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A Chinese social credit song
- vernie 7y agoI hope they dock the girl to the right of center a few points for piss-poor heart-hands.
- kelvin0 7y agoMakes me think of a Black Mirror episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) Really creepy stuff ...
- uoaei 7y agoThe only episode to cause me to physically cringe during the whole viewing.
- scarejunba 7y agoMe too, because the idea is sound, and the people involved ended up essentially 'in the right place'.
- tomxor 7y ago@ 1:24 - You need good social credit to buy food!? holly fuck they are taking it up a notch. ... i'm half joking though, I have been to China many times, there is no way this is going to be effective for all of the cheap restaurants and street food. One thing I've learned about China, is although we often interpret their emerging laws and policies to be extreme (which they are) - what we don't appreciate is the context - they are not enforced as widely, rigorously and thoroughly as in the west. This is at least partly cultural and geographic, and it is probably this same reason that contributes to some of the Chinese government's overreach in the first place (to overcompensate). It does not excuse the human rights issues, but explains them somewhat.
- bitwize 7y agoWhat that means, invariably, is that they will be enforced less against the politically connected and more on those without friends in high places.
- __sy__ 7y agoEnforcement of laws is inversely proportional to your 關係 (guanxi).
- mandelbrotwurst 7y agoIt's a bit more complicated than that. Many of these enforcement mechanisms are highly network dependent. People who are themselves less networked (e.g. less online, spending more time in rural areas or spaces with less cameras) are more likely to be overlooked by these enforcement mechanisms. To understand this a bit better, consider how much more likely someone who owns a car is to receive traffic tickets from cameras than is than someone who does not.
- Bonooru 7y ago>they are not enforced ... widely, rigorously and thoroughly That's a major source of the danger. If they were being consistently and equally enforced, then it would be obvious when there were issues. In the case with selective enforcement, the government can point to the law and say they're in the right, but only apply it when it suits them. This lets the people making the rules and the people who are in their good graces do what they'd like due to selective enforcement and not face the consequences of their actions.
- tomxor 7y agoYes, like I said it does not excuse it, and for some laws especially those with severe punishment, it's a serious concern. However in the case of certain types of policies it's not about intentional selectivity, it's about selectivity due to infeasibility, a type of selectivity that is not completely effective against any individual. For instance this one i'm pointing out: it's not possible to hold every single food source hostage in any country... but seriously, we are talking about food... in China... i'm running out of ellipses...
- the_resistence 7y agoThis is so awesome. I hope it takes hold some millenia.
- winrid 7y agoInteresting, related: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-how-to-get-rewards-2019-1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/china-s... Also, how do you increase your social credit I wonder? Do some stuff to help your community? How is it tracked? I couldn't find anything like you get X points for Y.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jhare 7y agoI believe this is all my true nightmares, come to life, expressed in one place.
- umvi 7y agoAnd yet, gun crime is non existent, suicide is much lower than the US, etc. China is actually by all measures a much better place to live than the US. The freedoms in the US just lead to death and suffering and political divisions and unhappiness. In China people are unified.
- TurkishPoptart 7y agoThis is pretty obvious 50 Cent Party crap. America's fucked up, but ya'll are leaps and bounds more fucked up.
- yathern 7y ago> China is actually by all measures a much better place to live than the US I think you need a source on that one. Gun crime is obviously worse in the US - and an ongoing problem - but it's not a huge impact on quality of life for most people. In suicide, China measures middle of the pack - certainly ahead of the US - but many Western countries do better. In terms of "happiness" - China ranks quite low on the World Happiness Index: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/
- diydsp 7y agoUS is very strange at the moment... better comparisons might be to Europe, Central and South America, who generally enjoy incredible freedom, political discourse, quality of health, education and life.
- dfee 7y agoSo long as you fit the mold: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china-forced-labor-camps-uighurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china...
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
- ozzyman700 7y agoThis is wonderful,happy to see collective relations promoted as positive as opposed to individual success.
- gapo 7y agoDefinition of dystopia
- amelius 7y agoAn outsider could perhaps look at capitalism in the same way.
- jblow 7y agoChina is capitalist.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- diydsp 7y agothe body language is unnverving. the insincere tics in the faces of the young women, the stilted swinging of the shoulders, the weak fist-squeezing of the young men with the awkward eye-popping. The deer in headlights postures... it all just reeks of coercion and young people trying to please but afraid and uncomfortable. Perhaps it's just a bad video director. Maybe the video director is trying to communicate their own discomfort. Maybe the producers see it all and delight in how much power they have... This video is evidence of their grip.
