http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089049/

The Black Mirror episode about a system like this came out in 2016.

In the spirit of this episode and the totalitarian nature of China today and the whole world tomorrow, i think it will be an every [regular] citizen duty to "plug in" for set amount of hours to run your fair share of social computing "dapps" and to sync-up/check the thoughts/emotions as well.

The open office enforced hive-style collaboration/teamwork and always-on IM with implicit contract of immediately dropping everything and lending your brain is a very-very early preview of that future.

That was what the Matrix was originally supposed to be - the humans were wired into a neural network to bootstrap the AIs, but executives were afraid moviegoers wouldn't be smart enough to understand that, so they forced the change to "batteries."

Ahh, jinx!

When The Matrix was first conceived, the machines used humans for some computing, but that was dumbed down a bit in the final product.

EDIT: ugh, double jinx

It wasn't clear what happened in the background, but it seemed like humanity was in a prison and to keep incidents down they made them do hard labor and provided endless mindless entertainment. Probably supposed to be an allegory for 9-5 jobs. The ending suggests that the rest of the planet is alive at least. Maybe humanity was put in prison for wrecking the biosphere and they're giving the planet time to recover?

> The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8700 “mass group incidents” in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005.[2] In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010.[3][4] Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.[5]

However

> Despite the increase in protests, some scholars have argued that they may not pose an existential threat to Communist Party rule because they lack “connective tissue;” the preponderance of protests in China are aimed at local-level officials, and only a select few dissident movements seek systemic change.

Who knows how it will play out in the long run, especially with the looming demographic problems of their aging population.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6912900/?ref_=ttep_ep7

I mean, guests at the party (spoiler) should be amused at the ghost of the maid and the scandal, filming it and all - especially young guys. It should go completely viral. Instead they stand frowning as if they're 70 - to avoid hurting their score.

Under social credit society, everybody will be forced to act like they're at the end of their life path.

And then there's real content, viral content, assertive content. In short, life. Social credit system fights life because life doesn't follow rules, life doesn't care about likes and life doesn't climb their ladder. So naturally I expect harsh sanctions for anything viral or any unexpected flash mobs in such systems.

Once a system like this is in place it will be abused. It's practically designed to be abused. Where is the accountability?

Once thing I kind of liked about that episode is that it was backwards from a normal Black Mirror episode. Normally they try to make the technology look fun and useful at first before they do the flip and make it horrible and dehumanizing. This episode started out like the end of a normal episode and ended with the main character doing a white girl rap battle with some random dude.

In this case, it's the government giving you a score.

Now, I could just wake up in the morning and get the same thing done in 5 minutes AND select a product I feel confident about based on reviews. Instead of wasting an hour of my life I could actually go live my life.

As a result, pretty much everything I buy comes through Amazon. Only things I don’t buy there are things that simply aren’t on Amazon, and getting those things is usually a pain in the ass because I have to search other websites or possibly an open store that may stock that item.

Using Amazon has made me time-rich. If I somehow couldn’t use it, I’d become something of a pauper: Unable to buy good items accurately, and spending a lot of time to find and purchase them. I do not want to return to those days.

I mean, don't people normally just buy what they need once a month or so?

And, do you actually need a review for basic groceries that you buy once a week?

Also actual high-end products, like fashion, aren't available on Amazon anyways, while the real cheap stuff you'd get from Ali Express.

I will never understand Amazon. I use it maybe a couple times a year.. don't understand what people that buy hundreds of items a year are going through..

Doesn’t even include movie and show rentals.

That's not to say every trip is enjoyable, but I wonder what people might be missing by forgoing those trips (and automating everything they can, in general). You miss the trip there, and everything you might experience along the way, and the people at the store, and a poster for a cool concert that you might have gone to see, etc.

To me, that's not wasted time, that is living life.

I liken the rise of Amazon as something analogous to the agricultural revolution. Before agriculture, everyone had to hunt and gather food, it was a laborious process similar to shopping. Once people discovered agriculture however, and similarly Amazon, it was no longer necessary to spend so much effort in getting life's basic necessities, freeing us to spend our time on more noble pursuits.

This is the world I would much rather live in. I do not care for the retail days of olde.

