Report Aoi_Kurosako's Profile

As of 10/25/2016
Completed:> 227
Plan to Watch :> 227

Soo if you have a mental problem, sucks to be you? I don't know if that's really a "perfect" society, either way you look at it. I know one person whose idea of creating a perfect society is to lock up gay people in an isolated community and let them do whatever. The rest of society is purified that way, according to her. So.. I think isolating any one segment of society can never be a true utopia. In that sense, even Plato's Republic was no utopia, since it NEEDS the criminal class to essentially provide slave labor. I think a true utopia would prevent crimes. You know someone is about to commit a crime? Excellent - stop them from doing so. Maybe "Person of Interest" is onto the right idea, there.. heh

I guess I can see your argument about the society mimicking utopia, though. I'll give you that - it might be on the right track. Sybil as a system is not flawed, but the way society decided to use it might be. Which also says a lot about humanity!

By the way, I saw this article today, and our debate makes me think back on it again: http://www.cracked.com/blog/genocide-coming-to-philippines-and-no-one-cares/

I don't entirely follow the final two points, but I'm with you on the rest - I don't know if it's fair to take apart just one study to reach the conclusion, but let me try to offer a different perspective!

We actually already had a system in place once, a long time ago, that was meant to weed out criminals before they had a chance to commit a crime. It was called phrenology, and the people who practiced it believed that several measurements of a person's head could predict their criminal tendencies. This idea has since been clearly proven wrong, but at the time its followers loved the idea, because it gave them a reason to pursue another great term: eugenics. If you find that a certain TYPE of person is more likely to become a criminal, would you be doing society a service by eliminating that kind of person from the world? I wonder if this is covered in Psycho-pass, because honestly, that would be the logical next step society would take. After all, they're already eliminating potential criminals before they commit a crime so... why not just eliminate them before they're even born?

I'm not sure it's fair to look at a system like Sybil and say it's a utopia because you "know it works," when so many other systems in the past did not work - even though we were equally "sure" about them working.

Even assuming Sybil is 100% infallible, you're leaving society in a situation where they can be persecuted for having negative thoughts. If I get stressed out and think "man, I really want to kill my kid right now because he's annoying me," that's a terrible thing to think - but does it make me a potential criminal? If Sybil predicts a person's likelyhood of "snapping" and acting on their negative thoughts, does it imply that people have no willpower or control over their own futures?

In addition, instead of taking this information and using it for rehabilitation, the enforcers of the system just take people down. A dystopia is a place where no one in their right mind would want to live and well, I definitely wouldn't want to live in a world where my momentary weakness or mental instability leads to my death instead of my rehabilitation. So yes, anyone who is SIMPLE enough to not be threatened by this system is fine. But if you have a wider range of thoughts and emotions, or if you're unlucky enough to be born with mental problems, you'd live in constant fear of the system. That doesn't sound like a utopia to me!

PHEW let me know what you think! :D

Hey, I absolutely 100% welcome discussion!!

Hmm let's see. Full disclosure: I only watched a couple of episodes of the series, so I may have missed the big picture. From what I saw, and from what others have to say about it, the society is in a pretty dark place. The setting immediately made me think of 1984 - Big Brother is watching. You might be fine and trust those around you... as long as you aren't afraid you'll have criminal thoughts. I mean you literally have a thought police, if that's not oppressive, I don't know what is!

If you also consider your own point - you have a tiny group of people trying to keep the peace and, yeah, *control* a large population. Remember that a dystopia isn't necessarily brought on by a government, it's just a society where no sane person would want to live.

The whole "constantly under surveillance" thing is also reminiscent of a Panopticon. Have you heard of it? Imagine a prison, with cells lining only the outside walls. Inside is a round watchtower, with a view into every single cell. Prisoner cells are open and can be looked into, but the guard tower is closed. You never know if you're being watched. You might ALWAYS be watched. Theoretically, it would keep you on your best behavior at all times. In practice, it's enough to drive you insane!

Someone even did a study about the Psycho-Pass system's resemblance to a Panopticon: http://studentjournal.petra.ac.id/index.php/sastra-inggris/article/view/2996 and how Sibyl is intended to create a utopia but instead plunges the society into a dystopia.

It seems to me that in the end, you can't predict human behavior - it's far too complex. All Sibyl would do is create obedient sheep, and weed out the thinkers (much like how the USSR purged all artists, scientists, and intellectuals. Can't have them upsetting the system!). After all, who watches the watchmen?

But anyway, since I haven't watched the entire series, I'm definitely not an authority on this. Here are a couple of people who might know better than me:

http://geekandsundry.com/psycho-pass-a-dystopia-ruled-by-nice-clean-thoughts/
https://www.byline.com/column/12/article/139 (see, I didn't even know it was based on Philip K Dick's writings!)

Do tell me your thoughts on all this!