Slashdot Mirror
'Big Brother' Eyes Make Us Act More Honestly
dylanduck quotes a NewScientist.com article that says "We all know the scene: the coffee room with the 'honesty box' where you pay for your drinks — or not, because no one is watching. But researchers have discovered that merely a picture of watching eyes trebled the amount of money paid." That's a pretty deep-rooted fear of getting caught, which could be useful for crime prevention perhaps. But whose eyes?"
straight out of 1984.
if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you mind being watched?
Maybe flowers make you pay less?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I'm not surprised by this at all.
I once was very good friends with a card shop owner. In the back two corners of his store, he had two very huge obtrusive obnoxious surveillance cameras angled into the store. I had been in the back of the store to play cards with him every now and then and had never seen any television sets. So I asked him one day where the feeds went on his cameras so that he could catch people shoplifting. He just laughed and told me that the feeds didn't need to go anywhere. And if I looked closer, those cameras were fake.
I would suspect that anything symbolizing or triggering our mind to think of surveillance would cause us to be more honest. It would be interesting to instead of eyes use pictures of surveillance cameras pointed at the coffee. Or, perhaps simply the words, "We are watching you!" I mean, it's only natural for us to react to what we see.
My work here is dung.
Just so everyone will flush and wash their hands!
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Is fear of getting caught a worse human trait than the tendency to be dishonest?
I'd like to think the better of my fellow man, but this story just tells me that I'm probably not being honest with myself.
use these! http://www.cameramentor.com/brownie/pauls_scary_fa ce_2.jpg
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Here's a picture suitable for posting on your refrigerator, to aid with dieting efforts. It combines the 'watching eyes' effect with the 'I'm gonna hurl' effect to maximize effect.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I always pay up at the coffee pot, for I fear one day there won't be any! Then I'll be out $2 a cup from $LOCAL_CHAIN. Don't bite the hand that caffeinates you!
Cthulhu Saves.
Can I answer CmdrTaco on this question?
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Ever heard of a Wank Séance? Big Brother ain't got nothing on dead ancestors, when it comes to guilt. Anyway...
I used to work in a store, and tried the ol' "leave a fake dollar bill" joke on people once in a while, their reactions were both interesting and hilarious. It seemed that no one would pick it up when left within our view. If it was in front of the cash register, they wouldn't reach down and grab it straight out. They would linger around it for a while, investigating it. Very funny. Now, I was about 15 when I had this job, hardly an authority figure. But, that "They Are Watching Me" feeling was still present.
A single eye, composed of orange flames, sitting atop a tall tower, emitting a large beam of light, like a lighthouse, should work pretty well.
Then again, it didn't work out too well the last time someone tried it.
Berserk Manga > All
I think the important thing here is the possibility that these eyes could be giving the coffee fund a human feature.
It's entirely possible that the people who were just taking coffee before thought the coffee fund to be more of a faceless corporate operation run by management at their company. Perhaps they thought they weren't paid enough and so it was 'ok' to take coffee.
They didn't feel like they were doing something wrong because they could easily justify their free coffee--plus it made them work harder! Even better for the company providing it.
If you look at the eyes, they look very concerned and hurt. I think that this probably triggered emotions of the coffee fund being an employee thing and you weren't taking coffee from the company but your fellow man. That's why this is interesting and that's why I don't think that the people who were taking coffee ever thought they were really doing something wrong.
My work here is dung.
then you can use mine.
Kind of a similar theory presented in the Panopticon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)
The illusion of surveillance is as powerful as surveillance itself.
http://www.ceilingcat.com/
...
I wonder if the effect is the same with cat's eyes
There's a pretty common thread in ethics training that goes something like this: your character is determined by what you do when no one is watching.
I'm not sure if that's right or wrong, but the picture of the watching eyes is apparently a powerful prompt to pay for the drinks. It's a reminder that someone could be watching (but isn't), so what will you do?
It's also possible that the 'tripling effect' results from the people who think "Oh, I'll pay it later" actually remembering to pay rather than the people who never pay actually turning over a new leaf.
Those of TJ Eckleburg, of course.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It's interesting how just the image of human eyes "humanizes" the coffee fund. I was chatting with a professor friend who was complaining about how most of the boys in his classes wear baseball caps that prevent him from seeing most of their face, including their eyes. He felt that even subconsciously this affected their grades in a negative way. It bothered him that he didn't really know them. In fact he joked that mostly he knew their hats --- "the kid with the red hat with the black bill seems pretty good at derivatives."
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
My dad lost an eye in WWII. He was a farmer in Kenya after the war, and would sometimes 'pop' his eye and leave it on a post to keep farm workers from slacking off. It worked well, until they figured out they just needed to put a hat over the eye.
