On changing our behavior

Back when I was a student at Wichita (Kan.) State University in the mid-1970s, students (and faculty?) from the philosophy department used to debate students (and faculty?) from the psychology department at the student union about free will vs. determinism. Most of the psychology faculty members were Skinnerians or determinists. That is, they followed the teachings of B.F. Skinner, a proponent of a theory of behavior modification that seemed to imply that humans had no free will. The philosophy department members opposed this approach, as did I, though I was a mere linguistics major. One of my kind, however, was Noam Chomsky, a linguist who opposed Skinner's theories.

That all seems so long ago. But then I read the cover article in the June issue of The Atlantic, "The Perfected Self" by David H. Freedman. Freedman argues that Skinner's ideas are making a comeback today, thanks to smartphone apps that help people become perfected versions of themselves. He tells stories of people who have lost weight by following a Skinnerian formula, which goes something like this: set modest goals, rigorously track food intake and weight, obtain counseling or coaching, turn to fellow participants for support, transition to less-calorie-dense foods, and move your body more often, any way you like."
Freedman shows how Skinner's principles underlie many weight-loss programs and smartphone apps that may eventually individualize programs to the extent that they take into account "lifestyle and environmental factors like types of job, whom you live with, how busy you are, what ethnic group you belong to and what kind of activity or type of food and drinks you like." As one researcher says could happen: "You put sensors in phones and throughout the home, you develop algorithms that can infer what people are doing, and then you provide tailored automatic feedback that reinforces the right behaviors."
One thing that drives such research is not just individual marketing but the effects it can have on health-care costs. For example, "If mobile apps could reduce obesity and its associated costs by just 5 percent, the savings would amount to about $15 billion a year in the U.S. alone."
Such use of Skinnerian tools applies to other fields as well. A manager at the U.S. Department of Transportation mentioned that it was testing an app "that provides local travelers with various transportation options for specific trips and could gently reinforce decisions to use public transit by pointing out the extra calories commuters would burn by walking to the station and the carbon they'd avoid emitting by leaving their cars at home."
This use of these tools raises such questions as this: "Should we be wary of utilities that try to shift our energy use or health insurers that try to change our diets?" If the effects are good, such as reducing obesity, we may think, Sure. But who decides what are good uses and what are bad?
Freedman points out the irony of Skinner's theory: "To control our behavior, we must accept a fundamental lack of control, acknowledging that our environment ultimately holds the reins." He argues here that most of us can't go against our environment in the long run, but "we can purposefully alter our environment to shape our behavior in ways we choose."
These are large questions. We go through our days being affected by many things in our environment that we ignore or are unaware of. Perhaps this article can serve to alert us to this fact and challenge us to find ways to change what is affecting us.
And I suppose even those of us without smartphones can do this, right?