I agree with you completely if we're talking about a Target in suburban Houston, but going to a handmade card store in NYC, or a rare books store in Charleston, or weird candy store in SF can all be fun exploratory experiences. I drop into the fancy grocery store nearby to look around and find ingredients I've never heard of, despite doing 90% of my grocery shopping online with delivery, because it's a fun way to get outside my comfort zone. The easy availability of places/stores that allow me opportunities to explore and be excited about new things is perhaps the thing I value most about living in NYC.

weird, that's how I'd describe about 60% of my time on Amazon... Better, sometimes.

*For certain values of "survived;" e.g. if someone had a bad accident in an isolated area before cellphones, they usually died.

Yeah I would be just fine without Amazon.

Everyone's children are going to make mistakes. The wealthy are going to be able to cover up their children's mistakes, the poor are going to be put on 'the list' and become 'restricted.'

The restrictions will grow, and eventually you'll have a new group of 'untouchables'

It is more like a modern iteration of very old Confucian ideals. (Not that I agree with Confucian philosophy)

Confucian philosophy had influenced Chinese culture for several millennial, and the oral tradition was that Confucius (Kong Tzu) himself distilled what went into the Analects from much older rites and cultures.

The basic idea here is that humans don't start out as humans, and require socialization to uplift them and refine their spirit to that of "human". To accomplish this as a society, there is an emphasis on education and behavioral control.

This has permeated many levels of the Chinese culture. What is novel here is the use of Big Data and AI to enforce these.

Confucious's philosophy and its descendent philosophies, though pervasive, are not the only streams that have influenced Chinese culture. If you are looking for echoes of classical liberalism, you'd find it more at home with the Lao-tzu, and the ethos of "let's improve our society with technology" would find an echo with Mo-tzu.

> Everyone's children are going to make mistakes. The wealthy are going to be able to cover up their children's mistakes, the poor are going to be put on 'the list' and become 'restricted.'

This already happens before Big Data, both in China and in Taiwan. It happened with other cultures that were influenced by ancient Chinese Confucian thought -- Korea and Japan.

Confucious also said "those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.”

"Jesus teaches us to be moral, so the inquisition is just letting the government teach us to be more moral."

This social credit is just what the "men of methods" would prescribe replace aristocracy with a bureaucracy. You get automatic four year ban for certain services if social credit drops below certain level.

If this is a modern iteration of confucianism, then confucianism is equivalent to a caste system.

Isn't every caste system.dressed up like that?

I mean that a felony removes your right to vote, makes employment much more difficult.

However, the actual effect of bring that up is to:

1) Blunt criticism of this newly implemented Chinese policy.

2) Distract everyone from it with a debate about US policy.

No one's talking about improving the US OR China here. Because of the whataboutism, we're derailing on if the two are morally comparable or not, which suits the Chinese authoritarians just fine.

You're not even using this term correctly. Not that hardly anyone is since it's become popular...but still. Whataboutism is a very specific thing, and every time someone draws a comparison it doesn't automatically become whataboutism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orville#Episodes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Development_and_Condiments

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/2017/12/15/black-mirro...

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-overs...

http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201803/t20180316_879653.html for air travel

http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201803/t20180316_879654.html for train travel

and Chinese news summary: http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/201803/16/t20180316_28505546...

Use Google translate to check if this is being misreported.

In China you are "bad credit" if you refuse to pay despite a court order. In the US you could be jailed for contempt of court.

Many times, you can contact the company who you owe and set up a plan where they'll remove the bad mark if you pay the debt in full.

Now that being the case I still don't like credit scores. You can work years, have lots of savings, pay all your bills on time, pay off cars and mortgages and have a rocking credit score. The if one medical vendor sends your $90 bill to the wrong address, you never see it, then they send you to collections you will watch your score crater. This is sadly what happened to me, it is rage inducing!

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/11/5365018...

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/medical-debt-and...

You can also easily dispute that $90 bill, and easily get it removed from your record. You'll find there's almost zero chance they're going to tangle with you over $90.

If it's a $5,000 medical bill, then they will fight you over that dispute claim.

Notwithstanding the qualifier, I think the difference between criminal records and social credit is the system itself. While flawed at least the (US) court system provide certain safeguards: due process, equal protection, right to remain silent, right to confront accusers, right to a lawyer even if you can’t afford one, ect...

