Psycho-Pass

[Archangel]

Ryll and I discussed the episode on irc:

[01:12] <Arkangel> [01:02] <%Ryllharu> @ psycho-pass: fuck.~
[01:12] <Arkangel> They really came up with the perfect villain
[01:13] <Arkangel> He literally represents all that's wrong with the system
[01:16] <%Ryllharu> Nah
[01:16] <%Ryllharu> The idea of him is cool
[01:16] <%Ryllharu> The implementation isn't
[01:17] <%Ryllharu> What he did should never have been allowable by the system
[01:17] <%Ryllharu> I would have been much happier had he just abducted
[01:17] <%Ryllharu> What did occur, broke my suspension of disbelief a bit
[01:18] <Arkangel> That's the whole point
[01:18] <%Ryllharu> No
[01:18] <%Ryllharu> It's dropped the series in my regard
[01:18] <Arkangel> They place their faith on technology so highly that they never accounted for this
[01:18] <%Ryllharu> substantially
[01:18] <%Ryllharu> It's a gaping plot hole
[01:18] <Arkangel> There are no loopholes in this world they've created
[01:18] <Arkangel> Or there shouldn't be
[01:19] <Arkangel> The fact that there is is so foreign to sybil that it doesn't know how to react
[01:19] <%Ryllharu> There is NO way the system should have allowed that. After the fact, he should have registered as over 200
[01:19] <%Ryllharu> It should be a hard-coded action
[01:19] <Arkangel> The system doesn't recongize violence as a changer of hue
[01:20] <Arkangel> The hue changes, and that's what leads to violence
[01:20] <Arkangel> It didn't account for the reverse
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> No level of oversight on the development of the Sibyl system should be that obtuse
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> no
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> fuck it
[01:20] <Arkangel> Ryll
[01:20] <Arkangel> Think of this as blind faith
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> arch: It's a load of shit
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> period
[01:20] <Arkangel> Technology is their new religion
[01:20] <Arkangel> They don't question it
[01:20] <%Ryllharu> Look
[01:20] <Arkangel> And technology doesn't question itself
[01:21] <Arkangel> It's a set of rules and orders and this guy is "humanity's" response
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> The system can recognize NON sentient, non-living threats to the operator of the dominator
[01:21] <Arkangel> Because humanity is more than that
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> But it can't recognize the imminent threat to innocent life
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> ?
[01:21] <Arkangel> Because non sentient being have no hue color
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> That's a GAPING plot hole
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> no
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> fuck it
[01:21] <Arkangel> So it was designed to deal with that
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> It's a load of shit
[01:21] <%Ryllharu> You CANNOT justify that plot hole
[01:22] <Arkangel> Not within my own rules but i can from this world's perspective
[01:22] <Arkangel> And i did
[01:22] <Arkangel> Read above
[01:22] <%Ryllharu> This series may have dropped below Btooom, just for that
[01:24] <Arkangel> Yeah i disagree with that completely
[01:24] <Arkangel> PP has been getting better each week for a while now
[01:24] <%Ryllharu> No arch
[01:24] <Arkangel> Yes Ryll
[01:25] <%Ryllharu> Technology being their "religion" doesn't matter
[01:25] <%Ryllharu> It is 100% unbelievable that the developer of the sybil system would simply forget a contingency like that
[01:25] <Arkangel> I'll simplify it even further
[01:25] <%Ryllharu> There's no way
[01:25] <Arkangel> As time went on and technology was developed
[01:25] <%Ryllharu> You CANNOT justify it
[01:25] <%Ryllharu> It's a plot hole
[01:25] <Arkangel> Humanity came to believe that technology > humanity
[01:26] <Arkangel> This guy is now here to tell them that's a load of shit
[01:26] <%Ryllharu> "oh, fiddlesticks, I forgot that people might get murdered"
[01:26] <%Ryllharu> BS
[01:26] <Arkangel> Crow Storm is a bitch
[01:26] <%Ryllharu> You're seeing the forest, and missing the fake cellphone tower trees
[01:28] <Arkangel> You're just not seeing it from the right perspective
[01:28] <Arkangel> You're judging this world on your own logic
[01:28] <Arkangel> Maybe if you lived in a fake world made of holograms you'd feel differently
[01:32] <%Ryllharu> No, I'm judging it from a perspective of someone who would MAKE such a system
[01:32] <%Ryllharu> You would never forget shit liket hat
[01:32] <%Ryllharu> End of discussion.
[01:33] <Arkangel> Lol, end of discussion indeed

Kraco is more or less agreeing with my points, or with what i meant at least.

