The Chinese Social Credit System?

It is yet another instrument of the police state. One would get angry, only instruments like that are pretty much par for the course under this Chinese government.

Quoting andrewk

It is yet another instrument of the police state.

So, I take it you don't like China. Many people don't but I'm more inclined to take a step back and ask is a social credit system a necessary evil? Banks already have a credit rating system.

It's not just the chinese, it's happening everywhere especially in all the developed countries. The only difference is that China isn't masking the truth of it, or they don't really care to. By and by anonymity will be a thing of the past for the majority of humanity (But, we've never really been absolutely anonymous, have we?). I think only those with exceptional computers (software, hardware) and computation skills might be able to afford themselves a dimension of decent privacy, and increasingly diminishing at that. Eventually, privacy will be extinct, or very difficult (expensive) to maintain.

Malicious authoritarian garbarge turned up to eleven.

Quoting Wallows

So, I take it you don't like China.

On the contrary, I love China. I love the communitarian culture and the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian influences in their culture. I love Chinese music, history and dance.

It's the Chinese government that I detest.
Quoting Wallows

I'm more inclined to take a step back and ask is a social credit system a necessary evil

The answer is a straightforward, simple No. New Zealand and Norway have no social credit systems and have harmonious societies with relatively low inequality and high levels of personal freedom. So such systems cannot be necessary. They are just ways for would-be dictators to exert power over ordinary people - to stifle dissent and force them to comply with the will of the autocrats.

Quoting andrewk

It's the Chinese government that I detest.

Hasn't it been pretty uniform in manner and policies since the ruling of the communist party? I'm not very informed about the political science of China since Mao.

Anonymity is not a good thing. It allows persons to participate in communities, no matter how vile that community or that participation is, without the risk of personal consequences. I struggle to find examples in which anonymity is strictly a positive force for both the individual and the communities they engage anonymously in, for which there isn't a valid alternative in the physical world (which doesn't share many of the problems of the digital world).

Of course, tackling anonymity has a good chance of damaging privacy. Privacy is mostly a good thing, insofar that it entails private matters and the only persons that can feel the consequences of such matters are the persons themselves.

Just some tangential thoughts, but if you combine this social credit system along with China aggressively pursuing Generalized-Artificial-Intelligence, (there's a 50/50 chance they'll be the first to it), you have something straight out of a sci-fi novel. They're really on another level.

Great way of control for the modern police state! Especially when you combine your credit scores with your chat history. What better way to control what people say to each other especially about politics, if it affects your ability to get a loan from a bank or to get a job.

Quoting Tzeentch

I struggle to find examples in which anonymity is strictly a positive force

So I guess you hate that election votes are anonymous? That it would be better that the government/political parties/your employer/everyone would know just who have you voted in all elections.

Or the anonymity in this site?

Quoting ssu

So I guess you hate that election votes are anonymous? That it would be better that the government/political parties/your employer/everyone would know just who have you voted in all elections.

Don't quote half a sentence without at least reading the second half.

Quoting ssu

Or the anonymity in this site?

The anonymity of this site has no value for me, and therefore I would term it a neutral force rather than a positive one. However, I could easily turn it into a negative one if I were to start spouting vitriol, hostility and what have you.

Quoting StreetlightX

Malicious authoritarian garbage turned up to eleven.

:up:

Quoting Wallows

Hasn't it been pretty uniform in manner and policies since the ruling of )the communist party?

Absolutely not. Modern China is run officially as a socialist market economy, but is effectively (according to many) a form of state capitalism. A far cry from Mao. Deng Xiaoping is the major figure you need to know about here. But Asia, in general, does it differently: The "democracy" of Singapore has been run by the same political party since it secured self-governance in 1959, governance in Japan has been monopolized (with only two very brief interludes) by the LDP since 1955, the current government in Thailand is a military dictatorship that's hardly any different in practical terms to the "democracy" that came before it, and so on.

Quoting Wallows

What are your thoughts about this incredible idea?

It appears to be part of a project of hyper-instrumentalization and depersonalization of social reality through an attack on individuality and personhood (I guess a reaction to trends of individualism afforded by cross-cultural mass-communicative media), the potential effect of which is a huge mass of people who become so conditioned they end up thinking they're voluntarily making decisions on the basis of being good citizens whereas the actual motivation is fear. So, fear and anxiety of the social dressed up as harmony with and love for others. A dictatorship's dream.