, ethics, lifestyle and the relationship between human beings and nature (Akingbola et al., 2024, p.1). It argues that TCM can play a relevant role at levels that lie beyond the reach of the algorithmic framework: first, by its high-dimensional cognition of the isomorphism among body, mind and cosmos, it counteracts the simplification of persons into sliced data; second, by the moral cultivation and empathetic practice expected of physicians, it corrects the illusion of “value neutrality” that often accompanies algorithmic tools (Sun, 2014); and third, through its doctrine of “treating disease before its onset” and the everyday techniques of self-regulation, it re-embeds health management in a meaningful life-world. In this way, the paper argues, the future of medicine and life management should not be framed in terms of a binary opposition between “TCM vs. modern biomedicine/algorithms,” but rather in terms of a multi-dimensional collaboration grounded in humanistic concerns and the Dao of medical care.

2 The Dehumanizing Tendency of Algorithmic Governance in Medicine

In the age of artificial intelligence and big data, medicine and health management are undergoing profound transformation. Electronic diagnostic-support systems have made “letting the data speak” a new consensus (Alaskar et al., 2022, p.1011). Diseases are encoded as sets of indicators; risk is translated into probability values; resource allocation relies on algorithmic ranking and automated decision-making. In terms of efficiency, predictability and cost control, this is undeniably a major technological advance.

Yet under the imperatives of capital, AI is deployed not as a neutral tool but as the operational core of surveillance capitalism, where systems like “Big Other” continuously harvest, classify, and manipulate human behaviour for profit (Zuboff, 2015, p.75). In this regime, people are not treated as subjects with inner lives but as measurable patterns of clicks, movements, and choices that can be predicted and steered, a mode of “radical indifference” that cares only for what can be observed and optimized (Gennero, 2024, p.2). AI “accomplishes its aims quietly and persistently, using methods that intentionally bypass our awareness, disappearing into the background of all things” (Zuboff, 2019, p.341).What looks like personalised service or convenience is in fact a machinery of behavioural engineering that steadily erodes autonomy, dignity, and the space for meaningful consent. Value lies in the surplus data extracted from individual lives, while all individual experiences, emotions, and moral significance are discarded as irrelevant. In this sense, AI under capital does not simply automate tasks; it quietly automates the dehumanisation of the people who generate its data. The problem it raises is that, together with machines, physicians increasingly reduce “the human being” to a bundle of data; complex experiences of life are abstracted into “outliers” and “risk values.” (Palmer and Schwan, 2022, p.188). What both parties fixate on are indicators—blood glucose, tumour size, risk stratification and compliance with guidelines. The patient’s emotions, fears, family pressures and existential choices are frequently relegated to “background noise unrelated to the disease.” From Foucault’s perspective, the dehumanizing tendency of algorithmic governance in medicine can be understood as an intensified form, under digital-intelligence conditions, of what he called “biopower”: modern power no longer functions mainly through the sovereign decision over “to kill or not to kill,” but through statistics, normalisation and risk management in order “to make live and let die,” that is, through the political administration of entire populations. Medical algorithms are precisely the technical embodiment of such biopolitics: individuals are decomposed into computable indicators, scores and risk values; diseases are reduced to patterns recognisable by models; the concrete situations, narratives and emotions that constitute encounters between doctors and patients are compressed into negligible variables (Allen et al., 2024, p.2).

More specifically, contemporary, algorithm-enabled health management entails several structural risks of dehumanisation in at least three respects. First, the “datafication” of persons. Wearable devices and smart terminals continuously generate data on physiological indicators, step counts, sleep curves and more, such that individuals are vividly conceived as “walking databases” (Ruckenstein and Schüll, 2017, p.262). In clinical decisions, blood pressure, blood sugar, imaging results and genetic tests constitute crucial bases for diagnosis and prognosis. Over time, an implicit hierarchy emerges between “subjective feelings that can be spoken” and “objective data that can be recorded”: what is not written into the record comes, in effect, to be treated as non-existent. This situation resembles what Foucault described in The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception: modern clinical medicine, through recording, monitoring and archiving, transforms life into a manageable object; the physician’s gaze is trained into a specific “medical gaze” that views the patient’s body as an object separable from their personhood, story and social identity, to be dissected, palpated, anatomised and described (Foucault, 1973, p.9). Algorithms push this mode of management even further towards real-time, global and predictive forms of governance, continually scanning and scoring every individual under the shadow of “anticipated future health risks.” In the digital age, human beings are ever more compressed into “the computable part”; emotions, pain narratives, life histories and relational networks are easily dismissed as “noise”—this is the first mechanism of dehumanisation.

