Xprize founder says 'humans behave better when they’re being watched'
“Your kids will grow up in a world with no ‘off the record’,” he writes to any parents reading his post. “Teach them that the best privacy strategy is integrity, living so that being seen costs you nothing. And fight, hard, for a world where the watching goes both ways.”
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Is that why police officers act much more violently against people recording their activities and why reporters are intentionally being targeted by the military?
I do agree that humans behave better when being watched. The issue is that humans being watched aren’t the ones that need to be behaving better.
Historically speaking, the people that need to be watched is not the general populace, but the organizational managerial structure, such as your government figures or your law enforcement.
But instead, all of this surveillance is being pushed onto the general populace, in some case even in their own houses. While repeatedly the people who have actual control on regulation and enforcement are the ones that have the least amount of surveillance/privacy.
Like sure, public hearings are being live-streamed in some countries, but overall, there is way more surveillance on the everyday person than the people who actually should be behaving.
It’s gone to the point where I can’t even be sure of my own privacy in my own house. And that’s absolutely ridiculous.
Celebrities and politicians are simultaneously the most-watched and poorest-behaved people on the planet tho
Both ways? Ok, let’s see the billionnaire while he’s on the toilet. Let’s see how exactly he fuels anti-labour movements. Let’s see how corrupt he is. Let’s see how he must be made to be unbillionnaire’d. Let’s know every single minute of his life. Let’s block asset and person access to offshore islands and his creephouses. Let’s stop him everywhere with the car, at the airport, subject him to rigid controls, go through his phone, his flipphone, his notes, and everything.
And fight, hard, for a world where the watching goes both ways
So it’s top-down by default, and if the underclass fights hard enough, they míght get a “trust me bro, this is all data there is, and we certainly didn’t destroy any”.
The Epstein class is corrupt. Only all those that recognise class struggle are legit. That is, those that support the labourers in their opposition against coal and oil industry, against trusts and wage theft. Whether queer or not, the capitalist attempts to pit one against another while they attempt to drown us in the pit of climate collapse. But they too shall fail, as we unite, share, help one another, and bring down the corrupt fascist oligarchs.
Trump should get the treatment of Maduro. All coal, gas, and oil CEOs should be thrown into their own field pits.
that the best privacy strategy is integrity,
The prob, ofc, is that it doesn’t matter if YOU think you’re doing something wrong. It only matters if someone ELSE thinks you are doing something wrong. Maybe you ahve the wrong religion. Maybe you have the wrong skin color. Maybe you push for democracy in an autocratic system. Maybe you’re female in a society that opresses the shit out of women. Or w/e! A million things.
In a globally connected world, there will be someone who hates you and tries to destroy you, no matter WHO you are. No matter HOW much integrity, or HOW decent a human you are.
Also, fuck this guy. I want every moment of his life recorded and live streamed to youtube. If he is doing nothing wrong, he has nothing to hide.
“Your kids will grow up in a world with no ‘off the record’,”
BTW. He’s an asshole, and he’s wrong about a hell of a lot. But he’s not wrong about that.
Which scares me. A whole generation will grow up with constant inescapable surveilence as their normal. They’ve literally never known anything else.
So watch the billionaires then. Watch the Epstein class.
No, they want to watch the proles instead.
Not better; different. They behave the way the people doing the watching want them to behave. Whether that’s better is purely situational, and that (among others) is why global surveillance is a bad idea.
+1. I think what it does, is enforce conformity. Even without authoritarians, there is still a form of tyranny from group pressure. Ppl become less willing to oppose the majority under total surveilence.
Sometimes, the majority gets things right. Other times, not so much. History is filled with examples. We need room for our MLK Jrs, our Ghandis, our Schindlers, to oppose the norms.
Its a well studied phenomena. When watched, people behave more in the way they think they are expected to behave.
If he thinks privacy is bad, then he can publish every email, text and message he’s ever sent/received. Then wear a camera around his neck all the time, never taking it off.
I won’t hold my breath on this.
What a dickhole.
Funny how the same standard doesn’t apply to the Epstein class though. Rules for thee, but not for me. Redacted redacted redacted. 🤐
Putting aside the practicalities, is a world where everyone’s on their best behavior really better (philosophically speaking). Is autonomy not worth something.
These types believe autonomy is disruptive to their perfect utopia and the sooner we get on the bandwagon the less they’ll have to punish us for it
The problem is there will be tiers of rules. Rich people rules. Other people rules on behaviour….already is.
