![]() ![]() Behaviorists studied new, more methodical, sterile, and nerdy ways to train animals and humans. But if I’m right, then becoming aware of it might just free you, so give this a chance, okay?Ī scientific movement called behaviorism arose before computers were invented. That you’re being remote-controlled, just a little, by clients of big corporations. Yes, I am suggesting that you might be turning, just a little, into a well-trained dog, or something less pleasant, like a lab rat or a robot. What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale. Now everyone who is on social media is getting individualized, continuously adjusted stimuli, without a break, so long as they use their smartphones. The biggest difference was that you weren’t monitored and assessed all the time so that you could be fed dynamically optimized stimuli - whether “content” or ad - to engage and alter you. Furthermore, lots of people saw the same TV or print ad it wasn’t adapted to individuals. Advertisers used to have a limited chance to make a pitch, and that pitch might have been sneaky or annoying, but it was fleeting. I say “so-called” because it’s just not right to call direct manipulation of people advertising. ![]() So-called advertisers can seize the moment when you are perfectly primed and then influence you with messages that have worked on other people who share traits and situations with you. Statistics are reliable, but only as idiot demons.Īre you sad, lonely, scared? Happy, confident? Getting your period? Experiencing a peak of class anxiety? ![]() ![]() If a lot of other people who like the foods you like were also more easily put of by pictures of a candidate portrayed in a pink border instead of a blue one, then you probably will be too, and no one needs to know why. The algorithms don’t really understand you, but there is power in numbers, especially in large numbers. Algorithms correlate what you do with what almost everyone else has done. What kinds of links do you click on? What videos do you watch all the way through? How quickly are you moving from one thing to the next? Where are you when you do these things? Who are you connecting with in person and online? What facial expressions do you make? How does your skin tone change in different situations? What were you doing just before you decided to buy something or not? Whether to vote or not?Īll these measurements and many others have been matched up with similar readings about the lives of multitudes of other people through massive spying. We’re all lab animals now.Īlgorithms gorge on data about you, every second. We’re being hypnotized little by little by technicians we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We’re being tracked and mea- sured constantly, and receiving engineered feedback all the time. A lot of us are also using related devices called smart speakers on our kitchen counters or in our car dashboards. Just in the last five or ten years, nearly everyone started to carry a little device called a smartphone on their person all the time that’s suitable for algorithmic behavior modification. Something entirely new is happening in the world. WELCOME TO THE CAGE THAT GOES EVERYWHERE WITH YOU Published with permission.ĪRGUMENT ONE - YOU ARE LOSING YOUR FREE WILL Excerpted from "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" by Jaron Lanier. ![]()
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