Second, the “outsourcing” of ethical judgement to technology. Under conditions of limited resources and the need for risk control, algorithms are frequently used to assist or even partially replace human decision-making: Who should have priority for a bed? Who is more suitable for an expensive treatment? Who can be discharged early? In this process, ethical choices that ought to be subject to open deliberation and borne as responsibility are subtly translated into questions of parameter tuning and threshold setting (Grote and Berens, 2020, p.205). Algorithmic recommendations appeal to being “objective,” “neutral” and “efficient,” masking the value hierarchies and social biases embedded within them concerning “who is worth treating” and “whose life counts for more.” Historical data used in training can easily solidify existing class, gender and racial inequalities (Zuboff, 2019, p.257). More importantly, when physicians and administrators cede part of the decision-making to systems, responsibility becomes “black-boxed”: the question is no longer “How do I respond to this particular patient?” but “This is what the system has calculated.” Ethics here is wrapped in technical language, weakening both professional agents’ and the public’s active questioning of the legitimacy of decisions.

Third, the “fragmentation” of the life-world. Within the logic of algorithmic platforms, a large number of health recommendations appear in the form of “check-in tasks,” “risk alerts” and “scores and rankings,” so that individuals’ relationship to their own bodies is increasingly governed by external indicators (Durán and Jongsma, 2021, p.329). Decisions about what to eat, how long to sleep and how many steps to take stem less from careful attention to one’s own rhythms than from anxiety about not losing points, not turning the indicator “red,” or not falling behind one’s peers. Health behaviour thus tends to slide into a “performance-oriented self-management”: the body becomes a project to be endlessly optimised, while life is broken down into fragments that can be quantified, compared and displayed. This mode of algorithm- and platform-centred “life management” continues, to some extent, the technical form of what Foucault called biopower—shaping “qualified bodies” through norms, surveillance and self-discipline—yet moves still further away from patient narratives and humanistic care, making it difficult for individuals, amid incessant reminders and tasks, to regain a grip on the fundamental question: “How do I wish to live, rather than merely how do I meet the standard?”

In short, the algorithm is not evil in itself, but its logic intrinsically favours dimensions that can be quantified, predicted and controlled, and therefore tends to exclude ambiguity, contradiction and the uncomputable. Yet it is precisely these “hard-to-quantify” elements that form the core of human ethical responsibility, affective depth and existential meaning. Technological progress does not automatically equate to humanistic progress. History has repeatedly shown that advances in technology do not spontaneously translate into the elevation of our human condition (Naik et al., 2022, p.5). From the steam engine and electrification to the information revolution, successive leaps in productive forces did not prevent colonial expansion, world wars or genocides. Nuclear power can illuminate cities, but it can also take the form of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, data technologies and artificial intelligence, on the one hand, optimise resource allocation and extend life expectancy; on the other hand, they intensify surveillance, entrench inequality and amplify bias. Foucault’s “clinical gaze” has been further datafied and automated: individuals are portrayed as risk points and cost centres, while biological indicators, behavioural data and consumption records combine to form new health profiles (Zuboff, 2019, p.251).

In the era of medical algorithms, decisions about life and death and treatment options are presented as “optimal solutions produced by the algorithm,” so that power relations and ethical choices are disguised as neutral technical decisions (Ornelas, 2025, p.70); on the other hand, patients are treated as life resources to be “optimised,” rather than first and foremost as subjects endowed with narratives, dignity and unique experience. While compressing uncertainty, algorithms are also compressing human complexity: ethical choices are translated into variables in cost-benefit calculations; human beings gradually appear as “objects to be optimised,” not as subjects who possess dignity and a story. In fact, technology itself is only a means; it is the institutional structures into which it is embedded and the value orientations it serves that determine whether it ultimately leads towards “greater humanity” or towards “more efficient dehumanisation.”

