Possibly the Scariest Social Engineering Implications to date

[HedgeWizard]

While I probably do not have to convince anyone of the death of free speech in China I think the up and coming "Sesame Credit" is something very relevant to this dialogue

 

The Sesame Credit has been compared to a citizen obedience credit score and is slated to be fully implemented and mandatory from its designers by 2020. As if that does not sound scary enough the implications can be truly terrifying. With the ability of government to outsource propaganda and ostracism entirely to the population by gameification of patriotism and civil obedience we could yet see an undead side to free speech's death.

 

 

https://chinacopyrig...stem-2014-2020/

 

http://baike.baidu.c...jF1aJmKP11CguRq

 

*somehow the text was all lost in the original post while editing, here is a fully rewritten post

[shirgall]

This is also a good exploration of this topic:

 

[AccuTron]

Where is the OP?  I see nothing.

 

 

The China video is indeed revolting.  Yet, what else is new?

US citizens now scowl at a person who dares do honest research, supposedly in the name of saving the planet, and no doubt free speech.  (Personal experience.)

The so-called news and entertainment complex ostracizes honest rational thought.  The viewers get bonus points for that by agreeing with lying sound bites. 

The Chinese are needing this software because they don't have the pre-existing dumb-down media net we have.

[luxfelix]

This is also a good exploration of this topic:

 

 

(Sounds like a dark-side version of what currently occurs with app service sites between user-rated providers and clients.)

 

I imagine this could backfire on the Chinese government if/when the people begin to see how many other people disagree with the regime; the bureaucrats may reward obedience, but the free market could reward dissension. 

[HedgeWizard]

Where is the OP?  I see nothing.

 

 

The China video is indeed revolting.  Yet, what else is new?

US citizens now scowl at a person who dares do honest research, supposedly in the name of saving the planet, and no doubt free speech.  (Personal experience.)

The so-called news and entertainment complex ostracizes honest rational thought.  The viewers get bonus points for that by agreeing with lying sound bites. 

The Chinese are needing this software because they don't have the pre-existing dumb-down media net we have.

sorry, I had edited the post and it made the thread screwy because I have <10 posts and they need to be approved by mods before submitting. everything should be fine now.

 

I think you underestimate what the Chinese media is like here. It is nearly as sophisticated in its application of psychology and has the added "benefit" of being directly government controlled so that its employees' incentives for success are more obviously one in the same, at least in regards to unpaid promoting on an individual level.

[fractional slacker]

Good thing is bitcoin doesn't give a flying rat poop about any social engineering "credit" score. Programs like this will accelerate the demise of the state as they increase the transparency of centrally planned tyranny.

[AccuTron]

..

I think you underestimate what the Chinese media is like here. It is nearly as sophisticated in its application of psychology and has the added "benefit" of being directly government controlled so that its employees' incentives for success are more obviously one in the same, at least in regards to unpaid promoting on an individual level.

You're right, I missed that one.

[Jer]

I'm sure a lot of people reading about this program are saying this would never happen in the US, but US law enforcement already has a similar system where they analyze the social media history of individuals on a massive scale in order to assess a "threat level". They haven't yet taken it to the next level of rewarding statist behavior, but you can bet Americans are already getting discriminated against (or whatever you want to call it) because of their public statements and those of their acquaintances that the state dislikes.

[ResidingOnEarth]

Sesame: Slave Electronic Submission And Manipulation Experiment

 

I expect the experiment will fail as I'm sure that any value associated with these points will result in people gaming the system and black market credit improvement services becoming available to game it for you.

 

Do you hate waiting in the sub-100-point-citizen lines?

Do you want to increase the chance of your home planning application being accepted?

Are you tired of going through a full tax audit every year?

 

If you answered Yes, Yes, Yes then you're in luck!  Check out our site on the deep-web today!  Only ¥650 for a 200 Sesame credit increase OR YOUR MONEY BACK! (probably)

[vizier42629]

I first heard about sesame credit on the corbett report. Although the idea of harnessing social rejection as a form of social control is as old as the hills, I think the refinement of this concept into a national "social credit reporting" information apparatus is far more insidious than older methods that I am aware of. 

 

I feel that it might be insightful to point out another recent example of this kind of social engineering. I remember reading years ago several articles Alan watt posted about "nudge teams" in the UK. Basically the idea was that these people would be positioned in public places or on the internet to encourage people to do things using sociology or psychology. Alan Watt is for the sake of brevity a conspiracy theorist. He considered these nudge teams a fiendish deception on the public by modern totalitarian governments. In fact the very reason he reported on them in this manner was to spread awareness of this perception of his. Keep in mind that the Alan watt i'm referring to is not Alan Watts, the renowned british eastern philosophy, meditation guy (for lack of a better description).

 

Here's a link to the Nudge Team's website.

http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/about-us/

 

Now from their slick government type website you would think its an innocuous program meant to encourage people to give more to charity, obey traffic laws, or recycle more often. Watt, insisted that it was utterly malevolent. I personally think its kind of creepy that tax payer money would go to paying people to goof around with the minds of unwitting consumers to get them to do stuff, whether good or bad.

 

I think that suggestion of positive behaviors is generally ethical. People do it all the time if they have good manners, often times without even realizing it. I enjoy being reminded of things personally.

 

"care to wash your hands before dinner?" 

"make yourself comfortable"

 

The take away point that i get from sesame credit or nudge teams is that there is a difference between making people feel welcome or boosting their wellbeing with courteous suggestions, and altering the freakin' destiny of their life with a giant BF Skinner social control system.

[ResidingOnEarth]

vizier42629: I also heard about this through James Corbett.  I'm a fan of his show; especially his New World Next Week show he does with James Evan Pilato.

