Me too. It was often done in context of human behavior. Sure, it ultimately might be deterministic, just as background radiation. Can you predict the amplitude of said radiation? Maybe Skinner could and I would have loved to see him try.
> the idea of manipulating the social environment to build automatic goodness is as relevant now as it was in the 70s.
This can be a trap as well. I believe experience should have told us that more delegated autonomy usually nets better results. That means more education, taking more care of people at the lower ends of society and making sure the problem is understood by everyone or at least the vast majority in democratic countries. But we tend to fall into the same traps again and again. Hopefully that is not deterministic behavior.
But I think man can stay autonomous, no it is even a very strong requirement. You cannot imagine the creativity of man that decides to go against mandated goodness. And gladly we have said creativity. Useful for solving problems too. Rules do influence behavior of course, but the rule should address the problem, not the behavior. And it only has a right to exist if it really does solve a problem. Otherwise it must be done away with.
I was mainly thinking about what Skinner describes as bringing "the individual under the control of some remote consequences of his behavior". For example, the prospect of ultimately bringing about the extinction of humanity in a few hundred years is too remote to have an effect on anybody's decisions. It would be good to have a system that mediates the effect. I guess, "internalisation of external costs" sounds less threatening.
