"The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me."
I've made use of this technique on myself; I've got a concentration app that, when turned on, will make an abhorrent piercing noise if I go on Facebook/Twitter/Hackernews/ read RSS feeds / etc. It's helped me train myself to focus when I'm working.
I will grant that using this on someone else without their knowledge is more questionable, but I wanted to say that it's sometimes legitimate.
I will grant that using this on someone else without their knowledge is more questionable
If you set that alarm, you know why and what for you are conditioning yourself, and that is even true if you know how and why someone else set it; but when it's just a faceless event that you learn to adapt to, possibly while even having a narrative about it that has nothing to do with reality, that's not just slightly different or worse, for me that's worlds apart.
I've made use of this technique on myself; I've got a concentration app that, when turned on, will make an abhorrent piercing noise if I go on Facebook/Twitter/Hackernews/ read RSS feeds / etc. It's helped me train myself to focus when I'm working.
I will grant that using this on someone else without their knowledge is more questionable, but I wanted to say that it's sometimes legitimate.