Hacker News Reader

Comment by krainboltgreene | Hacker News Reader

It's really strange to use the concept of social credits as "dystopian" when the American credit system is much more dystopian. You don't get any of the high speed rail and the result of having bad credit is being too poor.

View on HN

Frankly that’s an incredibly naive thing to say. There’s just no comparison. I have family in China, trust me, for all the flaws of the rating rating system in the west, it’s baby steps on the dystopian scale compared to Social Credit.

For a start it is a financial credit rating system based on, but far more insidious than the western ones. So any negative effect of credit ratings in the US, SC does that too. On top of that it adds whole other layers of monitoring and intrusiveness, combined with many dimensions of additional ways it’s used to interfere in people’s lives. Things that in the west are legal rights can just be arbitrarily taken away if you have a low SC score. Not just by accident or as a side effect, but systematically and by design.

I understand that China is worse. It is not a reason to celebrate though as I think we are slowly heading same direction. Hopefully the trend will reverse.

Pretending that two wrongs make a right or that everything is equally bad won't help, though. Democracies are often found wanting when measured against their standards. That's still better than having absolutely none whatsoever.

>"Pretending that two wrongs make a right or that everything is equally bad"

Where did you get this idea from? I said explicitly that theirs s worse. What I do not want is for us heading in the same direction which we seem to be doing lately. While I appreciate that we are in much better shape the trend does not bring celebratory mood.

It was not directed at you personally. It's just that I see a lot of "china bad but US also bad" and it's textbook whataboutism.

Every time one mentions whataboutism I think of hypocrisy.

Whataboutism is hypocritical because, by comparing it to some other 'crime' it is an implicit acceptance that the issue in question is a 'crime'.

West: Putin invading Ukraine is wrong.

Troll: Whatabout the US troops in Syria?

West: So you believe forign military adventures are wrong?

Troll: Of course they are.

West: Then you agree Putin's invasion of Ukraine is wrong?

Troll: but, but, but Syria.

West: Now that we've established you think Putin's invasion of Ukraine is wrong and should be condemned, sure, let's discuss the Syrian situation and US operations against ISIS on it's own merits.

>"Whataboutism is hypocritical because, by comparing it to some other 'crime' it is an implicit acceptance that the issue in question is a 'crime'."

Absolute BS. There is absolutely no acceptance. There must be severe punishment for Putin and his clique. And while we are at it remind me what is / was the punishment for other direct and indirect invasions / meddling with huge loss of life like Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc.

Hypocrisy is when you keep yappin about one side but you know that your side is doing the same thing. You know it is wrong and you know you are not gonna do shit about it. Hence you are completely condoning a crime. I am all for all perpetrators, many of them alive and rich to be brought to justice. So when is the next hearing in Hague?

Your contrived dialog about the west / troll is total BS as well.

I suspect it came from the post I was replying to, rather than yourself directly.

Things are always getting worse in democracies, but they're also always getting better. Liberal democracy is a dynamic system. The main threat I see at the moment is the risk of extreme political polarisation. Demonisation of political opponents is always insidious when it goes too far. It's important to recognise that, for the vast majority of our populations, there is far more that unites us than divides us.

Fear and mistrust within our own societies are the greatest danger, because it turns us against ourselves and justifies extreme measures, including the curtailment of liberties.

>"Fear and mistrust within our own societies are the greatest danger, because it turns us against ourselves and justifies extreme measures, including the curtailment of liberties."

I agree that this is the case. Fueled in particular by ever growing divide between our rich masters who can heavily influence governments using lobbying and peasants as many of them see that the American Dream becomes well, a dream.

> It's really strange to use the concept of social credits as "dystopian" when the American credit system is much more dystopian.

I'm not from the USA so I'm not super familiar with the credit rating system you have over there.

The reason for having these social credits is to limit the number of API calls per user in order to reduce my OpenAI bill. I just masked this limitation in a dystopian way by calling them "social credits".

I mean it's not good, but it only affects our access to credit. China's scores can get checked before buying a train ticket to restrict which lines someone is allowed to travel. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-p...

Like this one: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/americans-no-fly-list-fea... ? I personally lived in China for quiet a long time, I learned about the social credit system when I moved to the US, in the news. But I know that goes against what the establishment, and we should just hate other countries, no matter what, because everything here is just dandy. Ironically, I did see many real problems in China, but those don't get picked by CNN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com