[walterbell]

Charles Stross commented on these reports, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could...

"The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the price of a discount off a new fridge? ... You can see your score in real time, get helpful tips on what to do (or not to do) to grind for points, and if you're thinking about doing something a bit naughty a handy app will give you a chance to exercise second thoughts and erase your sin before it is recorded."

A 2014 Chinese planning document for the credit system, https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan... said, "... its inherent requirements are establishing the idea of an sincerity culture, and carrying forward sincerity and traditional virtues."

In the 1970s, Chile tried cybernetics at a national scale, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machin...

"At the center of Project Cybersyn (for “cybernetics synergy”) was the Operations Room, where cybernetically sound decisions about the economy were to be made ... One wall was reserved for Project Cyberfolk, an ambitious effort to track the real-time happiness of the entire Chilean nation in response to decisions made in the op room. Beer built a device that would enable the country’s citizens, from their living rooms, to move a pointer on a voltmeter-like dial that indicated moods ranging from extreme unhappiness to complete bliss."

[guard-of-terra]

One little thought:

By including political loyalty in credit scores, you basically outline your political pain points. Which are usually hidden - in closed societies by censorship and pressure, in pluralistic societies by social conventions.

When you go from "pain points are not known" (to a layperson) to "pain points are known but avoided", it's a step back. Yes, vocal minority now faces some pressure, instead silent majority now knows what topics are there to be careful about and gives them some thought.

[vidarh]

Imagine if someone were able to fund a service to provide financial benefits based on inverting the scoring....

More realistically: It provides a (though presumably risky) means of identifying who the Chinese government is concerned about, which would potentially be of interest to dissidents as well... (risky because I presume they'll be keeping a close eye on accesses to this system, and because it of course would be trivial for them to ensure there's plenty of "plants" there to cause problems if dissidents were to use it to find likeminded people)

[guard-of-terra]

Every bank teller is accessing this system. At the moment when they face the person whose score they see. An ideal moment for conversion if you ask me.

Having said that, dissidents usually don't have problems with finding their ilk, neither they're looking to assemble a rank-and-file army.

[spacecowboy_lon]

could be a way for loan shark sand payday lone companies to work out who to target - a government provided sucker list if you like.

[guard-of-terra]

People who need payday loans rarely dissent, they're too busy for that.

[Shivetya]

and here in the US its done through proxies who sue to get access to donation lists, list of those who supported petitions, access to previously courted locked documents, and such, in order to shut down speech or actions they don't like. sometimes even government agencies get involved with political activist abusing their position.

so while China might codify affecting people's credit scores and "social" score make no assumption that similar hasn't always been in Western countries, we just like to paint others as bogeymen to avoid looking at our own flaws

[zappo2938]

Proxies like college professors? Students gain points by telling professors what the professors want to hear and if the students thoughts manifest in submitted papers are dissimilar from the professors they are penalized. So, while writing and thinking more important the thinking students are trying to figure out what the professors want to hear.

Of course, this doesn't apply to any discipline that is a system like math, STEM, physics, ect.. But in humanities, what students are learning is to think like their teachers.

[diyorgasms]

I think you're painting the humanities with an overly broad brush, and writing off an entire field of study because of some presupposed notion.

And that you specifically exempt STEM fields from your ire has you playing right into the worst stereotypes of STEM arrogance.

[FelixP]

One interesting thing to note is that this allows for the exact quantification ("pricing") of various forms of dissent. If a large enough segment of the population is willing to pay a measurable financial cost in order to engage in a certain behavior, the government will be able to monitor (and respond) to that in near real time.