What safeguards are in place for a system of social credit?

From: https://csgjusticecenter.org/reentry/posts/researchers-exami...

> Key findings include:

> * Both black and Hispanic men were less likely to receive a positive response from employers—including a call back or email for an interview or a job offer—compared with white men.

> * Men with criminal records were more likely than women with criminal records to receive a negative response from employers.

> * White men with a criminal record had more positive responses than black men with no criminal record.

I can't remember the quote exactly, but there's one about the law, in all it's equality, prevents the poor and rich alike from sleeping outside or begging for food.

I don't really see a practical difference between the two systems

Safeguards that work 100% and laws that convict a certain group. Moreover, one of the safe guards is “equal protection” (14th Amendment) and if a Law on its face or in application is designed to convict a certain group that law would be declared unconstitutional.

If a Law is being challenged under the 14th Amendment, there are 3 levels of scrutiny:

1. Strict: race, national origin, religion, alienage

2. Middle tier: gender, illegitimacy

3. Minimum scrutiny: all other classes

As to your quote, I for one would love to see a class created based on socio-economic status which receives the highest level of scruitiny.

Nevertheless there are significant differences between our exisiting system of US law and the a unproven/untested social credit system. Maybe in time as it plays out one of us will change our mind.

If an upper-middle class blonde hair, blue eyed woman gets accused of a crime, a higher degree of people would at least give her the benefit of the doubt

Which would make sense, no? They're playing the odds. It's exceedingly rare for any upper-middle class woman to commit a crime. So to be surprised by that is understandable. Take color and class out of it, you need only compare "man accused of crime" vs "woman accused of crime". More will give the woman benefit of the doubt, and they're more likely to be correct than giving the man the benefit of the doubt.

But to be clear, of course anyone accused of a crime should go through the exact same legal process as anyone else. Justice should be blind and operate on the facts of the case. You can't just make assumptions or play the odds in court, obviously.

Aileen and Elizabeth are outliers. It makes sense to be surprised by it.

If there's a woman and a man and someone asks you to guess the criminal, which one are you going to choose? Flipping a coin would not be a wise strategy.

"Black people are often criminals and white people are not. It isn't racism. It is just playing the odds."

I find that statement pretty sickening. We have a system that often sets up certain classes of people for failure and makes it hard for them to avoid being charged, then use their inevitable failure as further justification for heaping on more mistreatment.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-fool-be...

If she was a black women, it would never have gotten to that point ever without a legit product.

Holmes was the perfect posterface for Silicon Valley's version of "progressiveness" that caters upperclass white folks, without care for people of color. Google "white feminism"

Our “knowledge” of who commitd crimes is distorted by societal biases that influence the ascription of blame; there is no set of crime statistics that is immune from that.

So, when you justify those biases on the bases of the understanding that they distort, you make a circular argument, where the bias is its own justification.

All methods of assessing who commits crime are subject to societal biases (and largely the same set of biases, so you can't negate them by combining multiple sources). There's no unbiased oracle to consult for true criminal guilt.

And that is even leaving aside that many crimes are defined in ways that, while they are “objective” in the sense that term is used in legal jargon, actual guilt or innocence is itself fundamentally not an objective fact.

You're confusing "commit" and "get caught and receive significant consequences".

Additionally, it's easier for someone in the upper middle class to legally have the same behavior that would give a lower class person a felony. Case in point, nearly all of the stay at home moms in the upper class neighborhood I grew up in were barred out on Xanax all day. They just all knew the doctor that'd write scripts no questions asked but didn't take insurance, only cash. Lower class can't access that 'doctor'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony

Just one of the hard realities of the legal system.

This is, exactly, how the immigration debate is being held in DC. One undocumented shot and killed a citizen by accident, and now we're supposed to kick all immigrants out. Visceral emotion is a great tool to optimize society for corner cases.

I can understand why the question is asked though. The jury is there to find facts, i.e. define what has happened. The judge will then find the "correct" sentence if found guilty. The jury should not be swayed to a not guilty finding if they believe a guilty would be correct, just because the possible maximum sentence is too long, even if it would not be imposed in the case at hand anyway.

