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The recent conversation on anime inspired me to write this review of the best one I've seen so far, not just in terms of Anime, but truly one of the best written stories I've ever seen. I often thought of it as prophetic, but looking back on it for the Nth time, I think a lot the phenomena and trends it talks about were already underway, they just didn't seem so prominent at the time, and so made a good premise for a fanciful sci-fi show.
Spoilers ahoy, although I'm not going to go beat by beat for each and every episode.
Psycho-Pass is set in a post-cyberpunk future, where Japan developed technology capable of looking into our very souls. Thanks to remote brain scans and big data analysis, a hyper-advanced computer system (often referred to by name as the Sybil System) can guide everything, from individual lives to the sociaty as a collective, towards it's optimal path. Various components of the scan form the titular Psycho-Pass (as in: passport) which determines your standing in society. We mostly see the world through the eyes of Akane Tsunemori, a young police inspector, fresh out of the academy. The first 3 episodes are a sort of "tutorial level" for her, where she learns the ropes of police work, and we get to see the basic mechanics of the Psycho-Pass, and how it affects people.
We meet Akane as she's running late for her first assignment: a normie white collar worker got flagged by a street scanner doing a "hue check" - a low resolution vibe check that gets translated into color for readability. The suspect has been determined to be doing a bit too much wrongthink, and was directed by a drone to go to therapy. Not only did he refuse to comply, he grabbed a passerby, took her for a hostage, and ran off to a ghetto full of the homeless and other undesireables. All of this is explained to us by Akane's work partner, inspector Nobuchika Ginoza. Just as he's done with the briefing, they a see a police van arrive, and the rest of the supporting cast disembarks:
The people you're about to meet cannot be considered humans like us.
Their Crime Coefficients all exceed the safety limit. They are people of bankrupt character.
Normally, they would be completely isolated as latent criminals, but they're allowed into the outside world for the sole purpose of flushing out criminals just like themselves.
They're hunting dogs. They're beasts used to hunt beasts. They're what we call “Enforcers”.
They will be your subordinates.
The Crime Coefficient is another component of the Psycho-Pass that measures an individual's propensity towards crime. It's a high resolution measure, that requires specialized hardware, and significantly more compute than a basic Hue Check, so they are not done routinely. Instead, law enforcement are the only ones handling such scanners, which conveniently come attached to a gun called a Dominator, which make the police work rather simple:
- Anyone with a Crime Coefficient below 100 is considered a law-abiding citizen, and is not a subject for any enforcement action. The trigger locks automatically when the gun is aimed at them.
- Values between 100 and 300 mean that the suspect is considered a "latent criminal", and they should be taken into custody. The gun fires in "paralyzer mode" to help facilitate this.
- Above 300 the suspect is subject to a summary execution, and the Dominator switches to "eliminator mode".
- Independently from the Crime Coefficient, there's also a "decomposer mode", which is activated when law enforcement are facing a significant threat, and really need to blast something to kingdom come.
Perhaps I should have said it's the judicial system's work that has been simplified, rather than that of the police, since the police still have to apprehend (and/or execute) criminals, while the entirety of the due process has been replaced with a Crime Coefficient scan. The system is responsive in some ways, but appears very rigid in others. On one hand, we do see update based on incoming data. When they first try to arrest the suspect, it turns out he took stimulants that countered the paralyzer. That act of defiance cost him is life, as the system responded by authorizing his execution. Similarly the hostage moves up and down the scale. First, the trauma of the entire ordeal makes her Crime Coefficient go up to the point where she's considered a latent criminal, and will placed under arrest. Then, upon witnessing the execution (which is done in a particularly gruesome way for no apparent, or explained in-universe, reason) and thinking she's next, she makes a break for it, which causes the Coefficient to go even higher, now authorizing her to be executed as well. Finally, as the resident naive newbie (and young woman), Akane insists on showing her mercy, successfully talks her down from going out in a blaze of glory, and thus the system updates once more, this time downward, and she's merely arrested.
On the other hand, everyone, with the exception of Akane, is acting like once you pass a certain threshold, your life is over. Before he's killed, the kidnapper has a little "what's the punishment for being late?" monologue explaining his actions:
Up until today, I did everything by the book. I spent my whole life walking on eggshells, trying my hardest not to upset or bother anyone.
And yet, I get flagged by one little detector and boom! They already treat me like I'm a criminal.
This is it for me.
Now that it's come to this, it's all over. I'll never be able to get a job, get married, or anything else.
Well, fine then. I've restrained myself all this time. So now, I'll just do whatever I want. I'll take whatever I want. I'll kill anyone I don't like!