 

One thing that makes these state-run, citizen-credit schemes immoral is the fact that you are forced to pay for them and forced to use government services that are hooked into them.  So they are involuntary.  I find that many ideas which are seemingly insidious (eg this credit scheme, eugenics and child labour) transform into something palpable and sometimes even positive when voluntarism is introduced. 

 

What's intrinsically wrong with a credit scheme that you choose to be a part of?  Insurance companies rate you in various ways.  What's intrinsically wrong with eugenics if you and others in your tribe are voluntarily choosing who breeds and who does not as per rules you voluntarily agree to?  What's intrinsically wrong with child labour if your child wants to work and learn your trade?

 

As Stefan often points out: voluntarism is the vital difference between rape and love making.  Voluntarism is a truly beautiful concept!

 

I'm from the UK by the way and I'm also new here.  So hello and 

I've also watched Alan Watt and Alan Watts videos.  I have taken some value from both Alans.  More from that latter than the former.

[John CEFD]

Well, nothing new under the sun here. Aldous Huxley commented in his Brave New World Revisited (http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/):

 

"In the light of what we have recently learned about animal behavior in general, and human behavior in particular, it has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effec­tive, in the long run, than control through the rein­forcement of desirable behavior by rewards, and that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manip­ulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Pun­ishment temporarily puts a stop to undesirable behav­ior, but does not permanently reduce the victim's tend­ency to indulge in it. Moreover, the psycho-physical by-products of punishment may be just as undesirable as the behavior for which an individual has been pun­ished. Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the de­bilitating or anti-social consequences of past punish­ments.

        The society described in 1984 is a society controlled almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of pun­ishment. In the imaginary world of my own fable, pun­ishment is infrequent and generally mild. The nearly perfect control exercised by the government is achieved by systematic reinforcement of desirable be­havior, by many kinds of nearly non-violent manipula­tion, both physical and psychological, and by genetic standardization. Babies in bottles and the centralized control of reproduction are not perhaps impossible; but it is quite clear that for a long time to come we shall remain a viviparous species breeding at random. For practical purposes genetic standardization may be ruled out. Societies will continue to be controlled post-natally -- by punishment, as in the past, and to an ever increasing extent by the more effective methods of reward and scientific manipulation."

 

Now, ostracism has always been a mechanism by which societies could repel the antisocial and damaging elements for self-preservation, it's a natural thing, and it is natural to happen in the large economic life and market process too: if you take loans and don't pay, you get a bad credit rate and will find problems from other economic agents plus bad reputation; and States have been using it in all sorts of ways in the past as well, by insufflating nationalism and then using citizens to or support the repel of anti-States elements is anything but new. But the catch now is the grandiose scale of the thing, thanks to new technologies, specially in internet and comunication.

It's a Brave New World unfolding folks, marvelous ain't it?

[ResidingOnEarth]

 Aldous Huxley commented in his Brave New World Revisited (http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/):

 

Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the de­bilitating or anti-social consequences of past punish­ments.

 

I have never-before, heard such a clear, powerful and succinct explanation for the existence of psychotherapy.

 

 

[ResidingOnEarth]

Bruce Schneier has written about this here.

 

Bruce is a well known cryptographer and computer security consultant.  He usually only writes about topics he has a high degree of expertise in and he also researches them well.  I think he does a good job of explaining the problem and the likely effects if unmitigated.  Where he goes a bit awry sometimes is on his proposed solutions.  That is because some of his proposed solutions invariably involve initiating force against individuals (via the state).  I do not throw the baby out with the bath water though.  I think he offers valuable information and insights.

 

Here are some excerpts from the article that I thought were valuable:

 

 

But there's little about the scoring systems used by Sesame Credit that's unique to China. All of us are being categorized and judged by similar algorithms, both by companies and by governments. While the aim of these systems might not be social control, it's often the byproduct.

 

As I said earlier.  I don't think these credit systems are necessarily, inherently evil.  I think -- as usual -- the NAP is what defines the morality of these systems in any given use-case.

 

Do I have to use Facebook?  No.  I choose not to and I'm ok with that.

 

Do I have to use a government sesame-like credit scheme?  Yes.  I choose not to, but it is imposed on me and others in the society I live using threat of extreme violence.  I'm not ok with this.

 

 

The US government is judging you as well. Your social media postings could get you on the terrorist watch list, affecting your ability to fly on an airplane and even get a job.

 

Having read this I immediately thought of Obama's recent speech where he advocated using violence to prohibit people from accessing guns if they are on the "terrorist watch list".

 

Obama is many things, but he clearly is not stupid.  He knows that the "terrorist watch list" is not appended to using any kind of legal, due-process.  He knows that he and his cronies could use this list to arbitrarily, prohibit any individual or group of individuals in society from having access to a gun.

 

In terms of credit ratings... I'd say getting on the terrorist watch list gives you a pretty low score.

 

 

The secrecy of the algorithms further pushes people toward conformity. If you are worried that the US government will classify you as a potential terrorist, you're less likely to friend Muslims on Facebook. If you know that your Sesame Credit score is partly based on your not buying "subversive" products or being friends with dissidents, you're more likely to overcompensate by not buying anything but the most innocuous books or corresponding with the most boring people.

 

All the smart control-freaks know about the chilling effect.  They will not openly advocate for a position because they want the chilling effect.  They know that people would not support their position if they did that.  They will make up some other excuse with popular appeal.

 

 

This is what social control looks like in the Internet age. The Cold-War-era methods of undercover agents, informants living in your neighborhood, and agents provocateur is too labor-intensive and inefficient. These automatic algorithms make possible a wholly new way to enforce conformity.

 

^ this.  This is how it is being and will continue to be done. 

 

Encrypt all the things!