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China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

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Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#11

Post by zimbatm »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #7
Aoyagi wrote: post #3

What are the odds that something like this is already in place on global scale by some American spooks? To "fight the war on terrorism" or something. Surely it's not that difficult to do considering internet megacorps already do behaviour analysis and payment processors already keep track of what goes where, including credit scoring.

I doubt it. To make it work, you need leverage. Make citizen's life slightly easier or slightly worse based on his score. Worse access to credit, withholding from top universities, preventing from starting a business - not easy to do anything like that on a grand scale in market society. So you won't exactly be making a new citizen.

This sounds exactly what Experian does. They are used by most (all?) UK banks to validate your credit score and they also provide an "identity protection" service. If your score is too low with them you don't get any credit anywhere.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#12

Post by thebouv »

What I wonder about when I read things like this:

How did they get to this point?

What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this?

Are they just the product of an already oppressive government and therefore see this as completely and totally fine?

Or do they know that it is oppressive, but since they're already a cog in the machine, they pitch the idea up and get praised for it?

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#13

Post by guard-of-terra »

zimbatm wrote: post #11
guard-of-terra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. To make it work, you need leverage. Make citizen's life slightly easier or slightly worse based on his score. Worse access to credit, withholding from top universities, preventing from starting a business - not easy to do anything like that on a grand scale in market society. So you won't exactly be making a new citizen.

This sounds exactly what Experian does. They are used by most (all?) UK banks to validate your credit score and they also provide an "identity protection" service. If your score is too low with them you don't get any credit anywhere.

Still it is very hard to link credit score with citizen activity, with gradual punishment of undesirable ones.

Once it would dismarry from financial reality, many banks will start to skip it, because it will become profitable.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#14

Post by tedks »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #5

Soviet Union tried to create a new citizen. You won't easily find creature more miserable than their result. Alcohol consumption spiked and life expectancy actually plummeted.

The Soviet Union was run by increasingly aging and increasingly paranoid revolutionaries (literally, people who had fought a coup) who were generally unconcerned with science.

The PRC is run by technocrats educated in the West.

It's very nice to think that it's impossible to "create a new citizen," but the West has been doing that pretty effectively over the last few decades. I don't doubt the Chinese will be successful.

There is no inherent good in the universe. There is no particle or fundamental force for morality. There are truly no constraints. It is nice to believe that good will win and evil will fail, but that doesn't always happen. There's no law of the universe preventing the PRC from creating a new citizen, a perpetually controllable citizen, held in check by pervasive surveillance of a very similar form to the one experienced in the West, only with the results visible, and leveraged against the people openly, rather than covertly and without opportunity to improve your score (try getting off the no-fly list).

There is no law of the universe that totalitarianism loses and democracy wins. Maybe the PRC will be successful and create a permanently stable capitalist totalitarian state.

I wonder who's writing their software?

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#15

Post by smilekzs »

thebouv wrote: post #12

What I wonder about when I read things like this: How did they get to this point? What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this? Are they just the product of an already oppressive government and therefore see this as completely and totally fine? Or do they know that it is oppressive, but since they're already a cog in the machine, they pitch the idea up and get prai…

> the product of an already oppressive government > but since they're already a cog in the machine

The vast majority only care if they earn enough to make ends meet. Their silence contributes to where we are now.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#17

Post by guard-of-terra »

tedks wrote: post #14
guard-of-terra wrote: post #5

Soviet Union tried to create a new citizen. You won't easily find creature more miserable than their result. Alcohol consumption spiked and life expectancy actually plummeted.

The Soviet Union was run by increasingly aging and increasingly paranoid revolutionaries (literally, people who had fought a coup) who were generally unconcerned with science. The PRC is run by technocrats educated in the West. It's very nice to think that it's impossible to "create a new citizen," but the West has been doing that pretty effectively over the last few decades. I don't doubt the Chinese will be success…

"who were generally unconcerned with science"

That one is far from truth. Soviet society was hugely concerned with science. They didn't lack in science in their ways; it just turned out that scientifically-sound methods often conflict with social reality and what people like.

