RobertLiguori
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User ID: 165
RobertLiguori
1mo ago
Respectfully, I don't find "Scotland is not England." persuasive in and of itself. Can you elaborate on what factors are present in England that aren't in Scotland that should change our priors in this case?
All I know about Scotland's justice system is the Dankula debacle, which is more than enough for me to default to assuming dishonesty from it. But if there are some moderately high-profile cases of immigrants running into the same kind of tyranny, that would be evidence against the expected racial discrimination and two-tier justice system from the non-US Anglophone world.
I also think that you are poisoning the well big-time with your witchcraft analogy. Witches are not real. Alien rapists given cover by their co-ethnics in positions of power and whites with outgroup bias are extremely real, and until very recently, the common consensus was that they weren't and that only a paranoid racist lunatic would believe they were.
With that being said, I am at least open to the possibility that this was naked unprovoked aggression from our dual-wielder. But to me, the BBC weighing in is not evidence, and neither is the justice system, until I can be shown how this is different than the position we were in with Rotherham ten years ago.
RobertLiguori
1mo ago
If they aren't, and it is ever possible that someone other than the Author-Empowered God Stand-In ever claims (or even challenges) that power, then there is not just no story, but no possibility of a story, because the superintelligence would just turn off the laws of physics that permit its enemies to have ever existed. A superintelligence would need to derive a benefit from the existence of a non-sterile galaxy commensurate with the risk of another superintelligence popping up in it and saying "Fuck you and the light-cone you rode in on."; even if it doesn't go full paperclip-maximizer, shouldn't a superintelligence be like "Hey, the fact that failure is a dramatic possibility means that we should pre-empt this?"
It's just unsatisfying to me, and more so to pretend that being able to change the INT_MAX global variable is anything other than either evidence of pure simulationism or about as sci-fi as the Force. It's a conceit I was able to go along with when I read one of the books, but what was trying to come across as mysterious just felt half-baked to me. Like, what if I invent blargle-snarfing, which is applying reason and inference to data available to me but not actually thought? How is 'thought' defined and gatekept?
RobertLiguori
5mo ago
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.
RobertLiguori
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
9mo 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
10mo 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.
Hmm. Recorded footage from someone else, verified to not be selectively edited, showing initial misbehavior from Team Dual-Wield and no prior interest from Bulgarian Man would be strong support. If the based wing of the Internet is unable to dig up any history of deceptive or antisocial acts from Bulgarian, that would also be weaker evidence in favor.
With respect, the fuck is this? People believing themselves to be Napoleon or Jesus or fucking married to Professor Snape on the astral plane do not mean that any of those things are real. The systematic, extended, and horrific abuse of young women and girls in Great Britain by aliens, which was explicitly and deliberately covered up and minimized by the government and media, was a real thing that happened to real people, in spite of people claiming it didn't happen. Conversely, no one in Europe had social or sexual relations with Lucifer the Archenemy, uses hexes to spoil crops or kill livestock, spied on their neighbors through the eyes of a familiar spirit, or flew through the air on a broomstick.
Describing something as a witch hunt is evoking a community turning on someone for committing crimes it is impossible for them to have committed, because magic (and evil magic in particular) is not real. The rape of young girls by foreigners is real, was ongoing for a very long time, and was covered up by people who used every rhetorical deceit in their power to obfuscate, deny, or simply attack people who spoke otherwise. It is, in short, a bad stylistic choice to move my priors in this case, especially when paired with an argument from numbers which seems to be contradicted by another grooming gang incident in the same city dug up by my sibling posters.
Given all this, why should we assume that a random sexual assault case was done by some type of brown, barring specific information otherwise? If we heard that there was a sexual assault in a convent, whose population was 19 female nuns with no criminal record and one escaped sex criminal with a dozen convictions for sexual assault, what sex should we assume the perpetrator is? (And, to be clear, this example is stacking the probabilities in a way that is more exaggerated than racial differences in crime rates are, and that it is not the case that literally all crime is done by some-flavor-of-brown men and that there are plenty of criminal Whites who get up to similarly-heinous shit, but the point is that we are not starting from an equal playing field and that numbers and base rates matter.)
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