Cognition Builders' particular practices seem pretty obnoxious but behavioral analysis conditioning can be very useful in general. For example, I've used profanity my who life. My wife didn't and it genuinely offended her more genteel sensibilities. I decided I wanted to make the change but I utterly failed for like two years of using just hope and willpower. Then we instituted a "swear jar" whose proceeds would be used to fund something distasteful to me like the Trump campaign. Within a couple months I was rid of the profanity. It's been like two years since we retired the jar and I haven't reverted. It was literally a life changing intervention.

When I started reading that article I was excited because I thought it was going to describe some cool, inspiring uses of the techniques to the much serious problems around dysfunctional family dynamics. Unfortunately Cognition Builders seem laughably Black-Mirror-esque. Another thing my wife and have wished for was a recording of our conversations for when we disagree about what was actually said in past conversations. I wonder if Cognition Builders could have a more passive offering where you could ask on demand things like "what did we agree to last week when we were talking about so and so..." It would be more like a life logging perfect AI for you to use as you see fit for things like reflection or accountability.