This is all nitpicky and arbitrary, which is largely my point. The line between misdemeanour and felony is thin, but the consequences of crossing it are severe. In one state, you might get a $50 fine; in the next, you might be barred from voting or lose your green card.

Besides, different states have different laws. This isn't arbitrary but how our country was designed to work.

This is the marketplace at work. It's not a government-imposed ban on access to public services.

A court that doesn't publish felony records is not a secret court. In fact, non-secret courts have been around for centuries even though easily accessible felony records are an extremely recent phenomenon (post-internet).

Reading back I suppose my previous statement came off as callous. That wasn't my intention. But let's take a quick peek at felony recidivism rates [0] Spoiler alert: it's quite high and depends on what they were convicted for.

  > Property offenders were the most likely to be rearrested, with 82.1 percent of released property offenders arrested for a new crime compared with 76.9 percent of drug offenders, 73.6 percent of public order offenders and 71.3 percent of violent offenders.

[0]https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welc...

First, what about the 30% some-odd folks who aren't recidivist? The individual should be smothered over the statistic of the many, because he's in a set of individuals (felons) and there's 70% of this set that repeats? How fair is that.

Secondly, if you're barred from professional or high-paying work because everywhere you go, you fail a criminal background check... Doesn't that mean you're MORE likely to return to crime? I don't know what it's like to have been a street criminal, but I can imagine I'd be a lot more likely to steal if no one hired me because of a past thing I did (like stealing). I'd say, the system is against me, it's corrupt and so forth, so screw it.

That last sentiment I described ("the system is corrupt anyway, it's stacked against me so screw it") is an attitude I see a lot in the (very large) US city where I live, and I know a number of people with criminal histories. They'll never end up in a cubicle farm making 180K writing code, that's for sure.

I'm 100% sure this negatively impacts the ability for those with records to get jobs. That really, really sucks for them. And like you mentioned, of course that would contribute to recidivism. Who's going to hire a thief to work unsupervised where they could just steal stuff again? That might be an unfair characterization, but I'd like to talk to the candidate about that and see if _I_ believed they were not going to steal my shit. If someone has a litany of drug convictions, I'd probably be hesitant to assume they were totally trustworthy to show up to work every day. But I'd like to talk to them about it. I guess your position is "it's none of your business", and you could be right about that.

The average Joe won't experience any difference. The armchair political scientist will argue it endlessly (I put myself in that category, by the way).

From the article:

> People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday.

The US may ban you from flying if you are politically controversial [1]+, get kicked off a flight [2, edit: 4], or sneak onto planes without a ticket [3].

Likewise, people who trespass on public transit are often barred from its use. And of course people who break traffic laws are (eventually) kicked off the roads.

I won't comment on whether the Chinese government's characterization of its laws is accurate or not (I don't speak any relevant language and don't know much about the culture, so all I have to go off of is western media). But at least according to the Chinese government, these rules are mostly in-line with how things often work in the US.

[1] https://theintercept.com/document/2014/07/23/march-2013-watc... (edit: changed from http://mentalfloss.com/article/68073/8-ways-you-can-end-no-f...)

[2] https://thepointsguy.com/2017/07/getting-banned-from-an-airl...

[3] e.g., http://wqad.com/2018/02/21/illinois-stowaway-woman-pleads-no...

[4] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39919229/ns/travel-news/t/can-bad-...

+ The "predictive assessments" (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/10/us-no-fly-li...) used for putting people on the no-fly list are not very transparent and, IMO, reminiscent of a social credit system. It's extremely hard to imagine such a system that doesn't harshly penalize certain constitutionally protected speech (e.g., about Islam and US foreign policy in the ME).

The provided source doesn't support this claim. The only part which could even remotely be constructed as support for this claim would be 3 and the anecdata there include "He suspects" and "He thinks" - on the other, that you can end on such a list without knowing the reason (and often without recourse afair) is a real problem, but that's not what you claimed.

There are other abuses that we have concrete evidence of. E.g., refusing the cooperate with the FBI. (https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/laws...).

Hell, up until 2005, the TSA used CREDIT SCORES as a component in deciding who should be on no-fly lists...