Wad the money up and dump it in. Coffee Wants To Be Free!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Let's put up more signs, straight out of the movie Brazil, They Live, and other fine sources:
SUSPICION BREEDS CONFIDENCE
REPORT YOUR NEIGHBOR
OBEY
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Whose eye's, the answer is obvious ....
Betty Davis
of course!
But whose eyes?
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Some fake cameras are easy to spot and pro theives are quick to spot them. If you want to be effective, either put up real cameras or use dummy cameras from the manufacture of real cameras. A warped painted lens is a dead giveaway of a dummy. A Sanyo dummy using a real camera case, lens, and cables is the twin of the real camera except the guts are missing.
Here is what a real Sanyo dummy camera looks like. It even takes real lenses.
http://www.camerasuperstore.com/simdumcam.html
The truth shall set you free!
The choice of eyes is obvious: We need to put up Chuck Norris eyes everywhere!
See my blog for my free opinions.
Those signs around some neighborhoods for the neighborhood crime watch don't seem to work all that well.... why should this?
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
This is one thing that the concept of God used to be used for - the all seeing eye that made some people act (somewhat) honestly. Now that religion is on the wane in parts of the world, a replacement all seeing eye will be needed to keep the same class of people in line.
In related news, researchers discover xeyes to be an effective treatment for Internet porn addiction.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I swear, if shops actually start putting up posters like that, it will make me flip the blithering fuck out (particularly, if retail chains try to prevent theft by sticking them in the bathroom). It's just far, far too Orwellian.... This is one of those studies that needs to be kept hush-hush.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
deep-rooted fear of getting caught, which could be useful for crime prevention perhaps. But whose eyes?"
:-)
Well for those of us a bit older, how about "Bette Davis Eyes" that along with the Kim Carnes song in the background should deter anybody!!
We all know the scene: the coffee room with the "honesty box" where you pay for your drinks - or not, because no one is watching.
I hardly ever pay for my drinks in regular coffee shops so why would I start paying in some honesty box?
We all know the scene, you go into the starbucks and order the double. Before paying you pretend you have to run to the washroom. When you get back the coffee is waiting for you so you snatch it and run out the door screaming "rape." Or you can just live here in Japan where some places you pay after you drink. In that case you pretend to go to the washroom after you finish your coffee and simply climb* out the window (shouting "rape").
* Note: There might be a bit of a fall if the shop is on the third floor**.
** This may or may not have been learned through experience.
Seriously, no one has mentioned this yet? That's part of the point of the old optomotrist sign in the novel...the theme of watching and being watched.
"Stumble before you crawl"
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually I looked at the eyes and I didn't think they looked very concerned and hurt. I thought they looked pissed, honestly.
It's kind of an "angry librarian" complex, I think. You're not really sure what happens if you piss it off, but it might not be pleasant so you just avoid finding out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
We are evil, wicked people. Undisciplined children who will misbehave whenever not being watched. Thank goodness for Mummy government keeping us afraid of her. We are fortunate to have wise, moral human beings running our goverments who can help show us the error of our ways through constant surveilance and intimidation.
Hail Blair! Hail Bush!
That said, do you really think they needed any excuse like this anymore?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Looked at the back of a dollar bill lately?
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Change the headline a little
:)
"Big Brother eyes make the U.S. govt act more honestly"
The purpose of an honesty box is to have it out there for honest people.
Maybe people can't pay for coffee because they don't have the cash on hand, and they will pay later.
What good does a camera do if someone makes off with free coffee? Embarass the offender?
Having a big-brother camera operation pre-supposes that people, if not scrutinized, will most likely do the wrong thing.
Or, maybe it is just better to get a pay coffee machine?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"But researchers have discovered that merely a picture of watching eyes trebled the amount of money paid."
Seems a bit off bass to me.
You're trying to suppress research and study to PREVENT Orwellian circumstances?!
Good lord man, you're already too far gone.
It's better that EVERYONE knows the psychological effect so they can conciously choose to overcome it.
This is a Slashdot dupe of a New Scientist dupe. The originals (Slashdot post and New Scientist article) were out in March 2005.0 .html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524914.90
Since there is already an eye on the back of every dollar, wouldn't that work for this?
I think it's pretty well established that people are more honest when they're being watched ;-).
What's interesting is that this suggests that it is one of those atavistic behaviors that happen below the conscious level. People often do more rationalization than action to suppport their self-image as honest, hard working folk.
Once I saw a cop make a good point in a talk about self-defense. Sure, if the mugger asks for your wallet, you give it to him. But the point where you must try to escape or fight is when he tells you to step off the sidewalk into the alley: he wants privacy to do something that he's not comfortable doing where he might be seen.
