Psycho-Pass - Anime General Discussion

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Perhaps it's a problem of language? There's nothing wrong with making deductions, but the way you phrase them makes it seem as though you are passing assertions for fact, and that's a poor way to approach any argument.

For example:

Non sequitur. You make a number of assertions, but none of them are definitively linked, nor has the show conclusively established the cause and effect. How does the doctor's status as a "latent criminal" prove that if one's crime coefficient becomes too blurry you get shafted into working for the state?

Why do we need the doctor to prove that? There was a guy who was condemened when he was 5 years old.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Why do we need the doctor to prove that? There was a guy who was condemened when he was 5 years old.

Eh? I'm not asking the "good" doctor to prove anything. Rather, I'm contesting the claim that her latent criminal status proves that she was "shafted into working for the state". Two different issues and not necessarily linked, yet ogon_bat apparently claims that one condition led to the other.

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".

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Here's another way to re-frame the scenario as it is presented in Psycho-Pass. Supposing that I believe myself to be a moral person, and that I feel an overriding responsibility to make good moral choices. If, after subjecting myself to Sibyl Judgment, it is discovered that I have the psychological profile of a potential criminal. What would be the moral choice? Should I bulldoze ahead on a normal track, heedless of the higher-than-normal risk I present to other people, if I should make a mistake and accidentally (or perhaps even deliberately, on a subconscious level) fail to take the medication I need to stay within normal limits?

In my desire to fulfil my own emotional needs, have I failed in my moral responsibility to other people, given the knowledge that the Sibyl System has presented to me? How much "choice" do I really have in this matter?

Granted the redhead was probably not presented with such a choice, but let's take it he's now given the chance to consciously think about the options before him. In the light of the Sibyl Judgment, and assuming that he does indeed regard himself as a moral person, how much "choice" does he actually have?

[Quadratic]

Originally Posted by ogon_bat

He was a veteran cop before he became an enforcer, so I do not see any intuition in play, just years of experience dealing with these kind of people.

From what we have seen so far IMO the hue level detector is merely giving a quantification of the level of psychosis human beings have at the moment, so thinking a mentally unstable person can sniff* another is a fallacy.

*as in, identifying them just by looking at them without having any kind of verbal interaction.

Years of experience is what gives him intuition. In any case, the guy's demeanor gave himself away and his subsequent actions when confronted by a couple of non-threatening mascots.

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.

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

How do we know that it wasn't a case of the doctor trying to seduce the enforcer, who then rejected her advances? As I said, context changes everything, and I'm sure we've all been caught in situations that made us look horribly wrong when the reality was the complete opposite.

We've also forgotten to mention the doctor starting smoking. It's a common after-sex move in television shows, movies, and real life.
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.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Quadratic

We've also forgotten to mention the doctor starting smoking. It's a common after-sex move in television shows, movies, and real life.
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.

At this stage, any number of speculative theories are possible. I don't deny the signs point heavily towards sex but, as of now, I'm sceptical that we're supposed to make much out of it other than something kinky very probably happened. If the scene is there simply to titillate a certain segment of the audience, well, it has clearly worked. But if it's that all it's supposed to do, colour me a cloudy shade of disappointed. I expect something more mature from the production staff.

Originally Posted by Quadratic

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.

That's clearly supposed to be the central theme of this story. More to the point, as many have already observed, we are asked to imagine a world where the psychological potential for "criminal" behaviour is treated like a disease. The underlying assumption is that you can statistically determine the biological/psychological traits of criminal behaviour (which naturally raises the very important question of who decided what is criminal). And, rather than to accept on faith that an individual can reliably exercise his free will to curb his biological/psychological tendency towards criminal behaviour, the state takes pre-emptive measures to ensure it will never come to that stage.

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:

Originally Posted by Arya

On a side note I found strange that they used the medicine symbol for the CID, but checking this out, it isn't, it seems to be a caduceus, ...a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals ... things got out of hand

Arya actually made a very astute observation, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the symbol of the CID is adapted from the caduceus symbol commonly used in North America as a logo for medicine (of course, readers are free to disagree with me; I'm not insisting that my view is 100 per cent correct).

And, if you find such deterministic approaches to controlling people contemptible, you can take it up with eminent scientists like Richard Dawkins.

Originally Posted by ChainLegacy

Dawkins has spoken on the subject. I'm not sure I fully agree with him, but provocative nonetheless:

TL;DR…

 

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[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

At this stage, any number of speculative theories are possible. I don't deny the signs point heavily towards sex but, as of now, I'm sceptical that we're supposed to make much out of it other than something kinky very probably happened. If the scene is there simply to titillate a certain segment of the audience, well, it has clearly worked. But if it's that all it's supposed to do, colour me a cloudy shade of disappointed. I expect something more mature from the production staff.

Orrrrrr they wanted to establish that those two characters were having a relationship for future plot developments with them, but they wanted to do it quickly and efficiently? I really don't think they were trying to be indulgently kinky about it. I'm gonna call Occam's razor on this. Speculative theories might be interesting, but generally the simplest answer to something that happened is the most likely.

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.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by ogon_bat

I do not see any intuition in play, just years of experience dealing with these kind of people.

There's a word for that: Intuition.

The question is still: WHY check the guy's hue if you already know he is the target?

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Dengar

There's a word for that: Intuition.