You might think maybe he's just an unstable man, failing to see that the system isn't as rigid as he claims, and his life was never over, but even the hostage thinks she's boned, when she's shown her Psycho-Pass. What's more Akane's decision to go easy on the hostage is portrayed as extremely unorthodox. Everyone treats her like she's crazy, and her actions can only be justified by being naive and inexperienced. She spends a good deal of the second episode fighting doubts about her decision, and trying to justify it in the case report*. Luckily for her the hostage ends up improving after being given therapy in custody, but that outcome is implied to be so rare, that the unorthodox nature of her actions are seen as a plausible explanation for it, so she gets to claim it as a justification.
*) You might be thinking "huh, it's a rather ruthless society, if you have to justify not killing a suspect", but "the decision" in question was less about showing mercy to the hostage, and more about shooting one of the enforcers (in paralyser mode) in order to prevent him from carrying out the execution (only has himself to blame, that's what he told her to do). There's also the "blaze of glory" aspect of the situation, where Akane would be putting herself and her subordinates in danger, if things didn't go her way.
The rigidity isn't even limited to the Crime Coefficient. After the kidnapper has been dealt with, the following day Akane meets up with her friends for coffee, and in the course of the conversation it turns out that in the Psycho-Pass universe, Akane has a super-power - the power of choice. One of the blessings of the Sybil System is it's ability predict how well suited each individual is for a given job, and Akane was found to have (top!) aptitude for jobs at all thirteen ministries and agencies, and six companies. Faced with so much choice, she also faces doubts like "what is my purpose in life?" which everyone else finds extremely annoying. One of her friends does manual labor, and the other is an IT worker, and neither has any prospect of ever doing anything else in their lives. Later on she also has lunch with one of the enforcers - Shusei Kagari - who's situation is even more dire. Enforcers are nothing but convicts with aptitude for police work, and Kagari was declared a latent criminal when he was still a child. His only choice in life was to either rot in prison, or work for the Public Safety Bureau in return for better living conditions, and a sliver of freedom (enforcers can even leave the PSB compund as long as they're accompanied by an inspector).
Another one of Akane's "superpowers" that's briefly mentioned, is that her Psycho-Pass tends be good. Why that is, is initially a matter of some speculation, and finally spelled out in the later episodes, but it seems to boil down to her stoic life philosophy. In any case, she seems to be unaffected even by events that would mess other people right up, while everyone else, who isn't already a latent criminal, goes through life stressing out trying to manage their "Hue". The third episode, possibly the first mission outside of the "tutorial level" explores that - and how it can go horribly wrong - a bit more. Akane's division is assigned to investigate suspicious deaths in a drone factory. Originally all ruled accidental, their mere frequency raised suspicions. No direct evidence of foul play is found, but the investigation reveals disturbing dynamics between the workers. For security reasons the entire factory is completely cut off from the interwebs, and they have to make do with what they have around for entertainment, which is not a lot. So, as is perhaps not uncommon in male-heavy environments, the workers as a group tend to periodically pick a victim and bully the shit out of him to blow off some steam. The director of the factory is aware of this, and allows it, as it's good for collective morale. When any particular worker gets bullied too much, and their Hue gets too messed up, he rotates him out and lets another schmuck take his place. However, no one's been rotated out in quite a while, as the most recent designated whipping boy's Hue seems to periodically recover on it's own... and the times of the recovery are curiously aligned with the times of his coworkers' deaths. Plot twist! Turns out the whipping boy has been blowing off some steam of his own.
One of the fascinating aspects of the show is the blurry line between what is meant to be a statement about the impact of technology on society, and what is an allegory for how society already operates. In interviews the show's creators often hint at most of it being the latter, and it makes sense. Psycho-Pass was written in 2014, AI was still a distant dream, and many technologically mediated social trends it talks about were still in their infancy, if they even can be said to have come about at all. Information revealed in later episodes even makes it clear that the Sybil System isn't exactly an AI in-universe, and shouldn't be interpreted to be about the impact of technology on society, at least not exclusively. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, but for now, since the story is leaning in the AI direction, and since so much progress has been made in the field IRL, it's hard not to dwell on it a little bit.
I've had my fair share of rants about Rationalists and how they get AI wrong, Psycho-Pass is how I think you get it right. Stop worrying about agentic superhuman conscious intelligences, and start worrying about systems for mass surveilence and control. Worry less about existential risks coming from misalignment, and more about existential crises people will face when you sucked all humanity out of their daily lives. Remote brainscans might seem fanciful, but between SocMeds, smart watches, and smartphones, do we even need to scan brains to get something like the Sybil System? China already has their Social Credit System that doesn't seem all that different from Sybil, Europe seems like it would like to have one as well, along with a uniquely identifying digital identity, or a (state manged) digital currency And in case we do need to scan brains to get something like the Psycho-Pass, well it's not entirely out of the question. Every time I rewatch the show I end up thinking it's scary how relevant it is.