Against this background, turning back to TCM is not a matter of cultural nostalgia, but because TCM as the Dao of medical care inherently bears a high-dimensional way of understanding “what it is to be human” and “what it is to be healthy.” Huangdi Neijing is regarded as the foundational text of Chinese medical theory. Its doctrines of the unity of Heaven and humanity, of yin–yang and the five phases, and of the viscera and channels provide a systematic framework for interpreting the human body as a “microcosm” (Wang, 1997, pp.11-12, 41; Wang, 2004). The Dao of TCM thus offers important theoretical resources for rethinking life management in the algorithmic era.

3 The Dao of TCM: A High-Dimensional Perspective on Life Management

TCM’s understanding of the body transcends a purely anatomical perspective. From the standpoint of the classical canon, TCM has never been a mere aggregate of techniques, but rather a praxis in which technique and Dao are inseparable (Luo, 2023, p.49). The Suwen chapter “The Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit with the Four Seasons” (Si qi tiao shen da lun) interprets health as a process of conforming to the four seasons and harmonising yin and yang. It emphasises principles such as keeping regular habits, avoiding over-exertion, moderating diet and regulating emotions; this became one of the classic sources of the later doctrine of “treating disease before its onset” (zhi wei bing) (Wang, 1997, pp.11-12). Under the contemporary national strategy of “Healthy China,” this doctrine has been re-activated and is regarded as a systemic advantage of TCM in the fields of chronic-disease control and early intervention.

This “Dao of TCM” is a comprehensive wisdom about how human beings can find their place in the world and live in accord with Heaven and Earth; it is not simply a set of disease-treating techniques. It offers a higher-dimensional perspective on contemporary “life management” (especially on public-level life governance). “High-dimensional” here does not refer to mystical height but to the inclusion of more dimensions: not only the biological, but also the emotional, ethical, ecological, temporal and spatial dimensions.

First, the conception of life in TCM is itself multi-dimensional. For TCM, concepts such as channels and collaterals, qi and blood, and viscera function together as parts of a dynamic whole: the body is not a sum of organs but a “small universe” corresponding to Heaven and Earth. “The correspondence of Heaven and humanity” is not a simple analogy, but a world-view of systemic isomorphism: circulations and rhythms within the body structurally mirror the seasonal changes and day–night alternations in the natural world. The management of an individual life is thus inevitably entangled with relations involving family, environment, season and social tempo—precisely those dimensions that many algorithmic models cannot adequately capture.

TCM understands health as a process of seeking balance in motion. Yin–yang and the five phases are not abstract metaphysics but forms of relational thinking: any local imbalance is related to the dynamic equilibrium of the whole (Pun and Chor, 2022, p.165). This framework, centred on correlation and holism, equips TCM with an inherently high-dimensional perspective that crosses biological, psychological, social and ecological domains, rather than focusing on isolated indicators such as blood sugar, blood pressure or BMI. Yin–yang harmony and the mutual restraint and generation among the five phases do not describe a static equilibrium, but a relative harmony maintained in ever-changing situations. Huangdi Neijing’s discussions of the correlations among the viscera and of the ascending, descending, exiting and entering movements of qi (Wang, 1997, p.19, 41) exemplify this. A way of thinking that is oriented towards individual difference and relational networks is itself high-dimensional and resonates closely with life-management frameworks that stress “whole-life-cycle, multi-dimensional intervention.”

Second, the Dao of TCM stresses the management of the entire life course “from birth to death,” rather than focusing solely on rescue at the moment when disease manifests (Wang et al., 2018, p.6). The doctrine of “treating disease before its onset” comprises three layers: preventing disease before it arises, preventing progression once disease has appeared, and preventing relapse after apparent recovery. Corresponding to these layers is the long-term planning of everyday habits, dietary structure, emotional regulation, work–rest rhythms (such as nourishing yang in spring and summer, and nourishing yin in autumn and winter), constitution-based differentiation (different treatments for different individuals) and the balancing of family relationships. The vertical time dimension and the horizontal relational dimension thus intersect to form a framework far richer than the two-dimensional model of “risk factor plus intervention plan.”