[Buffalobiian]

You're thinking about this from the consequence perspective Ryll, while the system uses a cause (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary).

If you add in a rule that says "taking an innocent life adds 200 to their PP", it's implying:

<<Just in case Sybil didn't work properly to add 200PP before, we'll add a safety net and say "taking an inno....">>

Thing is, there is no "just in case". Sybil is law, the bible, God.. you name it.

If Sybil was implemented under the idea that it can't be wrong, then you can't write things that imply it can be wrong.

I know this contrasts with how it seemingly evaluates inanimate objects.. and thought of this thought experiment:

1) Droid/car is out of control and is about to collide with Inspector. Lethal. Destroy.
2) Droid w. pilot is out of control and is about to collide with Inspector. Lethal. Destroy? PP?
3) Flying human is out of control and is about to collide with inspector. Lethal. Action??

If I believed in the Sybil system as much as these guys do, I would also argue that it shouldn't judge people as objects and should evaluate them based on their sentient minds.

It sucks... but my personal argument to myself is "Hey, they made a gun that takes 10 seconds to say Hello>Authorised>Graded_PP>Mode_Set before it can do anything.. this ain't so bad".

I'm not sure where the whole "will" thing is coming into all this, but it was interesting that Makishima's PP was lower the more harmful he seemed to be. I would hypothesis that it all comes down to malicious intent. He intends to free Akane from her mental prison. Hopefully it's a bit more involved than this though.

Maybe we'll learn later that Akane is also another ever-pure person.

[Kraco]

I'm not sure where the whole "will" thing is coming into all this, but it was interesting that Makishima's PP was lower the more harmful he seemed to be.

Who knows. I thought it kept getting lower because more time passed from his thrilling time of watching the geezer and Kogami fight each other, so he was calming down. So, his emotions likely were diminishing. But that's just my take.

The society with the Sybil has a serious problem with certain aspects of law enforcement. It has been solved, to a degree, with the bubblegum and duct tape solution of enforcers, but it's a dodgy solution. Basically to shoot somebody with a gun will cloud your psycho-pass. So, how can they have the cops do it? A partial solution to that is make a tool that will judge if pulling the trigger is right or wrong, the dominator. I'm sure that helps people's psycho-pass to stay within acceptable margins, since the blame is shifted elsewhere. It might not matter to the enforcers in practice, but for the sake of appearances the society would likely want to grant them the same "guilt protection" it gives the inspectors who still have a good psycho-pass. (Of course the real reason is not giving real guns to latent criminals, but that's not very politically correct.)

I don't have anything else to add because I addressed the issue on a larger scale already earlier.

[Yukimura]

My take on all this business is that somewhere deep down the dominator is relying on the subjects unconscious sense of right and wrong or some other assumption based on the person being evaluated which Makishima doesn't have or doesn't adhere to as expected. Maybe it's something that anyone with the right mindset could do or maybe he's just got a weird brain chemistry and is a fluke but all it means so far is that the system at it stands now is insufficient to punish all guilty parties. In the grand scheme of things I think Makishima's low psycho-pass is a much less troublesome issue than the completely unaddressed issue of the potential for a cloudy psycho pass not to amount to anything as this leads to innocent people being labeled as latent criminals. It's been said that it's better to not punish a guilty person than to punish an innocent one and Makishima's circumstance ndicates that the system may be following the first half of that at least.

While it's bad that Makishima couldn't be prejudged by the system for his crime everyone else who has been killed to date in the series has been so by someone the system COULD have caught. Thus I consider his potential for system destroying mischief to be fairly limited as he is most dangerous for his ability to raise the psycho pass of others, but those others can, in theory, be caught. The system needs some way to quietly deal with people who are known to be criminals but have no psycho-pass pollution to show for it, but his case doesn't necessarily disprove the theory that a high psycho-pass is a direct indicator of criminal intent which is what would have to be tackled to bring the system down.

Guffawing about how it doesn't make sense that this would ever be allowed to stand from the perspective of the adoption of the system is fair enough, but I would counter with why one would think that the system should be perfect to have been forced down everyone's throat. With enough capital, political clout, and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep public opinion on your side you could force a system like this onto a populace even if you knew there was a slim (let's assume Makishima is literally a one in one hundred million aberration) potential for the psycho pass to fail to predict imminent violent intent.

[Ryllharu]

The far bigger problem I have with it is that him performing the very act of murder instead of merely enabling it turned Makishima from a mastermind sort of character, who is perfectly sane pure-white in his own mind and thus safe from the judgment of a Dominator, into a very cliché, stereotypical fantasy villain.

