This Company Wants to Help Your Boss Monitor Your Brainwaves at Work | Hacker News Reader

This Company Wants to Help Your Boss Monitor Your Brainwaves at Work

vice.com

50 pointselorant30 comments

"Electroencephalograms (EEG) use electrodes, small metal discs that communicate with brain cells when placed on the scalp, paving a path to several kinds of information. When used in lab environments, the electrodes interact with stress hormones to create a measure of a person’s stress level. The brain also sends out electromagnetic waves of various types that correlate with attention and alertness, picked up by EEG."

Journalism. Sigh.

Not journalism... Vice.

Yeah, to be clear, while Vice isn't inherently terrible, they're not generally considered to be fact-focused. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ does a good job of placing them with their lean and accuracy.

>while Vice isn't inherently terrible, they're not generally considered to be fact-focused.

Nonfactual reporting is inherently terrible...

> Factless reporting is inherently terrible...

This is a mis-representation of what I said as well as of the reference I'd provided (and your "Nonfactual reporting" edit isn't substantially different). What I'd said was "they're not generally considered to be fact-focused." which is to say that more of their work is analysis given known facts, and analyses can skew in any direction.

The parent comment was pointing out misreporting of known facts, not "skewed analysis."

> The parent comment was pointing out misreporting of known facts, not "skewed analysis."

Please see the reference I'd provided to understand Vice's perceived reliability and political skew. They're skewed somewhat left (this is unrelated to reliability) and are not as reliable as outlets that focus on strictly fact-based reporting. This level of reliability can either manifest as skewed analysis (your term in this exact context. I only mentioned analysis-skewing in a general sense), inadequate laymanization, or factually incorrect reporting.

Not sure why there's a debate about this. I presented a source of fact to inform people as to any observed risks in the outlet who's output they're consuming, that's all. Opting out of this conversation, with respects.

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That said, no idea where the author got any idea that an EEG works off of hormones, so while Vice generally isn't terrible, this piece certainly is. My only assumption is that in the course of laymanizing this, they condensed the measurement of stress hormones as well as a separate EEG into one process, which is... yeah. I'm assuming you and I probably agree on this point.

I'd fake my own rig & put the real one on a cat with a laser-point attached. I'd probably always look highly active and at least moderately stressed.

A bad boss would look at the output & say "that's as it should be!" A good boss would occasionally say "Don't burn yourself out, take a break sometimes, have a day off!". Meanwhile, I'd just be doing my work.

Ha! If 1984 were instead of a book about government surveillance, a story about the malaise of working remotely for a nebulous and shadowy but well-paying "platform company" and was instead written in the year 2020, I feel like you would have just captured the soul of the entire narrative with what you've just written.

You're doing a good job of making me want to read this book which I know doesn't exist yet but maybe should.

Closest thing I can think of is probably J-Pod, by Douglas Coupland.

https://www.amazon.com/JPod-Douglas-Coupland/dp/1596911050

Nice reference. I've always wanted to read more of his work. What do you think about his All Families Are Psychotic?

Haven't read it, actually. Just nabbed the Kindle version to give it a read this weekend-JPod was given to me as a secret santa exchange and like you I've been meaning to read more of his work. Cheers for the suggestion!

Let's page Cory Doctorow, because that's the kind of stuff he's good at writing.

It's pretty scummy to claim to be peer-reviewed and scientific but simultaneously not have any studies published for the specific thing that they're selling.

Between these earbuds and Neuralink, I'm unpleasantly surprised at how fast we are approaching the dystopic brain-hacking of 90s-era sci-fi.

>I'm unpleasantly surprised at how fast we are approaching the dystopic brain-hacking of 90s-era sci-fi.

we're approaching the potemkin village version of it. Slapping some electrodes on your head and feeding it into scikit-learn makes Phrenology look like science.

In the 90s at least it was functional. No evidence of that yet.

It's nice to work in a country where this would be illegal.

Sounds like a corporate version of Psycho-Pass (a dystopian society where everyone constantly has their emotional well-being monitored and corrected by the state) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass

If I were made to wear such a device, all it would have to report is the murderous intent I would have for the jackasses that made the device, and those that made me wear it.

I think most bosses are probably not stupid enough to think this is a good idea.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is asking whether firms which eventually would employ this tech have a competitive advantage over those that don't. If the incentive exists it only takes complicity to allow the system to naturally run its course. Most bosses may not be stupid enough, but are they complicit enough?

Assuming I could keep my homicidal impulses in check, I think the rage would still surely impact my productivity.

What is the point when you say enough is enough?

The good news is that eventually intrusive devices, like Neuralink, may modulate your ability to care.

:) If you let it be installed, good movie to watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_1.0

When you get disgusted/angry enough. Knowledge is the goldmine that never runs out. Collecting all of the universe's information into a big server heap is a 2000yr journey.

I think we should probably accept that this will happen, but we should also fight hard for making unemployment a feasible longterm option. UBI might work, but it would be cool if we could make it easy to be minimally self sufficient. Low maintenance and low cost housing, the ability to grow your own food, the ability to get some basic level of energy from the sun, etc. That way, you can comfortably leave a company that goes too far with stuff like this. The easier we can make it to live unemployed, the better we'll all be.

>I think we should probably accept that this will happen

No, we should not accept this at all. This kind of defeatist attitude empowers these types of dystopian technologists.

I don't know what's less defeatist than figuring out how to survive outside of the system.

Why would I accept that this happens? What's next, my boss getting cameras in my house to see if I get the mandated resting time until it's time to work again?

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