DHS does not use social media posts alone to place someone on watch lists, but they are incorporated into predictive assessments. Given two people who are otherwise equivalent, the one with public stated controvsial opinions IS more likely to end up on a no-fly list. By the govt's own admission.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/thousands-chin...

Meanwhile, back in the US, we've actually begun to recognize our mistake as a culture. Thus eight states have legalized marijuana, and another dozen will go that way soon. Decriminalization of drug offenses is a common point of discussion in every state. Nearly every state that puts pot legalization on the ballot sees it go through. We've begun recognizing the mistake of how we fail to treat addicts.

Over a decade ago the US recognized the huge mistake of mass incarceration, as such the US prison population has peaked and has begun to decline, with both sides of the political aisle now openly discussing how to correct that broken system.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/grover-norquist/republicans-a...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/12/prison...

http://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/354288-we-must-p...

And there's China, going the other direction full speed.

[2013] "China executes 4 foreigners, televises death march" ... "China has mostly abandoned the once-common practice of parading condemned criminals before crowds in stadiums and through city streets on the way to execution grounds on the edge of cities."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-executes-4-foreigners-tel...

> A court in China has sentenced 10 people to death, mostly for drug-related crimes, in front of thousands of onlookers before taking them away for execution.

Did you mean sentencing in instead of executing? Based on the article you linked, the executions seem to have occurred elsewhere.

Until the US has a share equal to its percentage of the global population of incarcerated people (instead of 4-5 times that), and has abolished the death penalty, the shame that are private prisons, and improved the third-world conditions of its prisons, it has nowhere near "recognized its mistake as a culture".

It just has a few fewer prisoners than a decade ago, because of several factors -- including the legalization of marijuana. It's still as Old Testament and punishing to its inmates, and especially to the black population, as ever otherwise.

Btw, regarding China, let's cut it some slack.

For historical reasons not all countries develop at the same speed or are at the same stage. 40 years ago the US still had aggregation. 80 years ago it still lynched blacks.

And China 50 years ago had mass political executions and a full on political slash civil war -- compared to that, sentencing 10 people on a stadium with a crowd present (not executing them with a crowd) is BS.

(Especially since the US also has non-judicial citizens and even relatives of victims attend executions, to enjoy their revenge on the person dying...).

No, let's not "cut it some slack" on human rights abuses in the making.

That's a pretty flippant statement to make.

China is an authoritarian country that's moving closer to an autocracy, let's not "cut them any slack" and "take [their human rights] abuses" based on some cartoonish caricature of US actions. China is developing new forms of totalitarian social control may superficially resemble certain western practices (e.g. credit scores and background checks) but there are important differences. If you don't find that troubling, I can't really take your views seriously.

>>> For historical reasons not all countries develop at the same speed or are at the same stage.

This belies some fallacious thinking that countries develop along the same track. This is a common foolish mistake when it comes to thinking about China, which is becoming harder to entertain in light of recent events.

No, you read it wrong. The crowd watched felons to be sentenced and then they were taken to the place for execution (private location not open to public display) immediately afterwards. So no public execution like what it was like in the ancient China. I know this because I read similar Chinese news in past.

You would think that, but research shows systemic biases in the justice system throughout the entire funnel: from who gets more police attention, arrests, charges, plea deals and how heavy the sentences are. This is a sign the actions are not well-defined, and quite subjective.

None of this detracts from the fact that these laws are ultimately relatively clear in their restrictions, compared to China's social score.

Theft is theft. Drug possession is drug possession. Had these "unfairly" targeted individuals followed the law, they would not be subject to its penalties.

Sure, I recognize that very few of us are perfectly law abiding citizens. But I have trouble with the notion that heavier police presence, and heavier sentencing for repeat offenders, are somehow unfair phenomena, and these alleged transgressions far too often are lumped together with actual institutional inequity.

In other words, one must not conflate subjectivity in sentencing and policing with some kind of ingrained, institutional caste system, so long as laws are followed as written. If you wish to stay out of the felon caste, do not break obvious laws, like those regarding drug possession. If you do not agree with such laws, work to change them.

The end result is still members of the executive branches of the government deciding who gets punished based on their whims.

