The North Koreans already do this, and they did it with bureaucrats, not "big data" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbun
http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Songbun_Web.pdf (PDF with more details)
China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
111–120 of 171 posts
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, none of the agencies you mentioned have individual numerical scores for 330M+ Americans and US residents. The closest thing is credit scores (which the article mentions), which are metered and tracked by private companies under a broad set of federal regulations. More to the point, your potential employers don't get access to your personal life, beyond what you divulge to them and whatever informati…
Indeed, The US may have many real privacy violations but you have at least an ostensible right to privacy. That authority figures don't have to pretend fair even if they aren't actually fair is worth something. That surveillance isn't official is worth something. Sure, solid guarantees to privacy would be better but one really shouldn't claim unofficial surveillance is the same as official surveillance since the move…
This is very naive. If working in many countries and for many entities all over the world though me anything, it's that:
- people are tracked by everyone. Companies. State agencies. Other people.
- the database contains much more data than you think it does. And there are more data base than you think, also most of them are not connected to each others. But people in charge are.
- the data can be exploited in much more ways than you think it can.
- the law is broken is many more ways than you think it is. And as often as it's possible when not getting caught.
- the human in charge bypass everything they can, with every way they have, and help each others to do saw across entities.
- even the human that are not willing to do any of these are not necessarily competent enough to prevent abuses.
The only we don't suffer too much about it is:
- you can't see the many things in your life that are influenced by it because it's indirect and untold. - the sheer mass of it make it hard for the human to handle everything so only 5% of the real potential is actually in used. Wait for the AI to step in... - those are life threatening most of the time. But remember the table of power and freedom always turned during the history of humanity. Our current situation is NOT permanent.
Luckily most people I've met related to the data collection are not evil enough, and don't have enough greed to be a threat. Even the ones that are are usually not competent enough to become the next big brother. But the potential is here nevertheless.
TL;DR: the amount of data is huge. It can be used in scary ways. It is abused on a daily basis, but the consequences are not too insufferable yet.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the U.S., the courts can't decide whether something is moral or immoral. If we throw people in jail for corruption, it won't be because they were found guilty of having a bad moral character. It will be because of an illegal conflict of interest or anticompetitive practices or something like that. That's what a separation of church and state means in this context.
The US court sure comes close to deciding moral issues, if not actually. Abortion: some people say killing babies is wrong and should be illegal; other people say a woman has the right to kill* her baby if it hasn't been born yet. Homosexual marriage: some people say it is wrong and should be illegal; others say it is right and should be legal. So if I think homosexual marriage is wrong, the court requires that the s…
No, this isn't true. This isn't how the US courts work. The US courts decide what is consistent with the law. Let's look at the two issues you're discussing, abortion and gay marriage. These were both decided by Supreme Court cases, Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, respectively.
In Roe, the court found that outlawing abortion would constitute a violation of rights already established in the Constitution, specifically the due process clause of the 14th amendment. This means that the same legal rationale for your right to abort is also the legal rationale that prevents a state from, say, passing a bill stating that "prewett is now a criminal because we say so."
In the case of Obergefell, the court decided that denying recognition for same-sex marriages from other states was a violation of equal protection, because opposite-sex marriages from other states were recognized. This is the same right that, say, allows you to marry someone of another race and then go to another state and have that marriage continue to be valid.
So no, the court is not deciding, morally, what is right and wrong. If you think that, that's probably the source of your confusion. The court is deciding that the implication of the constitution and laws as written demand this conclusion in order to be logically consistent.
You might disagree with the logical (or moral) basis of their decision. Sure.
You might say they're legislating morality. No.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#114I feel like a crazy person every time I try to point out that North America is already there. We've just done it in a less reductionist manner, in which multiple scores are used for different purposes, because you can discriminate better with better targeted data. The IRS rates you on likelihood of fraud, border patrol rates you on your likelihood of breaking residency law, the FBI rates everyone's chances of being a…
The problem is that in China ratings can have side effects in other ratings. If you are not politically aligned your credit score can go down.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#115I feel like a crazy person every time I try to point out that North America is already there. We've just done it in a less reductionist manner, in which multiple scores are used for different purposes, because you can discriminate better with better targeted data. The IRS rates you on likelihood of fraud, border patrol rates you on your likelihood of breaking residency law, the FBI rates everyone's chances of being a…
As far as I know, none of the agencies you mentioned have individual numerical scores for 330M+ Americans and US residents. The closest thing is credit scores (which the article mentions), which are metered and tracked by private companies under a broad set of federal regulations. More to the point, your potential employers don't get access to your personal life, beyond what you divulge to them and whatever informati…
> The closest thing is credit scores (which the article mentions), which are metered and tracked by private companies under a broad set of federal regulations.
Is the fact that private companies do the tracking supposed to make me feel better? It doesn't; it only increases the likelihood that the information will be sold to unknown 4th parties or auctioned at bankruptcy fire-sales.
Not even a month has gone by since the story broke of law enforcement buying data off Twitter's firehose from a private company to track protesters. See also: parallel reconstruction.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, come on. We have our problems as a society but this is a little much. I have two specific objections. * The financial crisis was partially a result of mortgages being given to people whose financial data would have suggested that they had no business borrowing so much money. In that case, the opposite of your point is true. This shows that attention to data is beneficial to a mortgage system because it helps avoi…
They weren't given loans because they were incapable of figuring out they were bad loans due to insufficient data they were given bad loans because there was money to be made by giving out bad loans and bundling into mortgage backed securities. They deliberately crashed our economy as part of an effort to inflate their bonuses because they just don't give a fuck about you. me, or America.