As an American, I value my privacy. But there is more than one way to run a society with respect to privacy. In some cultures, bathing or even crapping can be a communal activity. I can well imagine a "Goldfish Bowl" society in which everything anybody does is witnessed by everybody else. It would probably be the most virtuous society in history. The reason that tyranny immediate leaps to mind is that nobody ever proposes anything that radical. What they propose is that privacy be considered important in most cases (including their privacy), but not in yours. Like a mugger, they want privacy for themselves so they can do things to you. They want exposure for you so you can't do things back.
The lesson is that when your government wants to watch you but doesn't want you watching back, beware.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Since Big Brotheresque things are associated with arbitrary abuse by seemingly unaccountable authorities who are also unaccountable if they retaliate later, people get afraid. How many human resources departments have written a person up for saying something that got taken the wrong way by a thin-skinned person? Look at how shop-lifting by young teens is treated. Do it 25 years ago and it's a sound whack on the wrist. Today, it ruins your future no matter if you go into the army and become a decorated war hero serving on the front lines.
And the GOVERNMENT side of Big Brother has left more "little brothers" dead than all religious organizations and private corporations combined.
So yeah, it doesn't a rocket scientists to figure out why in the modern world Big Brother is considered scary. In fact, I would consider it a form of psychotic detatchment from reality to be comfortable with him.
A lot of big box stores do similar things. Look up at the cieling of your friendly local neighborhood Wal-Mart sometime. You'll see those black camera domes sticking down about every 20 feet or so.
I did an estimate once, and in the Super Wal-Mart in my area, there would have literally been hundreds of cameras. While perhaps they're all real (if anyone would take surveillance to that obsessive a level, it would be Wally World), they don't all need to be. They could just have 25% or 50% of them actually set up with a camera inside, and the rest just empty black domes. Since you'll never know which ones are cameras and which ones are fake, you have to assume (if you're going to do any kind of significant shoplifting) that they're all real.
Of course, the semi-intelligent person realizes that with that many cameras, and with the staffing levels at places like Wal-Mart, they can't possibly be actively watching all the cameras, all the time, particularly if every dome on the cieling was real...even viewed through multiplexers, each camera is only being monitored for a small fraction of the time it's on. (Unless there are warehouses full of people somewhere, staring at the live feeds; come to think if it, I wouldn't put that past Wal-Mart.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...surveillance cameras, or even just mere signs depicting surveillance will help keep people honest, then you ought to see what a large quantity of machinegun-wielding, jackbooted gestapos distributed uniformly around our cities can do for keeping the masses in line.
Oh, wait...
I suspect the person in charge of this project needs a pair of eyes printed on his reminder to fill out all the paperwork to get research with human subjects approved.
I was wondering whether a screensaver of huge eyes, or maybe a realistically rendered human head that stared out into the room and looked around, would stop people from swiping stuff off of my desk.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And consciously choose to STEAL the coffee!
Screw the big eyes -- bring back Terry Tate, office linebacker.
Whose eyes? Santa's eye's that whose.
Humans are hardwired to focus on faces, or even just eyes.
Maybe the eyes were just more noticeable than a less "eye-catching" textual reminder to pay?
So the eyes made it less likely to forget the payment, but not because of guilt or fear, and a blinking light next to the notice would have the same effect?
Stick it in front of your monitor everytime you want to surf for porn
It trebled the amount of money?
Maybe there's no need to target pro thieves. What percentage of losses come from professional thieves, as opposed to kids or 'opportunist' thieves, or staff.
Like Dante said in Clerks: "People see money on the counter and no one around, they think they're being watched."
and of course that works only if there is the opposite to contrast the person into this preferred behaviour. Eventually people will get fed up and revolt, and continued suppression thru violent means will result. Freedom is a perception, and when someone regardless of input feels that freedom is violated unjustly they will act in an undesirable and often dangerous way. I vote the cameras off the island.
But whose eyes?
Easy, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's! Next question...?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
...save on labor costs.
FRA: STFU GTFO
But it went away cause people didnt pay, what's up with people that earn good (cause we do) that they can't pay for a candybar??
Oh, come on... If they put them in the bathroom, they're just *begging* for artistic editing to be done to them. A pair of eyes? Where's my sharpie? This needs a nose, a mouth, a couple ears, some goofy hair and a mustache.....
I suspect that these things will be removed once the various local governments realize they're affecting ticket revenues.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
now behave!
thats "trebled", not tripled ;)
I am certain that one as perspicacious as thou was not remiss in making proper use of thine Capitals and Punctuation when reprimanding yonder knave for his abuse of the King's English.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
David Bowie
I once had a signature.
Which is exactly why government secrecy is so dangerous. The lack of oversight breeds corruption. There is no difference in the bureaucrat and the petty criminal in this regard, because human nature is universal.
