So late last year we had [i]The Orville[/i] episode called "Majority Rule" which presented the case of an earth-like planet which exercised a form of "absolute democracy". Every adult on this planet maintained an absolute "social point score" which dictated your rights/privileges. They literally all wore badges with up and down vote buttons: do something nice and people around you would give you an upvote, do something mean and you'd get downvoted. If you earned yourself enough downvotes you could be barred from service in restaurants and the like. Their version of the Internet allowed people to instantly vote on specific people highlighted in their news feeds as an entire society. Basically it was the concept of the "like" button taken to a hyper-extreme.
Now I recently started seeing news articles [url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-social-credit-system-punishments-rewards-explained-a8297486.html]like this one[/url] that demonstrate things like this are actually already happening in real life. China is starting to rank people using what they are calling a "social credit system" where you'll get rewards for doing socially 'good' things and punished for doing socially 'bad' things. These systems are experimental and/or piecemeal right now but they intend to have it nationwide by 2020.
So for example if they catch you driving badly, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games or posting fake news online they'll start doing the following to you:
[list]
[*]Banning you from flying or riding the train
[*]Throttling your internet speeds
[*]Banning you or your kids from the best schools
[*]Stopping you getting the best jobs
[/list]
Rewards for 'good' behavior include:
[list]
[*]Better ranking on dating websites
[*]Discounts on energy bills, rents and better interest rates at banks
[*]Better hotel/vacation deals
[/list]
So it would seem that this Chinese system is just a stone's throw from the supposedly hypothetical Orville episode - pretty scary stuff.
Maybe this could apply to CoT in the form of some villainous faction trying to impose some kind of authoritarian rule over Titan City by tricking/forcing people to be "chipped" and structuring society to work on some kind of strictly enforced social caste system. Maybe they could have a benign corporate front image (like a version of Apple or Google) where they claim they are just there to "help humanity" or some-such but in reality they want everyone stacked and sorted via their own social credit regime.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
That is pretty scary.
But from the recent experiences of [url=https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/08/405183120/beijing-clamps-down-on-chinese-tourists-behaving-badly]Chinese Tourists in the Americas and Europe[/url], I can see why they'd want to implement it.
The recent [url=http://gatchaman.wikia.com/wiki/Gatchaman_Crowds]Gatchaman Crowds[/url] series was a [b][i]Phenomenal[/i][/b] look at zeitgeist behavior. It was probably a bit too deep for most teen audiences, but I thought it did a great job of capturing the basic problems with trying to "fit in" better than anything I've seen before or since.
For those who remember G-Force from the 80's:
[img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/G-Force_-_group_shot2.jpg[/img]
Gatchaman is the Japanese name of the show. And it had a reboot a couple of years ago called [url=http://www.crunchyroll.com/gatchaman-crowds]Gatchaman Crowds that is available on Crunchyroll[/url].
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I suppose if Chinese tourists are generally behaving badly overseas then it could be inferred they are behaving badly at home too. Still it seems incredibly Orwellian to go as far as to blacklist people from jobs, schools and public transportation just for being proverbial ass-hats.
In the Orville episode people who got enough downvotes were summarily "reprogrammed" (essentially lobotomized) so that they would "conform" to society's expectations. Doesn't seem like this Chinese system would do much to prevent that from eventually happening in real life as well.
Yeah I remember watching "G-Force" as a kid. I think I always knew it was based on an original Japanese show but I never got around to seeing any other incarnation of it. Did the recent reboot get into the idea of a "Social Credit" system like was mentioned here?
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It was similar enough to cause me to associate it with this thread. To say any more would be to spoil too much.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
That sort of social rating system would certainly work better in a 'communal' society than in an 'individual' one. Asian cultures do, generally, put more emphasis on fitting in. 'Western' cultures have placed more emphasis on the individual - probably due to the expanding Frontier that the west was until relatively recently.
(Consider that 'the west' was where social outcasts and criminals were sent.)
Exploration and expansion (generally) tends to emphasize individual survival behavior over social/communal ones.
Consider the effect that an asshat/troll or just the sort of arguments that spring up on these forums (and elsewhere) might have on such a system. A grumpy person is having a bad day, so they hand out down-votes, but somebody notices and cries out "Troll! Troll! Troll! They're handing out down-votes for no reason!" This sparks a flurry of voting as the argument spreads and could, conceivably bring down the whole neighborhood/town/county/state/nation (Yes, I know it's hyperbole). Just like occasional fits of acrimony have filled threads on this forum.
We do have Facebook and other 'Hot or Not' venues where we can indulge such behavior, but I don't feel it would work as a Social System anywhere where a metabolically-challenged person could be down-voted just for existing.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I'm sure some cultures could more naturally accept a Social Credit system better than others. Then again the Chinese government is still technically a repressive Communist authoritarian regime no matter how many veneers of happy, shiny capitalism you try to paint on top of it so the fact that they are toying with this "surveillance state" idea is not terribly surprising.