The conversation between Akane and her friends always makes me smile, because I had one eerily similar to it ages ago, with an old friend of mine facing a similar choice dillema, who ended up pining for a Sybil System to come into existence! "Wouldn't it be great", she said, "if there was a machine that could tell you what job you'd be good at, and would enjoy doing?". It's another thing that I think we're more likely to get than an AGI, and it's a good question if we really want it. The idea that people prefer to have a "human element" in a system instead of everything being decided by a machine has been a trope in sci-fi for a while, but despite being the resident Luddite, I'm starting to wonder if this is true. We're not even that far up the AI tech-tree, and I'm already hearing "but ChatGPT said..." as an argument enough times to make me want to pull my hair out. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it's healthier for people have such a human element, as demonstrated by the growing collective unhappiness, the more exposed to technology we become.
Other than all the food for thought, the show has some great character development. Since these are the introductory episodes there's not much to write home about yet, but here's the general run-down.
Akane is still inexperienced and is constantly wrecked with doubts, but over the course of the show we see her grow in skill and confidence. A fairly common trope in anime, but depressingly rare in western storytelling, and it ivariably makes me shake my head to think how much drama about Mary Sues we could have been spared if Hollywood copied a few notes from Japan.
Although I haven't mentioned his name yet, the other main protagonist of the show is enforcer Shinya Kogami, the poor bloke that got shot by Akane in episode 1. He's one of these dark and broody types with a quest for vengence, and set up as the counterpart for the story's main villain (to be disclosed). Though the thing I find interesting about him is his skepticism, if not quiet resentment, of the Sybil System, and how he chooses to process it (in contrast to the currently undisclosed villain).
Inspector Ginoza is dark and broody in his own way, and seemingly disdainful of the enforcers (he's the one that delivered the little speech about them not being entirely human), but it turns out his motivations are understandable, and his intentions relatively noble. We get to see some of the setup for his arc in episode 3, as Akane discovers there's some tension between him, and enforcer Tomomi Masaoka, which is apparently a touchy subject for both. It has a very moving resolution by the end of the show, but that's another bridge we'll cross when we get there. As for Masaoka, he's an "old dog" detective, with his own interesting backstory of how he became a latent criminal.
I already mentioned enforcer Kagari, he's more aloof and tends act like a goofball most of the time, but has these nice moments of depth, like his conversation with Akane that I mentioned above.
The final enforcer of the team is Yayoi Kunizuka who... well, doesn't really do that much, but gets a pretty good backstory episode later on. And last but not least is analyst Shion Karanomori a somewhat manic superhacker that supports the team back from HQ.
To be continued...
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This made me reflect that I hadn't actually thought critically about the phrase (at least, commensurate to how often it's used). For fun, if you think the purpose of a system is what it does, write what you think that means, before reading Scott's critique, then write if you've updated your opinion. For example:
(Spoilers go between two sets of "||")
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This is effectively a reply to @Corvos at https://www.themotte.org/post/1829/tinker-tuesday-for-april-8-2025/316753?context=8#context , but I invite anyone to discuss the topic.
Ask me anything. I love talking about this subject but rarely have the opportunity.
How long ago did you get started?
I started in 2013, and was very active until the lockdown and my subsequent life changes put me out of commission. When I started out, it was basically five core guys reading a medieval manuscript in a university hallway and trying to do what it said with nylon swords. By 2020, we were one of Germany's top clubs, with dozens of members, a proper gym, several courses and a very good tournament track record. I was mostly just along for the ride while others did the heavy lifting, though I like to think that I contributed to that growth, a little. The club, while occasionally dabbling in other weapons systems (dagger, sickle, half-pike, sword and buckler) and eventually establishing a recurring grappling class and a permanent rapier class, mostly teaches longsword, and that mostly based on the Liechtenauer system as documented by Peter von Danzig. We occasionally took a look at other styles as well, but mostly stuck to this, though in latter years the focus transitioned from historical reconstruction to maximizing tournament-effectiveness. I don't have as much as insight into what happened since 2020, or rather since the lockdowns were lifted, but from the looks of it it's been going steady since. If anything the mood seems a little worse than it used to; I feel there's not as much of outright joy and camraderie on display as used to be, but that might just be my own grumpiness coloring my perception. Nowadays I very rarely make it to regular practice, low single-digits per year, since it's an almost 2h drive both ways, and the practice sessions are late in the evening and I'm more of an early bird. Weekend events are more convenient, but somehow there are fewer instructive events than there used to be in my larger area. Tournaments still exist though, and I do like those. I'm just entirely out of shape, and growing old, on top of never having been all that good to begin with.