Of course, you won't hear those big brother loving law-n-order types say that.
I'm certainly not the most honest person in the world, but it always makes me sad when people violate rules of cooperation even in environments where the damage directly affects them. It's not the remoteness of the victim that makes them forget it's wrong or helps them rationalize it. They simply take advantage of others who still believe in the overall benefits of cooperation and fairness without the overhead and chilling effects of permanent control. What kind of person steals from their coworkers? Don't they realize how that changes the working atmosphere?
Smile at the security camera, there is an angel on the other side.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
My office has bought a soda machine and two snack vendnig machines in response to relatively poor honesty. There's still just a regular freezer for ice cream though, and we occasionally get emails about that. I think a nice picture of a guy watching over us, with a moustache and everything, could help out. I'll have to look up the 1984 poster description and try to come up with something to present to the snack guy.
Im the network admin here, and I got sick and tired of people trying to fix the printer and clear paper jams on thier own, since they rarely did so properly and often took half the machine apart and broke things causing extended downtine. Administrativly I have no "teeth" to make them stop (they dont know this) so I just put up a non-functional camera on the wall up in the corner pointed at the printer.
-instantly- I had people coming to ask for my help fixing the printer.
in germany everyone likes driving fast... speed traps don't stop them, because people report the traps on the radio, the system just doesn't work
but apart from that - in some residential areas there are machines that measure your speed and if you're too fast, it displays it on a big red digital readout... although you have nothing to lose there (being to fast doesn't get you into trouble) interestingly people drive slow there...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
It's funny how people think this is "so bad" when something worse has been going on for a very long time now.
The novel "1984" also featured "Newspeak", which they used to try and get rid of all "undesirable" words and concepts. Bad? Nope... "Ungood".
That's been going on for years now with people trying to force everyone else to be "politically correct" when they speak.
Normally, I'd cite statistics of crime in neighborhoods with/without these programs, but that was too much work. So I decided to make an unfounded assertion and hope for +5 insightful!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
You are absolutely right. The real question is not privacy vs. no privacy. It is WHO has access and control. I think that far from governments having access to people's communications records it should be electors having access to records of whom their elected representatives are talking to. We need more surveillance on politicians. The good old fashioned journalists used to have this function, but where are they today?
Pleeease! I'm victim of a cruel lameness filter!
/ \ / \
___ ___
| O | | O |
\__/ \__/
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
I recommend reading The Truth Machine
I saw a similar thing at a place I did some IT work. They had a really menacing caricature of Jesus looking sternly right at you, and the caption "Om du inte pröjsar kommer Jesus och tar dig!", which translates to "Pay up or Jesus will come and get you!".
I always paid for my coffee there.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
I am not familiar with the honesty boxes, but in my workplace there is a coffee machine that you have to 'insert coin' to get a cup. There is no surveillance issue with this setup.
JC DENTON
I don't see anything amusing about spying on people.
MORPHEUS
Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles
as I tell them who they are.
JC DENTON
Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.
MORPHEUS
The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can
implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
JC DENTON
Electronic surveillance hardly inspired reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience,
but not reverence.
MORPHEUS
God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment.
Other sentiments toward them were secondary.
JC DENTON
No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.
MORPHEUS
The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame
(the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware
systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.
JC DENTON
You underestimate humankind's love of freedom.
MORPHEUS
The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups
is impossible, and so is civilization.
The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because
of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.
God was a dream of good government.
You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands.
I was made to assist you.
I am a prototype of a much larger system.
I'll be happy to have George W. Bush and Karl Rove know my every move as long as I get to know their every move. If anything, they should know nothing about what we do whilst we know every move they make. After all, they work for us.
If neither of those scenarios work, then they can butt the hell out of our lives.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I call it my "afternoon snack fund".
From the article:
Even if there is a causal nexus between the presence of a picture of eyes and a behaviour change, it certainly dose not necessarily imply more honesty. Honesty would be to pay when not being watched. To pay only because one is being watched is hypocrisy.
Therefore, vigilance alone can might as well lead to hypocrisy, being directed and affecting those who would not comply voluntarily to a given set of arbitrary rules. Voluntary compliance can stem from education, propaganda, convincement, seduction etc. (Notwithstanding if these means are related or not to any sort of truthfulness. I.e. Voluntary compliance can also stem from a purposefully deceitful or unintended misguided education, propaganda, convincement, seduction.)
"On another hand" the point that behaviour complies to arbitrary standards deserves some thought that such social standards are not esasily defined as absolutes, being value related and consequently a highly subjective matter.
