2012-10-19, 21:31 | Link #21 |
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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AND in the end SYBIL after years of calculations determines that what it is doing right now for their society and humans, are NOT FOR THEIR ULTIMATE WELL-BEING after all and thus found a suitable person in the form of AKANE so that she can shake up the system and ultimately destroy the system that is SYBIL, therefore granting humans freedom of self-determination again (which it deemed better in the long run) and yet would also cause side-effets such as more criminality and wars and such.
just my thoughts.... well bittersweet ending , urobochi right? |
2012-10-19, 22:10 | Link #22 |
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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in the end, isn't it the human fault that rely too much on sybil? i mean sybil is just an AI it just see thing as is, a data.
it did not see human as human but see it as a gear in the system, and if a gear is potentially gonna bring problem is just right to take it out, but before using it to it fullest extent as is still can be used. it is tuned to maximum efficiency after all. P.S : by the way...she can suddenly change clothes with the hand mirror, is she wearing a a holo-suit? or is she wearing a work suit and wearing holo layer above it...interesting.. and if that the case everyone can literally walk naked without real clothes...do you think its interesting? |
2012-10-20, 01:14 | Link #23 | ||
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Yeah, I can definitely see how Akana's "Crime Coefficient won't go high even when she's in a bad mood" could become a very important characteristic later on down the line. And actually, I'm already seeing striking similarities between this show and Madoka Magica (albeit that some of these are predictive in nature). I'm going to allude to them in the spoiler space below. Spoiler for Psycho-Pass/Madoka Magica comparison:
I'm calling it now. Tomomi Masaoka is going to die, and his death is going to seriously shake up Akane and play a role in her questioning the system. That's a prediction I'm making. ThereminVox raises a very interesting societal aspect to the Sybil system that I honestly hadn't considered myself. Yeah, I can see "Psychological Beauty" in this show being held in the same sort of esteem that physical beauty is held in the real world. Quote:
1. Pretty accurate "snapshots in time" (more on this in a bit) 2. By doing 1 constantly, it's good at determining which people have the firmest mental stability (i.e. the "snapshots" can add up to paint a very precise picture over time). With Akane, what I think the Sybil system is picking up on is a fundamentally good person who is sort of incorruptible. It's not so much that she is immune to bad moods - It's that she has a strong personal sense of morality and justice that would prevent her bad moods from ever causing her to completely snap, so to speak. So even when plagued with self-doubt and lack of sleep, she doesn't give off a bad reading. For most people, though, their Sybil system rating changes with their moods and state of mind, because most people can snap. I think that a Sybil system rating accurately reflects where a person is at this exact moment of time. The problem, I think/suspect, is that it doesn't account for how likely the person is to recover from that heightened emotional state. It just flags people in the sense of "This guy/gal is on the verge of an emotional breakdown; take him/her out, or she might do something crazy and criminal". The thing is that Akane's method in Episode 1 should probably be standard operating procedure. In other words, you try to talk people down and you don't "Shoot first, ask questions later". And in fairness, maybe that's all the Sybil system was used for at first, at least within a law enforcement context: To help ascertain who needs to be "talked down" and who needs to be shot if you're unable to talk them down. Anyway, as critical as I've been of the Sybil system, I am finding this to be an extremely thought-provoking and pretty enjoyable show. Perhaps fittingly, it has intellectually engaged me in a way that no show really has... since Madoka Magica.
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2012-10-20, 05:26 | Link #24 |
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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The final semblance of personal freedom disintegrates once the government starts invading individual privacy.
