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The odd reality of life under China's all-seeing credit score system
- isoprophlex 8y agoUnder such a system, what happens to an individual if errors are made? If you have 1000 million citizens, your social credit computation better have a sub-ppm false positive rate, or else you risk ostracizing thousands of innocent people. Maybe on the whole it's worth it for the Chinese government. Also, I wonder if increasing adoption of this system will create a black market of 'score hackers', people that try to fuzz the algo's into giving free or cheap social credit....
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PredictorY 8y agoA callous government which oversees the lives of 1,000 million citizens isn't concerned with thousands of false positives.
- fao_ 8y agoAll governments are callous. Can you give an example of a bureaucracy that isn't callous?
- plankers 8y agoI don't think they were implying that there are uncallous governments, just emphasizing that particular feature of the Chinese government.
- oculusthrift 8y agonot many that disregard human rights or are as callous as the chinese govt.
- pishpash 8y agoWhen you get to 1 billion, your representatives will be as callous. (Already on the way there, actually.) Government is just a mirror of the people, even in China.
- PredictorY 8y agoI disagree. I argue that the Chinese government and the one I live under (in the United States) could hardly be more different. The government of China was established for the benefit of the rulers (the Party). The American Founding Fathers said "Government is like fire: It makes a good servant, but a poor master." Our Constitution was written primarily to constrain the government. Only two countries have gotten to 1 billion inhabitants, and I'd say that the government of India is much less callous or calculating than that of China.
- fao_ 8y agoFounding intention does not matter. Modern Russia was founded on the idea that all people are equal and that workers should be respected, that doesn't mean that that happens. The founders of Communist Russia intended that the state be dissolved by 1980, that it be replaced by councils that work together in coöperation, such that everyone has a say. Did that bear fruit? No. Did the founding fathers intend for the United States to spy on every single one of their citizens? No. Does it happen? Yes. Did the founding fathers intend for the state to be able to detain foreigners of the US indefinitely without trial? No. The patriot act allows it, however. You cannot judge a country by founding principals and safeguards alone, they are easy to repeal and change; you can only judge a country on the current legislature and how much the current Constitution constrains the government.
- PredictorY 8y agoI feel that this discussion has wandered. Are you arguing that the Chinese government is concerned with false positives in their social scoring system?
- PredictorY 8y agoSome governments are more callous than others.
- rkangel 8y agoI suppose there are two sorts of errors: System errors: falsely attributing you with certain penalties (or credits). The workaround here is the same as with a bank - provide a statement and a mechanism to dispute entries. Fine errors: penalising you when you don't deserve it. This is like anything else in the justice system, although it has the advantage that it should be an accumulation of a larger number of smaller inputs (positive and negative), so individual errors should act like noise and remain negligible.
- PredictorY 8y ago"...a mechanism to dispute entries" I seriously doubt that the Chinese government is interested in inviting dispute. Dispute is exactly what such a surveillance system is designed to suppress.
- JorgeGT 8y ago> I wonder if increasing adoption of this system will create a black market of 'score hackers' Well, Campbell's law... > "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
- LiweiZ 8y agoJust for those interested: "All Systems will be Gamed: Exploitive Behavior in Economic and Social Systems," in Complexity and the Economy, W. B. Arthur (2014) http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/Papers/All%20Systems%20Gamed.pdf http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/Papers/All%20Systems%20G...
- amaccuish 8y agoThere's a chinese girl in my russian class, so I asked her about it. She thought it was a great idea so people can't leave without paying their debts, and can't get further into debt.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoUntil your inability to leave your current city for better opportunities in another stifles your ability to get out of the first debt, of course.
- amaccuish 8y agoA valid argument.
- PredictorY 8y ago"Mortals never sell me their souls. They give them away." -Satan, "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson
- Rjevski 8y agoPrime example of brainwashing right there I guess.
- gowld 8y agoThat's a defense of a financial credit score system, not a social credit score system. And it's no defense of a top-down authoritarian score system. China doesn't have free speech or free press, so unfortunately a Chinese resident can only form "low-information" opinions about issues outside their immediate experience; as they spend their entire life under the brainwashing of an authoritarian government.
- amaccuish 8y agoMany Americans say we don't have free speech here in Europe. Does that mean I can only form a "low-information" opinion? I'm curious.
- Canada 8y ago"Chinese citizens signing up for the wildly popular multiplayer shooter game Counter Strike Global Offensive must register using both their national ID and Sesame Credit score, according to state media outlet CGTN, and anyone caught using cheating software like ‘Aimbots’ which ensure perfect aim will have their Sesame Credit scores deducted, potentially affecting their real-life ability to get loans." Valve knowingly allows its cheat countermeasures to impact human lives in this way? I'd like to hear their response to this claim.
- rasz 8y agoPC bang/internet cafes in China are filled with computers preloaded with aimbots. Every new multiplayer game maker quickly learns to isolate this part of the world with separate server pool, or face sale decline as people leave your game and never come back.