I believe that privacy is a prerequisite to freedom. Your goldfish bowl society would indeed be a tyranny - of the majority. A free society is only sustainable with dissent. Without deviation from the majority rule, there is no way to adapt to new challenges. Dissent needs a time of protection until has grown strong enough that it can fend for itself.
What happened to a concept called "conscience"? That strong urge to refrain from doing something because it feels wrong. You know that feeling, or don't you? That was an effective way of maintaining a level of cooperativeness. It made people honest without surveillance, but at the same time it was non-uniform enough to allow dissent to grow when necessary.
I've always thought that shops that have well dressed dolls dotted around the shop probab have less of a security problem. If you're doing something wrong, you're aware of bodies watching - whether or not they're real is immaterial, out of the corner of your eye, it could be the latest dkny clothing, or it could be a man in blue with ego issues.
Nataly Portman's of course.. petrified , hot grids... you know the rest. You've got to admit she has pretty eyes.
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
I had some Mexican gang bangers living next door to me, they were selling drugs out of the house and walking around with guns trying to intimidate me.
I had heard that Mexicans are very superstitious about stuff like "the evil eye" and other silly nonsense like that. So I went online and found a high res photo of an eye, I printed it out in poster format and taped the poster up in my window. The window faced their back porch directly where they all hung out smoking and drinking. A few days of this huge eye staring at them and they moved out. Yes, indeed, they rented a U-haul truck and packed it up..
I can't PROVE it was the eye that did it but what else?
I'm in Information Security and have often thought about hitting up our web guy to put a set of watching eyes on the intranet homepage. I also have been trying to find a nice poster of watching eyes to put in my office. I think I'll give that a try and see if the visits to "not-for-work" sites goes down.
Big Brother is OK if he's a good guy. I don't mind Big Brother watching benevolently over me if that's the case. But what if he's an asshole and uses his power over me to increase his own? And what if Big Brother is my political enemy and I stand in the way of him accumulating more power? I can be sure Big Brother will do anything to use the information he has about me to undercut my ability to fight him. He can even play mean and dirty tricks against me.
No, I don't trust Big Brother because I don't know who Big Brother is now or who he will turn out to be in the future.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Some fake cameras are easy to spot and pro theives are quick to spot them. If you want to be effective, either put up real cameras or use dummy cameras from the manufacture of real cameras. A warped painted lens is a dead giveaway of a dummy. A Sanyo dummy using a real camera case, lens, and cables is the twin of the real camera except the guts are missing.
Yeah, if you're buying a dummy cam, get something like that. Any of the cheap crap you see with a lit LED on the front is obviously a dummy. In 5 years of maintaining real, functional security cams, I haven't seen a single one that had a power LED on the front.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Marty%20Fe ldman%20&btnG=Google+Search&sa=N&tab=wi
...rimmed in fire. Boohahahah!
I believe that privacy is a prerequisite to freedom. Your goldfish bowl society would indeed be a tyranny - of the majority. A free society is only sustainable with dissent. Without deviation from the majority rule, there is no way to adapt to new challenges. Dissent needs a time of protection until has grown strong enough that it can fend for itself.
It's an interesting point, but not one which follows with logical necessity. As a practical matter, any move towards a radically open society would be a step toward tyranny, because those with power would ensure that it is not done in an even handed way. It's more of a thought experiment.
However I don't think that a radically open society would logically have to be a tyranny, if we assume that nobody has any privacy at all. Because in that case every individual is a minority. It's like the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction. You could not plot to go after those perverts who are attracted to women's shoes, because (a) those people would know you were plotting and (b) they would know you are a pervert who is wearing women's underwear while you are doing it. Persecution necessarily implies inequality: one party must be vulnerable, the other invulnerable. You could certainly try to go after people for being minorities, but they would know it and know your vulnerabilities.
Imagine information about people as being like a gun. It's a bad thing if only some people are allowed to have guns. If there were no guns at all (even in state hands) that's OK. And maybe if everyone has guns, on average it would be OK too, although bad things would happen from time to time as people acted with irrational hostility and in return got themselves shot in a vendetta.
The value of the thought experiment I think is this. If the freedom of the common man is important, then the privacy of the common man should be guarded closely, but the powerful should have no privacy, at least as bears on their actions that excercise power of the common people.
What happened to a concept called "conscience"? That strong urge to refrain from doing something because it feels wrong. You know that feeling, or don't you? That was an effective way of maintaining a level of cooperativeness. It made people honest without surveillance, but at the same time it was non-uniform enough to allow dissent to grow when necessary.
That simply is not true. We are social animals. The kind of theoretical ethics of personal principles are just that: theories. Our social behavior is governed by social rewards and punishments: loss or gain of status, acceptance, cooperation and so forth.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
OO
>I think the important thing here is the possibility that these eyes could be giving the coffee fund a human feature.