Your point saying "...so long as laws are followed as written" cannot apply as long as you ignore when the government chooses not to apply those laws to everyone, even if everyone that's gets charged has violated the law

A good summary is the ACLU’s position paper on Race & the War on Drugs. https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs

You also are repeating a common misconception when you state that “If you want to stay out of the felon caste, do not break obvious laws, like those regarding drug possession.” It has been shown time and time again that black Americans are disproportionately arrested and sentenced. And your trite remark about how “If you do not agree with such laws, work to change them” is puerile. The GP was expressing their opinion; in our democracy that is a critical component of working to change the law.

It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws? That's what he said. He didn't say "if you want to gamble with not joining the felon caste, you have fair odds". Lots of soapboxing ITT, threads should decapitate at the first post with 'systemic' in.

With the number of overturned sentences coming out of the courts lately, yes, it seems you can go to jail without ever having actually committed a crime.

Nonetheless, consider this after rereading the GP’s comment. If a doctor told two patients that they could avoid getting cancer by not exposing themselves to carcinogens, knowing that one somehow unknowingly lives on a Superfund site, but deciding to purposefully neglect to mention the risk this entails, would you say the doctor was presenting one patient an incorrect understanding of the issue at hand?

Likewise, if a car manufacturer found a problem with one of their models and decided to notify the US about this by saying “you can avoid harm from the problem by not driving cars,” I would say that thinking that this is not “somehow unfair,” as the GP writes, would be a misconception, as I wrote.

The sort of juvenile discussion you are attempting to bring to this conversation is not really appropriate for HN.

Does personal responsibility exist in your ivory tower?

What sort of convoluted logic could possibly drive you to equate necessities of life, or constraints of circumstance, with such antisocial choices? We're talking about smoking marijuana and stealing expensive clothing, after all, not theft of food for subsistence.

Why is it that any time race is brought up, any argument that even has the potential to cast minorities in negative light is immediately shouted down with any sort of logic or reason thrown out the window? What about objectivity?

We cannot shout down potential truths simply because they have unpleasant implications.

That you consider all drug use “antisocial” is revealing; that you think the need to use a car would exert more pressure on the average person than an environment which encourages drug use from a young age is telling.

Your use of the term “ivory tower” is ironic when your assumptions are based on a kind of life that many Americans do not inhabit.

There is such a thing as personal responsibility. I would argue that most drug use is not a good idea. I think environments that encourage people to make bad decisions should be repaired. But to argue that “just one drop” of bad decision making justifies massively unfair treatment is an argument that is as intellectually demeaning as it is dangerously naive.

Would you argue in favor of a law that puts people in jail for doing something “antisocial” like using bad language, and that is predominately enforced against people of a particular race? No one needs to use foul language, but having done so does not give us carte blanche to hate.

As my final comment, your unprompted use of the term “ivory tower” and your ominous reference to “unpleasant implications” regarding race suspect that you are trying to bring another argument into this discussion in which I have no interest. This is my final reply.

The only thing here that is telling is the desperation in your babble to paint people as bigots, strawmanning about foul language, single drops, and other such nonsense.

>suspect that you are trying to bring another argument into this discussion Perhaps in future comments you should spend less time suspecting, and more time actually reading the posts you reply to.

For the record, I do not believe that responsible drug use is antisocial, and I deliberately made my comment ambiguous, as I expect you to ignore the parts that were inconvenient to your narrative, as you have done.

You conspicuously failed to substantiate his "misconception".

>It has been shown time and time again black Americans are disproportionately arrested and sentenced.

I could not in all charitability/good faith (all your efforts to troll noted btw) extract a relevant point here. If they are disproportionately arrested having committed a crime, that has nothing to do with allthenew's whole post. If one charitably adds the context that in america you can also be arrested for committing no crime at all, then you've switched a basic premise of his post in 'arguing' it.

And you also conveniently ignore that blacks disproportionately commit crimes, especially violent crimes.

Such discussions cannot be productive until we are willing to admit to both sides of the problem.

I do not deny that there are inequities in our justice system. However, disproportionate police presence in low income communities is not a symptom of racist targeting. The blackness of these individuals is incidental to the fact that low income communities have higher rates of all types of crime, especially violent offenses, and in any other context it would be obviously prudent to assign additional police forces to target high crime areas.