- TrainedMonkey 8y agoCheating in online competitive gaming is a form of lying. I play CSGO myself and it is extremely frustrating when people aimbot or wallhack. Based on personal experience playing against aimbot is like banging head against the wall, it definitely lowers my quality of life. Moreover a single person with aimbot can depopulate entire server pretty quickly. A person chooses to negatively affect quality of life of 10-20 other people. I can't find a word to describe that behavior other than asshole. With that in mind the issue can be reframed to - should assholes have a lower credit score? I do not know. I certainly do not agree with Chinese methods, because I think positive reinforcement works better. With that said, I am curious what long term effect Chinese population hacking will have on their society. On using positive reinforcement to shape the society. Imagine a city park where lights pulse green when someone picks up a piece of trash from the ground and throws it away into the trash can. Or a park that remembers people that do not litter and greets them with a positive reinforcement signal when they walk in.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoIn that vein, Overwatch announced a new endorsement system yesterday, where people can mark others for "sportmanship", "good teammate", and "shot-caller", and they're going to highlight players who regularly get them. https://mic.com/articles/189690/online-shooter-overwatch-to-get-new-endorsement-system-encouraging-players-to-be-less-toxic#.Bl71iJCTe https://mic.com/articles/189690/online-shooter-overwatch-to-... They've been getting more and more requests for ways to penalize bad players, so I thought this was an interesting direction to push for features. A little more sophisticated that the general "commend a teammate" feature that was more or less just an upvote.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoHow close China has become to something out of 1984 is truly disturbing
- Dirlewanger 8y agoHere's more scary literature: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/china-xinjiang-surveillance-tech-spread/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/china-xinjiang-surveilla...
- gowld 8y ago1984 wasn't written as fantasy horror fiction. It was an informed and reasoned extrapolation of the then-present into the future, with some adventure fiction elements. Sadly, this turn of events was not unexpected.
- cryoshon 8y agofor some reason i haven't seen many people discuss china as a totalitarian country. but is there really any doubt, at this point? the government seeks to control an ever-greater range of human behaviors, from the banal -- like borrowing an umbrella -- to the political. it's unclear to me whether the chinese people want this sort of system for whatever reason or whether it's being forced onto them. what is clear to me is that this system would warrant a prompt and violent revolution if a similar implementation was attempted here. once these systems take root, become normalized, and start to change the way that people behave, a society's chance at freedom is finished...
- bena 8y agoAren't there like four different Chinas? You have the modern mainland, which is where all these problems exist, the rural mainland which this probably doesn't affect as much, Hong Kong which is autonomous, and Chinese Taipei which might as well give up the ghost by this point.
- Simulacra 8y agoChinese Taipei is Taiwan, an independent nation. As much as China would like to claim otherwise, Taiwan is not China.
- bena 8y agoThey claim to be China though. The ROC see themselves as the legitimate government in exile. Both the PRC and the ROC believe in "One China", they just disagree as to who is the "real" China.
- Simulacra 8y agoThat is true, so then if Taiwan sees itself as the official government in exile, then wouldn't that mean China proper is an extension of Taiwan, and not the other way around? :)
- nfoz 8y ago
- jfasi 8y agoThe problem with these sorts of systems, both those backed by technology and those backed by old-fashioned prejudice, is that it exerts an upward force on those who are already on top while simultaneously pushing downwards on those who are on the bottom. Each of the examples listed here have this effect: having a high credit score means you get cheaper healthcare, have more opportunities to find a well-off partner, don't need to pay deposits on car rentals, get to travel, etc. It seems as though if you're on top, you're going to stay there, meanwhile if you're on the bottom, you're going to stay there also. What I'd like to know, as an American sitting literally a world away from the people under this system, is to what extent wealth and influence purchase a high social credit score? Some factors are obvious: those with more money are less likely to incur debts, for instance. But what about connections to administrators? I imagine there isn't a politician in all of China who doesn't magically have a sterling social credit score. I wonder whether the net result is a society in which a high standing resulting from material and social wealth leads to perks that in turn lead to more material and social wealth.
- Simulacra 8y agoThe same way, for instance, Chinese wealth has purchased high social rewards in America; university placement for their children, investments, politics, etc. Wealth and influence seem to ahhh trump all, so to speak.
- fspeech 8y agoLet me give you a counter example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jia_Yueting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jia_Yueting He is on the travel ban list due to credit problems in China, yet apparently rich and free in the U.S. The first released travel ban list has 169 names on it: https://www.creditchina.gov.cn/toutiaoxinwen/201806/t20180601_117051.html https://www.creditchina.gov.cn/toutiaoxinwen/201806/t2018060... (according to Google Translate) "On June 1, the first list of restricted-riding trains was publicized on the “Credit China” website. The list of public opinions contained a total of 169 persons, of which 21 were provided by the State Administration of Taxation, mainly involving non-payment or underpayment of tax payables, illegal receipts of value-added tax invoices, etc.; the CSRC provided 31 persons involved in overdue performance of securities and futures Responsible parties related to listed companies failed to fulfill their public commitments within the overdue period; the Civil Aviation Administration provided 86 people, mainly related to finding trouble in airplanes, blocking traffic in airport security, occupying, impinging on security inspection channels, and assaulting other people, and checking out carry-on countries in airport security inspections. Laws and regulations stipulate that dangerous goods (stuck lighters) are subject to administrative penalties; the railway company provides 31 people, mainly involving smoking on EMU trains or smoking in non-smoking areas of other trains, without ticket or station ) Travel by car and refusing to make up for tickets etc. The public can click https://hmd.creditchina.gov.cn/ https://hmd.creditchina.gov.cn/ to view."
- Simulacra 8y agoTangentially related, the Daniel Suarez sequel novel, Freedom(TM) presents a similar scenario. People will have a rating system based on their interactions with others (think eBay) and you can see that rating. Four stars out of a base of 81 interactions - from the postman to your boss. I have a hunch that China's generally compliant, anti-antagonistic society, makes the Chinese system easier to implement. In a western country, I think it would turn south really, really quickly and for much worse.
- faitswulff 8y agoSesame Credit really creeps me out, but give it a few years and you'll see LifeHacker articles on "10 Ways to Raise Your Sesame Credit Score!"