- 7y ago
- narrator 7y agoI kind of wish our pop culture was this bad. People would go outside more. One of the things that I find amusing about Chinese people I meet and talk with who are traveling outside of China is that they are not obsessed with pop music, celebrities or sports, or at least far less than we are in the west. As an example, I met a fashionable young Chinese lady with an apparently large income who was traveling the world. You know what she did for fun? She played the piano, did tourist stuff and went out for dinner with friends.
- Timpy 7y agoThat's a self selecting group though. All of the Americans I met while travelling and living outside of America seemed disinterested in pop culture too. It's not the "Chinese" part of your observation that's relevant.
- sushid 7y agoA fashionable young Chinese lady traveling in the US is not your average Chinese person. They’re clearly upper to upper middle class and they’re clearly going to enjoy different “hobbies” abroad.
- lormayna 7y agoThey are, instead, obsessed by money.
- Chris2048 7y agoThe west is full of shitbags who get away with it because their offenses are small, but numerous, and no one is watching to accumulate them towards a punishment.
- aiscapehumanity 7y agoIs that supposed to be an argument for social coercion? The west works though, overall there is obvious function.
- Chris2048 7y agoWhat does "the west works" mean? Does China not work? I also don't know what you mean by "social coercion" - plenty insocial behaviour is given punishment, from littering to noise - is that also coercion?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- utf985 7y agoMight be just me, but parts of this song sound awfully similar to "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance.
- __sy__ 7y agoWouldn't be the first time... https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/04/19/national/world-expo-song-halted-by-plagiarism-row https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/04/19/national/world-...
- gherkinnn 7y agoAre these sock puppets here also part of that campaign?
- traverseda 7y agoWhich of the 12 other comments do you suspect of being a sock puppet? The deleted one? Or are you just getting ready?
- gherkinnn 7y agoInteresting. The vibe has changed considerably since I was here last. Nevermind.
- yorwba 7y agoPresumably most people who're going to watch the music video are already aware that fraud is illegal etc. and if they don't act as virtuous as the role models presented to them, it's because they feel the alternative is worse. So it would be interesting to find out whether the PR campaign actually changes anyone's behavior.
- human20190310 7y ago> So it would be interesting to find out whether the PR campaign actually changes anyone's behavior. That's begging the question as to whether the behavior needs changing. Is there a pervasive trust/integrity problem in China?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoScams are very common in China. If you ever decide to visit, do a favor for yourself and brush up on the latest ones so you have a good trip.
- the_resistence 7y agoIt's horrible...
- yorwba 7y agoI don't know about "pervasive", but there are definitely some people trying to make a quick buck at the expense of others. I know someone involved with an MLM scam selling "fuel saving cards" that are supposed to quantum-mechanically reduce fuel consumption by sticking them to your gas tank.
- tempguy9999 7y agoI'm ambivalent about this kind of thing. One one hand it takes advantage of people's stupidity, on the other, if people let themselves be that dumb then they deserve what they get. I distinguish 'are that dumb' (children, some people with senility etc. who need protecting) from those who 'let themselves be that dumb' such as mystic belief in homoepathy, or that read up on the latest cancer cure in the Daily Mail (a right-wing UK rag). Elective credulity deserves no protection or respect IMO. But opposing views welcome.
- stOneskull 7y agomedia turning the whole public robotic
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xerox13ster 7y agoNoooot gonna lie, I actually like the idea of social credit as a replacement for money in a capitalist society. Seems to me that people who don't like it would have low scores anyway. China is communist and has committed many atrocities. This has contributed to strong propaganda in the West, driven by the wealthy and those that stand to lose power if we did away with money. People believe they will lose everything they've worked for without money, or that without money, no one would do their jobs. But if we replaced money with social credit and used positive contributions to society to drive capitalism instead of profit at all costs, we might actually see the world get better. People would contribute because if they didn't they'd lose everything (It works this way now with money as a middle man). I know I'm idealist but I've had this idea since I was very young. People like to laugh at me for it. Basically, why can't we be like bee or ant colonies? They don't use money, they continue functioning, and we're animals too we shouldn't need money to function.
