RobertLiguori
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User ID: 165
RobertLiguori
9d ago
I mean, there is such a requirement for me to engage with the show. If it is the actual case that there are no more real laws any more and the only actual crime is for the system to rate you 100+ against its own internal criteria, then yeah, it's a crime oracle, and it says nothing new or interesting.
Now, with that being said, I think that we would absolutely get some horrible "We can measure X, so let's write laws against X instead of against what is actually fair and just." Goodhart bullshit if we started implementing the early phases of Sybil, but you still need an actual code of laws to compare those to. As I said above, we've got "What if it was illegal to fail a vibe check?" at home, and it's not novel to me that you can say "The Vibe of that person is white/capitalist/monarchist/>100 arbitrary bullshit number I just made up., get 'im!"
RobertLiguori
9d ago
Funny you say this, as this was, almost word for for, the reason the director of the factory gave for obstructing the investigation. One thing to keep in mind is that crime management is not the only task of the Sybil System, it manages all of society. It's not even clear how much power politicians have, and it's heavily implied they're just a human face for the system. So if it's the system that decided it needs drones from the factory, doesn't it stand to reason that it might tolerate a bit of harrasment to keep the productivity up?
Because at that point it's not an oracular system, it's an agentic one (a tyrant with extra steps). A system that lies in pursuit of a given goal is not an oracle (or at least, not a useful oracle), and if it would lie to cover its manager (just as the manager lied to cover his subordinates), then how can you trust that it's actually measuring economic output correctly?
The law is legible. The law is codified, tested with precedent, and those precedents recorded. And it is exactly because in the real world, it is frequently the case that legal systems beclown themselves and accept justifications like the manager's (for the friends of the system) while punishing those opposed to the system for rights that are written in bare ink on paper, undeniable yet denied, that I think I have so little patience for the show as presented. It's not new, original, or thought-provoking to ask "But what if the legal system ran purely on AI and vibes?", because, well, look at what we've got. Because I could predict what someone in that position would say, to put the "It's for the greater good!" blanket over themselves, since I have heard that excuse and that story many times before...and because I'm more than a little disappointed I didn't get an author willing to actually sit down and think about what a crime (and thus, a criminal) actually was.
RobertLiguori
10d ago
Why?
Because that's not what the law is, as we here and now define the law. Like, you could also have a pre-crime society with a totalitarian dictator where it was the written law and the whole of the law that what he says goes...but that's not pre-crime, that's just the dictator with extra steps. Likewise, society outsourcing its ability to designate people to pick on to an AI system is something, I guess, but that's not the law (again, as we understand the law.) That's just, I dunno, racism with extra steps? Classism, maybe? Or...ah, life in your choice of post-revolutionary totalitarian shithole, where anyone who commits a public impiety (or is just the least conspicuously pious when the bloodlust gets up) gets stoned or gulaged, and everyone who's not in the clergy or Party knows that they're on thin ice and need to police themselves accordingly.
I am not a sociologist who's studied Japan specifically, but one facet I've heard repeatedly is that lots of aspects of society are stultifying, with unwritten rules and expected codes of behavior, and avoidance of direct conflict. And turning those unwritten codes of behavior into something that is being parsed by a theoretically-objective system feels like a cleaner metaphor. The guy playing his speakers on full blast in the crowded train? And who absolutely refuses to take a hint or read the room, in that or any other similar situation? What's his crime index like, if he does actually care about the law-as-written, and the law-as-written expected people to get with the program due to social pressure?
Either you formalize the social codes, and you should have the cops sternly warn the manager in episode two for not sticking to the recommended duration and quantity of Accepted Workplace Bullying as defined in Psycho-punk OSHA (since if they've got algorithms for prediction and they're not just magic bullshit, there should be a huge amount of regulations and research about what makes the mean person more or less likely to crime). But the point is that there was no rule saying it was that guy's turn in the barrel and that he can sue to demand Victim Overtime instead of poking back (or alternately, him cheerfully pointing out that he's got a rock-bottom score himself because taking very-precise actions that just happen to result in his co-workers dying in hilarious industrial accidents isn't technically illegal any more than their harassment is).
Now, you can absolutely have a Sybil system that looks only at "Is this person going along with society?" And, if you're in a place that has a clown-shows justice system like Japan, then specifically using the term 'criminal' for someone who's gotten the cyberpunk equivalent of a K9's flag is probably making a point. But that's not fulfilling the promise of an actual pre-crime system that can actually predict crimes and thus eliminate them before the crime actually happens and the harm is caused.