Now he has become a, "Bwahahah! Your weapons are useless against me! Only the mythical horn of Krondor can destroy my shield, and it is lost to the ages!" type of last boss character.

He went from potentially very interesting, to very boring, all in a single second.

It's not that the Dominator doesn't register him as a problem, it's that it allows him to murder people. He should have always stayed a hands-off villain.

edit: He's suddenly not a genius toying at the edges of a system, preying at its weaknesses, he's just another Medaka Box villain in the wrong series.

[Kraco]

That doesn't make much sense at all, unless your point is specifically that from the story point of view he should have kept his very own hands free of blood. However, considering he has made it possible for others to murder who knows how many people over the years, it's completely and utterly useless to claim he should have a clean psycho-pass simply because he never pulled the trigger directly. A general can order his troops to slaughter ten thousand civilians yet never kill one directly, yet the general is a far bigger criminal than any single soldier under him - and that should reflect in his psycho-pass.

Forgetting the dominator issue, Makishima needing to kill the girl was fine for me story wise as well. In fact not killing anybody by himself and only letting those he manipulates to do it is a big scretch in terms of realism. There was nobody present for him to make murder the girl in the first place. Yet the girl had to die because he became interested in Akane. And basically his interest was either to make her a killer without the proxy of a dominator between them or have her suffer the psychological consequences of watching helplessly her friend being slain. That was exceedingly Makishima like, I'd say, even though we know little of him. He's not a textbook villain precisely because he's not following some inane pattern that supposedly can't be broken (like Hollywood psychopaths do). He's very sane and very insane at the same time, which is likely why the Sybil can't judge him at all.

[Ryllharu]

However, considering he has made it possible for others to murder who knows how many people over the years, it's completely and utterly useless to claim he should have a clean psycho-pass simply because he never pulled the trigger directly. A general can order his troops to slaughter ten thousand civilians yet never kill one directly, yet the general is a far bigger criminal than any single soldier under him - and that should reflect in his psycho-pass.

That's only if they felt bad about it, right? There are dozens of military leaders in European history who even throughout their trials at the Hague or wherever, were 100% convinced they were doing the right thing. There have been quite a number even in the last few years, as ex-Serbian leadership is slowly tracked down. All of them convinced that what they are doing on the correct side of justice...just like Makishima.

There was nobody present for him to make murder the girl in the first place. Yet the girl had to die because he became interested in Akane. And basically his interest was either to make her a killer without the proxy of a dominator between them or have her suffer the psychological consequences of watching helplessly her friend being slain.

Irrelevant. There are so many worse things he could have done by simply walking away with her in tow after Akane failed with the shotgun. Her friend's screams, and not knowing what the hell Makishima was going to do with her would be far more psychologically damaging. Not only would Akane suffer knowing she failed (as she did in the episode), but she would also be devastated by not knowing what he was going to do with her. Given his previous protégés so far, I imagine Akane or the Enforcers could imagine some truly terrifying possibilities.

The unknown is always so much worse.

edit: Foremost of these would be a clue we were already given. If the poor raped woman in the first developed a lethal pyscho-pass reading just from how she was treated, combine that with the statement Akane's friend made that she wouldn't mind becoming a latent criminal after seeing Kogami. For someone of Makishima's skill, it wouldn't be all that hard to make a new subject to observe, would it?

[Kraco]

I guess we could make all kinds of theories why he did things this way. For fairness's sake, since there isn't hugely wrong with the story otherwise, it would be sensible to consider the story innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. So, Makishima killed the girl right there possibly because she would have been a hindrance and he knew the other cops, who included enforcers not so helpless without a dominator, would be coming soon. And since he was originally interested in Kogami, and Akane was nothing but a last minute addition, it's not like he would need to go all out to formulate masterful plots to maximise her suffering.

I don't think the Sybil and psycho-pass can be so simple that if a criminal doesn't feel bad about what he did, he would get a clear reading. There must be lots of pathological crooks out there who could steal a lollipop from a child's hand and never look back. Something much more rare is going on inside Makishima's head.

[shinta|hikari]

Indeed, Makshima did say that the Sybil system did see through the soul. Most psychopaths don't feel bad or guilty about things they have done, and if that is enough to have a clean pass, then the Sybil system would not have been adopted in the first place.

What makes Makishima special is because he is supposedly the only one to circumvent this. This is what makes him fitting to be the final boss of the show.

EDIT: About the unknown being worse, that is subjective. I would say that it depends on the person. Pessimists with vivid imaginations would fit into your category, but others would simply not think about it as much. Psychological trauma usually happens to those who witness something, not those who imagined something.

[Buffalobiian]

I thought Makishima initially took the girl hostage in order to continue to have fun with Kogami. (He'll personally try to solve the case because he's .. well... personally involved now). He might also feel that he should help Akane out.

Lather Makishima saw Akane and decided to go in a different direction and try something more spontaneous. In all honesty, Makishima risked dying when he tried his little experiment with Akane - the murder was simply the conclusion to Akane's choice. He took the hostage with Kogami being the reason, but used her when Akane looked interesting.

[Yukimura]

I think I can understand where Ryll is coming from now that I've bothered to evaluate his position instead of ignoring him b/c he's being a naysayer and I can agree that Urobochi sacrificed some of Makishima's potential 'i don't know what' as an antagonist by demonstrating his ability to be above the established system through inexplicable specialness rather than a deft manipulation of established loopholes. Instead of demonstrating that he is bound by the same rules as everyone else, but he's just much better at working within them than everyone else we've been shown that he is blessed with some sort of elevated ability which makes him effortlessly superior to the protagonists.

If we were a group of film critics or something maybe that would mean something but as it stands I can honestly say that I am not at all put out about the doors that were closed on Makishima's character by this reveal because I don't care how original or unoriginal a villain Makishima is.

[Kraco]

I think I can understand where Ryll is coming from now that I've bothered to evaluate his position instead of ignoring him b/c he's being a naysayer and I can agree that Urobochi sacrificed some of Makishima's potential 'i don't know what' as an antagonist by demonstrating his ability to be above the established system through inexplicable specialness rather than a deft manipulation of established loopholes. Instead of demonstrating that he is bound by the same rules as everyone else, but he's just much better at working within them than everyone else we've been shown that he is blessed with some sort of elevated ability which makes him effortlessly superior to the protagonists.

Yes, in that sense it's certainly understandable. If this was a story centered around catching the one evil final boss, then and only then it might have been a mistake to render Makishima that much simpler and less mysterious by this episode. But is this that kind of a story? It's true we saw Makishima right in the beginning in the future flashback (or whatever you call that), but afterwards I immediately started to feel this story is about Akane's struggles, Kogami's personality broken by the obsession, and the world screwed by the Sybil. Makishima was simply there somewhere, half forgotten. So, I don't particularly feel like that half forgotten villain's character suffered greatly as a consequence of this episode. In fact things happening like this just reinforced my initial view of this show, which didn't hold Makishima as the pinnacle.

[Ryllharu]

If Arch can do this lazy type of posting, so will I:

[21:36] <@Yukimura> I think i've figured it out
[21:37] <@Yukimura> Ryll is lamenting that psycho pass can't possibly be a 10
[21:37] <@Yukimura> while the rest of us are happy that it's almost guaranteed to be 8+
[21:37] <@Yukimura> on personal rating scales of course
[21:41] <&Y> psycho pass is like the equivalent of The Mentalist or whatever
[21:51] <@Yukimura> i've never watched the mentalist, can I have another item from that 'whatever' list?
[22:11] <Arkangel> It's actually nothing like the mentalist
[22:12] <Arkangel> I hate that shw
[22:12] <Arkangel> show*
[22:20] <&Y> it's a police procedural with a gimmick
[22:22] <@Yukimura> perfect
[22:23] <&Y> what i'm saying is
[22:23] <&Y> psycho-pass is a show you'd never watch if it wasn't a japanese anime
[22:23] <Arkangel> [03:20] <&Y> it's a police procedural with a gimmick
[22:23] <&Y> because it's a fuckin police procedural for god's sake
[22:23] <Arkangel> Which described 99% of all cop shows these days
[22:23] <Arkangel> Fucking CSI started it all i reckon
[22:30] <@Yukimura> I can almost see where you're coming from Y, except for the
[22:33] <@Yukimura> ah nvm, you covered the fact that it's an anime which is the thing that makes it not fully fit the procedural mold anyway
[22:41] <&Y> yeah
[22:42] <&Y> somehow being animated by asians makes police procedurals blockbuster tv

It's has nothing to do with rating, and entirely to do with believability.

But do keep projecting what you think my thought process is.

A badly written plot point that breaks suspension of disbelief for some isn't something others can defend. Conversely, if it didn't break suspension of disbelief for others, it's not something you can really persuade them into agreeing with.

I know Arch worships Gen Urobuchi for Fate/Zero and Madoka, so he was a lost cause. If I can't convince you others by now, there's no point in continuing to attempt to do so.

