A callous government which oversees the lives of 1,000 million citizens isn't concerned with thousands of false positives.

All governments are callous. Can you give an example of a bureaucracy that isn't callous?

I don't think they were implying that there are uncallous governments, just emphasizing that particular feature of the Chinese government.

Some governments are more callous than others.

not many that disregard human rights or are as callous as the chinese govt.

When you get to 1 billion, your representatives will be as callous. (Already on the way there, actually.) Government is just a mirror of the people, even in China.

I disagree. I argue that the Chinese government and the one I live under (in the United States) could hardly be more different. The government of China was established for the benefit of the rulers (the Party). The American Founding Fathers said "Government is like fire: It makes a good servant, but a poor master." Our Constitution was written primarily to constrain the government.

Only two countries have gotten to 1 billion inhabitants, and I'd say that the government of India is much less callous or calculating than that of China.

Founding intention does not matter. Modern Russia was founded on the idea that all people are equal and that workers should be respected, that doesn't mean that that happens.

The founders of Communist Russia intended that the state be dissolved by 1980, that it be replaced by councils that work together in coöperation, such that everyone has a say. Did that bear fruit? No.

Did the founding fathers intend for the United States to spy on every single one of their citizens? No. Does it happen? Yes. Did the founding fathers intend for the state to be able to detain foreigners of the US indefinitely without trial? No. The patriot act allows it, however.

You cannot judge a country by founding principals and safeguards alone, they are easy to repeal and change; you can only judge a country on the current legislature and how much the current Constitution constrains the government.

I feel that this discussion has wandered. Are you arguing that the Chinese government is concerned with false positives in their social scoring system?

I'm arguing that the US and China are closer than you might think with regards to the goals of surveillance and tyrrany. The difference in founding intentions are irrelevant.

> I wonder if increasing adoption of this system will create a black market of 'score hackers'

Well, Campbell's law...

> "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

Just for those interested: "All Systems will be Gamed: Exploitive Behavior in Economic and Social Systems," in Complexity and the Economy, W. B. Arthur (2014) http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/Papers/All%20Systems%20G...

I suppose there are two sorts of errors:

System errors: falsely attributing you with certain penalties (or credits). The workaround here is the same as with a bank - provide a statement and a mechanism to dispute entries.

Fine errors: penalising you when you don't deserve it. This is like anything else in the justice system, although it has the advantage that it should be an accumulation of a larger number of smaller inputs (positive and negative), so individual errors should act like noise and remain negligible.

"...a mechanism to dispute entries"

I seriously doubt that the Chinese government is interested in inviting dispute. Dispute is exactly what such a surveillance system is designed to suppress.