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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

I "love" how China actually tried to formalize this some time ago. Every citizen would get a citizen score, like our credit ratings, but grading how politically loyal they were. There was quite a bit of outrage on the western internet about this.

The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things (though still to a lesser degree, and secretly). A big difference is that China often doesn't have a sense of tact when it comes to not sounding dystopian, and happiliy uses phrases like "citizen score", "criminal elements" and "reeducation". Also Big-Character posters are still a thing [1], though slightly modernized.

Although, we are getting there. At O'Hare airport in Chicago I remember seeing a poster urging me to "be vigilant", which has a nice ring to it...

[1] http://justinmccandless.com/files/beijingSpirit.jpg "The Beijing Spirit: Patriotism Innovation Inclusiveness Virtue"

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The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things

No, they're provably doing similar things. A "citizen score" only has cosmetic differences to the data crunching done by machine learning predictive policing.

The differences are just as large enough to avoid fitting into any of the identifiers for bad governance that the American collective conscience is already keyed into.

The main difference is you're not getting fired or ostracized or jailed for run of the mill political views or dissidence.

Look at today's Turkey for what it would be if this were true in western democracies (of which Turkey withdrew itself recently).

The main difference is you're not getting fired or ostracized or jailed for run of the mill political views or dissidence.

There are two different aspects.

The difference you're focusing on seems to be setting what positions are acceptable, and what gets done to people who hold them them.

The similarity I was focusing on was that they're being tracked at all. And in the cases that they're not not immediately actionable, I don't draw much distinction between a bureaucrat with actuarial tables and machine learning.

> The main difference is you're not getting fired or ostracized or jailed for run of the mill political views or dissidence.

Jailed, no. Fired and ostracized? Certainly, except for narrow definitions of "views" and "dissidence" (largely calibrated by region and type of employment).

You're conflating government action with civil actions. Civilians do all kinds of things governments are constrained from doing --I can be ostracized by colleagues for being irreligious or contemptuous of management or being pro choice, or conversely pro life or being too PC or not being PC, etc.

I'm unaware of dragnets and massive house to house searches in order to discover and punish people who went out for a brief protest against against a corrupt government office.

> China actually tried to formalize this some time ago [...] The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things (though still to a lesser degree, and secretly).

They may be doing it to an even higher degree (given they are far more sophisticated than CCP) but the key feature is that they do it like criminals that they are and in "secret".

The Chinese are stuck with the CCP and a techno-Scientific ruling elite unless they manage to have another rovolution. The generation that survived Mao is, imo, probably psychologically shorn of any will to express robust dissent given the state terrorism that they had to endure. The new generation is fed hyper-nationalism and has front row seat on the gloabally televised hypocrisy of American governing elite. (Isn't it so fine that in 21st century USA has become the enabler of autocrats the world over?)

We have a constitution that if ever resurrected would deal with all this. We need to focus on that.

The MTA's "See something, say something" campaign in NYC always kind of comes off sounding dystopian to me.

I'd much rather inefficient, racially biased policing come from the population than an ML algorithm in Ft. Meade.

I mean... I'd rather we don't have that kind of policing at all. Obviously...

You now have both.

Problem being that ML manifests the unconscious biases of its author -- in the form of its learning set being biased, in the form of not-spotting patterns that are obvious for human heuristics or in the form of training not capturing something the author sees as significant.

I recall a story recently about ML detecting risk for post-op inpatients. Human nurses know not to send people with Asthma home after an operation due to their high risk profile. Because the ML system was always ignoring Asthma patients as they were never queried, it assumed it was safe to send them home.

I would argue that that racially biased policing in ML is just an extension of racially biased data scientists in Ft Meade, or Silicon Valley or Wall St or where ever.