But this discussion has far surpassed the boundaries of what is acceptable on HN, and I will not comment in this thread further.

This is a racist lie. If you control for socioeconomic factors, the difference totally vanishes.

What knowing the controlling variable does is give you additional information about what interventions are likely to change the situation. If you thought the reason for more crimes committed by blacks were their skin color, you might think that vitamin D deficiency is the culprit and attempt to provide them with supplements. Knowing the influence of economic factors makes that suggestion appear silly, and crime-prevention efforts would be better focused on improving the economic standing of blacks.

The implication of "black people commit more crimes" is that there is something about being black that involves a degree of criminality. It is a very poor way of describing the issue. A much better framing is "black people in the US are disempowered socially, politically and economically and black communities are ignored by US social policy." Another, far more useful framing of the issue, that I hardly ever hear is that black people are more often the victims of crimes.

It sounds like you are the racist here.

Could you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by the rules when commenting here?

How many times must the particulars of the system be documented and disseminated before these arguments go away completely?

If you are white and wealthy, then drug possession is against the law only in vague terms on paper. It is not your practical reality. That's how the drug war has been made into the new jim crow. It's astonishingly simple, and very real.

> If you wish to stay out of the felon caste, do not break obvious laws, like those regarding drug possession.

Yeah, except that most humans don't consider the government a legitimate arbiter of their diet. I'm not going to decide not to consume cannabis because some person in Washington (or my state capital) overstepped his bounds. And yet, because I'm white and not poor, I suffer no consequences of this.

> so long as laws are followed as written

You can't be serious. The whole point is that laws aren't followed as written. If every person driving 56MPH in a 55 zone, if every person possessing cannabis, if every person violations "intellectual property" laws is suddenly subject to enforcement of those laws, they'll change real quick. But instead, only the "lower castes" are subject to enforcement, and they haven't the power to change the laws.

Just please stop spreading this nonsense. There are possibly young people reading these threads whose understanding of basic sociopolitical principles isn't developed yet, and we need to stop poisoning the well of discussion with this, "follow the law and you'll be fine" nonsense.

The world you describe is a world to work toward, but not the one that black and brown people live in today.

Not to discount your other points, but this is exactly how the Chinese system will work as well. (and already does in other respects from what I have heard and read)

>What a bunch of bigoted hogwash.

What did he say that was bigoted? (I am serious, by the actual definition [0], not the pejorative commonly thrown around to silence dissent) As a side note, my brother has a felony on his record, so I have some knowledge of the cause and effects.

[0] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigoted

Edit: This turned sour fast... not sure it's worth replying to comments.

--Lee Atwater

Just because you don't directly say "nigger", doesn't mean the policies aren't directed towards african americans.

And we also know for a fact that cannabis was made illegal because "it would make blacks want white women". And, it was also easier to criminalize the peaceful actions of citizens they see as "undesirable" and then throw them in prison for a long time.

So yeah, bigoted.

I mean, that's bigotry. That's something I expect to read on the_donald.

Bigotry [0], are you sure you are using this word correctly?

[0] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigotry

What aspect of this situation makes the GP's advice untrue? For any individual in either group, the best way to avoid becoming a felon is to avoid committing felonies.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here.

For a white, wealthy person, the healthiest life choices are to select a diet based only on the effects of the ingested materials in question, independent of their legal status.

For a black person, the healthiest life choice is instead to make very different dietary choices in order to avoid becoming a felon.

It is simply not the case that individuals in the two groups have the same dynamic re: life choices.

I don't think it's likely that a purely scientific and non-emotional discussion about race related subjects can be had these days online. Primarily because too many people frame their arguments in such a way to automatically make the other person wrong.

GP says: 1) laws are clearly defined, 2) increased attention/punishment for repeat offenders != institutional inequity

You say: 1) laws are subjectively enforced, 2) white and/or rich people don't suffer the same consequences

Note that neither of your points are necessarily responsive to or mutually exclusive with gp's.

But your appeal to the youth who might be reading this was just over the top.

I think you're ignoring the more serious point, though. GP literally advised disadvantaged people to more judiciously follow the stupid laws that were designed in the first place to disadvantage them.