The question is still: WHY check the guy's hue if you already know he is the target?

Because regardless of the Enforcers intuition, this is a state that makes arrests based on the hue of your psycho-pass. Until you confirm that, you can't just restrain somebody. If they DID happen to have a normal psycho-pass and you tackled them out of the blue, you could get in allot of trouble, since you would have been operating outside of police procedure.


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.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

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.

LOL. What are you now, my psychiatrist? Unless you've scanned my psycho-pass, I daresay you aren't anywhere near qualified to say that I'm "upset about being labelled gay". (It's a privately-held suspicion that crops up pretty often now, in any case, given that I remain happily single at my age.)

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.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

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.

Pretty big difference between some people having a mistaken impression/image of you, and the state determining that you're a latent criminal who's life options are going to be drastically reduced because of that.

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.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Pretty big difference between some people having a mistaken impression/image of you, and the state determining that you're a latent criminal who's life options are going to be drastically reduced because of that.

Ah, but here's the nub of it: One doesn't need a totalitarian state to make people's lives miserable based on mistaken impressions. We're already doing this quite perfectly every day, with or without the help of institutional controls. My key point is: What makes the Psycho-Pass system any worse than society as it exists today?

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.

[totoum]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

There is at least some semblance of a "scientific" basis for the profiling.

This isn't strictly about your last post but more about your post on the sibyl system in general.You do realize that just because you've met a few science fanatics in the animesuki religion thread it doesn't mean that the whole world is like that It just sounds like you're trying to appeal to them with your arguments but I'm not one of them,so most of those arguments are lost on me.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 3:

The Criminal Investigation Department crew is sent in a robot factory to investigate the most troubled employees and the mystery behind the factory. Meanwhile, Akane develops her feelings towards Shinya, and we even got a glimpse at someone's evil father. A great episode in my opinion, and Shinya acts pretty cool and appears to be nice towards Akane, although he also shows his evil face. We also learn a bit about Inspector Ginoza, and the drones' fight was pretty fun to watch. The episode's ending leave with a compelling cliffhanger, so I look forward to the mysteries more.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

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.

What I'd like to know is WHAT is the exact problem with taking a potentially dangerous individual into custody? And let me stress this again: They got the right guy.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Ah, but here's the nub of it: One doesn't need a totalitarian state to make people's lives miserable based on mistaken impressions. We're already doing this quite perfectly every day, with or without the help of institutional controls. My key point is: What makes the Psycho-Pass system any worse than society as it exists today?

Being treated like a convicted felon and worse at five years old, that's what.

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.

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

LOL. What are you now, my psychiatrist? Unless you've scanned my psycho-pass, I daresay you aren't anywhere near qualified to say that I'm "upset about being labelled gay". (It's a privately-held suspicion that crops up pretty often now, in any case, given that I remain happily single at my age.)

In his defense, you've beeen oddly defensive about what is a really rather minor matter. Especially the vocabulary you've used. Haven't you talked about "accusations", "horribly"

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.

[Archon_Wing]

Ep2:

Great episode. And aha, they let latent criminals be the law enforcers too; that shows what Gen thinks about the government, doesn't it.

The atmosphere was near-perfect; and this episode was used wisely to develop the world around us. World building is very difficult and the show accomplishes the concept of "Show, don't tell"

[DXMichael]

Ooo, that look she gave the owner when he didn't like what he was seeing with the incident in the cafeteria

Images

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So much satisfaction

Poor Akane though, it seems she just can't catch a break Pretty good ending to the episode nonetheless.

[konart]

Love this anime:

Spoiler for back to classics:

[Chiaki_chan]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

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).

Yes, you probably want to talk with the woman doctor Yayoi who have had "sexual relationship" before Akane happen? Simply not be the only one that thought LOL

[Kanon]

Spoiler for Episode:

Another good episode, although I was slightly disappointed the case ended up being so predictable. The most obvious person was the culprit, for both the viewer and the characters. They have their work cut out for them with the Psycho pass system. Even if the hue can't give a precise assessment of a person's state of mind, it's still enough to pinpoint a culprit.

The inner working of the factory was questionable to say the least. They chose one person to be used as a punching-bag by others in order to vent their frustrations off without any regard for that person's feelings, so long as they don't go completely psycho. A messed up system, once again. The guy in charge seemed to believe the criminal had been recommended by Sybil to fulfill that role, if this is the case, this is truly worrisome since he was clearly not suited for it.

The criminal had a crime coefficient of over 265. Oddly, the dominator didn't switch to lethal mode this time, even though the criminal was clearly attempting to murder the enforcers. That doesn't really make sense, since I recall both the criminal and victim in episode 1 had a CC lower than that. Plothole or am I missing something?

The dominator has a third mode, Destroy Decomposer, which is seriously overkill. I'd be curious to know the reason it switched to that mode. The criminal was already down and it's not like the machines have minds to scan. Does the dominator have another way to assess threats?

Akane was true to herself in this episode. She might be a fool, but I like that kind of fool. Sometimes it is better to learn through experience rather from history since I don't believe history has to always repeat itself. Given that this is this kind of show, I'm sure Ginoza will end up being right though

This episode strongly hinted there is some bad blood between Ginoza and Masaoka. I'm curious to learn what happened.

I ended up writing more than I intend. I suppose this goes to show this is a very good anime. Lots of food for thought.

[Klashikari]

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.