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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

One of my conjectures about the future world is that emotional abuse is likely to become as taboo as physical - and at some point companies will need to check their management for such behaviours - and not just the outrageous stuff. We will start to monitor all our interactions and ... well with enough data points (second by second capture of interactions over billions of humans) then coaching / therapy becomes a medical / epidemiology problem

It's going to be a weird world, but maybe we will be better adjusted ?

Or does that sound like the ending of Serenity the movie?

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Emotional abuse happens behind closed doors and leaves no obvious evidence. It is really hard for society to deal with something like that.

Yes. But what if everyone carries a smartphone round in their pockets that recorded their every move and sound and conversation?

What if celebrities were on the TV saying how much having a phone provide therapy chnaged their lives? We can easily imagine a fringe of people doing this - quantified living etc? What happens when those people start to have real world advantages? Are healthier wealthier?

What happens when a company of well adjusted people whose conversations are mapped is able to react faster? Extract meaningful knowledge graphs from who knows what? What about a country - will their army be more efficient ? will having a knowledge economy be all about meta data management ?

What happens at the tipping point ? When does it become suspicious that you are not medically recording your life? When does refusing to allow these recordings make a defence against accusations harder?

None of this is great, or fair, or even better.

But these are feasible future options - and something is going to chnage - this is all possible with tech - and we shall have to deal with it?

If you’ve seen real narcissistic abuse, other than the screaming dehumanizing rage filled sessions, (and this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective) the person on a receiving end has a realllllly hard time cogently describing what they suffered without drawing some suspicion to themselves. And when threatened the narcissist will (this is a stupid term but in the literature) have both flying monkeys, and unleash an attack on your character. Recording everything written is probably not sufficient imho.

I am not honestly suggesting this as a solution to abuse - but I am certainly saying that imagine everyone's lives lived in a medically / psychologically supervised reality TV show - where the conversations and abuses and tonality and heart rates are logged and watchable - I mean basic crime becomes ridiculously hard to get away with - and mental issues might stand out like a sore thumb.

I am not advocating for this, I am pointing out the technology not only exists, but exists in every home. It's hard to imagine something along these lines not happening

Edit: I just want to be clear I am not trying to belittle or reject emotional abuse that goes on day in and out across all societies - nor suggesting that tech is some silver bullet for complex problems.

It’s hard to imagine this not being abused for other nefarious reasons.

> But what if everyone carries a smartphone round in their pockets that recorded their every move and sound and conversation?

This is the problem deepfakes are meant to solve

It is worse than that. Bullying is part of the curriculum in the public schools.

It is one way that private schools can justify their expense and that rich people can pass their status to their kids since in a private school it might be safe to be different, but if you are different in the public schools you will get wounded for life and not fulfill your potential.

Worst of all, it doesn't happen as much to people who fight back.

So it happens behind close doors to people who don't fight back for whatever reason, and are mostly hidden.

The same vicious "incentives" will be in play, but they'll be communicated in strange and plausibly-deniable ways. A man will no longer say that you have to do X or else you'll be fired; instead a woman will encourage you to be "mindful" of the company values, in particular this one over here, which is a double-entendre, one meaning of which is "be a nice person", and the other meaning of which is "make me a profit, bitch". And then, with your head in a vice of massive neoliberal pressure, if you ever fail to "perform", you'll be left on the street, with a complimentary yoga app to help you manage the stress.

If you continue to complain after that, it will be because you have an ego disorder -- those damned narcissists, always throwing tantrums -- and you'll be paired with a confessor and medicated to within an inch of your sanity. This will be called "care".

Clarity and coherence will matter more and more - having everyone not doing anything for fear of offending just leaves the way open for more clear minded companies.

This is not of course a pass for people to be offensive and obtuse, as it is usually interpreted (see for example Elon at Twitter). But still it's a difficult path to walk

I have similar thoughts, but I actually think if our society continues in the way that it is going that narcissism will become more common, and the types of things that are labeled emotional abuse will go to encompass actions that make narcissists feel uncomfortable.

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