August 12, 2016 • 45 mins
What if you had a credit score that measured more than just your wallet? What if it took into account your political leanings, Internet traffic, and social media statements -- and what if the same stuff from your friends could affect your score? These are the concerns of Sesame Credit.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is no the hout, my name is Ben. You
or you? This is stuff they don't want you to know. Uh.
Did you guys ever see the video or the film?
Saw any of that franchise? I did the first one.
I'm aware of it. I never I never saw it. Huh,
(00:41):
but I didn't. You didn't see saw? I didn't see saw. No,
I did not. I have not yet. Um. But the
antagonist in there is, if I recall correctly, he's always saying,
let's play a game, or would you like to play
a game or something like that. Is that correct? Well,
people have taken his idea and just ran with it.
(01:05):
Aside from the torture party. They liked everything but the torture.
And we'll start today's podcast with a basic concept, a
pretty neat one that all three of us here in
the podcast studio and you um out in whatever your
neck of the global woods is have probably encountered. And
that is gamification. This is a fun idea. I happen
(01:29):
to personally like it for certain things. This is when
you're making some activity. Let's say you're at the gym
and you're running or just running somewhere. Uh, and you've
got something in your arm that's tracking the your arm movements.
Here your steps. That's gamifying if you you know, I'm
trying to get a certain number of steps in a day,
(01:50):
or it's gonna give me some kind of reward if
I achieve that number, right, and it could be something
as um you know, as immaterial as just points are
on a pen all machines contests. Yeah, then you had
a high score, you know, or as you can app
to quit smoking. Now they might be financial to sites
will not to imagine if you taking to the next
level and then do a thing like zombie zombies run,
(02:12):
there's that app that takes the that step counting thing
and trying to keep up the pace and introduces zombies
into the equation where you're you know, running away from
virtual zombies. So that's I mean, you can take it
as far as you want to go. Let's not forget
how you know, Nantic sort of tricked a bunch of
nerds into you know, gamifying their exercise unbeknownst to them
(02:35):
with the Pokemon. You know, it's just those Pokemon. You're
gonna get some steps, then you gotta at those eggs, right,
gamifying your GPS. So, according to the University of Pennsylvania,
and here's a pretty good basic definition here, gamification is
the application of game elements and digital game design techniques
to non game problems, like we said, you know, exercise,
self improvement, financial management. There's pretty spelling data that gamification
(03:02):
ups individual engagement by which we mean like sustained participation
in several different areas. To sum it all up and
and our our pal and erstwhile guest host Jonathan Strickland
as as a pretty good episode about this on Tech Stuff,
which we recommend uh. To sum it up, gamification is
(03:22):
messing with your brain. It's it's affecting your reward centers.
Our brains don't necessarily differentiate between a useful reward and
the feeling of being rewarded, achievement unlocked exactly, achievement unlocked.
And so this provides several things. There's an emotional relevance
(03:45):
to learning, because it turns out our brains are better
remembering stories we remember things if we have if we
feel like they matter emotionally, if we can fit it
into kind of a narrative, then there's a sort of
a beginning, middle, and end. That end being your goal.
It's just much easier to uh, sort of internalize and
(04:05):
sort of become a character in the story, so to speak. Yeah,
and when you are able to kind of cram yourself
into this narrative and earn those achievements, get to that endpoint,
what it does is it triggers dopamine receptors and it
creates this reward system with positive associations with learning. So
(04:27):
it's kind of a win win, right. Yeah, it feel
good and good things happen for you. Yeah, and that's
not the only chemical that will be involved. There only
all these other feel good chemicals, two very important ones
being you know, serotonin of course, and so endorphins. Well,
this is you know, this is why I have to
level up. I always have to level up, no matter
(04:48):
what time it is, it doesn't matter if it's three
in the morning. Got to get that next level because
it's important. And you probably of the three of us
have the most experience, probably the best gamer that well,
I don't want to offend do not best? Are you
what one might describe as a level grinder? Oh? I
am such a grinder for levels, for any kind of upgrades.
(05:11):
You know, if I've got a character, got to upgrade
it to the max. And there's been a lot of
research put into gamification of these of these various different aspects.
You know, how how do we make it um? How
do we make people feel like they are having fun
when they are accomplishing either something that benefits them or
(05:31):
benefits us, whoever they might be in this case. And
now for something completely different, well kind of China, So
China has uh. Let's talk about the relationship between the
government and the people. One of the biggest concerns historically
(05:51):
for any state level actor, which could be anything from
you know, Normandy back in the day to UH to
ancient commit civilization right UM to Mesoamerican civilizations. One of
the primary challenges or things that the state infrastructure needs
to address is how to maintain stability. And stability ultimately
(06:13):
means the security, safety, and acquiescence of the people to
being governed. The relationship between the government and the people
in the country of China has had um. It's definitely
ups and downs, and it's no secret that the ruling
(06:34):
party of China works assiduously to maintain stability across a
very diverse population. China has a lot of the ingredients
that historically speaking, have been signs of a brewing revolution,
and we can walk through a few of them right now. Yeah,
not to mention that it is a massive population, it's
(06:55):
it's also a population of young, unmarried males largely, and
this is due to the gender ratio skew that we've seen,
because of the cultural practices, the one child policy, of
growing cynicism over corruption in the government, because more and
more people, as the Internet has come around, are finding
out about it. And you could say that about most countries.
(07:17):
Oh yeah, there's accelerating inequality. Again, sounds familiar to a U. S.
Citizen sitting here in this podcast studio. Not to mention
all the different regions that are basically at odds with
one another, Tibet, Western provinces, the persecution of various ethnic minorities.
It is a hotbed of negativity in that country a
(07:38):
lot of times. Because yeah, it's definitely a hot bed
of tension. And just to put this in global perspective.
The estimated population of China and was one point three
nine billion. Yeah, that's uh, that's almost of the world's population,
So twenty of the world's peep will live here. Huge
(08:01):
divides too, between the people that live in the urban
areas and then work in various they're obviously financial type jobs,
also factory type jobs. With them, there are more rural
agrarian workers that live way way outside the city where
they just do not have access to the same infrastructure
(08:21):
as folks living in the city do. Right, And so
China's approach to this situation, to maintaining stability is multidimensional,
and that means they maintain a few things that we
were all familiar with, like police, Yeah, jail's prisons. You
gotta have a place to put the people who do
the wrong things. They also have paid informants who who
(08:44):
go around to get information about other people who do
bad things, which isn't surprising considering what a stronghold the
government has on pretty much any form of outside information.
And they have their you know, state sponsored news agency,
not in the same as the BBC, but much more
of a comes directly from the government, you know, always
(09:07):
entirely accurate, let's say, right, and compensation for deaths attracting
these dissident groups, and a dissident being, like as an
old pointed out, can be widely defined, uh, informal security
forces or goons. This is constantly occurring, and the government
pours a lot of scratch into this. Uh. Just in
(09:28):
two thousand and eleven, for instance, the expense on national
defense was six hundred and one point one five six
billion one or, for people who want a dollar for perspective,
ninety point six billion US dollars. That's the claimed number.
And I think that sounds kind of inflationary. But in contrast,
(09:50):
the expense on stability maintenance is six hundred and twenty
four point four to one billion, which means that this
government is spending more on in at least two thousand eleven,
spending more on internal stability than on external stuff force projection.
(10:10):
And this is all I know. It sounds billifying, but
almost every country has some sort of thing like this.
You know, countries happily jails paid informants. This is this
is just constantly happening. And it's not all um negative
or fear of consequence type stuff too. There are positive
(10:31):
things carrots rather than sticks. Well, yeah, you can rally
your entire population, well most of your population against some
shared threat that we all see existentially or for real,
let's see an historically antagonistic country one nearby like Japan
that China is in conflict with a lot of the time. Um,
(10:53):
they can also uh provide propaganda to rally the population
for China's historic regional importance globe ascendency. So the enforcing
the idea like we are all one entity, We're all
part of this one collective thing. There's no need for
us to try to break that or dissent or go
(11:13):
into factions. And perhaps one of the final carrots rather
than sticks is the the assurance of widespread economic improvement,
continual economic growth. Essentially the argument this government is worth
keeping around, you know, even if I'm not particularly happy
about one thing or another, because it is good for
me financially. But in addition to consistently using these long
(11:37):
established methods, which are again common throughout the world, China
is not the bad guy here. China has embraced cutting
edge technologies. Yeah, they're they're using vast internal surveillance online,
like looking at all of the Internet activity in the
country that they can possibly see looking at or listening
(11:59):
to telephone calls using the metadata a lot of the
same things that again we do in the US, just
because that's my personal frame of reference. Um. They're also
restricting access to information via this thing called the Great Firewall.