Although, now that I think about it, maybe another point of the anime is that it's meant to be obvious that the pre-crime is bullshit, because the society has the need for the Enforcer janissary class. But hey, maybe we'll see that the system is actually generally correct and the Enforcers get up to shady shit, and that giving them guns is actually a really bad idea when one clever-dick improvises a wi-fi jammer and then they all rise up and start beating the real cops to death with clubs and numerical superiority.
RobertLiguori
10d ago
But that's not what the series is promising, then. An actual pre-crime analysis system should look at everyone who is willing to go "Yup, I have free societal rein to hate on this person, we've all agreed that they're the designated victim." and note that whoops, the law doesn't say you're allowed to abuse your social lessers according to a nebulous and ever-shifting social pecking order, you're all criminals. An accurate oracle will predict that you are likely to commit a crime; if they don't peg as latent criminals, either criminal harassment isn't a crime in this society (which I strongly doubt is shown), or there are explicit and complicated legal codes allowing it in specific circumstances (which again I doubt is shown)...or, what I think is likely, the show (and/or the Sibyl system) are equivocating between what the actual law is and how the actual law gets enforced. Like, is discrimination against people who once-ever pinged into latent criminal legal and mandated, or social consequence? You can't appeal the court of public opinion if you're accused of a crime in a shame-based culture...but you can go "Predliciton towards illegal discrimination and targeted harassment! The Law says that this man is now innocent and if you disagree, that means you're likely to be a criminal yourself! Jail for all of you! Oh, you think that you can get away with changing the law so we're not allowed to imprison millions of people for going along with society's most-common actual beliefs? That's evading the police, like with drugs! Death for millions of you!"
Of course, this assumes that the Sybil system is honest, which I don't think it was ever meant to be. An actual pre-crime system means that the letter of the law is vital to the story, and that we need an actual indicator of how stable crime index scores generally are and what going from sub-100 to 300 to back to sub-100 means. (Can the cops walk into City Hall and shoot at random government officials, since if the act of being mock-executed makes their crime index go up it means they were latent criminals all along? Are there even government officials any more, or is it just the will of the computer system and its physical agents?)
RobertLiguori
10d ago
So, I think I'm missing something. (I've not watched this show, for reference.) How do you maintain a set-up like the one in the factory when the color vibe check should reveal "Yup, you assholes are all guilty of pre-crime harassment and conspiracy to commit harassment, everyone to jail, every politician that says 'No, this is an economically-vital piece of infrastructure.' also to jail.", and so on?
Or, alternatively, can you hang around and do the same kind of murder-provoking harassment to everyone in society without having a crime index, and since you don't have a crime index, you actually doing it can't be a crime?
Conversely, if the system spits out that a latent criminal has changed their psychology enough that they are no longer likely to commit crimes (as you'd expect them to do after having good, meaningful work inside a system) doesn't that mean that they graduate pretty quickly, and everyone saying "No, they're scum, we've collectively agreed that they're the non-metaphorical underclass we agree to look down upon" is intending to commit crimes against actual-citizens and thus gets immediately vibe-checked and shot?
I feel like either there is a lot being elided here. A society as described can't be both a functional pre-crime enforcement state and a metaphor for modern society, because shooting people with criminal nature and intent regardless of their social status, connections, or cleverness in concealing their actual crimes would wipe out huge swathes of the people we consider movers and shakers in modern society.
So, I'm going to guess that there is a reveal that the Psycho-Pass is fundamentally bullshit, with vast quantities of either false positives or false negatives, because just what I've heard in the first three episode descriptions, it does not sound like the system works as described.
RobertLiguori
4mo ago
The only real sign we're near the end-zone is when we can ask a model how to make a better model, and get useful feedback which makes a model which can give us more and better advice.
I certainly foresee plenty of disruption when we reach the point of being willing to replace people with AI instances on a mass level, but until the tool allows for iterative improvement, it's not near the scary speculation levels.
RobertLiguori
5mo ago
As time goes on, I'm leaning more and more towards simply rejecting Rationalism, as it leads to cudgels like "falsely claimed without evidence" beloved by the mainstream media.
Reject Rationalism, embrace rationalism.
That is to say, movements will be corrupted by status games and politics, but ideas remain true or false regardless. It is rational to observe the degree to which the mainstream media is attempting to manipulate public opinion with both carefully-crafted deceptions, repetition of lies, and aggression towards alternate sources of info, and write them off. It is rational to note how science with the wrong conclusion is buried or never even attempted and to see how the universities have purged themselves of wrongthinkers, and write them off as well.
It is rational to recognize that the words of a liar are very poor evidence. And it is not rational to deny that a liar is a liar and call it charity.
RobertLiguori
7mo ago
So what percentage of contentious traffic stops in which the driver disobeys police instructions do you think have the police open fire first?