For example: while it is sound to build your cities as arrays of concrete blocks with wide roads served by public transportations, living in such environment is no picnic. When you relocate someone who used to have their garden, their garage with tools, etc - into a flat in concrete block, they usually begin to drink for the lack of activities they are used to.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#18

Post by guard-of-terra »

tedks wrote: post #14
guard-of-terra wrote: post #5

Soviet Union tried to create a new citizen. You won't easily find creature more miserable than their result. Alcohol consumption spiked and life expectancy actually plummeted.

The Soviet Union was run by increasingly aging and increasingly paranoid revolutionaries (literally, people who had fought a coup) who were generally unconcerned with science. The PRC is run by technocrats educated in the West. It's very nice to think that it's impossible to "create a new citizen," but the West has been doing that pretty effectively over the last few decades. I don't doubt the Chinese will be success…

"There's no law of the universe preventing the PRC from creating a new citizen, a perpetually controllable citizen, held in check by pervasive surveillance"

Control is a contract. Citizen gives you his behavior, you give him predictable prosperous life.

Once you breach this contract, your system begins to leak. Do Chinese expect eternal economy growth now? Because when it stops, millions of people will seek to change their lives to make a living. That's what happened in NK where tight surveillance did not prevent hundreds of thoudsands from unregulated activites such as crossing the border, selling things on market and producing stuff outside of state factories.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#19

Post by SamReidHughes »

thebouv wrote: post #12

What I wonder about when I read things like this: How did they get to this point? What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this? Are they just the product of an already oppressive government and therefore see this as completely and totally fine? Or do they know that it is oppressive, but since they're already a cog in the machine, they pitch the idea up and get prai…

Let's say you're the Chinese government (or a person in the government) and care deeply about the future of China. What's your main concern? Is it not the prevention of destabilizing civic unrest like that we've seen in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, and for that matter, China? That's the worst possible thing that could happen to the country, and it's quite far from unlikely, and I'd want to do whatever I can to prevent it.

Re: China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

#20

Post by tinfoilman »

Ntrails wrote: post #8
higherpurpose wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the initial phase - finding out the traits of the perfectly controlled citizen. Next is actually creating such citizens. I wouldn't be surprised if within 3 decades China regulates how parents design their children at birth (as in they'll all have to design them to be compliant to the government in adulthood). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/designer-babies-on-the-way-in-ch...

See, the thing about this comment isn't that I believe it couldn't happen. It's that I for damn sure don't think it will only be done by China. The designing will be regulated in all countries, some attributes will be ruled unsafe to alter, or only allowed to be altered in specific fashions. The appropriate medical council variant will explain rationally that it's unsafe to do otherwise for such and such reasons. The…

Completely agree but I see it much worse.

The general public will have access to change certain genes/or be required to make these changes for the 'good' of the population. These Genes will be to make the working class less disruptive (reducing conflict by reducing genes that generate anger/or narrowing the emotional band of people to a much more narrow scope (think gene changes that have the same result as anti depression medication)) while stating that these genes need to be changed to get rid of medical issues such as ADHD For example Think about removing the ability to have their own children, got to pay extra if you want your child to be able to have their own.

The top will be able to change a lot of other things. They will be able to boost intelligent (do you really think the governments of the world want a super smart population? no, they will kept that for themselves)

All in all we are getting to the stage where there will be 2 classes of humans. The working class will become completely inferior to the uppers and thanks to the gene changes very few if any will ever raise above their station

Seems like we trying 1984 in US n Euro. And Brave new world in China

If you try and counter this with "people wont stand for it" they will, none of the China population will stop it, and once its standard there they were be breeding super humans. The rest of the world will either have to do it to keep up, or accept our Chinese overlords

So glad I have no plans to bring a child in to this future we all building for them

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