It's referred to as the Great Firewall. It's the restriction
of of Google search terms. Right, anything that you search online,
(12:23):
you're not going to find certain things. Tenament Square massacre
comes into. Well, there's there's another thing that's interesting. As
a side note. One of my old professors I used
to love talking about this where I think we've mentioned
the Great Firewall in this show before, but every so often,
if you're using the Internet without a proxy or something
(12:44):
in the country, then the Internet police will pop up,
not that you're doing anything wrong, just remind you that
they're here for your safety, you know, so that you
just hit a malicious website. And I think it was
always interesting to my professor was that their eyes were blue.
Oh why he brought that up? Because it is like
a fun little animated avatar like Clippy. It kind of is.
(13:06):
I don't know if it's animated. It might be now
at this point but as Steve Jobs like to say,
there's one more thing. But first a word from responsible
Year's where it gets crazy. Enter sesame credit. So the
(13:33):
Chinese government has decided to take all of these things
into account, how how important internal stability is within their country,
and they've partnered with private industry to gamify essentially obedience
among its citizens for for the state. So this could
(13:53):
be possibly a very dangerous enterprise. It's it's a social
credit system, um, I guess, kind of like a credit score,
but critics are already alleging that it's affiliated more so
with obedience than with pocketbooks. It's called sesame credit. Yeah.
(14:14):
It's being constructed for the Chinese government by an outfit
called ant Financial Services Group, which is associated with Ali Baba.
And if you haven't heard of Ali Baba, you almost certainly, um,
you almost certainly will soon. It is the world's largest
retailer as of April of It's very much like Amazon
(14:35):
to me in the way I've fewed it. Yeah, and
anti financial. This is a bit dry, but this is
very important for you to know, especially if you plan
on living in this country in the next few years.
And financial operates what's called the alie pay payment platform.
So ali Pay is a third party platform and it
(14:57):
doesn't charge transaction fees. It's partnered master Card, Visa, all
all the big hitters financially in Alipa handled almost half
of the online traffic online payment market of China. That's
half of of the world's population, right, at least the
(15:19):
Internet active right. And so this means that Sesame Credit
is able to pull data from these online purchases or transactions.
It can go to Aunt Financial and then it can
go into Sesame Credit. They can the the concerns here
are pretty much already apparent, but we do have you know,
we do have word from the official spokespersons or spoke
(15:41):
people for for Sesame Credit who say, essentially what this
does is only associated with that that it will not
pull from social media platforms, and we have a quote
about that too. So, according to spokesperson Miran a Check,
Sesame Credit tracks quote, financial and consumption activities of users,
(16:05):
but materials published on social media platforms do not affect
our users personal Sesame Credit score. So essentially we'll we'll
see every we'll see every time that Ben buys the
next um I don't know, gallon of blood or whatever.
But but we won't track how many pictures he posts
(16:30):
of him with track. Right. The thing is, opponents remain
skeptical of this claim. And here's why it's dangerous. Do
you guys want to do a hypothetical thing. Oh, that's
my favorite thing to do. They scare me. Well, yeah,
because you're the example of this one. Okay, let's say
(16:51):
let's say that you are. Let's let's give him a
different name. Can I be dron If it please you it, well,
please green lighting it. Then I say you are Drogan officially.
So Drogen is a pretty stand up citizen. Right, you're
not politically involved. I mean you could describe yourself pretty easily. Yeah,
(17:13):
I'm not really politically involved. You guys know that I
don't like to stick my nose in those kind of
places because I feel like it's not my place. Um.
I just you know, I'll go out to eat, grab
a drink with friends, but not you know, not too
often because I like to save money. Um, I don't know.
I buy all the things that I that I do
(17:34):
for my hobbies, like I like to I'm a skater.
You guys know that I love to skate. I like
to run and hike. So I buy little things like that.
I've had a solid job for a while. I'm married,
I've got a kid on the way. You know, Um,
you should see you should see my ali bab account.
I've got so much baby stuff on there. Uh, it's
pretty insane. I'm a little worried about that. But but
(17:55):
it's good. I'm a good citizen, right. But let's say,
says to me. Credit does take social media in the account.
If that's the case, then when Drogan posts a link
to a censored news site, it could affect his sesame
credit score. Furthermore, you needed more dangerously. It may not
matter how good Dan is depending on the people he's
(18:18):
friends with and social media, But the activities of your
friends on social media can have an impact on your
score as well. So, um, your score can actually dip
below a certain threshold. And when that happens, your life
can get significantly more difficult. What do you mean, Maybe
the Internet slows down and get throttled a little bit.
(18:40):
Uh might be tougher to get alone, it might be
harder to start a small business that you wanted to do.
That's gonna be a problem. And then your application to
various government agencies might get denied really so, so going
through bureaucracy gets more difficult, which way, as we know,
I mean, in a country of that size, is already
probably not an easy task. So things like moving, applying
(19:02):
for travel visas, so on. You know, that means that
there is a system that relies on social pressure, um
but is introducing these incentives to the public to self
monitor as people want to take advantage of having this
good sesame credit score and then avoid the consequences of
(19:22):
having a crappy one. So maybe, um, maybe Drogen drog
In takes a hit to his sesame credit score and
his wife comes in and says, what happened because she
can see my sessame sesame credit score, I can see hers.
Maybe we have a joint credit score sesame credit score knows,
but it is for sure that your activity with the
(19:44):
person you probably spend the most time with would meet
noted and affect it. And speak of notes, it is
important to note that at this point Sesame credit has
not um not rolled out any penalties for low score,
and official sources state it will not include penalties for
low score. And right at this point, let's let's just
(20:08):
stop and like, what what do you guys think of this?
This this idea of UM, this idea of of a
state rate rated agency. It feels like something out of
like NUR to me, you know, it really feels like
the kind of thing that on the surface might feel fun.
(20:30):
But the deeper you get into it, the more you
realize that you're kind of being duped into allowing the
government to have even more control over your life than
they already do. So what if, for instance, what if,
for instance, Drogan wants to start a small business and
he knows that if he gets his number up to
a certain threshold, he will be able to get alone
(20:53):
much easier, much more easily. So he reports one of
his neighbors for something thing which may be true maybe not,
and then that participation makes him more of a model citizen,
more of a trustworthy citizen, and then boom, his score
goes up with with the possibility is there. The spokespeople
(21:15):
for Sesame Credit have said explicitly that they're not checking
social media and that this is an opt in system,
but it is possible to incentivize essentially UM a place
where people, instead of reacting out of fear, are reacting
because they see themselves bettering themselves. They see it as
(21:36):
bettering themselves. I know this might sound sort of paranoid
on our parts, and this this thing, this news has
been around for a few years. But there's one other
there's one other fact that really gives some sand to
our concerns here, and we'll get to it right after
(21:56):
a word from our sponsor and we're back. Here is
the troubling fact about sesame credit that gives a little
more credence, I think to the speculation around the world
(22:19):
about it. It's opt in for now, at least until
when it becomes mandatory for every citizen of the country. Yeah,
so I'm trying to imagine it happening in the United States. Um,
the let's say the federal government creates their version of
(22:40):
sesame credit. It's called okay, okay, no, no, But I'm
being serious, sure something something as well, something more transparent,
because there's there are also pretty compelling arguments that the
alphabet agencies take credit score and social connections on face
spooke into account. You know, they do a full linked
(23:02):
in on that sucker, and and and I'm trying to
imagine opting into something like that and going, Yes, I
want to see how good of a citizen I am,
and I want to be a better citizen and do
all the right things for that. I feel like this country.