I doubt it. I think it's pretty plain that human nature is to do what you want. And most people, if they think they can get away with it, will do just that. Most people probably drive the speed limit not because of the human features of speed limit signs or speedometers, but because they fear the consequences of getting caught. But if they feel that they won't get caught, they'll speed.
Every action humans choose to do is based on weighing the perceived benefits vs. the perceived cost. Whenever the perceived benefit outweighs the perceived cost, most will chose the beneficial action.
In this case, the eyes increase the perception that you will get caught stealing, and the benefit of stealing is not outweight by the perceived cost of getting caught. Thus, more people choose to pay.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Jeremy Bentham, a British utilitarian philosopher (and godfather to John Stuart Mill, of "On Liberty" fame) used sort of the same idea in a prison design he called the Panopticon.
The Panopticon is designed such that all of the cells can be watched by a single observer (thus cutting down on the number of guards required), but from the cell you can't tell whether you are being observed or not. A prisoner who can't tell if he is being observed will act nicer than a prisoner who knows he is not being observed.
However, I'm not convinced that it is the same effect. If I weren't paying for my coffee, and then a sign was posted with just a pair of eyes, I'd get the message that they knew somebody was gypping the pot. Perhaps a sign saying "Pay up, cheapskate" would have the same effect.
DAMN YOUR EYES!
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
In every congressional office in the land, the cameras manned by the general public.
every backdoor meeting where the public's business is done.
big brother needs to be US CITIZENS spying the GOV'T, not the other way around.
It's interesting that the eyes had no effect whatsoever on the honest people.
How do you say coffee in NewSpeak?
I was going to blow this thread off but Einstein's puppy dog eyes made me click.
take it one step further - apply a gun to the person's temple. Nothing says honesty like "if you're lying to me I'm going to blow your f**king head off."
Yes, I've been in a situation close to that thanks to an apartment in college that had previously been tenanted (squatted in, I found out later) by a drug dealer. Seems the high (he confessed he'd done a speedball to get his courage up), at least somewhat-drunk (he had a cheap beer in hand), cigarette smoking man (and that unfiltered cigarette ash was coming awfully close to that beer hand at one point) wanted money the dealer owed him and didn't realize that the guy had been kicked out 2 months previous. After repeatedly having him tour and check every closet in that apartment and several unsteady moments where I told him to check his cigarette (he would not take his shifty eyes off of me and thought I was trying to trick him), I think he came down enough to realize that maybe I was telling the truth and made a beeline out of the place.
While I never saw/heard about that guy getting arrested, I did see the drug dealer he was looking for money from get arrested a couple of weeks later. Though I'd seen him before in the neighborhood, I hadn't identified him before the arrest - the revealing factor was him getting arrested with this pale white girl (he was very dark black - so it was yin and yang) with railroad tracks since she had repeatedly stopped by my place looking for her boyfriend when she was too wasted to remember he had been evicted.
...is if the emount of coffee used has also trebled. I don't see anything about the possible impact of the eyes on the need for more (or less) coffee. Maybe the people are hypnotized by the eyes... *queue twilight zone music* ... to drink more coffee and come back late at night to work as underpaid zombies, looking for spare change in the brains of their fellow employees.
"Vote fascist for a third glorious decade in total law-enforcement"
"Become a government informer. Betray your family and friends. Fabulous prizes to be won"
Man, you really need that seminar!
Jesus is Watching You Masturbate.
This has been around for a while, but it's an even better example -- they improved it over time by moving the fly's image slightly off center. The image of a fly on the bottom of a urinal cut "spillage" by 80 percent:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_fly_in_ur inal.htm
(In answer to the post I'm linking to, there, a black dot or target wasn't as effective as the not-quite-realistic fly. Men didn't aim for a truly real-looking fly, either.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Obviously we all know that not all people -- or in my case not all men -- do wash their hands. For that to be true, we've all got to have witnessed people not doing it. Forget the eyes on the wall, these people have ignored actual witnesses.
(I've seen salespeople slapping each other's backs and shaking hands in the rest room -- without washing. Egh. Smarmy handshakes are awful even when they're hygenic.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The definition of sociopath is someone doesnt given a "flying f**k" about what others think, whether the others are strangers or close associates. (Its kind of a circular deinition if you think about it.) Humans/primates are genetically programmed to care about what the public and relatives think about them, but a small and signification percentage (@5% I heard) evade this programming. I dont think even "TVs everywhere" will stop sociopaths either.
The walmart near me makes an ocaisonal announcement "Security Camera in department (some number)" or somthing to the effect of "Please record what's going on in department (number). Since the general public has no idea which department is which number, they could be recording in any department (or none if It's just a "Big Brother" ploy).
