
China's Dystopian Social Credit System - rm2889
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm
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chrisco255
I'm sort of terrified that democracy, individualism, and freedom might die
within the span of a decade or two, with the advent of AI and its abuse by
those in power. China will likely also use and leverage this system to monitor
and influence external governments and individuals. And I wonder what the
spillover of that will be?

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laughingman2
There is this anime called psycho-pass, that explores how an AI assigns jobs
based on psychological profile aka Psycho-Pass, identify criminals for police
to execute or jail etc.

Very good take on how things might be.

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sseth
Its like reading 1984. But now its happening.

I hope the democracies come together to fight this. We have taken our freedoms
for granted. I think we will now have to earn them. We should not forget that
modern democracy is just a couple of hundred years old. It is not a given that
they will always be around.

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GW150914
I think we have bigger fish to fry closer to home when it comes to preserving
whatever versions of democracy we have. We’re not going to effectively fight
China when we do so much business with them, and a war would be catastrophic.
Meanwhile if you care about freedom and democracy, the (re-)rise of populism,
and even fascism seems like something we are capable of fighting.

If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own
houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground. Sweden,
Germany, Italy, France Austria, the UK, all have either slid hard to the
Right, or have flirted with the likes of Marine Le Pen, Lega Nord, Alternative
For Germany, and so on. Then you have Hungary and Poland going fully off the
deep end, and oh yes, Trump. All in all our table is full before we pretend
thst we have either the political will or leverage to make China change. We
might even have to accept that the Chinese people more or less have to fight
for change themselves, or not, because we’re too busy doing business with
Beijing to worry about their concentration camps.

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thecopy
> If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own
> houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground.
> Sweden, Germany, Italy, France Austria, the UK, all have either slid hard to
> the Right,

Do i read you correctly that you believe it is impossible to be moral and at
the same time hold conservative views?

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GW150914
Only if you read neo-fascism/far-right populism and conservative as the same
things, in which case I’d say... yes. I’d point out that by no means did _I_
attempt to conflate those things with conservatism though. I think being moral
and believing in smaller governments, gradual change, and other conservative
ideas can be consistent with morality. I think that xenophobia, bigotry and a
return to the worst ideologies of Europe’s recent past is not.

All in all, it might be helpful to quote me more fully, or not at all, since
the fragment you chose is unhelpful taken out of context. I’d like to think
that in context, what I meant was clear and hard to take in the sense you seem
to want to frame it.

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thecopy
I did not mean to misrepresent your meaning. I think often a heated
argumentation starts when people use the same words but have different
interpretation of those words. For example, what "right" means. Here it seems
you used "Right" to describe neo-fascism/far-right populism when at least me
did not read it like that.

I believe this is the root cause of a lot of flame wars on social media.

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mercer
That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the
bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly)
sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to
reflect.

In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and
ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go
into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I
mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-
managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do.

I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that
exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the
one-dimensional left-right divide...

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tonteldoos
Every time this topic comes up, I think of Nosedive (Black Mirror S3E1 [1]),
and wonder how anyone can think this will end well.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_\(Black_Mirror\))

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turtlecloud
Meh. I think it will be a net positive imo. Will help in socially engineering
a more peaceful country.

As a group it will be good. For an individual it will suck. We all know how
difficult it is to change ourselves.

Most foreseeable change I can see is that Chinese tourists being seen as nicer
and more friendly as the rude ones with low social scores won’t be able to get
a visa.

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netwanderer2
Last time I checked, freedom of movement is an essential human rights. It's
all good as long as it doesn't happen to you right? You see, when you allow
someone to dictate every detail of how you should live your life, that means
you're being oppressed. We are all different individuals with different needs.
Does the person dictating your life have the same needs as you? NO! Someone
has set up a template based on their own ideas and completely ignored your own
personal preferences. You have been reduced to nothing more than a bot or a
walking dead at this point.

One thing I agree is that if this is what China want to do with their country
then let them have a go at it. It's their country, people have different
values and beliefs in China that citizens from the West will never understand.
We can disagree with them, but it is not right for us to interfere or try
changing the way how their society functions. Only the future will tell what's
best for all of us.

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turtlecloud
Well.... you may view it as oppression, but they prob view it as the gov
taking care of them. 2 sides to the issue.

Collectivists will love it. Individualists will hate it.

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netwanderer2
I agree completely. As you mentioned, it's collectivism vs. individualism,
people from the West with different values and beliefs system would not be
able to understand what drives and motivates the average Chinese citizens, and
vice versa. We can sit here and point our fingers all day, but does it really
matter if the people who live there are happy? The two systems have vastly
different principles, it's unreasonable and impossible to conform them into
one.

Nothing in life is black and white as we tend to label them. There are always
pros and cons in everything. As we approach the age of AI, this chapter could
even be considered as a new experiment in the history of humankind. None of us
can accurately predict the future so it might actually be beneficial to
witness the outcome from such experiment. Good or bad, there will be something
here for everyone to learn.

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netwanderer2
Human made video game "The Sims", now we have officially reversed it and turn
ourselves into those game characters. The AI is now shaping our behaviors and
dictating what we buy, eat, and drink. The scores are even live and updated in
real time. Well done human, you have played yourself.

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wpdev_63
it's interesting there aren't alot of comments in this thread.