This is huge generalization, but I feel like the individuals
in this country believe in individualism so much that that
(23:26):
may not be attractive. I don't know, and that's complete
speculation and from my own personal view. But on the
flip side of that, though not too generally over generalized,
but it does feel like that the culture in China
has much more of a focus on collectivism versus individualism.
So I could see how something like this would take
(23:47):
off without having to be mandatory. Yeah, and there's also
one party, right, So in the US, as the federal
government changes hands from one party to the net to
the next, how does that change from I like these
say changes hands. Yeah, that's the same hand going into
a different puppet. Right, But that's a that's a good point. Um,
(24:09):
So yeah, these things happen by degree. Right. Facebook didn't
come out and say, let us do these horrific things
to you or to your concept of privacy. They just said, hey,
you can you can hang out with your friends from
college online, create artificial scarcity, artificial um sense of exclusivity.
(24:31):
So they're very they're very smart things happening here because one,
it's opt in, which means the original group will be
self selecting people who want to and want to have
assessament credit score, want it to be high. I want
people to know about it, and perhaps me even compete
to achieve a better score. And then if those people
are seeing, you know, doing quote unquote better in life
(24:53):
and society, then having a credit score assessment credit score
will you know, probably become are desirable. And who's to
say that the government doesn't take one of these cases
and turn it into like a poster kind of short
ration where they're like, hey, look at this family here.
They went full bore on the sesame credit you know
(25:15):
model they got yeah, and now they're thriving. Don't you
want to be like this family? I mean, I just
I don't know. And how will it affect how it
will affect younger people who are in the dating phase
of life, looking for a looking for some kind of spouse,
whether that's you know, a husband or a wife. And
then they also said they also said, according to a
(25:36):
BBC article, that the company does not hide that it
judges the types of products shoppers by online. So someone
who plays video games for ten hours a day would
be considered idle. Someone who frequently buys diapers would be
considered probably a parent who was on balance more likely
to have a sense of responsibility That comes from li
Ying Yong Sesamese, direct technology director. Yeah, and this this
(26:00):
idea that it's so much more granular with those though,
you know what I mean, Like, I mean, like these
categories that we're talking about now are very broad. But
as we know, with the way even our data is used,
um and mind. Oh yeah, I think of the possibilities
of all of the specifics you can find out about
somebody with unfettered access to their feed that they're streamed
everything that they're putting online. Yeah, which diapers did they
(26:21):
buy and at what time exactly. Privacy is not endangered.
Privacy is extinct already for the vast um the vast
majority of people who live in developing or develops nations. Privacy,
I submit you as one of the new currencies of
the very well to do right. The people you don't
see in pictures, the people who are in name and
(26:43):
who's who so and so, and very soon water will
be one of those things. I hope not. I hope
water will be on all the time. You know, we're
is it sustainable? That's a good question to mean before
a different day. It makes me think of what's going
on now with the water and Rio de Janeiro secrept
for the Olympics, right, and watch out for dead bodies floating.
(27:06):
So this, this brings us to something else, like the technology.
Technology is inherently disruptive, right, there's this whole um. If
there was a pantheon for the circle of society, then
technology would receiva the destroyer because it fundamentally changes roles
of people, institutions, and fundamentally changes timelines. In this case,
(27:31):
we're seeing technology change the role of monitoring. If it's
full potential, again they say Sesame Credit says that it's
just to do this will be mandatory later, but it's
full potential is crystal clear. It's paving the way for
(27:52):
the people of a country to become the police of
a country. Yeah. Yeah, it could subvert the old paradigm
of state stability through fear of consequence, to a new
paradigm of desire for reward. And you know that the
other thing is like, is that necessarily bad if people
are there just to follow laws? Right, if people have
(28:15):
social pressure, that's saying hey, don't um you know, hey,
hey stop hey, Druggon's brother in law, stop stealing all
those fiats, Right, you're messing up my sesame credit score.
And I'd really like who knows my kid to get
into a good school? Like when when other when we
(28:36):
hold other people hostage for things, or other people hold
us hostage for things, that becomes a powerful and uh
probably more cost effective means of controlling people. It's it.
I think the concern is that it's bad if there's
a it's bad if there's a bad government. Right that
(28:57):
says it says we're in turning everybody of you know,
Korean descent, or we're we're in turning everybody in Tibet,
which probably would never ever happen, yeah, or just you know,
allowing any kind of abuses, just outright allowing any kind
of abuse in any country that would allow that that
(29:17):
had this kind of system on, it would be dangerous.
It reminds me of a David Egger's book called The
Circle that I've mentioned before. Um, there is a version
of the Internet that exists in this novel, where you
can no longer be anonymous on the Internet anymore, and
that in and of itself creates this democratization of the
(29:38):
Internet where you know, if you're not willing to stand
behind your trolling and you know, have your name and
I D number visible to everyone, then you're not gonna
do it, right. So it eliminates a lot of the
negative aspects of the Internet. But it also like you
are tied to this account for life, you know, and
I could just see an escalation of this being like
(29:58):
this is your social currency, this is your identification. Everything,
your record, your permanent record, a thing that happens in
your life is stored in this account, and it's all
kind of tied to information technology. So it follows you
around and you can never escape it short of like wiping,
you know, doing like a Mr. Robot style hack, you know,
(30:19):
and just totally annihilating the record. It's a digital shadow
and it follows you. Yeah, when you combine that technology
with surveillance technology, you get something that's extremely close to
a digital version of version of our concept of God
that knows everything you've done, or Santa Claus maybe he
(30:40):
knows everything that you're doing when you're naughty and when
you're nice, see you when you're sleeping. It's a creed. Yeah,
I mean really that's I mean that these are these
are excellent points. They call it god view with Uber.
You know, they have like a view where they can
see everybody that's on the grid and Uber they call
at god view. And that's like a that's a tech
(31:02):
term for any kind of platform that has users where
you can view everyone where they are geo raphidally at
any time. Take a thing like this where not only
maybe Spotify has a gazillion users or whatever, but this
is literally everyone. So there could also be let's we
talked about some of the cons. I wanted to talk
about some pros, just to give at least a fair
(31:26):
things so it's not a complete condemnation. One of the pros,
for instance, could be the ability to see a problem
brewing before it does. And I don't mean necessarily like
a dissent, but to see the thing it's doing is
it's it's giving a wider view, it's giving that Uber
(31:48):
god mode, right, but is it explaining why something happens
if people are maybe there are people who are purchasing
less of some at some frequency, right, and they're concentrated
in this one region in this area. Well, maybe they're
purchasing less stuff overall and that drops their SESAME credit score.
But the reason they're doing that is because the factory
(32:12):
in the area that everybody worked at closed or is
closing and has been laying off workers. And this is
something maybe that the larger scale government would not have
been aware of in enough time to help, right, Or
maybe there's a maybe there's something that changes with disaster.
The thing is, the world is so dynamic and it's
(32:32):
difficult to imagine a system nimble enough to accurately represent
that without you know, breaking millions of eggs to make
an omelet. That maybe an abomination. And the issue with this,
in my mind is that we must always be cautious
of hard cells. This is entirely my opinion. But usually
(32:57):
when someone has an act now thing and say here,
do this, you have twenty four hours, you do this,
you have familiar three minutes. And again, one worrying thing
about this is that it is a hard sell. It
is inevitable. Currently it is an opt in, but it
is mandatory within the near very near future. To two
(33:19):
thousand twenty may sound or like a long way away
or look like that on paper, but it's I mean,
much much faster than you might feel. I could have
sworn the stock market just crashed a little while ago,
but that was almost ten years ago. As William Faulkner said,
the past isn't even over right, I'm paraphrasing, But with
this it may be inevitable. Another question, you know, is
(33:43):
the US already doing this? Is the European Union already
doing something like this but much less transparent? And if so,
should we applaud a country that is at least putting
out of beta. Yeah, having a modicum of transparency? And
what does this What does this lead to in the future?
Does this mean that will be the end of what
(34:03):
exists is free speech in this country? Does this mean
that free speech in the country in which we reside
is already you know, monitored? Of course, granted, free speech
never was meant to mean speech without consequence, and we've
always been monitoreds since we've been able to communicate online. Yeah,
that's that's true as well. So we would like to
(34:25):
hear your thoughts on this. What what do you think
is this is this actually going to happen is Sesame credit.
What is Sesame credits credit score here? Is it trustworthy
enough that it will not for ideological or dare we
say moral reasons begin to also vacuum in social media data?
(34:48):
Will it be will it be just a motivating factor
for people to work out more and like gamify the
way that smaller, smaller scale apps have done. Where is
it something different? Is it when it becomes mandatory? In?
What will it? My question is what will it be in?
(35:10):
You know what I mean? What will it be in?
You know? I just thought about ben before we get
to how to send your questions for that stuff? Is
that it doesn't even really matter if Sesame Credit itself
is tracking all that stuff and putting it together, because
some third party can just take the data which exists,
especially if they're you know, Sesame Credits selling it like
(35:32):
many other social media companies do, selling that data they
collect to third parties. You can just combine it all
and then have another company that's essentially like a social
blade or something that's just collating all the data. Ultimately,
it may not matter if somewhat even if they say okay, mandatory.
That's kind of crazy. We understand how that would make
(35:53):
us seem disingenuous or less trustworthy than we actually are.
It will always be opt in right, the same way
that face Book is. But there's a problem of saturation
that occurs because if you have never signed up for
Facebook and all of your friends have and they have
sent you an email, right, then Facebook knows there's someone
(36:16):
who has your email address. They may not know as
much about you as they want to, but they probably
already know more than you wish. You may have heard
stories before people who found that there was a dummy
Facebook account a digital parking space waiting for them and
they never logged in. This could be the same kind
of problem after a certain threshold, if there are enough
(36:38):
people that are in this kind of situation, then there
will be connections that are unintentional. Right, And that is
not a conspiracy theory. That is a real thing that
can happen with any sort of social network, right, especially
if the people in the social network interact in person,
go places with their cell phones, right, picks in different
(37:00):
places while you were at the party with three different
friends who are unconnected somehow, but they all end up,
you know, play Pokemon Go or whatever the equivalent of
a GPS game is with facial recognition as part of
the thing. You know, then this this is all happening live.
This is a live fire, This is this is uh
(37:22):
you guys know him hesitant to cover ongoing events. This
is just an upcoming thing. So there's a huge disclaimer
like it may not who knows it may it may
not happen. It may just just collapse on itself and
become vapor wearer. I think it's interesting that you refer
to it as a beta test, because I mean, that's
exactly what it is. But it's a very unusual beta
(37:42):
test for sure. So what do you think, folks? Do
you think this is on balance a good thing a
bad thing? As one of our coworkers, as Scott Benjamin Is,
want to say, are you for it or again it
he does it and uh we we'd like to hear
your opinion and why and if you if you feel
(38:05):
like sesame credit has been vilified because of the potential
for misuse. Uh we, we'd like to hear a good
defense of this. You know it would it would make
not just us, but many of our listeners and many
of the other folks around the world ecstatic to know
that this was all alarmism and panic. We're not saying
it's happening now, we're saying that it's possible, and we
(38:28):
may well be being a little bit alarmist and panicky
to be fair. Also, I don't know, I mean, I
just this is the kind of thing that's sort of
like catnip, you know, for getting the brain kind of
twirling around, like what is the worst case scenario, What
is the most nefarious way this potentially well meaning program
could just spiral out of control into the depths of
(38:50):
black mirror Farenheit fifty one territory. It is that kind
of thing to me, But doesn't necessarily mean it has
to go there, right, Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean it
has to go there. I mean they're like if I was,
I was gonna say the worst analogies, like just because
(39:11):
a car hits a poll and burst into flame doesn't
mean that people are going to be injured if they're
in it. It means they probably will be and chances
are they're going to be incinerated. You know, that's a
very that's a very unfair comparison for me to make.
I'm not implyined that this is a car accident, but
it is interesting. It does show, you know, it shows
this increasingly um increasingly profound role the technology is playing here. Uh,
(39:36):
so we would like to hear from you. Let us
know what you think. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter because we do have a Facebook page and
it probably knows way too much about what kind of
pizza the three of us like. You can find us
there we are conspiracy stuff, and also find us on
uh Instagram where we are conspiracy Stuff show where you
can see my brand new Space Camp T shirt sent
(39:59):
to us by listener Paula H. Because she took pity
on me because I had never been to Space Camp.
It had been a dream of mine ever since I
was a little Nickelodeon loving child watching Double Dare and
seeing that as the grand prize, the end all be
all of my childhood dreams dashed while she put them
back together, picked up the pieces, healed my child like soul.
(40:22):
And thank you appreciate that, gene. That was a genuine
joy and uh appreciation that you saw there on this
this bearded face. So thank you, Paula H. Yeah, they
and you know what the NAT and I owe you
a thank you for that as well, because, uh Knowl's
(40:45):
enthusiasm was palpable everybody's day. I was out, I was
out of the office somewhere and you texted me, and
so I just like immediately poohed back into that circle
to see the shirt. That again, listeners are the most
important part of our show, and every time we say that,
we like to demonstrate that with a little thing we
call shot at Corners. Our first shoutout today goes to
(41:10):
Jonathan West, who wrote to us on Twitter. He let
us know about the Panama Papers movie that's coming to Netflix.
I'm excited about that. That was a great episode in
my opinion. Guys don't mean to tute our own horn,
but I enjoyed that episode because give a little horn too. Well.
It gave a real window into a world that we
(41:30):
kind of knew was there. We did know what was happening,
but we got to see the details. Um, let's see
it's it's written by It's a book that was written
by investigative journalist Frederick ober Meyer and Bastion ober Meyer.
Interesting similar last names there, um, but yeah, thank you
Jonathan West. We're definitely going to be checking that out
(41:53):
next We have went from rick Comstock via Facebook. Are
manufacturers paint robots? Um quote? My robots have no AI,
which I believe is a good thing. But they can see.
They can see colors, and they can see when something
is near to them and how close someone is to them.
I find my job extremely interesting watching the advancements that
(42:14):
happened at my company. But I'm also glad they are
taught by a teach pendent. A teach pendent, I don't
know this term, and also that they are creating a
lot of jobs in the field. Uh, teach pendents are
really interesting. I had to look them up. It's how
you teach a robot to do things right. So inputs,
you give robots certain inputs kind of if ends, those
(42:35):
kind of things, and it learns by what you what
you tell it. That's what's Yeah, it's not learning. Is
that how they teach those robots on the radio how
to wrap? Yep, you are so proud of that joke
(42:55):
makes me happy, But I probably got that wrong about
teach pendance right to us, teach us about teach pendants. Yes,
and our next shout out comes from KLi Lipkey, who says,
I just found your podcast while on a four hour
road trip. Now I listen at work. I've been really
disappointed that you don't have an episode on Benghazi. Would
love to hear one on that would be the part
(43:18):
of the attack on the US uh US and facilities
there the embassy. Yeah, I don't know that that could
be a rough one, but we can at least look
into it see if there's something worth our time. Sure,
what do you know about it? What did Hilldog know
about it? What did yes? The okay, yes, the allegations
of the emails right that we're released by wicked leaks
(43:41):
regarding uh, the Hillary Clinton's campaign or Hillary Clinton's activities
while serving as Secretary of State under the Obama administration. Yeah,
response times too when everything was going down. There's a
lot of stuff there. It's been this whole thing seems
have been taken up by the right so of the U. S.
(44:01):
Government as like an attack. So, I don't know, it
might be a little too sensitive, right yet. You know,
I have not been as educated on that one as
I should be. So I'll look into that and learn more,
and uh, who knows what we'll find if we dig
deep enough. Thank you so much for writing CALLI that
(44:22):
concludes ours, But that does not conclude this stuff they
don't want you to know. I mean in this episode. Yes,
this is clearly the end of the episode. You can
check out you can check out some other stuff we've
done about international relations, about um disruptive rules of technology
by visiting our website. Stuff they don't want you to
(44:43):
know dot com. But wait, you might be saying, no, Ben,
I've got something that that I want to write two
guys with in detail. It's really good idea my fellow
listeners would like to hear. Or it's a really good
point about sesame credit, or I've got some it's a
really good recipe for sesame chicken. Yeah, maybe it's a
really good um. Maybe it's a really good haiku about sesame,
(45:07):
or or like a limerick. Or maybe it's just your
Facebook logging information. No, please don't do that. So where
should they send this? They should send this to conspiracy
How Stuff Works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is no the hout, my name is Ben. You
or you? This is stuff they don't want you to know. Uh.