Third, at the public level, the Dao of TCM offers an imagination of a “warm” form of life governance. Modern public health policy often centres on population statistics and risk management, treating groups as dividable “risk populations” and easily degenerating into a cold form of biopolitics. By contrast, the tradition of TCM takes as its ethical core the notions that “medicine is the art of humaneness” and that the great physician is of “utmost sincerity,” placing the relationships among physician, patient and community in the foreground (Qiu, 1988, pp.283-284). Over the centuries, cultures of “nurturing life,” village compacts and community regulations, as well as collective health activities tied to the solar terms, have essentially constituted public life-management mechanisms grounded in shared rhythms and common ethics: by adjusting production tempo, diet and networks of mutual aid, villagers cooperatively maintained the physical and mental balance of the population in a given region. Such governance, which simultaneously addresses community affect, lifestyle and ecological environment, is naturally more “high-dimensional” than the management of health solely through statistical indicators.

Finally, if we shift our gaze to current developments in digital health and algorithmic governance, the value of the Dao of TCM becomes even more visible. Algorithms excel at slicing human beings into data fragments and risk factors, greatly increasing efficiency, but they also tend to simplify life into a “computable object.” The high-dimensional perspective of TCM can at least make up for three missing dimensions: the dimension of meaning—understanding disease as a form of imbalance within an individual’s particular life history and social structure, rather than merely as functional breakdown; the relational dimension—emphasising networks of family, community and nature, and resisting the tendency to treat patients as isolated atoms; and the ethical dimension—grounded in ideals of benevolence and reverence, reminding us that all technical regimes of life management must be premised on concern for concrete persons. In this way, TCM does not seek to replace modern biomedicine or algorithmic tools, but to provide humanity with a coordinate system through which multiple dimensions can be recomposed, so that future public life management is no longer computed solely on the “efficiency–cost” plane but can, in a higher-dimensional space, integrate health, dignity, meaning and co-existence.

4 How the High-Dimensional Cognition of TCM Complements Algorithmic Dehumanisation

To respond to this dehumanising drift, people should treat TCM not simply as an alternative set of therapies, but as a reservoir of high-dimensional cognition about what it means to manage life. Rather than opposing algorithms in a binary way, TCM can be understood as offering a series of corrective “supplements” at precisely those points where current data-driven regimes are thinnest: how we conceptualise the body, how we handle emotion and ethical responsibility, and how we imagine prevention and self-care (Zhou and Wang, 2025, p.8). In what follows, three such dimensions are explored

(1) The “Human Body as Microcosm” and Holism: Resisting the Simplification of Data Slicing

TCM conceives the human body as a “small universe,” emphasising the mutual restraint among the viscera and the functional synergy of the whole body. The four diagnostic methods — looking, listening and smelling, asking questions, and palpating the pulse — are not merely technical steps but embody a holistic method of observation: the physician attends not only to a local lesion but also to complexion, spirit, tempo of speech, posture, living environment and emotional state. This style of diagnosis itself expresses a conception of life in which body, mind, environment and society are interwoven.

Such holism can serve as a cognitive reminder in the algorithmic era: no matter how many refined indicators we may have, individuals are always situated within multiple relational networks. Principles such as “adapting to season, locality and individual” in TCM are high-dimensional counter-moves against one-size-fits-all, standardised protocols (Wang, 1997, p.41). In practice, this implies that even when we use algorithms as auxiliary tools, we still need a second-order interpretation analogous to pattern differentiation (bianzheng) in TCM: clinicians and health managers must listen anew to patients’ narratives and examine life circumstances beyond what the data can show, lest health management slide into the mere manipulation of numbers.

(2) Emotional and Ethical Dimensions: Correcting the Illusion of “Value Neutrality”

Chinese medical classics repeatedly stress that “anger harms the liver, joy harms the heart, rumination harms the spleen, grief harms the lungs, and fear harms the kidneys,” treating emotions as a key dimension of health (Wang, 1997, p.113). This understanding is highly consonant with findings in contemporary psychosomatic and biopsychosocial medicine. At the same time, Sun Simiao’s famous essay “On the Great Physician’s Utmost Sincerity” (Da yi jing cheng) urges physicians to “first give rise to a heart of great compassion and empathy so as to save all living beings from suffering,” and to treat all who seek help “without asking whether they are noble or base, rich or poor,” regarding them “all as if they were close relatives” (Sun, 2014). This text has become a core document in the ethical tradition of TCM and is frequently cited in contemporary discussions of “medical humanities” as a reminder of the importance of physicians’ moral self-cultivation and empathetic capacity (Zheng, 2023).

By contrast, algorithms are often represented as value-neutral tools. Users tend to shift responsibility onto “the model” or “the system,” overlooking the value assumptions that enter into model construction, variable selection and threshold setting. In this respect, TCM can play a dual complementary role at both institutional and practical levels. On the one hand, by bringing emotions, family relationships and ethical dilemmas into the diagnostic field of vision, it compensates for algorithmic models’ neglect of “incomputable experience.” On the other hand, by re-emphasising physicians’ moral cultivation and empathetic practice, it resists the diffusion of responsibility encapsulated in the phrase “I simply followed the system’s recommendation.”

(3) “Treating Disease before Its Onset” and Self-Regulation: Re-establishing Subjective Life Management

The doctrine of “treating disease before its onset” emphasises adjustment of lifestyle and mental state before disease takes form, so that the body can be kept in dynamic balance. The Suwen’s “Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit with the Four Seasons” famously asserts that “the sage does not treat what is already diseased, but treats what is not yet diseased; does not put in order what is already in disorder, but puts in order what is not yet in disorder,” a statement that is not only a preventive-medicine slogan but also a philosophical premise for embedding health management in everyday life (Wang, 1997, pp.11-12). Contemporary studies of zhi wei bing, writing from the perspective of “Healthy China,” likewise stress its policy value in chronic-disease control, sub-health regulation and interventions in psycho-social factors (Wang et al., 2017).

By comparison, many algorithm-based programmes for health management also advocate “early screening and early intervention,” but they often operate in the mode of “reminder–check-in–scoring,” which easily shapes subjects into “those who are reminded” and “those who complete tasks,” rather than into persons who genuinely understand the rhythms of their own bodies and the meanings of their lives. In this regard, TCM, through a language and practice rich in meaning (such as “conforming to the four seasons,” “regulating emotions” and “moderating diet”), helps individuals to regard health behaviours as part of a broader project of living harmoniously with Heaven and Earth, rather than as mere means of passing some “health assessment” with a qualified score. This contributes to re-establishing the subject’s agency in life management — not being led by indicators, but making choices that better fit one’s own circumstances through a refined sensitivity to bodily and natural rhythms.

If algorithms provide a risk map from an “other’s perspective,” then what TCM stresses is the “subject’s perspective” of embodied experience and self-regulation. Only by combining these can we approach anything like a complete framework for life management.

5 Conclusion: From the Verification of TCM to a TCM-Informed Rethinking of Health

In the algorithmic era, TCM is often placed in a passive position, required to “prove its effectiveness” through randomised controlled trials, evidence-based standards and mechanistic studies. This scientising endeavour is undoubtedly important, yet it rests on a tacit premise: that modern biomedicine and algorithmic evaluation constitute the sole “legitimate yardstick.” Under this premise, TCM is easily compressed into “another database of drugs and therapeutic effects,” while its high-dimensional reflections on the Dao of medical care, the body as a “small universe,” and the correspondence of Heaven and humanity are regarded as “cultural packaging” or “rhetorical ornament.”

Unschuld observes that while the global reception of TCM has led to new “conceptual and clinical realities,” revisiting its original principles allows us to see how Chinese medicine has adapted to “the values and requirements of modern times” (Unschuld, 2011, p.10). By reviewing relevant ideas in classics such as Huangdi Neijing and Bei ji qian jin yao fang, and drawing on contemporary research on zhi wei bing and on medical humanities, this article has sought to show that the value of TCM lies not only in offering an alternative therapeutic technology, but also in providing a high-dimensional cognitive resource for thinking about “how to live as a human being.” At a time when the dehumanizing tendency of the algorithmic era is ever more evident, this resource has irreplaceable complementary significance.

Accordingly, the future value of TCM does not lie in simply claiming to be “scientific,” but in entering into genuinely reciprocal dialogue with modern biomedicine and algorithmic technology: fully absorbing the achievements of modern science at the level of disease recognition and therapeutic technique; exercising its own strengths, rooted in the Dao of medical care, in the realms of humanism, ethics, emotion and life meaning; and providing, in institutional design and practical operation, cognitive and value-based correctives that can help to prevent medicine from sliding into dehumanisation.

When we no longer see TCM merely as an object to be “scientifically verified,” but as a high-dimensional cognitive resource capable of dialogue with the algorithmic age, the combination of TCM and life-management studies may prompt us to uphold the baseline that human beings become more like human beings, and machines more like machines, and thereby build a medical and health-management system that is not only efficient but also retains warmth.

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