
China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score - squidi
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28314-inside-chinas-plan-to-give-every-citizen-a-character-score/
======
walterbell
Charles Stross commented on these reports,
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-
could...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could-be-
worse.html)

 _" The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian
government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who
needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and
family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the
price of a discount off a new fridge? ... You can see your score in real time,
get helpful tips on what to do (or not to do) to grind for points, and if
you're thinking about doing something a bit naughty a handy app will give you
a chance to exercise second thoughts and erase your sin before it is
recorded."_

A 2014 Chinese planning document for the credit system,
[https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan...](https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-
outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/) said, _"...
its inherent requirements are establishing the idea of an sincerity culture,
and carrying forward sincerity and traditional virtues."_

In the 1970s, Chile tried cybernetics at a national scale,
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-
machin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine)

 _" At the center of Project Cybersyn (for “cybernetics synergy”) was the
Operations Room, where cybernetically sound decisions about the economy were
to be made ... One wall was reserved for Project Cyberfolk, an ambitious
effort to track the real-time happiness of the entire Chilean nation in
response to decisions made in the op room. Beer built a device that would
enable the country’s citizens, from their living rooms, to move a pointer on a
voltmeter-like dial that indicated moods ranging from extreme unhappiness to
complete bliss."_

~~~
Shivetya
and here in the US its done through proxies who sue to get access to donation
lists, list of those who supported petitions, access to previously courted
locked documents, and such, in order to shut down speech or actions they don't
like. sometimes even government agencies get involved with political activist
abusing their position.

so while China might codify affecting people's credit scores and "social"
score make no assumption that similar hasn't always been in Western countries,
we just like to paint others as bogeymen to avoid looking at our own flaws

~~~
zappo2938
Proxies like college professors? Students gain points by telling professors
what the professors want to hear and if the students thoughts manifest in
submitted papers are dissimilar from the professors they are penalized. So,
while writing and thinking more important the thinking students are trying to
figure out what the professors want to hear.

Of course, this doesn't apply to any discipline that is a system like math,
STEM, physics, ect.. But in humanities, what students are learning is to think
like their teachers.

~~~
diyorgasms
I think you're painting the humanities with an overly broad brush, and writing
off an entire field of study because of some presupposed notion.

And that you specifically exempt STEM fields from your ire has you playing
right into the worst stereotypes of STEM arrogance.

------
hugh4
Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished
dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag.

It's just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life
of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making
dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers.

Very clever, China.

~~~
arethuza
Actually, the Soviet Gulag was mostly about slave labour - they arrested
people to make them slaves because they thought this would be efficient -
which it wasn't.

If they thought you really were a threat you were executed rather than being
sent to a camp.

I can recommend Anne Applebaum's book:

[http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag-a-
history/](http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag-a-history/)

~~~
userulluipeste
"If they thought you really were a threat you were executed rather than being
sent to a camp."

True, but the threat of deportation was nonetheless one of the Nomenklatura's
weapon of choice. Someone's death was, even in the aftermath of the WW2 mass
carnage, perceived as brutal mean of "solving" problems and could spur further
backslash/dissidence. Someone's separation from their social circle however,
was a much more safer method and the perpetrators were able to sleep at night
because there could hardly be any retribution for such a thing.

------
falcor84
On the one hand, this is very spooky. On the other, it seems like it could be
a precursor to a social currency similar to the Whuffie[0] in Cory Doctorow's
"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". I remember that reading that book, I
couldn't help but feel that, as we move closer to a post-scarcity society, the
rise of something like that would be inevitable, and might in some ways be
much better than what we have now.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie)

~~~
bmn_
Admiration and social standing as currency was used by Howard L. Myers in "All
around the universe" 31 years earlier than Doctorow.

[http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1125/Baen/0743436075/0743436075...](http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1125/Baen/0743436075/0743436075__12.htm)

------
moron4hire
To the extent that my understanding of European current events is aided by
shared culture and a much better coverage of history, even including many more
modern events, I find my near-complete lack of understanding of Chinese
culture is a serious impediment to my understanding of articles like this. My
university history classes basically ended at the Boxer Rebellion, with a
brief interlude into using the Great Leap Forward as a hit piece against Mao
(which, to be fair, he seems to have deserved, but that's all it was meant as.
It wasn't meant as history of China).

For example: isn't China supposed to be Communist? How are there so many
ludicrously rich people? Clearly, I'm missing some part of the equation in
there that explains why I have this perception.

