Conditioned behavioral predictability turns people into controllable decorative elements

Evidence

However, in order for this “image” to persist, every part must have a static, controllable function. Frazier addresses this first by conditioning all of the members of Walden Two so that, although they are not literally static, they exhibit predictable behavior. In that regard, the members are not too different from the artificially intelligent “hosts” of the TV series Westworld, who believe they are acting of their own volition but are actually running a series of scripts and loops designed by humans they do not know. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 185

Categorization

• XREF: Reads Walden Two through Westworld’s host/creator schema; connects to the reader’s chapters on conditioned docility and the aesthetics of social engineering. — connects to: Ironized nostalgia merchandise functions as unconscious crowd control — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1844