Did you guys ever see the video or the film?
Saw any of that franchise? I did the first one.
I'm aware of it. I never I never saw it. Huh,
(00:41):
but I didn't. You didn't see saw? I didn't see saw. No,
I did not. I have not yet. Um. But the
antagonist in there is, if I recall correctly, he's always saying,
let's play a game, or would you like to play
a game or something like that. Is that correct? Well,
people have taken his idea and just ran with it.
(01:05):
Aside from the torture party. They liked everything but the torture.
And we'll start today's podcast with a basic concept, a
pretty neat one that all three of us here in
the podcast studio and you um out in whatever your
neck of the global woods is have probably encountered. And
that is gamification. This is a fun idea. I happen
(01:29):
to personally like it for certain things. This is when
you're making some activity. Let's say you're at the gym
and you're running or just running somewhere. Uh, and you've
got something in your arm that's tracking the your arm movements.
Here your steps. That's gamifying if you you know, I'm
trying to get a certain number of steps in a day,
(01:50):
or it's gonna give me some kind of reward if
I achieve that number, right, and it could be something
as um you know, as immaterial as just points are
on a pen all machines contests. Yeah, then you had
a high score, you know, or as you can app
to quit smoking. Now they might be financial to sites
will not to imagine if you taking to the next
level and then do a thing like zombie zombies run,
(02:12):
there's that app that takes the that step counting thing
and trying to keep up the pace and introduces zombies
into the equation where you're you know, running away from
virtual zombies. So that's I mean, you can take it
as far as you want to go. Let's not forget
how you know, Nantic sort of tricked a bunch of
nerds into you know, gamifying their exercise unbeknownst to them
(02:35):
with the Pokemon. You know, it's just those Pokemon. You're
gonna get some steps, then you gotta at those eggs, right,
gamifying your GPS. So, according to the University of Pennsylvania,
and here's a pretty good basic definition here, gamification is
the application of game elements and digital game design techniques
to non game problems, like we said, you know, exercise,
self improvement, financial management. There's pretty spelling data that gamification
(03:02):
ups individual engagement by which we mean like sustained participation
in several different areas. To sum it all up and
and our our pal and erstwhile guest host Jonathan Strickland
as as a pretty good episode about this on Tech Stuff,
which we recommend uh. To sum it up, gamification is
(03:22):
messing with your brain. It's it's affecting your reward centers.
Our brains don't necessarily differentiate between a useful reward and
the feeling of being rewarded, achievement unlocked exactly, achievement unlocked.
And so this provides several things. There's an emotional relevance
(03:45):
to learning, because it turns out our brains are better
remembering stories we remember things if we have if we
feel like they matter emotionally, if we can fit it
into kind of a narrative, then there's a sort of
a beginning, middle, and end. That end being your goal.
It's just much easier to uh, sort of internalize and
(04:05):
sort of become a character in the story, so to speak. Yeah,
and when you are able to kind of cram yourself
into this narrative and earn those achievements, get to that endpoint,
what it does is it triggers dopamine receptors and it
creates this reward system with positive associations with learning. So
(04:27):
it's kind of a win win, right. Yeah, it feel
good and good things happen for you. Yeah, and that's
not the only chemical that will be involved. There only
all these other feel good chemicals, two very important ones
being you know, serotonin of course, and so endorphins. Well,
this is you know, this is why I have to
level up. I always have to level up, no matter
(04:48):
what time it is, it doesn't matter if it's three
in the morning. Got to get that next level because
it's important. And you probably of the three of us
have the most experience, probably the best gamer that well,
I don't want to offend do not best? Are you
what one might describe as a level grinder? Oh? I
am such a grinder for levels, for any kind of upgrades.
(05:11):
You know, if I've got a character, got to upgrade
it to the max. And there's been a lot of
research put into gamification of these of these various different aspects.
You know, how how do we make it um? How
do we make people feel like they are having fun
when they are accomplishing either something that benefits them or
(05:31):
benefits us, whoever they might be in this case. And
now for something completely different, well kind of China, So
China has uh. Let's talk about the relationship between the
government and the people. One of the biggest concerns historically
(05:51):
for any state level actor, which could be anything from
you know, Normandy back in the day to UH to
ancient commit civilization right UM to Mesoamerican civilizations. One of
the primary challenges or things that the state infrastructure needs
to address is how to maintain stability. And stability ultimately
(06:13):
means the security, safety, and acquiescence of the people to
being governed. The relationship between the government and the people
in the country of China has had um. It's definitely
ups and downs, and it's no secret that the ruling
(06:34):
party of China works assiduously to maintain stability across a
very diverse population. China has a lot of the ingredients
that historically speaking, have been signs of a brewing revolution,
and we can walk through a few of them right now. Yeah,
not to mention that it is a massive population, it's
(06:55):
it's also a population of young, unmarried males largely, and
this is due to the gender ratio skew that we've seen,
because of the cultural practices, the one child policy, of
growing cynicism over corruption in the government, because more and
more people, as the Internet has come around, are finding
out about it. And you could say that about most countries.
(07:17):
Oh yeah, there's accelerating inequality. Again, sounds familiar to a U. S.
Citizen sitting here in this podcast studio. Not to mention
all the different regions that are basically at odds with
one another, Tibet, Western provinces, the persecution of various ethnic minorities.
It is a hotbed of negativity in that country a
(07:38):
lot of times. Because yeah, it's definitely a hot bed
of tension. And just to put this in global perspective.
The estimated population of China and was one point three
nine billion. Yeah, that's uh, that's almost of the world's population,
So twenty of the world's peep will live here. Huge
(08:01):
divides too, between the people that live in the urban
areas and then work in various they're obviously financial type jobs,
also factory type jobs. With them, there are more rural
agrarian workers that live way way outside the city where
they just do not have access to the same infrastructure
(08:21):
as folks living in the city do. Right, And so
China's approach to this situation, to maintaining stability is multidimensional,
and that means they maintain a few things that we
were all familiar with, like police, Yeah, jail's prisons. You
gotta have a place to put the people who do
the wrong things. They also have paid informants who who
(08:44):
go around to get information about other people who do
bad things, which isn't surprising considering what a stronghold the
government has on pretty much any form of outside information.
And they have their you know, state sponsored news agency,
not in the same as the BBC, but much more
of a comes directly from the government, you know, always
(09:07):
entirely accurate, let's say, right, and compensation for deaths attracting
these dissident groups, and a dissident being, like as an
old pointed out, can be widely defined, uh, informal security
forces or goons. This is constantly occurring, and the government
pours a lot of scratch into this. Uh. Just in
(09:28):
two thousand and eleven, for instance, the expense on national
defense was six hundred and one point one five six
billion one or, for people who want a dollar for perspective,
ninety point six billion US dollars. That's the claimed number.
And I think that sounds kind of inflationary. But in contrast,
(09:50):
the expense on stability maintenance is six hundred and twenty
four point four to one billion, which means that this
government is spending more on in at least two thousand eleven,
spending more on internal stability than on external stuff force projection.
(10:10):
And this is all I know. It sounds billifying, but
almost every country has some sort of thing like this.
You know, countries happily jails paid informants. This is this
is just constantly happening. And it's not all um negative
or fear of consequence type stuff too. There are positive
(10:31):
things carrots rather than sticks. Well, yeah, you can rally
your entire population, well most of your population against some
shared threat that we all see existentially or for real,
let's see an historically antagonistic country one nearby like Japan
that China is in conflict with a lot of the time. Um,
(10:53):
they can also uh provide propaganda to rally the population
for China's historic regional importance globe ascendency. So the enforcing
the idea like we are all one entity, We're all
part of this one collective thing. There's no need for
us to try to break that or dissent or go
(11:13):
into factions. And perhaps one of the final carrots rather
than sticks is the the assurance of widespread economic improvement,
continual economic growth. Essentially the argument this government is worth
keeping around, you know, even if I'm not particularly happy
about one thing or another, because it is good for
me financially. But in addition to consistently using these long
(11:37):
established methods, which are again common throughout the world, China
is not the bad guy here. China has embraced cutting
edge technologies. Yeah, they're they're using vast internal surveillance online,
like looking at all of the Internet activity in the
country that they can possibly see looking at or listening
(11:59):
to telephone calls using the metadata a lot of the
same things that again we do in the US, just
because that's my personal frame of reference. Um. They're also
restricting access to information via this thing called the Great Firewall.