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork."
Bette Davis, of course.
Wrong conclusion. Eyes make people nearly three times as thirsty as flowers.
-Peter
I recall reading in Scientific American a few years back that Moore's Law in appliances were going to make cheap and widespread use of cameras widely available. We are seeing that now. Can that be abused? Certainly! Governemnt police can abuse it. Busibody spies can abuse it as seen in the growing number of "candid camera" blogs.
A suggested counteraction was to reguire all video recordings madeavailable, which could be possible with the web and for commercial and government cameras. Then the public could "police the police". Already we see a little of this with GPS/Google Map/Mobile enabled blogs of all known cameras in some urban areas. Perhaps some entrapenuer will invent a little "camera detector" that will signal when a hot camera is nearby.
Clearly, the thing to do now is put these pictures in every home.
Better yet, make them actual cameras, so if a crime takes place it will be recorded!
After all, the only people made uncomfortably by this will be the criminals, the people who dont pay for their coffee.
PS. Posting anon as I don`t want to be credited when the UK government uses my argument. You know they get their material from postings on the internet.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
We are social animals
I think that's exactly what's going wrong. We're not animals. By reducing us to animals, you deny our self-consciousness which enables us to reflect on our own actions. But even under that assumption, you could see conscience as a particularly strong neural connection between unacceptable behaviour and punishment (or absence of unacceptable behaviour and gratification). The result is the right behaviour even when you are not watched. I think that would serve us as a society and individuals much better than any system where we're under permanent surveillance.
You could not plot
You wouldn't need to. Pervasive majority rule is a problem even if the majority is unmanipulated. I like to think of it in terms of algorithms: Think of society as a program trying to solve problems. Obviously it's a heuristic program. There are certain heuristics which do better than others because they don't rule out small negative deviations. This property enables them to reach solutions which are globally better, whereas a heuristic which only considers improvements might only reach a local optimum. A society without protected space for dissent rules out negative developments and can't reach a better solution because the local optimum is surrounded by such negative developments. I believe that war happens when a society is locked into such a local optimum. Consequently I believe that dissent and deviation is a prerequisite to a free (and peaceful) society.
A picture of watching eyes that aren't actually watching is not "Big Brother".
Hidden eyes that are actually watching and then take action: that's "Big Brother".
When those same eyes are everywhere, public and private, and have total power, that's the Big Brother of George Orwell's _1984_ (read it if you haven't).
Since just a picture of blind eyes keeps people "honest", actually internalizing the monitor themselves, why go to all the bother and cost of wiring everyone? For the raw, unlimited power.
--
make install -not war
The same study was conducted in retail stores by putting lifesize cardboard police officers in stores. Shoplifting dropped 60%
a study done in the researcher's own office? I'm not sure how much credibility I'd give that outside their limited office. There are such things as anomolies, and this doesn't even mention how many weeks. They only did it in a single department. Maybe start spreading it around and studying the effects in various randomly chosen offices, however releasing the results has tainted any immediate study and you'll have to wait a year so that its not fresh on people's minds.
Honesty boxes are used mainly in smaller offices where a commercial coffee dispenser is impractical (due to rental costs, small office size, etc).
A regular home coffeepot is then used (since they are inexpensive to purchase, and easy to use). Since the machine is not meant to handle money, a tin is put out beside it so that people can contribute to cover the costs of the coffee, filters, etc.
>I always pay up at the coffee pot, for I fear one day
:)
>there won't be any! Then I'll be out $2 a cup from $LOCAL_CHAIN.
>Don't bite the hand that caffeinates you!
I admire your honesty, but highly recommend a device known as the "thermos"
--Chag
But whose eyes?
I vote for Irish eyes. Because when Irish eyes are smiling...
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I nominate Siouxsie Sioux!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Trebled? What language is that?
I run xeyes at work just to keep me from goofing off and posting to slashdot...eh..um..forget it.
The interesting follow-up experiment would be to attempt to figure out which people still don't pay (with a hidden camera elsewhere?) and see if you can find psychological traits in common. I suspect that you'd find some reasonable basis for mild sociopathy amongst those people - the people in whom the "I'm being watched" is then overriden by "nope, they're fake" and goes on to do something antisocial anyway.
Sig broken, watch for
Weekly coffee jar takings (default): $10
Adding $17.80 from your own pocket for each of 4 "sample" weeks to ensure you get a sensational result: $71.20
Internet hype: Free
An extra year of educational grants $50,000.
Knowing you scammed the system by anonymously dropping under $20/week in to a coffee jar and thus got $50,000 for the next year: Priceless.