> But your appeal to the youth who might be reading this was just over the top.

Listen, I usually find any sort of "protect the children" narrative nauseating. But in the specific case of racism, I do think it's reckless to spout this stuff on this forum. You and I have perhaps read The New Jim Crow or exposed ourselves to the statistics of the drug war, but a lot of people (sure, young and old) come here from other fora where they're more likely to have followed the breadcrumbs of technological development and might need a little more help before being able to pick apart these basic, bedrock examples of institutional discrimination.

Not all laws are that simple. Are you aware that not even the US Federal Government is aware of how many laws apply at any given time in a given place[1]? While I'm not going to justify people breaking laws, there are many federal laws that you can see might cause problems for people that could not reasonable have known that a law was being broken. For instance 16 U.S.C 3372[2] (the Lacey Act):

> It is unlawful for any person [...] to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase any fish or wildlife or plant taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law, treaty, or regulation of the United States or in violation of any Indian tribal law

So if you have ever bought or been gifted a fish or plant that at any point broke Indian tribal law (even if you didn't know about it, even if it wasn't the law where you received it, even if the plant or fish is legally farmed and sold in another area) you have broken a federal law and you're now a criminal.

Does it make sense to not allow someone to have their constitutional rights if they were given a fish that was caught in an area where that is prohibited by Indian tribal law, and they weren't aware of that? Not all criminals have been convicted under such strange laws, but having such a black-and-white view of criminals stops being as obvious when you look at cases like this.

[1]: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=279 [2]: http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-16-conservation/16-usc-sec...

According to the article, the actions described seem like discrete and well-defined like giving false information about terrorism, and not paying fines.

Later we voted the cameras out >2 to 1. Try that in China too.

Second, you just made the argument for me, as you implied, fines are easy to define and redefine.

That's just the sales pitch to make it seem reasonable and positive to the average person. It's naive to think that this social credit system won't have a political component. Here are some descriptions of some current pilot programs that make that much clearer:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-cr...:

> But the fourth category, behaviour and preference, is where it gets interesting.

> Under this system, something as innocuous as a person's shopping habits become a measure of character. Alibaba admits it judges people by the types of products they buy. "Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person," says Li Yingyun, Sesame's Technology Director. "Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility." So the system not only investigates behaviour - it shapes it. It "nudges" citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.

> Friends matter, too. The fifth category is interpersonal relationships. What does their choice of online friends and their interactions say about the person being assessed? Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.

If they're slurping up your purchases and social media for your credit score, it's going to be a lot more than about if you lie or fail to pay fines.

Also what might "false information about terrorism" really mean in practice? Vouching for your friend when the government thinks he's a dissident?

Sounds like a propaganda botnet that uses gamification to spread influence evenly. By incentivizing many intermittent points of influence the propaganda cannot easily be filtered from the rest of the data.

That's true, but I see no reason for the government system to take a more moderate approach.

I don't really buy that Alibaba would have too much power, either. I'm pretty sure the CCP could swat it down pretty easily if it gets too uppity.

> China's social credit system (which doesn't exist yet)

My understanding is that things like Sesame credit are much like pilot projects -- if their ideas work to the CCP's liking, they'll make it into the government system.

I understand the US isn't perfect, but I feel the real effects of comments such as yours do as much to excuse China's brand new system as they do to bring light to flaws in the US's system.

I think it must be emphasized that "once untrustworthy, always restricted" is a new policy in China that's being implemented, while in the US it is a historical principle that's coming under increased skepticism and criticism.

For some context in case anyone was curious, please see the page numbered 116 (but 118 of 240 of the PDF) from this report from the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/111213a-lwop-complete-repo...

> You can imagine what would happen. Manna fires you because you don't show up for work a couple times. Now you try to go get a job somewhere else. No other Manna system is going to hire you. There had always been an implicit threat in the American economy -- "if you do not have a job, you cannot make any money and you will therefore become homeless." Manna simply took that threat and turned the screws. If you did not do what Manna told you to, it would fire you. Then you would not be able to get a job anywhere else.

As we get better at collecting and analyzing data on employees (a hot topic whenever tech interviews are discussed on HN), we should remember to exercise a certain amount of "social forgiveness."

[0] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm