I got annoyed at my father once for making a sarcastic comment about 'algorithms' in the sense you're describing here. So I sat him down at the table and cut 10

I got annoyed at my father once for making a sarcastic comment about 'algorithms' in the sense you're describing here. So I sat him down at the table and cut 10 bits of string of different length. I then walked him through bubble sorting the bits of string. Then I said something like 'that is all an algorithm is. A set of rules or instructions that a computer can follow. The only trick the computer has is that it can do the instructions really quickly. There is no magic and they're not inherently oppressive.' I wasn't expecting it to work, but after that he never made another dig at 'algorithms'.