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The EC version of this is one way it could play out, and yes, that's a dystopian nightmare (though it would never work in the US, and not just for the dystopian hellscape reasons; the simpler reason is that half of the population is automatically against whatever the other half is for and therefore far too divergent from each other for this to make sense.) However, even in China, this only works on the non-governmental level if people who score higher also wind up better credit risks or marriage material. The government can do whatever it wants with the number without any further consequences than Chinese dissidents already face; it only gets worse than the status quo if the rest of society also punishes low scorers. I'm very unconvinced that this will happen IRL; it's much more likely that the upper crust of scorers cuts themselves off from everybody else and disconnects from society altogether or even that there are perverse incentives to avoid the top 10% (no way is the art scene or any other counterculture movement going to want those people, etc. etc.) I think it's as likely the number winds up being ridiculed as that it becomes a tool for non-governmental actors to do anything important.
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Dec 17, 2015 19:26
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Salt Fish posted:It is highly likely that there is already a similar system in place in the United States being run as an FBI/CIA/NSA cooperative. They don't capture as much Internet data as possible and store it in giant datacenters for no reason. It's too easy to hook up a MOSIAC algorithm to look at the incoming data and process it into a generic trustworthiness score and it would be totally legal because until a human looks at the information it isn't a "search". Sure, but it won't give you one total "trustworthy citizen" number and tie it into your credit score and shopping habits or going to look at how much of a Democrat you are compared to your friends. It will definitely do a large part of that and check how jihadi you are compared to them (which is fine IMO) but overall, it's not the right kind of profile to be used for what China is trying to do. It also helps that there are two parties so neither of them can safely Orwell the other half out of top secret clearances and bureaucratic appointments.
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Dec 17, 2015 21:01
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:There are two parties that have extremely similar worldviews on all but a fairly narrow range of very specific issues, and already independent of any kind of formal system for grading someone's politics people have been pretty proactive about using social media to ferret out and hound those who display evidence of being outside the window of acceptable thought. The danger is not to people who vote Democrat or think Planned Parenthood should be defunded, they're your basic 'good citizens' who don't meaningfully threaten the status quo even to the other side; it's to the Muslims and the Communists and the black power activists and the wartime pacifists of the future who rightthinking persons of both parties can get together on hating (and anyone who might readily be mistaken for one). Those Communists you mentioned, along with civil rights activists outside the Overton window, were getting crushed much harder sixty years ago without the Internet being a thing and before we even had a country-wide interstate highway system. I don't want to downplay your point because it's valid, but what the three letter agencies are doing with that info right now looks like it's overfocused on collection and storage and underdelivering on results. At some point they will figure out how to get results, then at some further (or maybe not much further) point overreact until the inevitable backlash and history repeating itself. What I don't see even when they do overreact is the NSA looking up every poster on 4chan, Stormfront or whatever the new LF is and getting them all fired or arrested on trumped up charges by the local cops, which was very much a real thing back in the day and the worst case scenario in China. Your activism might rule you out of some jobs but it was already doing that when, as you've pointed out, HR looked you up on Facebook or called up the background check agency they had on retainer to do that instead.
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Dec 17, 2015 23:49
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