(As an aside: 10s are only for series that are compositionally perfect for me. Pyscho-Pass was never going to be a 10 for me. PP failed in the first episode because I hated the art style of the female characters, which don't match the male characters. It's the mismatch that is the problem.)

and I can agree that Urobochi sacrificed some of Makishima's potential 'i don't know what' as an antagonist by demonstrating his ability to be above the established system through inexplicable specialness rather than a deft manipulation of established loopholes. Instead of demonstrating that he is bound by the same rules as everyone else, but he's just much better at working within them than everyone else we've been shown that he is blessed with some sort of elevated ability which makes him effortlessly superior to the protagonists.

Far more deftly said than I could ever convey.

[Xelbair]

Theory:
Sybil system upgrades itself. It uses the values and moral system of few people connected to a some kind of machine.
Makishima and Akane are next candidates for an 'upgrade'(clear psycho-pass, always. Akane might be the only candidate). Therefore it pitted them against each other, Akane was guided to Bureau so she would have 100% chance to confront Makishima.
Take note that current shitstorm started after Akane joined - one of enforcers confirmed(Kogami i think) that it is really bad only recently.

[Kraco]

Take note that current shitstorm started after Akane joined - one of enforcers confirmed(Kogami i think) that it is really bad only recently.

That's not true at all. Makishima was manipulating latent killers way back, when that colleague of Kogami was investigating it and got killed, turning Kogami into an enforcer. Akane was likely in the uni back then, learning how to become the kind of textbook anti-detective Gino loves. We have no idea whatsoever how far and wide Makishima has been practicing his foul art, because logic dictates we only know the tip of the iceberg. The shitstorm has been going on all the time, and it was nothing but a coincidence the cops now happened to stumble upon it, although their progress was greatly aided by Akane's efforts to encourage Kogami instead of hindering his every move like Gino likes to do.

[Ryllharu]

I'll be honest, I'm hoping the next episode gives us a good look at the "therapy" that trauma victims are meant to go to.

That will be quite interesting, if they give us a good look at it. I can't imagine it is merely something as simple as talking to a few psychologists while laying on a couch.

[fireheart]

I don't remember 100% on this but didn't the guy that killed his coworkers in the factory have a clearer hue after he killed one of them than before? If nothing else that episode showed that violence towards others can lead to a clearer hue since the coworkers that bullied him didn't get a cloudier hue rather it kept them from getting cloudy. In that perspective the whole thing with Makishima isn't newly introduced to the series, just on a different scale compared to before. Though I'm more with Kraco on that Makishima isn't the interesting part so it's not a big loss for me.

[Buffalobiian]

I don't remember 100% on this but didn't the guy that killed his coworkers in the factory have a clearer hue after he killed one of them than before? If nothing else that episode showed that violence towards others can lead to a clearer hue since the coworkers that bullied him didn't get a cloudier hue rather it kept them from getting cloudy. In that perspective the whole thing with Makishima isn't newly introduced to the series, just on a different scale compared to before. Though I'm more with Kraco on that Makishima isn't the interesting part so it's not a big loss for me.

Your Hue is like your stress level. It's possible for it to become less cloudy after you kill someone, but your Crime Coefficient is a different thing. That's why the gun still opened fire on him when they finally managed to relay Sybil's signal underground with a drone.

Makishima's Coefficient remained low the entire episode.

[fireheart]

Your Hue is like your stress level. It's possible for it to become less cloudy after you kill someone, but your Crime Coefficient is a different thing. That's why the gun still opened fire on him when they finally managed to relay Sybil's signal underground with a drone.

Makishima's Coefficient remained low the entire episode.

I'm pretty sure the guy was a lot more stressed when he was trying to kill Kogami than during the regularly scheduled scans, or rather his hue probably got cloudier as he was being cornered mentally and was about to be found out which could have played a part in why the dominator would fire on him.

The dominator reads the Psycho-Pass of the people you aim it at and analyses it with Crime Coefficient and job aptitude from what I gathered in episode 3. But if it only calculated based on the Crime Coefficient then there's no reason why they need to make an assessment of the person from the beginning. Hence to me the hue is a representation of your Psycho-Pass and depending on how clear/cloudy it is combined with other factors which Sibyl uses to make an assessment.
For example the girl in the first episode, her Crime Coefficient went up high enough for Sibyl to deem her unneeded. And the criminal told her that her hue was getting cloudier and looked like his which probably drove her stress up even more. Then subsequently when she seemed to have calmed down and relaxed her Crime Coefficient went down. While they aren't the same, they are related to each other.

[Xelbair]

In that episode - the one with robot factory - they said that Hue assesment was just a brief look at someone's Crime Coefficient. Getting crime coefficient requires direct connection to Sybil, and queues are damn long for that - but dominators are privileged - so they are using Hue as a cheap and fast method(but not as accurate).