July 13, 2022 • 47 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):
Oh, Man, Matt, this is one of those episodes where
our predictions turned out to be correct. How come are correct?
Predictions are never about happy stuff. I mean, this will
be a very different show if that were the case. Um. Yeah.
(00:21):
In this case, we looked at a thing called Sesame
Credit and it's a social credit score. It's a social
credit system that exists in in China, and we we
saw a slippery slope. I think, as we often describe,
we saw it and man if we didn't ride down
(00:42):
that thing. Yeah, agreed. So what you're going to hear
about today is, um, it's an older episode. It's when
we're classics. This is our first on air encounter with
a credit system that is not necessarily financially based. If
you live in the West, you're familiar with the great
(01:05):
racket of credit scores, and almost everybody you know has
had a not great experience with the big three credit companies.
Uh that it's a system that has a lot of
problems but is arguably necessary. The government of China extended
this to the idea of a kind of credit rating
(01:27):
for your status as a citizen in that country, and
as we recorded this episode, the Sesame credit system as
it was being called at the time, was opt in
at this point. Uh, there's nothing officially like that in
the US. Officially, we just uh we police ourselves via
(01:52):
social pressure on social media. But it is weird to
think about it the way you're talking about credit been.
You know, it's not like the credit system here in
the US is opt in. You're just a part of it.
As soon as you wanna, you know, do things and
buy things and have things. In the West, you have
to have a credit score. You get one, they kind
(02:13):
of just assign it to you. And uh, I don't know.
I'm just I'm just waiting for that to officially happen
here in the US. It feels very soon. What are
we talking about. You're you're about to You're about to
see from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history
(02:33):
is riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is no the Hout, my name is bog You
(02:54):
or you This is stuff they don't want you to know. Uh,
did you guys ever see the video or the films,
saw any of that franchise I did the first one.
I'm aware of it. I never I never saw it. Huh,
but I didn't. I know, you didn't see saw. I
didn't see Saw. No, I did not. I have not yet. Um.
(03:17):
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. Aside from the torture party. They liked
everything but the torture. And we'll start today's podcast with
(03:39):
the basic concept, a pretty neat one that all three
of us and 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 happened to personally like it for
(04:00):
certain things. This is when you're making some activity. Let's
say you're at the gym and you're running. We're 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, or it's gonna give
me some kind of reward if I achieve that number, right,
(04:22):
and it could be something as um you know, as
immaterial as just points are on a pinball machine contests,
but then you had a high score, you know, or
as it can app to quit smoking. Now they might
be financial to sites. We'll not to imagine if you
taking to the next level and then do a thing
like zombie Zombies Run. There's that app that takes the
(04:43):
that step counting thing and trying to keep up a
pace and introduces zombies into the equation where you're, you know,
running away from virtual zombies. So that's fine, 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 with the Pokemon. You that's just those Pokemon.
(05:07):
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 compelling data that gamification
(05:31):
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
(05:51):
messing with your brain. It's it's affecting your rewards 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
(06:14):
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
(06:34):
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
(06:55):
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 all
me all these other feel good chemicals, two very important
ones being you know, serotonin of course, and endorphins. Well,
this is you know, this is why I have to
level up. I always have to level up, no matter
(07:17):
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. You're probably the best gamer that well,
I don't want to offend you be Are you what
one might describe as a level grinder? Oh? I am
such a grinder for levels, for any kind of upgrades.
(07:40):
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
(08:00):
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
(08:20):
for any state level actor, which could be anything from
you know, Normandy back in the day to UH to
ancient commet 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
(08:42):
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
(09:03):
party of China where its asciduously 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. Uh,
(09:23):
it's 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
(09:44):
in most countries. 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 to bat western provinces,
the persecution of various ethnic minorities. It is a hotbed
(10:05):
of negativity in that country a 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 of the world's
(10:28):
people live here. Huge divides two between the people that
live in the urban areas and then work in various
they're obviously financial type jobs, also factory type jobs. Within
there are more rural agrarian workers that live way way
outside the city where they just do not have access
to the same infrastructure as folks living in the city do. Right,
(10:52):
And so China's approach to this situation, to maintaining stability
is multidimensional, and that means they maintain a few things
that we we are 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 go around to get information about other
(11:16):
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 entirely accurate, let's say, right, and compensation
(11:39):
for deaths or tracking 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 two thousand eleven, for instance, the expense on
(12:00):
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 but in contrast, uh, the expense on stability maintenance
(12:22):
is six hundred and twenty four point four to one billion,
which means that this government is spending more on at
least two thousand eleven spending more on internal stability than
on external stuff force projection. And this is all I know,
it sounds billifying, but almost every country has some sort
(12:46):
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 things, carrots rather than sticks. Well, yeah,
you can rally your entire population, well most of your
(13:07):
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 is in conflict with a lot of
the time. Um. They can also provide propaganda to rally
the population for China's historic regional importance, global ascendency. So
(13:30):
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 into factions. And perhaps one of the final
carrots rather than sticks, is the the assurance of widespread
(13:50):
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 established methods, which are again common throughout the world,
China is not the bad guy here. China has embraced
(14:13):
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
to telephone calls using the metadata a lot of the
same things that again we do in the US, just
(14:34):
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,
you're not going to find certain things Tenament Square massacre
(14:57):
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
in the country, then the Internet police will pop up,
(15:17):
not because 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 the thing it was
always interesting to my professor was that their eyes were blue.
I don't know why he brought that up, because it
is like a fun little animated avatar like Clippy. It
kind of is. I don't know if it's animated. It
might be now at this point. But as Steve Jobs
(15:40):
like to say, there's one more thing, but first a
word from responsible. Here's where it gets crazy. Enter sesame credit.
(16:03):
So the 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.
(16:23):
So this could 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, it's being constructed for the Chinese
(16:47):
government by an outfit called AUNT 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. And it is the world's largest retailer as
of April of It's very much like Amazon to me
in the way I've sewed it. Yeah, and anti financial.
(17:10):
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 doesn't charge
transaction fees. It's partnered with MasterCard, Visa, all all the
(17:32):
big hitters financially in ali pay 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 internet
active right. And so this means that Sesame Credit is
(17:54):
able to pull data from these online purchases or transactions,
it can go to AUNT Financial and and 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
people for for Sesame Credit who say, um, essentially, what
(18:17):
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 Miranda Checks,
Sesame Credit tracks quote financial and consumption activities of users,
but materials published on social media platforms do not affect
(18:40):
our users personal Sesame credit score. So essentially, will we'll
see every We'll see every time that Bend buys the
next um, I don't know, gallon of blood or whatever,
but but we won't track how many pictures he posts
(19:01):
of him with 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 god, yeah,
that's my favorite thing to do. They scare me. Well, yeah,
because you're the example of this one. Okay, let's say
(19:22):
let's say that you are let's let's give him a
different name. Can I be droken if it please your
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,
(19:44):
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. I'll
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
(20:05):
for my hobbies, like I like to I'm a skater.
You don't know that I love to skate. Yeah, I
like to run and hikes, 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 Baba account.
I've got so much baby stuff on there. Uh, it's
pretty insane. I'm a little worried about that. But but
(20:26):
it's good. I'm a good citizen. Right. But let's say
sesame 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
(20:47):
is depending on the people he's 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
(21:09):
get throttled a little bit. 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,
(21:32):
applying 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
(21:53):
having a crappy one. So maybe, um, maybe drog in
drog In takes a hit to his sessame credit score
and his wife comes in and says, what happened because
she can see my sess of my sesame credit score,
I can see hers. Maybe we have a joint credit score.
Sesame credit score knows, but it's it is for sure
that your activity with the person you probably spend the
(22:16):
most time with would meet noted and affect it. Let's
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
(22:37):
this point, let's let's just 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 ur to me. You know,
it really feels like the kind of thing that on
(22:57):
the surface might feel. 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
(23:17):
business and he knows that if he gets his number
up to a certain threshold, he will be able to
get alone much easier, much more easily, So he reports
one of his neighbors for something 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,
(23:41):
his score goes up with with the possibility is there.
The spokespeople 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 play s where people instead of reacting out of fear,
(24:03):
are reacting because they see themselves bettering themselves. They see
it is 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
(24:26):
right after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Here is the troubling fact about sesame credit. That gives
(24:48):
a little more credence I think to the speculation around
the world 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
(25:11):
government creates their version of sesame credit. It's called okay, okay, no, no,
But I'm being serious something something as well, something more transparent,
because there's they're also pretty compelling arguments that the alphabet
agencies take credit score and social um connections on Facebook
(25:32):
into account. Ye know, they do a full linked 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
(25:54):
in this country believe in individualism so much that that
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 to generally over generalized,
but it does feel like that the culture in China
has much more of a focus on collectivism versus individualism,
(26:16):
So I could see how something like this would take
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 next to
the next, how does that change from what 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
(26:40):
good point. 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. So they're very they're very smart
(27:05):
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 as sessame 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 and society. Then having a
(27:28):
credit score assessame credit score, will you know, probably become
more 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 station where they're like, hey, look
at this family here. They went full bore on the
sesame credit you know, models they got, Yeah, and now
(27:51):
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. Came for a looking
for some kind of spouse, whether that's you know, a
husband or a wife. Uh. And then they also said
they also said, recording to a BBC article, that the
company does not hide that it judges the types of
(28:12):
products shoppers buy 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 idea that it's so
(28:33):
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,
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 buy and at what time exactly.
(28:56):
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 to 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 who's who and so
(29:17):
and so, and very soon water will be one of
those things. No, I hope not. I hope water will
be on all the time. You know, we're Is it sustainable?
That's a good question, 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. So this this
(29:40):
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,
institute tuitions, and fundamentally changes timelines. In this case, we're
(30:03):
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 the
(30:25):
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?
(30:47):
If people have 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
assess me credit score. And I really like who knows
my kid to get into a good school? Like when
when other when we hold other people hostage for things,
(31:11):
or other people hold us hostage for things. That becomes
a powerful and uh, probably more cost effective means of
controlling people. It's I think the concern is that it's
bad if there's a it's bad if there's a bad government.
Right that says it says we're in turning everybody of
(31:33):
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 had this kind of system on, it
would be dangerous. It reminds me of a David Egger's
(31:55):
book called The Circle that I've mentioned before. 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 Internet where you know, if you're not willing to
stand behind your trolling and you know, have your name
(32:17):
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 this is your social currency, this is your identification. Everything,
your record, your permanent record, anything that happens in your
(32:38):
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,
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
(33:05):
a digital version of version of our concept of God
that knows everything you've done, or Santa Claus. Maybe he
knows everything that you're doing when you're na eying, when
you're nice, he sees you when you're sleeping, when you're awake.
That's a creed, Yeah, I mean really, that's I mean
that these are these are excellent points. They call it
(33:26):
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 it God View, And that's like
a that's a tech 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
(33:46):
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 thing, so it's not I comple condemnation.
One of the pros, for instance, could be the ability
to see a problem brewing before it does. And I
(34:11):
don't mean necessarily like a dissent, but to see the
thing that's doing is it's it's giving a wider view,
it's giving that uber 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,
(34:32):
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 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
(34:53):
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
difficult to imagine a system nimble enough to accurately represent
that without you know, breaking millions of eggs to make
an omelet. That may be an abomination. And the issue
(35:18):
with this, in my mind is that we must always
be cautious of hard cells. This is entirely my opinion.
But usually when someone has an act now thing and
say here, do this, you have twenty four hours. You
do this, you have fam three minutes. And again, one
(35:40):
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 thousand twenty may sound or like a long way away,
or look like that on paper, but it's I mean
much much faster. That might feel. I could have sworn
(36:02):
the stock market just crashed a little while ago, but
that 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
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
(36:25):
out a 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 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
(36:47):
was meant to mean speech without consequence, and we've always
been monitors since we've been able to communicate online. Yeah,
that's that's true as well. So we would like to
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
(37:11):
enough that it will not for ideological or dare we
say moral reasons begin to also vacuum in social media data?
Will it be will it be just a motivating factor
for people to work out more and and like gamify
the way that's smaller, smaller scale apps have done or
(37:32):
is it something different? Is it when it becomes mandatory
in what will it My question is what will it
be in? 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
(37:53):
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, sess Me Credits selling it
like 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
(38:14):
social blade or something that's just collating all the data. Ultimately,
it may not matter if someone even if they say, okay, mandatory,
that's kind of crazy. We understand how that would make
us seem disingenuous or less trustworthy than we actually are.
It will always be opt in right the same way
that Facebook is. But there's a problem of saturation that
(38:35):
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 who
has your email address. It 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
(38:57):
before people who found that there was a dumb Facebook
account a digital parking space waiting for them and they
had never logged in. This could be the same kind
of problem. After a certain threshold, if there are enough
people that are in this kind of situation, then there
will be connections that are unintentional. Right, and that is
(39:19):
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, take pictures in
different places while you were at the party with three
different friends who are unconnected somehow, but they all end
up play Pokemon Go or whatever the equivalent of a
(39:42):
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, you
guys know. I'm hesitant to cover ongoing events. This is
just an up coming things. So there's a huge disclaimer, like,
(40:03):
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 test for sure. So
what do you think, folks? Do you think this is
on balance a good thing a bad thing? As one
(40:25):
of our coworkers, as Scott Benjamin Is, want to say,
are you for it or again it it does it?
And uh we we'd like to hear your opinion and
why and if you if you feel 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,
(40:46):
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 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
(41:06):
of thing that 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 black mirror Farenheit fifty one territory.
(41:26):
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 you're probably going to go there? I was,
I was gonna say the worst analogies, like, just because
a car hits a poll and burst into flame, doesn't
(41:47):
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 implying 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.
(42:08):
Uh 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 Instagram where we are Conspiracy Stuff Show, where you
can see my brand new Space Camp T shirt sent
(42:31):
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.
(42:55):
And thank you. You are appreciate that was that was
a genuine and joy and u 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 enthusiasm was palpable everybody's day. I was out,
(43:22):
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 ut Corner. Our first shoutout
today goes to Jonathan West, who wrote to us on Twitter.
(43:45):
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 okay, man,
give give a little horn too. Well. It gave a
real window into a world that we kind of knew
was there. We did know was happening, but we got
(44:06):
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. Next, we have
one from Rick Comstock via Facebook. Are manufacturers paint robots? Um? Quote?
(44:32):
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 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
(44:53):
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 robot certain inputs, kind of if ands,
those kind of things, and it learns by what you
what you tell to do. That's what the sequence of if.
(45:15):
Then 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. Makes me happy, But
I probably got that wrong about teach pendance. Right to us,
teach us about teach pendance. Yes, and our next shout
(45:37):
out comes from Kali 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 that be the part of the attack
on the us uh US and facilities there the embassy.
(45:57):
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 regarding uh, the Hillary Clinton's
campaign or Hillary Clinton's activities while serving as Secretary of
(46:20):
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 is he has been taken
up by the right side of the U. S. 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
(46:43):
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 writing CALLI. That concludes
our gosh, 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
(47:06):
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
Know dot com. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
(47:26):
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
st d w y t K. If you don't want
to do that, you can send us a good old
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Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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(47:47):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, Man, Matt, this is one of those episodes where
our predictions turned out to be correct. How come are correct?
Predictions are never about happy stuff. I mean, this will
be a very different show if that were the case. Um. Yeah.
(00:21):
In this case, we looked at a thing called Sesame
Credit and it's a social credit score. It's a social
credit system that exists in in China, and we we
saw a slippery slope. I think, as we often describe,
we saw it and man if we didn't ride down
(00:42):
that thing. Yeah, agreed. So what you're going to hear
about today is, um, it's an older episode. It's when
we're classics. This is our first on air encounter with
a credit system that is not necessarily financially based. If
you live in the West, you're familiar with the great
(01:05):
racket of credit scores, and almost everybody you know has
had a not great experience with the big three credit companies.
Uh that it's a system that has a lot of
problems but is arguably necessary. The government of China extended
this to the idea of a kind of credit rating
(01:27):
for your status as a citizen in that country, and
as we recorded this episode, the Sesame credit system as
it was being called at the time, was opt in
at this point. Uh, there's nothing officially like that in
the US. Officially, we just uh we police ourselves via
(01:52):
social pressure on social media. But it is weird to
think about it the way you're talking about credit been.
You know, it's not like the credit system here in
the US is opt in. You're just a part of it.
As soon as you wanna, you know, do things and
buy things and have things. In the West, you have
to have a credit score. You get one, they kind
(02:13):
of just assign it to you. And uh, I don't know.
I'm just I'm just waiting for that to officially happen
here in the US. It feels very soon. What are
we talking about. You're you're about to You're about to
see from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history
(02:33):
is riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now
or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is no the Hout, my name is bog You
(02:54):
or you This is stuff they don't want you to know. Uh,
did you guys ever see the video or the films,
saw any of that franchise I did the first one.
I'm aware of it. I never I never saw it. Huh,
but I didn't. I know, you didn't see saw. I
didn't see Saw. No, I did not. I have not yet. Um.
(03:17):
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. Aside from the torture party. They liked
everything but the torture. And we'll start today's podcast with
(03:39):
the basic concept, a pretty neat one that all three
of us and 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 happened to personally like it for
(04:00):
certain things. This is when you're making some activity. Let's
say you're at the gym and you're running. We're 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, or it's gonna give
me some kind of reward if I achieve that number, right,
(04:22):
and it could be something as um you know, as
immaterial as just points are on a pinball machine contests,
but then you had a high score, you know, or
as it can app to quit smoking. Now they might
be financial to sites. We'll not to imagine if you
taking to the next level and then do a thing
like zombie Zombies Run. There's that app that takes the
(04:43):
that step counting thing and trying to keep up a
pace and introduces zombies into the equation where you're, you know,
running away from virtual zombies. So that's fine, 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 with the Pokemon. You that's just those Pokemon.
(05:07):
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 compelling data that gamification
(05:31):
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
(05:51):
messing with your brain. It's it's affecting your rewards 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
(06:14):
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
(06:34):
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
(06:55):
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 all
me all these other feel good chemicals, two very important
ones being you know, serotonin of course, and endorphins. Well,
this is you know, this is why I have to
level up. I always have to level up, no matter
(07:17):
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. You're probably the best gamer that well,
I don't want to offend you be Are you what
one might describe as a level grinder? Oh? I am
such a grinder for levels, for any kind of upgrades.
(07:40):
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
(08:00):
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
(08:20):
for any state level actor, which could be anything from
you know, Normandy back in the day to UH to
ancient commet 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
(08:42):
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
(09:03):
party of China where its asciduously 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. Uh,
(09:23):
it's 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
(09:44):
in most countries. 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 to bat western provinces,
the persecution of various ethnic minorities. It is a hotbed
(10:05):
of negativity in that country a 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 of the world's
(10:28):
people live here. Huge divides two between the people that
live in the urban areas and then work in various
they're obviously financial type jobs, also factory type jobs. Within
there are more rural agrarian workers that live way way
outside the city where they just do not have access
to the same infrastructure as folks living in the city do. Right,
(10:52):
And so China's approach to this situation, to maintaining stability
is multidimensional, and that means they maintain a few things
that we we are 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 go around to get information about other
(11:16):
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 entirely accurate, let's say, right, and compensation
(11:39):
for deaths or tracking 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 two thousand eleven, for instance, the expense on
(12:00):
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 but in contrast, uh, the expense on stability maintenance
(12:22):
is six hundred and twenty four point four to one billion,
which means that this government is spending more on at
least two thousand eleven spending more on internal stability than
on external stuff force projection. And this is all I know,
it sounds billifying, but almost every country has some sort
(12:46):
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 things, carrots rather than sticks. Well, yeah,
you can rally your entire population, well most of your
(13:07):
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 is in conflict with a lot of
the time. Um. They can also provide propaganda to rally
the population for China's historic regional importance, global ascendency. So
(13:30):
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 into factions. And perhaps one of the final
carrots rather than sticks, is the the assurance of widespread
(13:50):
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 established methods, which are again common throughout the world,
China is not the bad guy here. China has embraced
(14:13):
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
to telephone calls using the metadata a lot of the
same things that again we do in the US, just
(14:34):
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,
you're not going to find certain things Tenament Square massacre
(14:57):
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
in the country, then the Internet police will pop up,
(15:17):
not because 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 the thing it was
always interesting to my professor was that their eyes were blue.
I don't know why he brought that up, because it
is like a fun little animated avatar like Clippy. It
kind of is. I don't know if it's animated. It
might be now at this point. But as Steve Jobs
(15:40):
like to say, there's one more thing, but first a
word from responsible. Here's where it gets crazy. Enter sesame credit.
(16:03):
So the 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.
(16:23):
So this could 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, it's being constructed for the Chinese
(16:47):
government by an outfit called AUNT 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. And it is the world's largest retailer as
of April of It's very much like Amazon to me
in the way I've sewed it. Yeah, and anti financial.
(17:10):
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 doesn't charge
transaction fees. It's partnered with MasterCard, Visa, all all the
(17:32):
big hitters financially in ali pay 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 internet
active right. And so this means that Sesame Credit is
(17:54):
able to pull data from these online purchases or transactions,
it can go to AUNT Financial and and 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
people for for Sesame Credit who say, um, essentially, what
(18:17):
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 Miranda Checks,
Sesame Credit tracks quote financial and consumption activities of users,
but materials published on social media platforms do not affect
(18:40):
our users personal Sesame credit score. So essentially, will we'll
see every We'll see every time that Bend buys the
next um, I don't know, gallon of blood or whatever,
but but we won't track how many pictures he posts
(19:01):
of him with 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 god, yeah,
that's my favorite thing to do. They scare me. Well, yeah,
because you're the example of this one. Okay, let's say
(19:22):
let's say that you are let's let's give him a
different name. Can I be droken if it please your
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,
(19:44):
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. I'll
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
(20:05):
for my hobbies, like I like to I'm a skater.
You don't know that I love to skate. Yeah, I
like to run and hikes, 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 Baba account.
I've got so much baby stuff on there. Uh, it's
pretty insane. I'm a little worried about that. But but
(20:26):
it's good. I'm a good citizen. Right. But let's say
sesame 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
(20:47):
is depending on the people he's 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
(21:09):
get throttled a little bit. 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,
(21:32):
applying 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
(21:53):
having a crappy one. So maybe, um, maybe drog in
drog In takes a hit to his sessame credit score
and his wife comes in and says, what happened because
she can see my sess of my sesame credit score,
I can see hers. Maybe we have a joint credit score.
Sesame credit score knows, but it's it is for sure
that your activity with the person you probably spend the
(22:16):
most time with would meet noted and affect it. Let's
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
(22:37):
this point, let's let's just 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 ur to me. You know,
it really feels like the kind of thing that on
(22:57):
the surface might feel. 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
(23:17):
business and he knows that if he gets his number
up to a certain threshold, he will be able to
get alone much easier, much more easily, So he reports
one of his neighbors for something 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,
(23:41):
his score goes up with with the possibility is there.
The spokespeople 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 play s where people instead of reacting out of fear,
(24:03):
are reacting because they see themselves bettering themselves. They see
it is 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
(24:26):
right after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Here is the troubling fact about sesame credit. That gives
(24:48):
a little more credence I think to the speculation around
the world 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
(25:11):
government creates their version of sesame credit. It's called okay, okay, no, no,
But I'm being serious something something as well, something more transparent,
because there's they're also pretty compelling arguments that the alphabet
agencies take credit score and social um connections on Facebook
(25:32):
into account. Ye know, they do a full linked 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
(25:54):
in this country believe in individualism so much that that
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 to generally over generalized,
but it does feel like that the culture in China
has much more of a focus on collectivism versus individualism,
(26:16):
So I could see how something like this would take
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 next to
the next, how does that change from what 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
(26:40):
good point. 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. So they're very they're very smart
(27:05):
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 as sessame 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 and society. Then having a
(27:28):
credit score assessame credit score, will you know, probably become
more 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 station where they're like, hey, look
at this family here. They went full bore on the
sesame credit you know, models they got, Yeah, and now
(27:51):
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. Came for a looking
for some kind of spouse, whether that's you know, a
husband or a wife. Uh. And then they also said
they also said, recording to a BBC article, that the
company does not hide that it judges the types of
(28:12):
products shoppers buy 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 idea that it's so
(28:33):
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,
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 buy and at what time exactly.
(28:56):
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 to 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 who's who and so
(29:17):
and so, and very soon water will be one of
those things. No, I hope not. I hope water will
be on all the time. You know, we're Is it sustainable?
That's a good question, 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. So this this
(29:40):
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,
institute tuitions, and fundamentally changes timelines. In this case, we're
(30:03):
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 the
(30:25):
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?
(30:47):
If people have 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
assess me credit score. And I really like who knows
my kid to get into a good school? Like when
when other when we hold other people hostage for things,
(31:11):
or other people hold us hostage for things. That becomes
a powerful and uh, probably more cost effective means of
controlling people. It's I think the concern is that it's
bad if there's a it's bad if there's a bad government.
Right that says it says we're in turning everybody of
(31:33):
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 had this kind of system on, it
would be dangerous. It reminds me of a David Egger's
(31:55):
book called The Circle that I've mentioned before. 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 Internet where you know, if you're not willing to
stand behind your trolling and you know, have your name
(32:17):
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 this is your social currency, this is your identification. Everything,
your record, your permanent record, anything that happens in your
(32:38):
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,
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
(33:05):
a digital version of version of our concept of God
that knows everything you've done, or Santa Claus. Maybe he
knows everything that you're doing when you're na eying, when
you're nice, he sees you when you're sleeping, when you're awake.
That's a creed, Yeah, I mean really, that's I mean
that these are these are excellent points. They call it
(33:26):
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 it God View, And that's like
a that's a tech 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
(33:46):
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 thing, so it's not I comple condemnation.
One of the pros, for instance, could be the ability
to see a problem brewing before it does. And I
(34:11):
don't mean necessarily like a dissent, but to see the
thing that's doing is it's it's giving a wider view,
it's giving that uber 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,
(34:32):
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 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
(34:53):
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
difficult to imagine a system nimble enough to accurately represent
that without you know, breaking millions of eggs to make
an omelet. That may be an abomination. And the issue
(35:18):
with this, in my mind is that we must always
be cautious of hard cells. This is entirely my opinion.
But usually when someone has an act now thing and
say here, do this, you have twenty four hours. You
do this, you have fam three minutes. And again, one
(35:40):
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 thousand twenty may sound or like a long way away,
or look like that on paper, but it's I mean
much much faster. That might feel. I could have sworn
(36:02):
the stock market just crashed a little while ago, but
that 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
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
(36:25):
out a 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 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
(36:47):
was meant to mean speech without consequence, and we've always
been monitors since we've been able to communicate online. Yeah,
that's that's true as well. So we would like to
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
(37:11):
enough that it will not for ideological or dare we
say moral reasons begin to also vacuum in social media data?
Will it be will it be just a motivating factor
for people to work out more and and like gamify
the way that's smaller, smaller scale apps have done or
(37:32):
is it something different? Is it when it becomes mandatory
in what will it My question is what will it
be in? 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
(37:53):
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, sess Me Credits selling it
like 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
(38:14):
social blade or something that's just collating all the data. Ultimately,
it may not matter if someone even if they say, okay, mandatory,
that's kind of crazy. We understand how that would make
us seem disingenuous or less trustworthy than we actually are.
It will always be opt in right the same way
that Facebook is. But there's a problem of saturation that
(38:35):
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 who
has your email address. It 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
(38:57):
before people who found that there was a dumb Facebook
account a digital parking space waiting for them and they
had never logged in. This could be the same kind
of problem. After a certain threshold, if there are enough
people that are in this kind of situation, then there
will be connections that are unintentional. Right, and that is
(39:19):
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, take pictures in
different places while you were at the party with three
different friends who are unconnected somehow, but they all end
up play Pokemon Go or whatever the equivalent of a
(39:42):
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, you
guys know. I'm hesitant to cover ongoing events. This is
just an up coming things. So there's a huge disclaimer, like,
(40:03):
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 test for sure. So
what do you think, folks? Do you think this is
on balance a good thing a bad thing? As one
(40:25):
of our coworkers, as Scott Benjamin Is, want to say,
are you for it or again it it does it?
And uh we we'd like to hear your opinion and
why and if you if you feel 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,
(40:46):
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 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
(41:06):
of thing that 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 black mirror Farenheit fifty one territory.
(41:26):
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 you're probably going to go there? I was,
I was gonna say the worst analogies, like, just because
a car hits a poll and burst into flame, doesn't
(41:47):
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 implying 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.
(42:08):
Uh 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 Instagram where we are Conspiracy Stuff Show, where you
can see my brand new Space Camp T shirt sent
(42:31):
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.
(42:55):
And thank you. You are appreciate that was that was
a genuine and joy and u 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 enthusiasm was palpable everybody's day. I was out,
(43:22):
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 ut Corner. Our first shoutout
today goes to Jonathan West, who wrote to us on Twitter.
(43:45):
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 okay, man,
give give a little horn too. Well. It gave a
real window into a world that we kind of knew
was there. We did know was happening, but we got
(44:06):
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. Next, we have
one from Rick Comstock via Facebook. Are manufacturers paint robots? Um? Quote?
(44:32):
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 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
(44:53):
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 robot certain inputs, kind of if ands,
those kind of things, and it learns by what you
what you tell to do. That's what the sequence of if.
(45:15):
Then 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. Makes me happy, But
I probably got that wrong about teach pendance. Right to us,
teach us about teach pendance. Yes, and our next shout
(45:37):
out comes from Kali 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 that be the part of the attack
on the us uh US and facilities there the embassy.
(45:57):
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 regarding uh, the Hillary Clinton's
campaign or Hillary Clinton's activities while serving as Secretary of
(46:20):
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 is he has been taken
up by the right side of the U. S. 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
(46:43):
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 writing CALLI. That concludes
our gosh, 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
(47:06):
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
Know dot com. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
(47:26):
of different ways. One of the best is to give
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