On the surface, Sybil seems to be quite a pragmatic system geared towards crime prevention. It efficiently deals with any radical variables that can potentially induce disorder in society. But then, what concerns me is the means by which the system collects its data. In other words, what exactly is reflected by an individual's Psycho-Pass number? I have two possibilities in mind with regards to this. First, it might simply indicate a person's current mental stability. Or second, it might go as far as being a measure for an individual's tendency to commit a crime. The former possibility is much easier to grasp. The Psycho-Pass serves as a general indicator of an individual's mental health. That way, anyone at the verge of breaking down from mental stress becomes a target for psychiatric evaluation. But if such was the case, it wouldn't make sense to treat the individuals as criminals right there and then. Is the prevention of crime as simple as singling out the mentally unstable individuals? The latter possibility on the other hand is much more ominous since it goes much deeper than just measuring mental stability. Rather, it would measure how likely an individual would deviate from the norms established by society. A "crime", after all, is an act the goes against the rules of society. If that truly is what the Psycho-Pass measures, then I wouldn't be surprised if it could even read as a far as each individual's intentions, thoughts, and emotions in addition to mental stress. Going so far as to think about committing a crime would be enough to show on one's Psych-Pass number. In short, it would essentially be detecting "thoughtcrime" in that case. The ultimate question here is the extent of the mind reading that the Sybil system does. How much of a person's mind can it actually see into? Does the concept of privacy still even exist in this setting? I hope the the coming episodes elaborate a bit more on the entire system and how it works.
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2012-10-20, 14:50 | Link #25 | |||
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The impression I'm getting is that, in the real world, a lot of cops are using tasers as the ultimate catch-all tool - It's not supposed to be lethal, but it's supposed to quickly and safely subdue a person, so cops naturally and understandably love it. But it's getting overused, as some cops just grab that taser at the first sign of trouble. Police officers tend to like things very nice, clean, and unambiguous (less chance of they themselves getting in trouble that way). And also given the dangers in their line of work, I can't blame them. But it means that a tool like the Dominator is just ripe for abuse and over-reliance, which is what I think has happened here. Quote:
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... But given that this is a Gen anime, that probably means he's not going to last too long. Back when I tried to make speculations for Madoka Magica well over a year ago, I tried to take a mostly counter-intuitive approach to things. But no, I think Gen prefers giving people honest hints over red herrings, and having nice, little bits of foreshadowing and winks-to-the-audience about where he's going. For example... that guy holding a copy of 1984 in that image. I'm not sure if Gen had any say in that image, but let's just say you don't get a much more blatant hint than that, lol.
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2012-10-20, 20:11 | Link #26 | |
~AD~
Join Date: Oct 2006
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And why does Cybil treats a 5 years old Kanari as the potential criminal? Hope they explain how Cybil make the judgement. |
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2012-10-20, 20:32 | Link #27 | |||
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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Cybil probably has some difficulty discerning between a regular person suffering extreme fight or flight responses due to emotional trauma, and someone on a psychopathic break. When you think about it, allot of the chemical/neurological brain activity of an untrained person in fear of their lives is gonna look allot like mental activity of a crazed psychopath. The primary difference is that one can probably be coxed out of this flight/fight mentality more easily than the other. If I was to guess why guys like Kougami can't get their psycho pass lowered, is probably because they have very innate sociopathic/violent tendencies that they can't be medicated or counselled out of. So far it doesn't seem like Cybil has the ability to completely rewrite personalities, so there will always be outlier cases that can't be treated into being safe enough for cybils standards. So it becomes a matter of committing them, or finding some other limited capacity that they can work. I will say Cybil does come off as just a little bit trigger happy based on the first episode. Though I'm wondering if allot of this is based on automatic responses in the system reacting to situations. Like if after authorizing an initial termination authorization, Cybil will authorize subsequent termination authorizations much more easily. So when the victim started growing desperate enough to set off the gasoline, the system recognized murderous thought patterns, and so automatically authorized termination in response to the situation already being escalated. When Akane managed to calm the victim down, the system recognized that, and so deescalated the authorized use of force. Quote:
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2012-10-21, 01:26 | Link #28 |
You are Dominated!
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Another solid episode. Everyone gets nice character moments and we get a better view on the Cybil system and society as whole. As discussed, the whole system has a good intend and was just a guideline. However probably due to humans who got lazy using it, the whole world eventually turned it into their only choice and everything was autonomous. It is an interesting world and I want to know more about it.