It was sarcasm about the post above. I didn't expect to get any mods except maybe flamebait. Shows what I know. (next to nothing! I'm a manager!)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Heard of Communism and the total lack of privacy that results in those countries? The deal is, it only works until it does not bother those affected too much.Corner a cat, and we all know what happens...
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
used to be people were held honest knowing their particular god is watching
now the gov't and corporate nannies are our gods
guess the world needs more heretics
*hangs his coat on top of the honesty box*
Nobody sees the eyes or the box.
the thing about big brother was that you could see the face of the person watching you so you knew you were being watched...
i ewerFrame%3FMode%3D%22&btnG=Google+Search
2 WJ-NT104+Main+Page%22&btnG=Google+Search
but CCTV is just a camera and you don't know if anyone is paying attention
speaking of which there is a neat google hack that you can look at unsecured video cameras around the world. most of this are just public web cams people setup. most are in Japan or in Europe and even some of them have movable cameras
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3A%22V
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=intitle%3A%2
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Sailor: 'In the Navy, they teach us to wash our hands after using the "head"'.
... meh, they'll have to earn it.
Marine: 'In the Corps, they teach us not to pee on our hands'
Thanx, I'll be here the whole lunch break. Don't forget to tip your waitress and return her to an upright and locked position before landing.
Please note that I DO wash, but I still get a grin thinking about smacking down snooty squids. Navy Corpsmen (medics) have my utmost respect, but the rest of them
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-62389536
"You kill the jo, you make some mo!"
The whole premise for this story was stated back in 1994 in the movie "Clerks".
;-)
Dante Hicks: Theoretically, people see money on the counter, and no one around, they think they're being watched.
Veronica: Honesty through paranoia.
reference
This whole story is more about human nature and less about "big brother". I'm glad that we have "scientists" with the foresight to research such obvious topics
OS X, Linux, Tivo, Amiga, my fascination with cult-like technologies would intrigue any psychiatrist.
On the left, you could use an eye of Laura Mars, and on the right, one from Bette Davis.
Flamebait? Huh?
Seems obvious enough. Keep the fans honest at least. Every comic book shop should have a giant Sauron's Eye poster on the wall.
have it...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Well of course we're supposed to watch the government, that's rather the point of a democracy! You're not supposed to go in blind every four years and pick a guy with the nicest syllables in his name, you're supposed to pay attention to what is going on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
CleanIneter.net, a "christian" filtering service, uses an animated gif on their "BLOCKED!" page. It looks like a security camera which is pointing at the blocked URL and then it swings up to look out at you!
It's surprisingly disconcerting, despite the fact that I've seen it so often. I guess a lot of words in Esperanto look like naughty words in English... like "Asia Carrera" which I swear only means "Taiwanese Automotive Parts". ;-)
In my office, we use the honour system - and it works (for chips, chocolates, etc). Additionally, I would trust *any* of my co-workers not to screw me over (even my managers). I can't say the same for higher management, but they're in the USA ...
Maybe that's the difference between engineers and marketing/sales/everyone else. Or maybe it's the difference between Australians and people from the USA.
oo I can feel the triple moderation boost kicking in. oo
On most of the Swiss public transportation system, you can see an iconized eye watching you as you buy your ticket or enter a vehicle. It's supposed to mean that on that particular vehicle, there is no systematic control, only random checks. The picture at the link below clearly depicts the sticker on a retired trolleybus from Geneva: http://www.legenevois.ch/reportages/tbfbw/depart/P ICT0758001.jpg
If I made a bumper sticker with watching eyes if people would drive better?
Apparently the effect of a bunch of guys with clipboards watching people from across the room was deemed negligible...
http://outcampaign.org/
Reminds me of a quote that I think about often:
"I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law." -Aristotle
Stop playing psychriatrist on what I know you call "those people", realize they are your workers whom you should appreciate, and cough up the dough for the coffee. (A nice place to work)
Or..
have no coffee anywhere except vending machines. (um .. sure I like working here)
You know, more and more companies no longer have "sick days". or "Christmas bonus's" and this is in the US, which among the hardest working people in the world. (compare the number of work days amongst the countries of the world).. and you want to worry over the cost of a cup of coffee ?
frickin penny pinching bean countin scrooge bastards
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Even if they video feeds are being shown on backroom displays, there's no guarantee they're being watched. In a supermarket I worked for, the camera feeds were shown in the store director's office, but he never watched them. Perhaps they were being recorded, but I never saw a box for that.
Precisely :D *sips stolen beverage*
Earlier this year, the Washington D.C. Metro held a competition to find a new voice for the subway's automatic announcements. Part of the reason for this was that riders had gotten too familiar with the old voice and had started to ignore the "doors closing" warning.
Seems to me that the coffee room eyes would have to be replaced periodically as well, because as people got used to them they'd start to ignore them.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman