China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score

Charles Stross commented on these reports, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.antipope.org&#x2F;charlie&#x2F;blog-static&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;it-could-be-worse.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.antipope.org&#x2F;charlie&#x2F;blog-static&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;it-could...</a><p><i>&quot;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&#x27;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.&quot;</i><p>A 2014 Chinese planning document for the credit system, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;14&#x2F;planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;14&#x2F;plan...</a> said, <i>&quot;... its inherent requirements are establishing the idea of an sincerity culture, and carrying forward sincerity and traditional virtues.&quot;</i><p>In the 1970s, Chile tried cybernetics at a national scale, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;13&#x2F;planning-machine" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;13&#x2F;planning-machin...</a><p><i>&quot;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.&quot;</i>

Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag.<p>It&#x27;s just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers.<p>Very clever, China.

On the one hand, this is very spooky. On the other, it seems like it could be a precursor to a social currency similar to the Whuffie[0] in Cory Doctorow&#x27;s &quot;Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom&quot;. I remember that reading that book, I couldn&#x27;t help but feel that, as we move closer to a post-scarcity society, the rise of something like that would be inevitable, and might in some ways be much better than what we have now.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Whuffie" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Whuffie</a>

To the extent that my understanding of European current events is aided by shared culture and a much better coverage of history, even including many more modern events, I find my near-complete lack of understanding of Chinese culture is a serious impediment to my understanding of articles like this. My university history classes basically ended at the Boxer Rebellion, with a brief interlude into using the Great Leap Forward as a hit piece against Mao (which, to be fair, he seems to have deserved, but that&#x27;s all it was meant as. It wasn&#x27;t meant as history of China).<p>For example: isn&#x27;t China supposed to be Communist? How are there so many ludicrously rich people? Clearly, I&#x27;m missing some part of the equation in there that explains why I have this perception.<p>It&#x27;s vexing because I tend to want to &quot;fix&quot; problems in understanding as soon as I identify them, yet I have no idea how one would gain an accurate image of China from the outside, given how much <i>I&#x27;ve been told</i> they control information flow.

And the arms race between freedom and control goes on.<p>“<i>All that behaviour will be integrated into one comprehensive assessment of you as a person</i>”<p>The ultimate simplification, condensing a human being to a simple number. Gods have always been used to rationalise entitlement to and application of power. This one is electrified and fully programmable.<p>As a concept, this is so predictable that it&#x27;s already boring (was only a question of time until machines become capable of implementing this nightmare). There should exist a ton of science fiction literature that explores this scenario. How dumb would people have to be to not see through it? We already had a period of enlightenment that disposed of the “old gods”. And they seriously believe an electrified god artefact would fare any better?

For additional commentary, there was previous discussion of this topic a week ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10329733" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10329733</a>

It seems that people (in power; but especially ones commenting on such articles; those with cynical spin mostly) perceive life in a country as a computer game.<p>Where &quot;dissidents&quot; will happen to your country, and you have to implement &quot;measures&quot; to make them go away, and then you call it a day. Because game rules incentivize you to do exactly that.<p>The reality is: Life happens to your country. People happen to your country. Things happen to your country that are outside of your control. DDR&#x27;s Stasi had kilogramms of dossiers on every its citizen, and it got scrapped in a few days with as little as a handshake.

Well I guess now we know which government provided the seed capital for Peeple.

Looks like all this does is cause people to waste time optimizing the score, and make the wealthy better off since they can hire the service of consultants specializing in this.