The only slight trouble I have with the episode is that how Shinya casually talked with Akane about all his thoughts. Their conversation was nice but a bit too sudden. From the first episode, I thought Shinya would be the silent, keep to himself type and I was surprised to see the two bond so quickly
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2012-10-25, 01:08 | Link #29 | ||
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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And indeed, if he wanted to assert that claim, the situation presented by the redhead enforcer would make a more compelling case. I also drew up an alternative scenario to discuss if being locked into "working for a state" is necessarily "bad". Quote:
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2012-10-25, 02:12 | Link #30 | ||
SIBYL salesman
Join Date: Feb 2011
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As for making a potential mistake, episode 1 already established the psycho-pass system is flawed. It's not necessary repeat this again from a story perspective (well, not this early). The point of this 'sniff out the criminal' plot is to expand on the idea of "contagion" of crime coefficients (To spot or beat the criminal, one must think like a criminal), and that they are to be treated as trained dogs. Quote:
As for the whole lesbian angle, maybe they're setting up a 'doctor tries to make a move on Akane' angle for drama and/or comedic reasons? I'm kinda doubting ogon_bat's sexual predator theory, though. The two women might just be having a fling to release their frustrations if they're not a couple. As for the latent criminal status, the only thing I've seen established is those in the working sector are treated lowly. If you don't choose to work, then you're only other 'choice' is isolation (and/or "treatment"?). I'm also that guessing latent criminals who choose to work can only work in areas designed to capture other criminals. So they'll probably never have a chance to go back to a normal life, even if it is possible. |
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2012-10-25, 02:33 | Link #31 | ||||
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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That's not unlike how we deal with the threat of highly contagious disease. We track down the vectors, isolate them from other people, and keep treating them until they are either cured, or die of illness. Hence: Quote:
And, if you find such deterministic approaches to controlling people contemptible, you can take it up with eminent scientists like Richard Dawkins. Quote:
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2012-10-25, 06:53 | Link #32 | |
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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TinyRedLeaf. I understand and can sympathize with why you would be upset about being labeled as gay due to some weird circumstantial evidence. But that can be applied to analyzing characters from an animated show from another culture.
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2012-10-25, 07:20 | Link #33 | |
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
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What I'd like to know is WHAT is the exact problem with walking up to the guy and asking to see is Hue? The situation seemed to work out.
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2012-10-25, 08:53 | Link #34 | |
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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More humorously, you just went ahead and proved what I mean about the importance of context, something you didn't bother to check: my friend was just teasing. She was a prolific theatre actress even in her teens and, unsurprisingly given her chosen field, many of her best male friends were gay. She eventually came to the tongue-in-cheek conclusion that any man who is even halfway nice had to be gay, according to her "gaydar". (Because, in her experience and worldview, men who aren't in theatre are a boorish, uninteresting lot. Biased? Of course. Was her assessment very wrong? I'm not so sure any more.) On a more sober note, for the longest time, I couldn't quite figure out what people meant by "gaydar". And it was only recently that I realised how it worked — any guy who behaved effeminately triggered said "gaydar". I don't think I need to elaborate how wrong this stereotype is, but I was taken aback by how prolific this assumption actually was. In my office, there was a colleague who often sparred with me over all kinds of issues, one of them being that of homosexuality, with her being appalled over some of the provocative positions I'd take simply for the sake of argument. And yet, said colleague also unconsciously labelled one somewhat-girly male intern as gay, based purely on her "gaydar". This despite me pointing out that I've overheard how the other interns, who all got along pretty well, had already asked him the big question upfront. And he said: "No." Quite emphatically. To which my colleague simply retorted: "What are you, an idiot? Which guy would ever publicly admit to being gay?" So, there you have it. If you can't even take a person's statement at face value, convinced that you know him better than himself, what more is there to say? The whole story also proves something else that's relevant to the debate at hand: We humans are perfectly capable to profiling ("condemning") people based on our own biased stereotypes, with or without the help of technology. The Sibyl System doesn't change that. It merely reinforces what was already there to be begin with: a flawed value system. |
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2012-10-25, 09:09 | Link #35 | |
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As for the implied lesbian makeout scene... I'm not particularly fond of this fact myself, but as the old saying goes, "there's no coincidences in fiction". That scene exists for a reason, and given how Akane was subtlety hit on after the fact, the meaning couldn't be any more clear. At the very least, the woman who hit on Akane is a lesbian, and she either had consensual sex with the woman who left the room in a hurry, or she at least tried to seduce her (as you speculated). I don't really see the point in denying the obvious implications of scenes in fiction. If this was real life, sure, it would be different. Coincidences actually can happen in real life... but not so much in fiction.