You are approximately right, but I don't think that they deliberately crashed the economy. I think that they were hoping for something to turn up and had good reason to think it would - after all, long term capital finance got bailed out, why not mortgage backed securities?
The lesson is that the risks of finance need to be sufficiently crystalised that behaviour is moderated, the problem is that economic growth has come to depend on risky finance.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#117I feel like a crazy person every time I try to point out that North America is already there. We've just done it in a less reductionist manner, in which multiple scores are used for different purposes, because you can discriminate better with better targeted data. The IRS rates you on likelihood of fraud, border patrol rates you on your likelihood of breaking residency law, the FBI rates everyone's chances of being a…
I have no problem with that though. Banks should try to predict the likelihood of people repaying loans. Giving out loans likely to fail is bad. For the economy, for everyone else taking out loans, and for the people loaning money. It's certainly much more accurate and much less biased than the old system of having a human determine your worth. Same with the IRS using prediction to spend less resources and perform fewer audits.
Putting a number on someone isn't inherently evil. The old system had numbers too, they were just in people's heads instead of in a computer. And as I said, they were much less accurate and much more biased.
China is trying to punish people with different political opinions or behaviors. The american system doesn't care what your political opinions are, just that you don't commit tax fraud and pay back your loans on time.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#118I just finished watching the Nosedive (Season 3, episode 1) from Black Mirror on Netflix, it shows a similar system. Unlike other Black Mirror episodes its quite well balanced. I would highly highly recommend watching it.
I watched it last night and was struck by how much impact had been lost by Netflix transition. OK they were clearly going for humour, but even with bigger production, and good acting the longer running time diluted it so much. We didn't need the star rating explained every 2 mins for the first 20. Though I think it was that one that's based on a Charlie Brooker story, rather than written by. I actually paused after t…
My first impression and suspicion is that it has been Americanised. British humour tends to be more grating and grotesque than what's considered acceptable in the US, and the outlook is bleaker.
So far I've watched the first three episodes. The first even has some sort of happy ending. The second episode looks just like a bleak prequel to Inception, rather predictable. The third is maybe the most faithful to the original spirit. There seems to to be a slow transition from American to British in the three episodes, so curious to watch the others.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Were credit score non existing in 2008? If so, were they completely ignored? I think the parent's point may be incorrect in this example. The financial crisis didn't happen because the lenders weren't aware the clients had a high likelihood of default, it was because the lenders didn't care the clients had a high likelihood of default. The mortgages were packed into packages and sold to other entities so the lender…
Parent here...I agree with you, and if you read my comments again you will see that I never said the lenders were unaware. I said the credit history data were available and would have indicated a lack of suitability for the borrowers.
I think that the lenders were aware and thought that the borrowers were unsuitable but thought that they had discovered a way that would allow high risk loans to be made safely. A lot of really clever Ph.D's had said that securitisation of these loans would work to manage and distribute the risk. I remember going to a dinner party and being lectured by one of these guys and thinking that it made no sense to me, I felt like I always do when I get a new maths problem and I can't figure it out at all and every one else seems to understand it! I was embarrassed by my lack of ability. The said "lecturer" was patently earning several multiples of my salary (I guess that he earned, gross, 10*). He wasn't ostentatious about his wealth, but his watch was nice, not showy, they had come in a new Range Rover, and they lived in the Surrey communter belt. All of this communicated success and authority, his Ph.D came from a big, important university, mine comes from a little and not prestegious one, I struggled to get through my Ph.D - I found it really really hard. I suspect this guy had cruised.
And yet, he was spouting complete rubbish; all the assertions that he made were contrary to straightforward treatments of the data and common sense. I can't even remember the technical justifications he made, I think that I probably didn't make appropriate challenges to get these.
So, I went back to my job as the telco doing pedestrian things with telematary data (n things not working = problem). The lesson of the conversation is that the smart people who were figuring out risk and investment strategies in these places are not smart. Also I was not of the caliber required to smoke that out.
An actionable lesson that I have run with since (ok, I thought this out in a slow way about 18mths after the crisis while chewing over past humiliations and social disasters in which I have participated), is that critical thinking is the most important skill in my portfolio, and I'm not good at it - and almost everyone I meet is worse than me. So I have focused on trying to recruit people who seem capable of thinking round problems, and then have invested time and energy in getting them to be able to understand problems and become domain experts. This is different from the normal strategy of recruiting experts, doesn't deliver results reliably (which is challenging in a business environment - I have missed my scorecard a few times since this experiment began and I am rendered nervous about my career as a result) but has produced a business capability which to me seems qualitatively different from the previous capability that I took over when I got my current role.
Anyway - it makes for more fun at work.
Re: China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
#120I feel like a crazy person every time I try to point out that North America is already there. We've just done it in a less reductionist manner, in which multiple scores are used for different purposes, because you can discriminate better with better targeted data. The IRS rates you on likelihood of fraud, border patrol rates you on your likelihood of breaking residency law, the FBI rates everyone's chances of being a…
As far as I know, none of the agencies you mentioned have individual numerical scores for 330M+ Americans and US residents. The closest thing is credit scores (which the article mentions), which are metered and tracked by private companies under a broad set of federal regulations. More to the point, your potential employers don't get access to your personal life, beyond what you divulge to them and whatever informati…
Any bureaucratic system will assume the features of its creator - for North America that would mean collusion between the public and private sectors. I guess that in eastern countries you will get something uncompromisingly cruel on the one side - but it will also have its loopholes that can be gamed/hacked by the subjects/citizens.