It's vexing because I tend to want to "fix" problems in understanding as soon
as I identify them, yet I have no idea how one would gain an accurate image of
China from the outside, given how much _I 've been told_ they control
information flow.

~~~
laurent123456
They control their citizen's access to information, but from outside it's not
difficult to get a relatively accurate picture. This book [0] for instance was
quite helpful in understanding how the CCP controls the country and, as a
result, how many things work in China.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Secret-Chinas-
Communist/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Secret-Chinas-
Communist/dp/0061708763)

------
tempodox
And the arms race between freedom and control goes on.

“ _All that behaviour will be integrated into one comprehensive assessment of
you as a person_ ”

The ultimate simplification, condensing a human being to a simple number. Gods
have always been used to rationalise entitlement to and application of power.
This one is electrified and fully programmable.

As a concept, this is so predictable that it's already boring (was only a
question of time until machines become capable of implementing this
nightmare). There should exist a ton of science fiction literature that
explores this scenario. How dumb would people have to be to not see through
it? We already had a period of enlightenment that disposed of the “old gods”.
And they seriously believe an electrified god artefact would fare any better?

~~~
PavlovsCat
> We already had a period of enlightenment that disposed of the “old gods”.
> And they seriously believe an electrified god artefact would fare any
> better?

Plenty of people think that way about money, with the ends often justifying
the means to astonishing degrees. We create things, then worship them. Plenty
of people get manipulated to elect people, and that makes what those do right
by definition in their eyes, rationalizing even hard facts away once they're
taken; people basically get deceived and "voluntarily" make choices against
their own interests as a matter of daily business; that's just more
sustainable coercion, not freedom. There's one thing worse than not being
free, that's not being free and thinking you are.

~~~
lukifer
Money is a curious sort of behavioral information network, in that the
information is destroyed at every hop. If you pay five dollars at my hot dog
stand, I accept the exchange in value without the slightest clue if the money
came from tutoring orphans, or human trafficking. I'm honestly unsure which
has greater perverse incentives and moral hazard: behavioral opacity, or
behavioral transparency. (Note that the only entities that have access to at
least some of the information of each money hop are governments, banks, credit
agencies, and to some extent online silos like Amazon.)

------
privong
For additional commentary, there was previous discussion of this topic a week
ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10329733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10329733)

------
guard-of-terra
It seems that people (in power; but especially ones commenting on such
articles; those with cynical spin mostly) perceive life in a country as a
computer game.

Where "dissidents" will happen to your country, and you have to implement
"measures" to make them go away, and then you call it a day. Because game
rules incentivize you to do exactly that.

The reality is: Life happens to your country. People happen to your country.
Things happen to your country that are outside of your control. DDR's Stasi
had kilogramms of dossiers on every its citizen, and it got scrapped in a few
days with as little as a handshake.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In some areas, it would be so much better if countries were really ruled like
sim games. You need more energy for growth and global warming threatens your
future? You start building goddamn nuclear power plants. No political
bickering, no clueless citizens protesting everything at random because of
fear or propaganda.

~~~
im3w1l
Enlightened despotism used to be a popular idea. I don't think it works
because there is no guarantee they despot will optimize for country outcome
rather than personal enjoyment.

~~~
amyjess
My main worry about enlightened despotism is "what happens when the despot
kicks the bucket?". No guarantee their successor will be as enlightened as
them.

If you solve the succession problem, enlightened despotism starts sounding
very good.

~~~
jqm
Except the term "enlightened" is most often relative to a groups desired
outcomes...

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's good enough. It's better to have a stable and reasonable ruler that
tries to do the Right Thing (i.e. optimize globally in the scale of country)
than everyone trying to have it their - however smart or stupid - way.

~~~
jqm
Well I don't fully disagree, but then there are the "enlightened" rulers of
ISIS trying to do the "right thing" for humanity...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, I'll grant you that. I guess that I dream of someone pulling off an
enlightened semi-dictatorship based on liberal values...

------
stevetrewick
Well I guess now we know which government provided the seed capital for
Peeple.

------
devit
Looks like all this does is cause people to waste time optimizing the score,
and make the wealthy better off since they can hire the service of consultants
specializing in this.

~~~
collyw
Pretty much like our current financial system then. You can send ages moving
your money from one investment to another. The rich already pay professionals
for that and genrally come out on top. Just sticking your money in a normal
account and it effectively diminishes over the years.