> The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things

perhaps in capital driven liberal countries it's called Credit Ratings - rather than your worth being judged through your loyalty, it's judged through your willingness to spend and accrue debt.

not trying to sound bleak and cynical, but just a thought.

why so tentative? i pay my limited bills on time, i have taken on debt twice and paid it off as soon as possible, living basically within my means, and because of this my credit score is terrible.

i can't get a phone contract, a mortgage is out of the question. i automatically fall to the bottom of the list when trying to rent an apartment. don't know what went on at the places i applied to for employment that requested a credit score waiver, but can't imagine it was to my benefit.

now i can't even get on the credit train and start maintaining a card because i'm apparently such a poor risk.

its clearly not the same set of concerns as a patriotism score. but there's clearly some kind of profiling and clustering going on.

Have you got any credit cards? Get one. Before trying the crappy "secured" cards, try a Discover, they seem lenient if you don't have cards yet. Stuff it in a drawer, add something small to it, such as Netflix, setup autopay, forget about it.

Your credit score will slowly increase. And at no cost to you (other than the time to setup this, which can be minimal if you can get approvals online).

You can (and should) live within your means and that's fine. What creditors want to see is that you have access to credit and you use it responsibly (eg, paying on time). You don't actually need to use any of your available credit.

have you requested your credit history? you should be able to access that for free and that might give you some insight.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-repor...

and yeah, it's fucking awful and i detest the whole thing.

It's hilarious I think. It's sort of the same end result, but the means to get there are a bit different.

Having a Citizen Score would send me into a fit of rage, but I probably have some kind of other score I don't know about. Or I'm on a List. Those Lists. Must take much money to maintain them.

No maintenance required really. Once a name goes on a list it never comes off. Weekly backups are probably a good idea though.

Are you referencing Beneath A Steel Sky or did it actually say "be vigilant"? I just finished the game last week :)

It might have been just "thank you for your vigilance" or something similar, but it strongly reminded me of a game. Thanks for reminding me of what it was called :-) great game!

China actually tried to formalize this some time ago. Every citizen would get a citizen score, like our credit ratings, but grading how politically loyal they were

North Korea actually did it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbun

Reminds me of Psycho-Pass where everyone is basically assigned a criminality rating and you're arrested or killed on the spot if it gets too high.

And as a result, crime and unemployment are unheard of and the greatest risk to public health (aside from freedom-loving terrorists) is a debilitating LACK of mental stress.

Well... that's one interpretation of it I suppose...

> A big difference is that China often doesn't have a sense of tact when it comes to not sounding dystopian, and happiliy uses phrases like "citizen score", "criminal elements" and "reeducation".

Clintons "basket of deplorables" is a reminder that this sense of tact could change after the election.

Shit slinging during an election is hardly new. And talking shit about the other side is hardly an indicator of some massive policy change.

I'm sorry, you still seem to be treating this like it matters instead of some type of show.

It bothers me that one tactless moment from Clinton seems to get more attention than a lifetime of tactlessness from Trump. The guy openly insults anybody who doesn't unconditionally support him, but Clinton has one quotable moment of frustration and it's all of the sudden the evidence we need that politics isn't polite anymore?

Candidate A says that immigrants from a certain country are "bringing crime; bringing drugs; they're rapists; and some, I presume, are good people".

Candidate B says that half the supporters of Candidate A are "deplorable".

If anything, Clinton was going out of her way to be excessively tactful.

To be fair, the number is much higher than 50%.

It's not a binary choice, after all.

LOL. Seriously?

Who gives a shit anyway? "Offending" Trump supporters isn't going to change anything. Not like they were on the fence.

I love the double standard being applied here. It's like what Trump says is just "expected", but Clinton says one thing you find offensive (oh no, political correctness!) and you're all up in arms. Woe is the deplorable Trump supporter.

I would LOVE to have that kind of formally acknowledged scoring system. I could then actually weigh the decisions - "I'm currently at 523 risk points, which puts me at the 65th percentile of ethical divergence. I can sign this petition and go up 10 points. I'll only be at the 67th percentile and I don't plan on doing anything else subversive so I should be able to decay back down to below 500 before I need to book my vacation next spring."

Instead you have to guess "is this going to put me on a list? What does being on the list mean? Does the list exist?" Well, aside from the obvious list of the petition itself. You know what I mean.

London had a nice "watchful eyes" poster a few years back

https://www.wired.com/2002/11/londons-privacy-falling-down/

Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!

http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/up...

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