I posit that even the utopian futures will require something like it to preserve the utopias. Defensive Democracy will eventually see it as a necessary evil. The questions become: when? where first and where last? etc.
Discuss :)
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It seems like it’s already here, at least informally. It’s pretty common for employers to screen job applicants by social media posts. Without a good job, you’re basically a second-class citizen.
The most extreme example is: whenever anyone runs for government, their opponents go through all their history trying to find something, anything, that can be used to smear them loudly and publicly. So the only viable candidates are the ones with no social media presence whatsoever. Which, of course, makes them so totally disconnected from what people are doing.
(Well, if there’s anything we learned from Trump, it’s that the opposite can also be true. So perhaps it’s changing.)
We already have it. Reddit and other forum-style social media has upvotes and karma or reputation points. People judge others in these forums on the content and the “social reputation” they have.
We also have credit scores which function and act in a similar fashion.
Just like Meow Meow Beenz?
100% haha
My meow meow beenz! 🐱🐱🐱
Yeah thats a hot take alright a hot steaming pile of a take for sure. Remember your outlook beliefs and politics may be popular right now but there will certainly come a time when they won’t be and you too will be “problamatic” and that social credit system you vaunt now can and WILL be turned against you
that […] system you vaunt now can and WILL be turned against you
This is true of almost any institution if the checks and balances are broken. Courts are great, but kangaroo courts are terrible. Democracy is great, until it elects a dictator. Etc.
Just because we don’t personally like an idea doesn’t mean it is avoidable from the perspective of a civilization.
If you work on the assumption that it is unavoidable: what checks and balances make it palatable?
The point is not to have it come to pass period. Just because you personally like an idea because it fits into your world view doesn’t mean that’s it’s necessary, or unavoidable. Thinking about checks and balances is admitting defeat. if you want a thought experiment think about all the ways that current government are trying to bring this about and instead of checks and balances think about was to push back and get rid of such a system.
