Finally! And I agree - this interesting discussion definitely deserves its own thread, even if it'll be a bit of work for the moderators to move all the posts over...
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Speaking of which...just my two cents.
I feel that the main debate here atm is whether the Sibyl system is just a tool and thus faultless, with the flaws in the way it is used existing entirely because humans can never use such technology 'perfectly', vs. the idea that Sibyl itself is part of the problem.
I wonder if this debate is actually pointing to one of the deeper points about the world that the creators of this show are interested in, except not just with regards to the universe of Psycho-Pass, but also and more importantly with regards to the modern societies in which we, the viewers, live.
The apparent dichotomy that seems to have appeared in this thread is, in my opinion, pointing to questions at another level - which some might term the 'meta' level - about why we have reacted in particular ways to what has been presented to us thus far. This has been illustrated in what some of you have been posting about the system, though I'll draw on one of TinyRedLeaf's recent comments in particular.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf
We keep coming back to this point. I agree, of course, that it's an important principle — in real life — but to keep harping on this is to miss the entire premise of the show.
As I've highlighted before, I don't think it's a coincidence that the Criminal Investigation Department's logo is adapted from the North American symbol for the medical profession. We are, in essence, being invited to ask: "What if an individual's potential for 'crime' can be detected in a way similar to how we diagnose disease?"
We're being asked to put aside our disbelief and to imagine an ethical system built on that premise. The premise is, at heart, quite simple and is, in fact, not very far removed from some of the ideas proposed by contemporary scientists as renowned as Samuel Harris and Richard Dawkins: that it makes no sense to have a justice system that punishes criminal behaviour after the fact if science could show that a defendant was psychologically incapable of distinguishing right from wrong the way healthy individuals can.
Monsters do exist. Serial killers are, for example, wired very differently from normal people and they can't help but kill.
And to take the premise one step further, if you could in fact diagnose criminal potential — and in this alternative reality, the underlying assumption is that it can be measured very accurately — would it be morally responsible to let the individual roam free when appropriate treatment is readily available?
*snip*
My arguments in support for the Sibyl System come from this angle. It's easy to dismiss dystopian fiction as something that could never happen in real life. It's much more fun, on the other hand, to imagine how it could have come to pass.
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Personally, I'm probably leaning towards seeing the Sibyl system and the institutions built around it, particularly the judgement of people's mental health, as something I don't want to support. To me, there's something sinister about the way that mental health has been criminalised...or perhaps, the way to see it is that crime has been medicalised, and that there are many problems inherent in the system because that. In other words, I'm inclined to see the world of PSYCHO-PASS as a dystopia that can only fall apart, sooner or later.
However, I wonder if the more important question to ask is: why do I think that way? Why is this my instinctive reaction? Why do I expect failure? Why do some of us automatically recoil at the thought of a social system that places so much faith in a scientific diagnostic tool?
Or, to be more specific, what are the institutionalised beliefs about freedom and choice, about the relationship between science and human nature, that inform my reaction, and most importantly, where have they come from?
The reason I think these questions are important is because we ourselves often lose sight of the factors that influence the way we think. Which is where the debates in this thread come in again. I think it's been pointed out a lot earlier in this thread: the Sibyl system is like many systems in the modern world, systems that set limits on what we can do in various aspects of life. However, we don't really perceive these systems anymore - they've become so much a part of our lives that we don't question how they've been formed, or whether they actually make sense. Just like many of the characters in PSYCHO-PASS don't question how ubiquitous Sibyl is in their lives.