Awareness of being observed by peers and your social group absolutely inhibits the expression of non-conforming behavior. Anyone who has lived in a small town – where everybody knows everybody else and where individual behavior is observed by so many others who can report that behavior to parents or friends —knows the forces that inhibit non-conforming behavior.
There are numerous anthropological case studies (e.g. the "sexual revolution" in the US brought about by the automobile, the breakdown of marriage patterns among the Sami due to the snowmobile) that show the relationship between anonymity and freedom to express non-conforming opinions and behaviors. The real question is whether or not mass surveillance by the government has the same effect. I would really doubt it - despite the Washington Post report. I would expect to see similar kinds of self-censorship among "friends" in social media, but not among "strangers" in that same context. In fact I would expect that "strangers" would exhibit extreme non-conforming, antisocial, behavior. davew On Tue, Mar 29, 2016, at 12:55 PM, glen wrote: > On 03/29/2016 11:05 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote: > > Thought you guys would be interested in this: > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/28/mass-surveillance-silences-minority-opinions-according-to-study/ > > Is it right to say that mass surveillance _causes_ the silencing? It > seems to me that our tendency to conform is the cause. Then the cause[s] > of that tendency [is|are] probably occult, where some will yap about > things like group selection and others about ontogeny (education, > demographics, etc). I assume that various generations vary in their > tendency to conform. (We just watched Experimenter the other night: > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3726704/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 , which suggests > it's robust across lots of conditions.) So, perhaps the relationship > between (recognition of) mass surveillance and self-censorship is simply > a symptom of a deeper cause. > > -- > ⇔ glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