Because there are a lot of dashcam and bodycam vids which show, undeniably, that the vast majority of police do not do what you are claiming they do. How many do you think you'd need to see to think differently?
RobertLiguori
8mo ago
I think we have a working model for what people with working knowledge of firearms, access to long guns, and willingness to go into hot war with D.C. will be; it might not be an insurgency, but instead, dozens of D.C. snipers operating in tandem, and specifically targeting the tyrant and their supporters.
Obviously, only the barest fraction of people who talk the boogaloo game would do anything but hand over their guns and seethe when push comes to shove. But as the D.C. sniper shows us, it doesn't take a lot of people to utterly fuck things up. Add in things like targeted sabotage of the power grid in key areas and a few more Oklahoma City bombings, and I think that the government could run out of state capacity very quickly.
RobertLiguori
10mo ago
My opinion is that morality is not relative, but neither is it universally shared. Morality is a way for people willing and capable of positive-sum interactions to interact with each other. If you are not willing and able, you are not a moral actor, and likewise, dealing with you is a matter of pragmatism, not morality. You can have a moral war (or at least a war with moral aspects), if both sides are willing to agree on values like "Killing civilians for no significant military gain is wrong." and formalize combat to keep the fighting out of the fields and towns; when one side violates that agreement, then that is no longer a moral issue.
Again, I agree with the wolf; I agree that the wolf and those who carry water for him can and will disregard both honor and morality, and tear down every house and building to loot the rubble for themselves and their fellow-travelers.
A pretty elementary tenant of morality, or reasoning in general, is that you need to be alive to do it (or at least for other people that share your ideals to continue in your stead). If you choose to lay down and be devoured, because you feel that it's as good for the wolf to enjoy your flesh as a meal as for you to keep living in it, then that's on you. And if you hold to a morality that says that the above is the highest virtue, then that morality will end when it runs out of practitioners.
I honestly don't see this as something that can be meaningfully argued. Either you read the above comic and reach for your gun (or give fervent thanks to those around you who pick up the gun on your behalf), or you don't; if you don't, then you're not likely to share enough values with those who do to make discussing it worthwhile.
Morality is way for people who share values to coordinate and make great things. But it is only that. Absent shared values, there is only the pigs shooting every wolf, or the wolves devouring every pig.
RobertLiguori
10mo ago
The wolf is factually correct that private property requires force, because Communists (and other thieves and despoilers exist). You cannot trust in the bricks of contract law to willing parties to save you, absent men willing and able to do violence on your behalf.
When dealing with wolves (or when wolves deal with you), there is no 'right' in the moral sense; that only applies when you are dealing with moral actors interacting with each other. If we were talking about pigs, or other people who had signed contracts, then we can discuss if they were right or wrong for how they followed their contracts, and even if contract law is the highest form of morality and if there are some contracts that shouldn't be enforced, but (if I may delve into the spicy takes) the correct response to wolves is not negotiation, not diplomacy, but large amounts of armed men, and probably helicopters.
RobertLiguori
11mo ago
If the state has argued beyond reasonable doubt that one of two men has done an exclusive action, then they have also argued that there is reasonable doubt that the other hadn't.
Of course, the court system is a sham that hides its constant hypocrisies behind pomp and Latin, so neither the facts of the world nor even the facts of other court cases actually matter when judge and jury decide that precedent is optional today, but in a court system of professionals bound to their oath and juries capable of reason, convicting one person for a singular crime should exclude anyone else from being convicted of that crime.
As an aside, you can also have things like the felony murder rule, where "You did a felony and a murder happened as a direct result." is the argument, not "You murdered.", and in that paradigm, you absolutely can have multiple people convicted of the same murder, but that's not the same as lying to the court about what you think the evidence shows happened, as needs to happen to argue for two different versions of events.
RobertLiguori
11mo ago
"We'll have peace only if and when every last Palestinian renounces violence and accepts the status quo, and until then, we'll keep bombing," no, there will never be peace. At the moment, that does seem to be Israeli policy.
Wait, why not? If Israel decided to ignore optics, accept whatever level of collateral damage as was necessary, and bombed every Palestinian that didn't renounce violence, and only bombed them, then Israel would stop when only the non-irredeemable non-vengeance-monsters were left, and there'd be no more violence, yes?
I mean, given the current state of Palestinian culture, this would be at least genocide in the wholescale and eradication of their culture, and would probably end up being genocide in terms of actual real genocide, yes, but that would stop the violence.
RobertLiguori
11mo ago
If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you.