It's referred to as the Great Firewall. It's the restriction
of of Google search terms. Right, anything that you search online,
(12:23):
you're not going to find certain things. Tenament Square massacre
comes into. Well, there's there's another thing that's interesting. As
a side note. One of my old professors I used
to love talking about this where I think we've mentioned
the Great Firewall in this show before, but every so often,
if you're using the Internet without a proxy or something
(12:44):
in the country, then the Internet police will pop up,
not that you're doing anything wrong, just remind you that
they're here for your safety, you know, so that you
just hit a malicious website. And I think it was
always interesting to my professor was that their eyes were blue.
Oh why he brought that up? Because it is like
a fun little animated avatar like Clippy. It kind of is.
(13:06):
I don't know if it's animated. It might be now
at this point but as Steve Jobs like to say,
there's one more thing. But first a word from responsible
Year's where it gets crazy. Enter sesame credit. So the
(13:33):
Chinese government has decided to take all of these things
into account, how how important internal stability is within their country,
and they've partnered with private industry to gamify essentially obedience
among its citizens for for the state. So this could
(13:53):
be possibly a very dangerous enterprise. It's it's a social
credit system, um, I guess, kind of like a credit score,
but critics are already alleging that it's affiliated more so
with obedience than with pocketbooks. It's called sesame credit. Yeah.
(14:14):
It's being constructed for the Chinese government by an outfit
called ant Financial Services Group, which is associated with Ali Baba.
And if you haven't heard of Ali Baba, you almost certainly, um,
you almost certainly will soon. It is the world's largest
retailer as of April of It's very much like Amazon
(14:35):
to me in the way I've fewed it. Yeah, and
anti financial. This is a bit dry, but this is
very important for you to know, especially if you plan
on living in this country in the next few years.
And financial operates what's called the alie pay payment platform.
So ali Pay is a third party platform and it
(14:57):
doesn't charge transaction fees. It's partnered master Card, Visa, all
all the big hitters financially in Alipa handled almost half
of the online traffic online payment market of China. That's
half of of the world's population, right, at least the
(15:19):
Internet active right. And so this means that Sesame Credit
is able to pull data from these online purchases or transactions.
It can go to Aunt Financial and then it can
go into Sesame Credit. They can the the concerns here
are pretty much already apparent, but we do have you know,
we do have word from the official spokespersons or spoke
(15:41):
people for for Sesame Credit who say, essentially what this
does is only associated with that that it will not
pull from social media platforms, and we have a quote
about that too. So, according to spokesperson Miran a Check,
Sesame Credit tracks quote, financial and consumption activities of users,
(16:05):
but materials published on social media platforms do not affect
our users personal Sesame Credit score. So essentially we'll we'll
see every we'll see every time that Ben buys the
next um I don't know, gallon of blood or whatever.
But but we won't track how many pictures he posts
(16:30):
of him with track. Right. The thing is, opponents remain
skeptical of this claim. And here's why it's dangerous. Do
you guys want to do a hypothetical thing. Oh, that's
my favorite thing to do. They scare me. Well, yeah,
because you're the example of this one. Okay, let's say
(16:51):
let's say that you are. Let's let's give him a
different name. Can I be dron If it please you it, well,
please green lighting it. Then I say you are Drogan officially.
So Drogen is a pretty stand up citizen. Right, you're
not politically involved. I mean you could describe yourself pretty easily. Yeah,
(17:13):
I'm not really politically involved. You guys know that I
don't like to stick my nose in those kind of
places because I feel like it's not my place. Um.
I just you know, I'll go out to eat, grab
a drink with friends, but not you know, not too
often because I like to save money. Um, I don't know.
I buy all the things that I that I do
(17:34):
for my hobbies, like I like to I'm a skater.
You guys know that I love to skate. I like
to run and hike. So I buy little things like that.
I've had a solid job for a while. I'm married,
I've got a kid on the way. You know, Um,
you should see you should see my ali bab account.
I've got so much baby stuff on there. Uh, it's
pretty insane. I'm a little worried about that. But but
(17:55):
it's good. I'm a good citizen, right. But let's say,
says to me. Credit does take social media in the account.
If that's the case, then when Drogan posts a link
to a censored news site, it could affect his sesame
credit score. Furthermore, you needed more dangerously. It may not
matter how good Dan is depending on the people he's
(18:18):
friends with and social media, But the activities of your
friends on social media can have an impact on your
score as well. So, um, your score can actually dip
below a certain threshold. And when that happens, your life
can get significantly more difficult. What do you mean, Maybe
the Internet slows down and get throttled a little bit.
(18:40):
Uh might be tougher to get alone, it might be
harder to start a small business that you wanted to do.
That's gonna be a problem. And then your application to
various government agencies might get denied really so, so going
through bureaucracy gets more difficult, which way, as we know,
I mean, in a country of that size, is already
probably not an easy task. So things like moving, applying
(19:02):
for travel visas, so on. You know, that means that
there is a system that relies on social pressure, um
but is introducing these incentives to the public to self
monitor as people want to take advantage of having this
good sesame credit score and then avoid the consequences of
(19:22):
having a crappy one. So maybe, um, maybe Drogen drog
In takes a hit to his sesame credit score and
his wife comes in and says, what happened because she
can see my sessame sesame credit score, I can see hers.
Maybe we have a joint credit score sesame credit score knows,
but it is for sure that your activity with the
(19:44):
person you probably spend the most time with would meet
noted and affect it. And speak of notes, it is
important to note that at this point Sesame credit has
not um not rolled out any penalties for low score,
and official sources state it will not include penalties for
low score. And right at this point, let's let's just
(20:08):
stop and like, what what do you guys think of this?
This this idea of UM, this idea of of a
state rate rated agency. It feels like something out of
like NUR to me, you know, it really feels like
the kind of thing that on the surface might feel fun.
(20:30):
But the deeper you get into it, the more you
realize that you're kind of being duped into allowing the
government to have even more control over your life than
they already do. So what if, for instance, what if,
for instance, Drogan wants to start a small business and
he knows that if he gets his number up to
a certain threshold, he will be able to get alone
(20:53):
much easier, much more easily. So he reports one of
his neighbors for something thing which may be true maybe not,
and then that participation makes him more of a model citizen,
more of a trustworthy citizen, and then boom, his score
goes up with with the possibility is there. The spokespeople
(21:15):
for Sesame Credit have said explicitly that they're not checking
social media and that this is an opt in system,
but it is possible to incentivize essentially UM a place
where people, instead of reacting out of fear, are reacting
because they see themselves bettering themselves. They see it as
(21:36):
bettering themselves. I know this might sound sort of paranoid
on our parts, and this this thing, this news has
been around for a few years. But there's one other
there's one other fact that really gives some sand to
our concerns here, and we'll get to it right after
(21:56):
a word from our sponsor and we're back. Here is
the troubling fact about sesame credit that gives a little
more credence, I think to the speculation around the world
(22:19):
about it. It's opt in for now, at least until
when it becomes mandatory for every citizen of the country. Yeah,
so I'm trying to imagine it happening in the United States. Um,
the let's say the federal government creates their version of
(22:40):
sesame credit. It's called okay, okay, no, no, But I'm
being serious, sure something something as well, something more transparent,
because there's there are also pretty compelling arguments that the
alphabet agencies take credit score and social connections on face
spooke into account. You know, they do a full linked
(23:02):
in on that sucker, and and and I'm trying to
imagine opting into something like that and going, Yes, I
want to see how good of a citizen I am,
and I want to be a better citizen and do
all the right things for that. I feel like this country.
This is huge generalization, but I feel like the individuals
in this country believe in individualism so much that that
(23:26):
may not be attractive. I don't know, and that's complete
speculation and from my own personal view. But on the
flip side of that, though not too generally over generalized,
but it does feel like that the culture in China
has much more of a focus on collectivism versus individualism.