Do I think the vision of "absolute democracy" as envisioned in the Orville episode (or even the real world Chinese system) is going to happen in the United States tomorrow? No. But considering how many people are now living and dying by their smartphones and what people are saying in their tweets and such I don't think the idea of it actually happening here is as far-fetched as it might initially seem.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I agree, not far-fetched.
Of course, I'm one of those Luddites that doesn't have a smartphone. *smile*
Be Well!
Fireheart
[youtube]lUXHB5U-Vl4[/youtube]
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Good thing Huckleberry sent his Body Snatcher after you first... now that you're gone I might be the last person alive without a smartphone. ;)
Full disclosure: I work on average roughly 4 to 5 months of the year on a ship at sea. Without a wireless connection of any kind a so-called "smart" phone is fairly pointless. Also turns out when I'm not at sea I'm usually working in various controlled areas where personal electronics are heavily restricted. Smartphones are again relatively useless when you can't superglue them to your hand like most people who use them do. Perhaps when I retire I'll finally get an iPhone 17 or whatever and become "one of them" but at least for the moment I can easily afford to be blissfully ignorant of such things.
To add icing to that Luddite cake I've never had a Facebook account either... even before it was cool to delete one. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Never had FB, never had a smartphone until 3 years ago and didn't even really use it until 1 year ago. :p
As for China, theirs is less some idea of a democratic society and more of a way to control their people.
Behaving badly, includes such things as, calling China out on it's terrible practices.
Personally, I hope westerners get pass their feelings that they're special and can't be made to whine. :p
Considering the upvote / downvote bots that seem to be in heavy use on sites with such voting features, I can easily imagine scenarios where people buy old cellphones or banks of vote-mining-capable cards, hack/run them with whatever software can trick the central vote-tallying system into believing those are real voters, and vote themselves into the top echelon (and their enemies into the dirt). Soon enough, we'll get botnets of real voters' devices secretly trickle-upvoting while the voter is sleeping, and companies offering similar services - whether to re-polish a criminal's lost reputation, revenge-downvote a bully or a hated boss, or ensure that Business X's CEO is properly adored by all while the secretary (who just asked HR about the complaints process) seems to have boarded the train to Frown Town...
All employees are reminded to provide vote feedback on the management team at least once per day.
[size=3]Compliance check at 4:58pm, direct deposit of wages at 4:59pm daily.[/size]
Clearly China's Social Credit system will be a new layer of control over their citizens. To be clear there's actually a huge difference between what's known as an "absolute democracy" and the thing China is trying to do, even though the net effect of both is super dystopian either way.
The plot of The Orville episode I mentioned is the textbook example of an [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_democracy]Absolute Democracy[/url]. This is a form of "government" (if you can even call it that) which operates with no "representatives" between the people and the rule-making. Imagine the United States but you replace the three branches of the Federal Government with Twitter (sound familiar?). Everyone directly votes at any time without any pretense that ANYTHING could be considered a permanently undeniable fact, right or privilege. No Constitution, no Bill of Rights, no laws that couldn't be re-voted on every 5 minutes. Just about the only thing that separates this system from pure anarchy is that instead of rule by mob you've got rule by 51% majorities.
On the other hand China's Social Credit system is going to be an insidious layer of absolute democracy firmly controlled by a top ruling party who will use the results of the system to maintain its firm grip over everything. In a creepy way it'll be "another layer of control" just like the machines imposed on humans in the Matrix movies. The ruling party will use the results of the Social Credit system to pick winners (loyal to the system) over losers (who defy the system) so in a very real sense China will become closer to an Orwellian nightmare than it ever dreamt of being possible until now.
Exactly. The fact that I started this thread would have likely earned me lots of downvotes if I happen to have been a Chinese citizen while doing it.
There would be plenty of westerners who would lose their collective shit if their representative democracies suddenly became absolute democracies overnight.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It would be a glorious hot-mess regardless...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I watched that episode of Orville (well, I watched ALL the episodes) and I couldn't understand how people wouldn't just down vote those who down voted them. Like the guy who got down voted for accidentally spilling his coffee onto someone else (which looked to be part of the other guys fault anyways).
Although it was never explicitly stated, I can easily imagine that there would be some sort of Tit-for-Tat downvote retaliation suppression system in play, such that reciprocating downvotes are prohibited (you vote me down, well I'll just vote you down right back!) in order to put a dampener on downvote revenge action. Simplest thing would be to prohibit downvoting someone who downvoted you for 5 minutes. However, given the society shown in The Orville, there might not have been even that layer of protection against downvote retaliations.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Maybe, but with their system, I just couldn't see that being the case. Also, I did wonder how they got anywhere, as I would think anyone in the public eye, would get quickly put into retraining.
Survival of the Populist.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
They look familiar...
[youtube]r8cCyNp9fNo[/youtube]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
By the time almost any anime/manga series is big enough it's probably been copied a dozen times over. That's one of the best ways you know it's become a big anime/manga series. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Megas XLR was a great show. And yeah, those guys have been parodied and homaged many times over.
[img]http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/954/738/89d.gif[/img]
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."