Unfortunately we’ve seen a lot of compliance with abhorrent cruelty in the last few years. Autonomy is more than “something”; It’s the only thing standing between a letter and the systemic genocide of an entire demographic.
Also, they have no way to learn from mistakes because a single mistake as a teen or young adult can mean an entire lifetime of consequences even if little to no harm was done. If you only do things out of fear without knowing the reason they’re bad, then you never learn why your impulses might be bad and eventually you’ll do something with much more severe consequences. This is why many kids raised in strict environments, like religion, stereotypically end up getting into so much trouble later in life. They have no experience with the real consequences, only the extreme, fabricated ones.
+1. Underrated point. We all need the freedom to make mistakes and learn and grow from them.
On top of this, now we can search through someone’s entire life for the worst thing they ever did or said. To use that against them. Maybe they run for political office. Maybe it’s to blackmail them for profit or for espionage. Maybe to get back at htem over a slight.
This is why autocrats and tyrannical governments love surveilence. Because it gives them power over those they surveil.
Okay bud, wire yourself for video and sound and stream it online 24/7 then. Being seen can always cost you something. Doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Sometimes what you’re doing is just embarrassing and you’d rather it not be recorded for posterity. People need to start getting their asses beat for voicing shitty opinions like this.
If that were the case then people would be so well behaved considering that people post everything to social media nowadays.
Or maybe this psychopathic piece of shit knows HE would behave if he was being monitored again proving that every accusation is really just a confession?
Doesn’t seem much different from citizens turning on their neighbors under various fascist regimes…
There are things outside morality that are subject to shame and judgement. But also freedom can be defined in the ability to make the choices others would like you not to. Mass surveillance aims to enable punishment of freedom.
And beyond all that, philosophically, there is no virtue without the capacity for vice. Integrity is often described as what you do when nobody’s watching.
Oh and this mass surveillance is already seriously fucking with everyone’s heads. So many people are living increasingly performatively. Between mass surveillance and social media it’s becoming more and more normal to feel this shame and self consciousness that impairs the ability to just live.
Maybe, but humans are less likely to socialize and be kind if they know they are being monitored.
Allegedly.
Funny. Clicking on the article asks me to disable my ad blocker. K. Who is this POS? And I’m curious if he stats any research here or is just trust me bro I’m rich vibes. In not that curious, I think we already know.
You children will grow to love the panopticon. They will learn their place and never question it, even in private, because there is no private anymore. They will never have any original thoughts or conversations because those lead to crimes. If you don’t want to commit crimes, then why are you not repeating the norms of the society we have created for you? Clearly you are formenting some criminal plot.
Against the wall citizen!
I think this is called dementia
No it’s sycophancy. He knows what he is saying, it’s an agenda he is pushing. One that benefits the rich. He is either that or thinks he will be looked after by them.
We all know that watching people makes them behave differently, so why does TechCrunch feel the need to remind me of that right now in particular?
What if it goes the other way? People do so much weird shit when they’re alone. I can imagine a timeline where nothing is off limits anymore, because all deviant behaviour becomes normalized.
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You can have both privacy and integrity. Humanity isn’t meant to be watched every hour of every day.
Essentially: Be a NPC, while i do the cool shit.
Great! Let’s put 24/7 webcams in his house, so he’ll perform spectacularly and we can get many more absolute banger ideas like this one!
I’m just doing what the man himself says: “Fighting for a world where the watching goes both ways.” But then, I suspect that when he said that he was thinking it’s “us versus the government”, and not “regular citizens versus billionaire tech-robber-barons”.
Why do these tech-bros always seem to act like the problem is government, and they’re somehow “fighting the good fight” no matter what they do? The problem is any powerful group with the power to steamroller others. And big business is at least as bad as big government.
Exactly, when you have as much power as a politician or c-level executive, you should be the first one to have every waking moment streamed online for anyone to see. Your bank accounts should be 100% public, and you should have to share your ID with 10 different companies just to buy a pack of tictacs. Why? Because everything you do will impact many, many people and you have incentives to lie, cheat, and steal.
Humans behave better when their basic needs are met
I wonder if he behaves better with a gun pointed at him 24/7…
he clearly hasn’t met me, I’m very confident I can do almost anything I can put my mind to, just so long as no one is watching and I don’t benefit from it :P I turn into a royal klutz under supervision