So I could see how something like this would take
(23:47):
off without having to be mandatory. Yeah, and there's also
one party, right, So in the US, as the federal
government changes hands from one party to the net to
the next, how does that change from I like these
say changes hands. Yeah, that's the same hand going into
a different puppet. Right, But that's a that's a good point. Um,
(24:09):
So yeah, these things happen by degree. Right. Facebook didn't
come out and say, let us do these horrific things
to you or to your concept of privacy. They just said, hey,
you can you can hang out with your friends from
college online, create artificial scarcity, artificial um sense of exclusivity.
(24:31):
So they're very they're very smart things happening here because one,
it's opt in, which means the original group will be
self selecting people who want to and want to have
assessament credit score, want it to be high. I want
people to know about it, and perhaps me even compete
to achieve a better score. And then if those people
are seeing, you know, doing quote unquote better in life
(24:53):
and society, then having a credit score assessment credit score
will you know, probably become are desirable. And who's to
say that the government doesn't take one of these cases
and turn it into like a poster kind of short
ration where they're like, hey, look at this family here.
They went full bore on the sesame credit you know
(25:15):
model they got yeah, and now they're thriving. Don't you
want to be like this family? I mean, I just
I don't know. And how will it affect how it
will affect younger people who are in the dating phase
of life, looking for a looking for some kind of spouse,
whether that's you know, a husband or a wife. And
then they also said they also said, according to a
(25:36):
BBC article, that the company does not hide that it
judges the types of products shoppers by online. So someone
who plays video games for ten hours a day would
be considered idle. Someone who frequently buys diapers would be
considered probably a parent who was on balance more likely
to have a sense of responsibility That comes from li
Ying Yong Sesamese, direct technology director. Yeah, and this this
(26:00):
idea that it's so much more granular with those though,
you know what I mean, Like, I mean, like these
categories that we're talking about now are very broad. But
as we know, with the way even our data is used,
um and mind. Oh yeah, I think of the possibilities
of all of the specifics you can find out about
somebody with unfettered access to their feed that they're streamed
everything that they're putting online. Yeah, which diapers did they
(26:21):
buy and at what time exactly. Privacy is not endangered.
Privacy is extinct already for the vast um the vast
majority of people who live in developing or develops nations. Privacy,
I submit you as one of the new currencies of
the very well to do right. The people you don't
see in pictures, the people who are in name and
(26:43):
who's who so and so, and very soon water will
be one of those things. I hope not. I hope
water will be on all the time. You know, we're
is it sustainable? That's a good question to mean before
a different day. It makes me think of what's going
on now with the water and Rio de Janeiro secrept
for the Olympics, right, and watch out for dead bodies floating.
(27:06):
So this, this brings us to something else, like the technology.
Technology is inherently disruptive, right, there's this whole um. If
there was a pantheon for the circle of society, then
technology would receiva the destroyer because it fundamentally changes roles
of people, institutions, and fundamentally changes timelines. In this case,
(27:31):
we're seeing technology change the role of monitoring. If it's
full potential, again they say Sesame Credit says that it's
just to do this will be mandatory later, but it's
full potential is crystal clear. It's paving the way for
(27:52):
the people of a country to become the police of
a country. Yeah. Yeah, it could subvert the old paradigm
of state stability through fear of consequence, to a new
paradigm of desire for reward. And you know that the
other thing is like, is that necessarily bad if people
are there just to follow laws? Right, if people have
(28:15):
social pressure, that's saying hey, don't um you know, hey,
hey stop hey, Druggon's brother in law, stop stealing all
those fiats, Right, you're messing up my sesame credit score.
And I'd really like who knows my kid to get
into a good school? Like when when other when we
(28:36):
hold other people hostage for things, or other people hold
us hostage for things, that becomes a powerful and uh
probably more cost effective means of controlling people. It's it.
I think the concern is that it's bad if there's
a it's bad if there's a bad government. Right that
(28:57):
says it says we're in turning everybody of you know,
Korean descent, or we're we're in turning everybody in Tibet,
which probably would never ever happen, yeah, or just you know,
allowing any kind of abuses, just outright allowing any kind
of abuse in any country that would allow that that
(29:17):
had this kind of system on, it would be dangerous.
It reminds me of a David Egger's book called The
Circle that I've mentioned before. Um, there is a version
of the Internet that exists in this novel, where you
can no longer be anonymous on the Internet anymore, and
that in and of itself creates this democratization of the
(29:38):
Internet where you know, if you're not willing to stand
behind your trolling and you know, have your name and
I D number visible to everyone, then you're not gonna
do it, right. So it eliminates a lot of the
negative aspects of the Internet. But it also like you
are tied to this account for life, you know, and
I could just see an escalation of this being like
(29:58):
this is your social currency, this is your identification. Everything,
your record, your permanent record, a thing that happens in
your life is stored in this account, and it's all
kind of tied to information technology. So it follows you
around and you can never escape it short of like wiping,
you know, doing like a Mr. Robot style hack, you know,
(30:19):
and just totally annihilating the record. It's a digital shadow
and it follows you. Yeah, when you combine that technology
with surveillance technology, you get something that's extremely close to
a digital version of version of our concept of God
that knows everything you've done, or Santa Claus maybe he
(30:40):
knows everything that you're doing when you're naughty and when
you're nice, see you when you're sleeping. It's a creed. Yeah,
I mean really that's I mean that these are these
are excellent points. They call it god view with Uber.
You know, they have like a view where they can
see everybody that's on the grid and Uber they call
at god view. And that's like a that's a tech
(31:02):
term for any kind of platform that has users where
you can view everyone where they are geo raphidally at
any time. Take a thing like this where not only
maybe Spotify has a gazillion users or whatever, but this
is literally everyone. So there could also be let's we
talked about some of the cons. I wanted to talk
about some pros, just to give at least a fair
(31:26):
things so it's not a complete condemnation. One of the pros,
for instance, could be the ability to see a problem
brewing before it does. And I don't mean necessarily like
a dissent, but to see the thing it's doing is
it's it's giving a wider view, it's giving that Uber
(31:48):
god mode, right, but is it explaining why something happens
if people are maybe there are people who are purchasing
less of some at some frequency, right, and they're concentrated
in this one region in this area. Well, maybe they're
purchasing less stuff overall and that drops their SESAME credit score.
But the reason they're doing that is because the factory
(32:12):
in the area that everybody worked at closed or is
closing and has been laying off workers. And this is
something maybe that the larger scale government would not have
been aware of in enough time to help, right, Or
maybe there's a maybe there's something that changes with disaster.
The thing is, the world is so dynamic and it's
(32:32):
difficult to imagine a system nimble enough to accurately represent
that without you know, breaking millions of eggs to make
an omelet. That maybe an abomination. And the issue with this,
in my mind is that we must always be cautious
of hard cells. This is entirely my opinion. But usually
(32:57):
when someone has an act now thing and say here,
do this, you have twenty four hours, you do this,
you have familiar three minutes. And again, one worrying thing
about this is that it is a hard sell. It
is inevitable. Currently it is an opt in, but it
is mandatory within the near very near future. To two
(33:19):
thousand twenty may sound or like a long way away
or look like that on paper, but it's I mean,
much much faster than you might feel. I could have
sworn the stock market just crashed a little while ago,
but that was almost ten years ago. As William Faulkner said,
the past isn't even over right, I'm paraphrasing, But with
this it may be inevitable. Another question, you know, is
(33:43):
the US already doing this? Is the European Union already
doing something like this but much less transparent? And if so,
should we applaud a country that is at least putting
out of beta. Yeah, having a modicum of transparency? And
what does this What does this lead to in the future?
Does this mean that will be the end of what
(34:03):
exists is free speech in this country? Does this mean
that free speech in the country in which we reside
is already you know, monitored? Of course, granted, free speech
never was meant to mean speech without consequence, and we've
always been monitoreds since we've been able to communicate online. Yeah,
that's that's true as well. So we would like to
(34:25):
hear your thoughts on this. What what do you think
is this is this actually going to happen is Sesame credit.
What is Sesame credits credit score here? Is it trustworthy
enough that it will not for ideological or dare we
say moral reasons begin to also vacuum in social media data?
(34:48):
Will it be will it be just a motivating factor
for people to work out more and like gamify the
way that smaller, smaller scale apps have done. Where is
it something different? Is it when it becomes mandatory? In?
What will it? My question is what will it be in?
(35:10):
You know what I mean? What will it be in?
You know? I just thought about ben before we get
to how to send your questions for that stuff? Is
that it doesn't even really matter if Sesame Credit itself
is tracking all that stuff and putting it together, because
some third party can just take the data which exists,
especially if they're you know, Sesame Credits selling it like
(35:32):
many other social media companies do, selling that data they
collect to third parties. You can just combine it all
and then have another company that's essentially like a social
blade or something that's just collating all the data. Ultimately,
it may not matter if somewhat even if they say okay, mandatory.
That's kind of crazy. We understand how that would make
(35:53):
us seem disingenuous or less trustworthy than we actually are.
It will always be opt in right, the same way
that face Book is. But there's a problem of saturation
that occurs because if you have never signed up for
Facebook and all of your friends have and they have
sent you an email, right, then Facebook knows there's someone
(36:16):
who has your email address. They may not know as
much about you as they want to, but they probably
already know more than you wish. You may have heard
stories before people who found that there was a dummy
Facebook account a digital parking space waiting for them and
they never logged in. This could be the same kind
of problem after a certain threshold, if there are enough
(36:38):
people that are in this kind of situation, then there
will be connections that are unintentional. Right, And that is
not a conspiracy theory. That is a real thing that
can happen with any sort of social network, right, especially
if the people in the social network interact in person,
go places with their cell phones, right, picks in different
(37:00):
places while you were at the party with three different
friends who are unconnected somehow, but they all end up,
you know, play Pokemon Go or whatever the equivalent of
a GPS game is with facial recognition as part of
the thing. You know, then this this is all happening live.
This is a live fire, This is this is uh
(37:22):
you guys know him hesitant to cover ongoing events. This
is just an upcoming thing. So there's a huge disclaimer
like it may not who knows it may it may
not happen. It may just just collapse on itself and
become vapor wearer. I think it's interesting that you refer
to it as a beta test, because I mean, that's
exactly what it is. But it's a very unusual beta
(37:42):
test for sure. So what do you think, folks? Do
you think this is on balance a good thing a
bad thing? As one of our coworkers, as Scott Benjamin Is,
want to say, are you for it or again it
he does it and uh we we'd like to hear
your opinion and why and if you if you feel
(38:05):
like sesame credit has been vilified because of the potential
for misuse. Uh we, we'd like to hear a good
defense of this. You know it would it would make
not just us, but many of our listeners and many
of the other folks around the world ecstatic to know
that this was all alarmism and panic. We're not saying
it's happening now, we're saying that it's possible, and we
(38:28):
may well be being a little bit alarmist and panicky
to be fair. Also, I don't know, I mean, I
just this is the kind of thing that's sort of
like catnip, you know, for getting the brain kind of
twirling around, like what is the worst case scenario, What
is the most nefarious way this potentially well meaning program
could just spiral out of control into the depths of
(38:50):
black mirror Farenheit fifty one territory. It is that kind
of thing to me, But doesn't necessarily mean it has
to go there, right, Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean it
has to go there. I mean they're like if I was,
I was gonna say the worst analogies, like just because
(39:11):
a car hits a poll and burst into flame doesn't
mean that people are going to be injured if they're
in it. It means they probably will be and chances
are they're going to be incinerated. You know, that's a
very that's a very unfair comparison for me to make.
I'm not implyined that this is a car accident, but
it is interesting. It does show, you know, it shows
this increasingly um increasingly profound role the technology is playing here. Uh,
(39:36):
so we would like to hear from you. Let us
know what you think. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter because we do have a Facebook page and
it probably knows way too much about what kind of
pizza the three of us like. You can find us
there we are conspiracy stuff, and also find us on
uh Instagram where we are conspiracy Stuff show where you
can see my brand new Space Camp T shirt sent
(39:59):
to us by listener Paula H. Because she took pity
on me because I had never been to Space Camp.
It had been a dream of mine ever since I
was a little Nickelodeon loving child watching Double Dare and
seeing that as the grand prize, the end all be
all of my childhood dreams dashed while she put them
back together, picked up the pieces, healed my child like soul.
(40:22):
And thank you appreciate that, gene. That was a genuine
joy and uh appreciation that you saw there on this
this bearded face. So thank you, Paula H. Yeah, they
and you know what the NAT and I owe you
a thank you for that as well, because, uh Knowl's
(40:45):
enthusiasm was palpable everybody's day. I was out, I was
out of the office somewhere and you texted me, and
so I just like immediately poohed back into that circle
to see the shirt. That again, listeners are the most
important part of our show, and every time we say that,
we like to demonstrate that with a little thing we
call shot at Corners. Our first shoutout today goes to
(41:10):
Jonathan West, who wrote to us on Twitter. He let
us know about the Panama Papers movie that's coming to Netflix.
I'm excited about that. That was a great episode in
my opinion. Guys don't mean to tute our own horn,
but I enjoyed that episode because give a little horn too. Well.
It gave a real window into a world that we
(41:30):
kind of knew was there. We did know what was happening,
but we got to see the details. Um, let's see
it's it's written by It's a book that was written
by investigative journalist Frederick ober Meyer and Bastion ober Meyer.
Interesting similar last names there, um, but yeah, thank you
Jonathan West. We're definitely going to be checking that out
(41:53):
next We have went from rick Comstock via Facebook. Are
manufacturers paint robots? Um quote? My robots have no AI,
which I believe is a good thing. But they can see.
They can see colors, and they can see when something
is near to them and how close someone is to them.
I find my job extremely interesting watching the advancements that
(42:14):
happened at my company. But I'm also glad they are
taught by a teach pendent. A teach pendent, I don't
know this term, and also that they are creating a
lot of jobs in the field. Uh, teach pendents are
really interesting. I had to look them up. It's how
you teach a robot to do things right. So inputs,
you give robots certain inputs kind of if ends, those
(42:35):
kind of things, and it learns by what you what
you tell it. That's what's Yeah, it's not learning. Is
that how they teach those robots on the radio how
to wrap? Yep, you are so proud of that joke
(42:55):
makes me happy, But I probably got that wrong about
teach pendance right to us, teach us about teach pendants. Yes,
and our next shout out comes from KLi Lipkey, who says,
I just found your podcast while on a four hour
road trip. Now I listen at work. I've been really
disappointed that you don't have an episode on Benghazi. Would
love to hear one on that would be the part
(43:18):
of the attack on the US uh US and facilities
there the embassy. Yeah, I don't know that that could
be a rough one, but we can at least look
into it see if there's something worth our time. Sure,
what do you know about it? What did Hilldog know
about it? What did yes? The okay, yes, the allegations
of the emails right that we're released by wicked leaks
(43:41):
regarding uh, the Hillary Clinton's campaign or Hillary Clinton's activities
while serving as Secretary of State under the Obama administration. Yeah,
response times too when everything was going down. There's a
lot of stuff there. It's been this whole thing seems
have been taken up by the right so of the U. S.
(44:01):
Government as like an attack. So, I don't know, it
might be a little too sensitive, right yet. You know,
I have not been as educated on that one as
I should be. So I'll look into that and learn more,
and uh, who knows what we'll find if we dig
deep enough. Thank you so much for writing CALLI that
(44:22):
concludes ours, But that does not conclude this stuff they
don't want you to know. I mean in this episode. Yes,
this is clearly the end of the episode. You can
check out you can check out some other stuff we've
done about international relations, about um disruptive rules of technology
by visiting our website. Stuff they don't want you to
(44:43):
know dot com. But wait, you might be saying, no, Ben,
I've got something that that I want to write two
guys with in detail. It's really good idea my fellow
listeners would like to hear. Or it's a really good
point about sesame credit, or I've got some it's a
really good recipe for sesame chicken. Yeah, maybe it's a
really good um. Maybe it's a really good haiku about sesame,
(45:07):
or or like a limerick. Or maybe it's just your
Facebook logging information. No, please don't do that. So where
should they send this? They should send this to conspiracy
How Stuff Works dot com
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An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.