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The panopticon concept from Bentham was interesting because even if there was only a small chance that you might be observed, at any given time, then people would act as if they were being observed. Even if they weren't. We have had that kind of system, now, for just about everything. Not just from the Big Brother direction, but also the Little Brother direction. At any time, a mob of people might decide to pull up your old digital footprint and condemn you for it. Likewise, even before AI, at any time the IRS could decide to audit your past tax filings, or data breaches could expose your personal secrets, or street camera can nab you for a traffic violation, or someone could decide to pull up surveillance footage and get you for something, and so on. The exact degree of difference between the two systems is significant, but much of the marginal psychological burden of such things has already been paid by everyone living in industrial civilization. And, as with the panopticon, just the small chances of active monitoring already provided 80% of the sought-after result. Indeed, that kind of condition is what people like Ted Kaczynski were so bothered by decades ago. Those living in the epicenters of civilization, like those in the largest cities, have basically been under almost constant surveillance now for decades. |