Aggregate Patterns: The Effects of Analyzing Human Behavior

-- By JeremyLee - 9 Oct 2020

I. Understanding Human Behavior and the Ability to Modify It

The ability to recognize patterns in human behavior has long been used to shape desired results. This tool, when applied effectively through technology, now holds the potential to shape modern society. The central theme of this essay is identifying certain types of human behaviors that can be modified and whether or not they should be. It will be assumed the choice of the mold is either (A) conditioned manipulation or (B) guided access to information and, therefore, freedom.

A similar choice was identified by acclaimed British author, Aldous Huxley, as economic or humanistic (*1) . Economic driven leaders (EDLs), it was argued, choose to focus effort on maximizing social "stability and uniformity," (*2) the ingredients necessary for the highest returns in a system of mass consumption. The modern tool of choice for today's EDLs seeking to maximize stability and uniformity is surveillance capitalism, (*3) where human behavior is systematically commodified for cash profit. Humanist driven leaders (HDLs), in contrast, strive for "a society which gives its members the greatest possible amount of individual liberty, but at the same time provides them with the most satisfying incentives to altruistic effort. . . ." (*4) These, Huxley argued, are the ingredients necessary for society to "consciously [tend] towards the realization of the highest human aspirations." (*5) A humanistic application of the same tool--systemic surveillance of human behavior--should be just as capable at providing guided access to information; information genuinely believed to improve, or at least maintain, quality of life for those who want it--freedom. Thus, devices that track human behavior and physiology can aggregate data and analyze patterns to predict and modify society for the better (humanist), or worse (economic).

II. The Choice of Shape for Society

A. Malevolent Control Through Conditioned Manipulation

Charming demagogues and learned business persons have known the power of propaganda and advertising for millennia("*"). Of particular importance here is the advent of commercial advertising and systemic analytics of the effect marketing campaigns have on consumer behavior. Prior to the deployment of the internet and development of surveillance capitalism, (*6) however, EDLs were relatively limited in the quality and quantity of data they could extract from consumers("*"). Based on specific tools like focus groups, rewards clubs, product registration, and more general metrics like understanding cultural values, the ability to predict or modify human behavior came with a margin of error("*"). That is, the accuracy in predicting consumer behavior was plus-or-minus X.

Internet connected devices and data mined from them have revolutionized what "margin of error" now means to EDLs. Many of the applications associated with devices are driven by algorithms designed to keep users engaged--and they work, well. This surveilled engagement provides modern EDLs a level of insight on human behavior and patterns exponentially more detailed and powerful than before. The question posed to further reduce that purest of bottom lines (i.e. margin of error) is no longer a team of humans asking, "based off these predictions, how many people will buy (into) this product (or idea)?," but is now algorithms, continuously calculating, in real time, "how many people aren't subscribing to these suggestions? Why? And what relentless adjustments will it take to produce the desired action?"

The unsettling answer to the algorithm's query is, as described by Huxley, "systematic conditioning of infant reflexes." (*7) EDLs, have already experimented with conditioning tools designed to alter moods of users. As intimate metrics about human patterns and behavior continue to accumulate by the millisecond, the accuracy and potency of tools like this will grant the keys to broader social conditioning. And the desired results of EDLs are bound to become more nefarious than mood alteration, especially as users become younger--social casting and the loss of conscious choice are easier to solidify when implemented from birth. Voting behavior, housing, school, job, marriage placements; all become prescribed for social stability and uniformity in the EDL's pursuit of eliminating margin of error completely.

B. Benevolent Guidance to Information and Freedom

The consequences of economic driven applications of modified behavior appear quite dire, but there is an alternative model--HDLs. Aggregated data analytics, when applied to intimate measurements of human patterns, has the potential to revolutionize what quality of life means to the individual and society as a whole. Medicine, in the physiological sense, has been, and continues to pursue this goal as a matter of course. Tests and studies are aggregated over time to produce a consensus that condition X is, or is likely caused by, Y. Devices tasked with tracking breathing, sleep, organs, food preference, comprehension, mood, social engagement, and other patterns, when aggregated and analyzed, enable individuals, if they so choose, to access guided information genuinely believed to maintain or improve quality of life. HDLs, paired with the same intimate metrics about human patterns and behavior accumulated by the millisecond, could, then, facilitate a society where individuals hold the keys to their future.

A basic premise for a working model of guided access to individual liberty and altruistic incentives is intrinsic human goodness, and, admittedly, the benefits of this model tend to become dizzying. For example, opting into a system, that, based on aggregate data notifies someone they fit a pattern associated with an imminent heart attack seems objectively good; whereas being notified one fits the pattern of imminently committing a violent crime may not be. Another example, straddling the line between good and bad, could be a notification that one fits the pattern of imminent suicide.

III. Conclusion

In sum, the shape society takes can be greatly affected by the drive of those in power. Whether it's economic or humanist driven, analysis and application of aggregate, intimate human patterns appears inevitable.

word count: 971

Sources:

These citations are not useful. Is the reader supposed to read an entire 700-page book to find out whether your claim about the content of the book is justified, and to what specific idea your were referring?

(*1) Aldous Huxley, “Science and Civilisation,” broadcast on the BBC National Programme, January 13, 1932.

(*2) Id.

(*3) SHOSHANA ZUBOFF, THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM (2018).

(*4) Huxley, supra note 1.

(*5) Id.

(*6) Zuboff, supra note 3.

(*7) Huxley, supra note 1.

("*") need source

The most significant absence from this draft, which is about behaviorism, is behaviorism. The draft behaves as though BF Skinner and his revolution either never existed or were merely a footnote to something Aldous Huxley said once on the radio. There is a similar absence of the entirety of social psychology from a discussion about the influence of minds on minds. It's as though Shoshana Zuboff invented the whole discipline the morning after Marx died and nothing else has been written since. I experience a slight ethical quandary every time I recommend it, but there is still no single better work than Elliot Aronson's The Social Animal for explaining the essence of what has gotten thought.

In short, I think the best route to improvement is to put the next draft in a richer intellectual context. You don't need to invent everything for yourself by the light of nature. The weakness of the conclusion, which does not really escape tautology. is a signal that you have spent too man of your words on devising the foundation, rather than adding your own ideas atop a century of quite vivid and most definitely existing thought.

When I said in September that "the machine is a behaviorist," I was registering my complete agreement with your proposition that a psychological theory has once again come to dominate our relationship to our computers. Recurrently, since we began this technological arc in the mid-20th century, we have built on the basis of a misinterpretation of our own image, in which we were building. Because we devised the structure and function of the new species-wide nervous system on a psychological theory that began by denying the existence of mind, we have wrapped ourselves in a new biology that erodes mind. The parasite, which is the silicon incarnation of the behaviorist deity, now shapes us in its image. But if you want to pose the questions with which that recognition leaves you, you need a deeper familiarity with the thinking that made it happen.

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