What do you practice?
Mostly longsword. I tried to get more into rapier, which is reportedly the preferred weapon for old men, but one lucky day I managed to break my thumb and my rapier and since then that's been on ice. The rapier-fencing, I mean - the thumb is fine by now. I used to just do absolutely everything and had lots of fun, but that's just not possible with my severely reduced practice time, so by now it's all longsword. Obviously I started out with the formally correct Liechtenauer style the club in general leaned on, learning the correct stances, master-strikes, infighting techniques, and I think I can say I achieved an acceptable level of technical proficiency across a wide spectrum of skills, though I never quite built up the physical fitness to leverage them properly.
Liechtenauer, compared to Meyer, the style we most love to disrespect, is less flashy and more energy-efficient, and relies more on geometry and less on psychology. You learn a handful master-strikes that efficiently threaten or hit the enemy while preventing him from striking you directly, and the rest is mostly learning which of those techniques to use in a given situation. You can even condense it down further; one very successful fencer (top 5 globally at the time) once told me that he pretty much just practices one strike and one thrust and applying those skillfully enough covers all his needs. So as long as you can avoid becoming too predictable, I think you needn't stress yourself about obtaining an encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of highly situational techniques with hard-to-memorize German names.
Nowadays, being a lot weaker yet and having unreliable knees and a propensity for injury on top, I try to compensate for my physical inadequacy with a more defensive style: Always keep the sword between me and my opponent, keep the range open, use strikes very sparingly and try to go for thrusts from the bind instead. I like to fight from the left, point forward, which takes several powerful striking options off the table for my opponent, so that they have a harder time just battering through my guard. And defensively that works; I can often work out an opening...but fail to exploit it because I lack the explosiveness to generate forward momentum on demand. Something to work on; just plain physical exercise would do me good.
Any tips/advice?
The following will be colored by my tournament-centric view. Obviously it's also possible to just enjoy the archaeological aspects, or the methodical technical exercise, but I mostly speak as someone who wants to go to tournaments and perform as well as possible.
In no particular order:
- Ignore any clubs or schools that don't have their people go to tournaments.
- Gear is expensive. If your club doesn't have any to borrow, you'll be looking at 500€-1000€ for a set of protective equipment and a Federschwert (steel practice sword). When you get a sword, make sure it suits your build - not too short, not too long - and that it complies with your regional tournament regulations.
- Dry technical practice and instruction are valuable for learning the basics. Don't ignore it early on, you need to get the foundational knowledge, skills and vocabulary from somewhere. But over time it will become less important, as you need to find your own way.
- Outright drill - repeating the same motions over and over - is great for increasing the quickness and reliability with which you deliver a specific technique, but it's effectively an isolation exercise and should not occupy the majority of your practice time.
- On the other hand, don't neglect relaxed, playful sparring. At 100% pressure, you'll stick to what you know. With less pressure, you can experiment. It pays to spend some time trying new things.
- Throw yourself into sparring fights and then tournaments as early as possible. Don't get stuck in endless dry practice sessions thinking you aren't good enough. You never will be, if you don't go out and get your mistakes highlighted by adversarial competition.
- HEMA is overall very woke. Ignore it though - it's superficial. Once you get into the competitive scene, nobody takes that seriously anymore. And have a laugh whenever women go into mixed-gender tournaments. Hell, let me tell you about the one time I fought a pregnant woman...
- Everyone fights differently. There is no standard HEMA fighter, not even within clubs or schools, and there is no singular example to aspire to. You too will need to find ways of fighting that suit your personality, build, weapon of choice, the opponent you face, and whatever other factors come into play.
- Don't waste your practice time chatting. If you need information, then get it and immediately get back to practice. There will be social events at other times.
- That said, talk to more experienced people, as often as possible before and after practice. Don't stick to the kiddie pool, get with the big boys. There's too much ignorant pseudobabble at the entry level.
- Most beginners quit. It's normal. Don't assume that this reflects poorly on a club.
- If your club isn't a commercial school, take over responsibilities to keep it running as soon as possible. Somebody's got to do it.
- Visit other clubs as often as you can. Swim in as many different kinds of water as possible.
- More practice, no matter whether technical, drill, sparring or competition, is always better. The more you do, the better you'll get. Take every opportunity you can.
- When you get hurt in a fight, fight on if you can by any means. If you aren't used to getting repeatedly bruised and battered, any injury will feel much worse than it is.
- The judge is always right. Make your peace with it.
- There is no substitute for physical fitness.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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Shaming.
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Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
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Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
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Recruiting for a cause.
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Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
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Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
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Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
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Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
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Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of February 24, 2025
Contributions for the week of March 3, 2025
@kky:
Contributions for the week of March 10, 2025
@gog: