Skinner’s behaviorist vision now wins acceptance that once triggered moral revulsion.

Evidence

Pentland’s academic credentials and voluble intelligence help legitimate a social vision that repelled and alarmed intellectuals, public officials, and the general public just decades ago. Most noteworthy is that Pentland “completes” Skinner, fulfilling his social vision with big data, ubiquitous digital instrumentation, advanced mathematics, sweeping theory, numerous esteemed coauthors, institutional legitimacy, lavish funding, and corporate friends in high places without having attracted the worldwide backlash, moral revulsion, and naked vitriol once heaped on Harvard’s outspoken behaviorist. This fact alone suggests the depth of psychic numbing to which we have succumbed and the loss of our collective bearings. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1333

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that identical social vision now passes unchallenged solely due to packaging and institutional legitimacy is a dense, paradigm-shifting observation about the normalization of surveillance.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘psychic numbing’ concept and connects to the book’s earlier chapters establishing behavioral surplus as an accepted economic form. — connects to: Skinner’s once-scorned behavioral control dream now attracts massive capital and state protection — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1210; Skinner showed animal behavior is conditioned by variable rewards and punishments — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 652; Skinner saw Enlightenment freedom values as impediments to behavioral science — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1207 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Skinner showed animal behavior is conditioned by variable rewards and punishments #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 652
• Skinner’s behaviorist utopia requires sacrificing liberal ideals for the good life #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1186
• Skinner saw Enlightenment freedom values as impediments to behavioral science #complicates (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1207
• Moral revulsion at cruelty is learned, not merely spontaneous #expands (0.75)
• Skinner’s behaviorism prefigured Pentland’s dismissal of the autonomous individual #expands (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1399