- binarymax 7y agoCriticizing the production quality of this video is just a cheap shot. Imagine if DHS or ICE got together to produce a music video. It would be absolutely terrible.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoA major defense contractor who shall remain nameless put together an internal training music video called Let's Talk About FOD (foreign object damage) to the tune of Let's Talk About Sex. It was sung by a C-level exec. There were guys in clean room suits dancing (IIRC one of them even spun on his/her head). It was filmed on site in actual production facilities. The production value easily surpassed "peak-ISIS" and rivaled that of professional music videos. Being a lumbering bureaucracy doesn't mean you can't make a good music video. You just gotta have the skills to pull it off. Any government agency that takes propaganda (aka marketing) seriously should have the requisite skills in house.
- durpleDrank 7y agoDevils advocate here, is it safe to say that capitalism is a type of credit system that allows upward mobility except for it is based on greed and not being "trust worthy"? I dunno there is a part of me that wishes the propaganda was true. It would be nice to live in a world where everyone is nice and respectful of each other. No lying, no cheating, etc. I'm sure that it's not implemented well at all in China, and resembles more of a Police State hellscape than anything but there is a part of me wishes that bad landlord I had or that person who ripped me off etc weren't able to get away with it so easily.
- syrrim 7y ago"it's based on greed" All systems reward greed. The more detached they are from how people naturally behave, the more they reward people who chase the system at the expense of thise who what comes naturally. Capitalism rewards people for fulfilling other's revealed preferences. A democratically-decided social credit system would reward people for doing what the majority says they should do. Both systems would occasionally reward people for anti-social behaviour, and require legislative correction. Of the two, I would prefer the one oriented towards the needs and desires of the individual, not of the collective. We would like a world where people are more kind. Why not pay people to be kind to you? - an induced kindness it not desirable, we want a natural kindness - it's subjective: what one person thinks is kind, another doesn't; how would we write that contract? - there's a tradeoff: while we value kindness, in many cases others value not being kind more than we value kindness; you would likely have to pay more than you are willing to pay - transaction costs: while the subjectivity problem might be solved, it would be at great expense, this would probably push the price over the edge where it wasn't already All these reasons apply equally to inducing kindness with a social credit system. I think the tradeoff problem would likely be ignored. That is, people would be forced to be kind against their wish (being punished for not doing it rather than rewarded for doing it). Suppose I believe that the burden of being constantly forced to be kind would outweigh the advantage of living in a world where everyone is kind all the time. A capitalist system tests this claim, a democratic social credit system ignores it in favour if the will of the majority.
- jkingsbery 7y agoArguably, when people think of capitalism, they think of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," and all it entails about trade, specialization, profit, etc. For much of its history though, capitalism depended on a lot of what Smith wrote about in "On the Theory of Moral Sentiments," i.e., societies work because people "naturally [desire], not only to be loved, but to be lovely." In the West, we're trying to figure out the right allocation of goods through the market economy, and the right way "to be lovely" through freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc.
- ian0 7y agoHeres one for you. A benevolent and all knowing AGI runs a tamper proof social credit system that penalises things that are "bad" in the eyes of a strict majority and rewards things that are "good", reducing the rights of people with poor scores to limit potential harm they can do and giving people with good scores more leeway. What are the ethical considerations here? Is it just a perfect democracy + judicial system? Does it impact growth as a society? Im remembering the quote "All progress depends on the unreasonable man". Would it be a very conservative society that resulted? PS should go without saying, but this is just thought exercise, obviously..
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoAristotle once said: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." My expectation for such a system is that a majority group who have a specific lifestyle would penalize anyone who does not strictly adhere to that specific lifestyle. The group would change over time (likely liberal, then conservative, then back again) and each group would become more and more dogmatic about those views. Eventually the group will resemble something like the Nazis or the Soviets and violent revolution or war would end the experiment. Source: the past two thousand years of human civilization
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoSee Elysium and the AI parole officer.
- gpm 7y agoA perfect democracy includes the right to vote to allow people to do things that you think are bad though, and to vote to change the rules of the system together (such as to vote in a system where crimes/punishments must be defined beforehand, like they currently must be in the real world america).
- voldacar 7y agoThis just sounds like a (fairly unexceptional) tyranny of the majority. Our society may already be heading in this direction, albeit in a softer sense, with the rise of filter bubbles and highly polarized outrage culture