Then unless you fall into your own bullet one above, you've got your justification not just for Israel's extremely restrained and humane war, but for actual full-on retaliation. Palestinians literally are the criminal mafia you use metaphor to compare to Jews, they are actively and currently targeting Jewish civilians for the purpose of unrestrained murder, so by your reasoning, we should be pro-Israel and support them because they are, by and large, not shooting Palestinian children because they imagine them to be related to mob bosses and mocking them.
There is no ethical principle other than "Whites bad" (or other general Who, Whom?) that condemns Israel while not condemning not just the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the Arab countries for their historic displacements and exterminations of Christians and Jews. If "That screaming child I just killed was related to people who have wronged me." is understandable justification for said killing, then Israel is justified seven times fucking seventy; if that is not a principle you are willing to endorse generally, then you are starting from the position that the acts of violence that the Palestinians are committing are unjustified and monstrous, and you have a practical answer.
As a calibration question, I'm curious what you think of the Allies's campaign in WWII. Do you sympathize with the modern Neo-Nazi arguments that the firebombing of Dresden was an abomination, that the mass destruction of civilian life is never justified, and thus Nazi resistance to Allied occupation was justified then and justified now? Were the lives of the German civilians that died in Dresden precious enough that the war effort should have been forestalled?
I recognize that Nazi comparisons are emotive and can shed more heat than light, but I also recognize that the "Jews are literally all organized criminal gangsters, down to the children." is ticking boxes off of my Historical Anti-Semitism bingo card I did not expect to see in ${CURRENT_YEAR}, and feel that the potentially-inflammatory barn door is opened.
RobertLiguori
11mo ago
Huh. So you can make a husky act like a basset hound in terms of general laid-backness and temperament with a single gene tweak?
Respectfully, I doubt this. Can you link any sources to this effect?
RobertLiguori
11mo ago
Then please, build your own argument. We can look at the various breeds of dogs and see how they vary in behavioral traits, and then compare dogs as a whole to wolves, and see that within a species, all of the above traits are strongly influenced by lineage, and that while you can give a pitbull a gentle and caring upbringing and abuse a golden retriever into being violent, equal treatment of the animals does not result in equal behaviors.
The features of living creatures are strongly influenced by their specific biology, and the specifics of that biology is inherited from their parents. It is not controversial that the apple does not fall far from the tree, and traits that are genuinely randomly distributed and uncorrelated entirely with showing up in your family history are very few and far between. It is not controversial that this is the case; it is heretical to the tenents of the Successor Religion, but not actually controversial on the underlying facts, the theory, or the observed results.
If you want to argue otherwise on any of those points, please do so. Because otherwise, objecting solely on procedural grounds makes it obvious that there are no arguments against them you can make, and that shame and procedural arguments is the strongest claim the anti-HBD side can stake out.
What would be more secure; a system with no wifi, or a system with maximal wifi, scanners everywhere, and a Dominator pointed at everyone entering the factory at all times?
Heck, why not just corral people entering into the factory into cells loaded with scanning equipment but no net connection, have them be scanned, send a courier to take that data to a network node, drop it off, and come back with the vibe shift kill orders for that crop of entrants that day?
I also feel like I need to balance what (presumably) characters are saying about the cost and difficulty of full scans, versus the fact that full scans were conducted on a hostage in a hostage situation, multiple times and repeatedly, and came back quickly enough for them to be relevant in the moment-to-moment crisis. I know that there's bullshit under-the-hood reasons for why you can't, e.g., announce "Hey, we're limiting job and romance horoscopes to once per month per person and re-allocating those MIPS towards crime-screening, and we're also re-allocating 3% of the industrial economy into putting a Dominator on every street corner - for all of our protection.", but you should need an actual cover for that reason, because if people start asking questions and then stop trusting the Sybil system en masse, your society is kind of fucked.
I also feel like we're at kind of the same problem I've been discussing with the fancy boarding schools. Are they meant to be Amish-esque? Because if not, then "Yeah, a cop went to one of those schools finally and wiped out like a third of the students. What fools they were, for investing in money and power and influence and not carefully purging their children of wrong-think! Why would they think that the ability to temporarily dodge the judgement of the all-seeing Sibyl would protect them when one of those criminal bastards wandered within its gaze? Did they really think they could bribe or threaten a good, honest, upright sub-100 citizen?" should be the attitude we see; how do you coordinate as an elite to dodge the judgement of a world-enveloping digital system that can kill you on a whim?
The Sybil system, as described, should be an entirely new way of organizing society, and one that should utterly demolish previous forms of influence and corruption that have been basically universally-present. And even if it is not at all as described, either everyone believes in it and the system should be able to instantly break the power of any previously-elite groups, or the system should basically be purely the judgement of society and thus to be avoided at all costs no matter what people say externally, and we should have people recognize that, unless the point is that everyone in the society is double-thinking super-hard at all times.
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