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2012-10-25, 09:13 | Link #36 | |
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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At least with the Psycho-Pass system, such hypocrisy is stripped away. There is at least some semblance of a "scientific" basis for the profiling. Things are at least that little bit more predictable, or so one would hope. I suspect that it was this hope, after all, that convinced the people of this alternative reality to adopt the Sibyl System. It's flawed, sure, but to them it probably seemed that much better than the previous system. |
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2012-10-25, 13:11 | Link #37 | ||
I disagree with you all.
Join Date: Dec 2005
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I'm not a fanatic, even if I'm not crazy about their arrest procedures when it comes to victims. I acknowledge the PP could be a very useful tool. I'd be willing to compromise quite a lot on the presumption of innocence if something like that really existed. But wherever I'd draw the line, you can be sure it'd be far before the point where small children are condemned to life without parole. Quote:
IRL, I probably wouldn't notice. But this is a show. The clues provided make "sex" a rather natural assumption, and one that doesn't matter. Not yet, maybe not ever, except to tell us how they while away their time, cooped up in that building with the same faces day in and day out. (If you'd seen the doctor put away game controllers, would you argue there was no reason to conclude they'd been playing video games?) Re: Dawkins: I noticed he didn't say anything about the fact we often scrap whole machines if repairing them becomes too costly. Which can be a remarkably low threshold. |
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2012-10-25, 16:45 | Link #39 |
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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This episode gave me some mixed feelings: while we have more details regarding the different components and features of the Sybil System (which make a distinction between Hue and CC with other points), the "case of the week" was not exactly subtle with that.
The answer was so obvious that I almost felt it was a cheap attempt to have a plot twist, but in the end, it stuck with the prime suspect. At this point, the anime doesn't show a consistent measure like Kanon said: Kanehara was obviously going on an onslaught, vastly superior compared to previous criminals, yet the dominator didn't switch to lethal mode. Speaking of the dominator, I wonder how far the sybil system can analyze its target in general, because I hardly can expect the analysis method to be similar with machine, so figuring out the drone was dangerous, based on its program alone is a bit of a stretch (although it should be "more" logical for a machine than human feelings, ironically). What bothers me a bit more though is how Ginoza and Akane were a tad exaggerated in their respective role. Ginoza was just shown as a blind inspector, following the system without really any afterthought (in fact, because of circumstancial evidence, an inspector would have to analyse them and deal with them to see if they are proved true or baseless assumptions). It really looks like his role was just to shoehorn a "the system turn people into brainless law enforcers that can't judge a situation without a bogus number". Meanwhile, even if an interview state the word "moe" was forbidden during the production of the show, Akane is really taking a step further in that part. It isn't like it is overdone by itself, but they try a tad too hard to have a "naive/innocent" character in the setup, which throws me off quite seriously at few occasions, due to her candid reactions. She is meanty to be the anchor of the show that allows the audience to have at least a character to root/care about, but the way it is done isn't really reflecting too well the direction of the show so far.
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2012-10-25, 16:45 | Link #40 |
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Join Date: Mar 2010
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They may have apprehended the criminal, but I have a feeling they didn't solve or prevent the crime.
The factory originally had a system to prevent the factory workers' Psycho-Passes from clouding over by reassigning the workers to different locations, but that practice ended a year ago. Why? It's obvious that someone (most likely the manager) stopped it to encourage bullying. The bullies clear their Psycho-Passes by picking on someone, while the bullied clears his Psycho-Pass by retaliating in secret like Kanehara did. If the victim's Psycho-Pass does not become clear over time, the manager can let the authorities remove him. Yes, I suspect the murders by Kanehara were also a part of the factory manager's system, considering how he can see everything with the security cameras. There is nothing to prevent another factory worker from becoming the next Kanehara. I also suspect that the factory's isolation from the Sybil System is not just to prevent hacking, but to prevent the manager from being exposed as well. If the police do not have the Sybil System, they have no Crime Coefficients. Naturally they would go after the person with the worst Psycho-Pass, which would be the bullied-victim-turned-vengeful-murderer like Kanehara. The police would be distracted by Kanehara, and the calmer, more conspiring criminal such as the factory manager would slip under the radar everytime. |
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