So much Psycho-Pass....

S1:E13

"Today, the world has realized a stable prosperity and achieved the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people... Planning one's life...Obtaining what one desires...When people make choices, no matter what they are, they ask for Sibyl's judgment rather than agonize over it."

"No mistakes are allowed with Sibyl. That's the ideal... If the system is perfect it shouldn't even require humans to operate it."

Is this their version of a utopia? Or at least what they are aiming to achieve. Is an entirely computer-operated society even a utopia at all? Should the humans be involved in the functionality of their society or does that not matter if they don't have to worry about anything (in theory)...

Are the criminals in Psycho-Pass "hardwired to self-destruct?"

Soooo, even the title of this song feels relevant to Psycho-Pass in general as it's all about catching criminals and I'd say that they criminals themselves are pretty unkind... 

This song is specifically for episode three though (goes with my other post, I have a lot of catching up to do (so, sorry for anyone who is actually looking at these)) lyrics in the song like "I've become hostage to my mind" and "dominate, killing of the innocence" go with Yellow-Green snapping and such, though I know the victims aren't entirelyyyyy innocent...

Good Ol' Yellow-Green

I wanted to take a look at episode three of “Psycho-Pass” because of the obvious issues that are presented in the drone factory (obviously there are issues presented in all of the episodes of Psycho-Pass buuuuut ya know…). Good ol’ Yellow-Green is going around killing people with the drones, but nobody suspects him because he is the underdog; he is bullied by other factory workers so that they can take their stress out on him. Which is, in a sense, throwing this one person to the dogs in order to alleviate any strain felt by the other workers. What I find pretty dumb of them to not realize is that all of the bullying and pressure put on Yellow-Green is going to/ is causing him to have repressed emotions of hatred towards his coworkers. And all of those negative emotions held in are going to raise his Psycho-Pass until he feels the need to alleviate his own pressure back onto them. What’s also interesting about this episode is how Akane starts to trust in the enforcer’s judgments more. She has had her doubts of the Sybil System from the beginning and couldn’t quite bring herself to believe in how the enforcers were operating on their own knowledge. I think that it says a lot about Akane’s character and judgment abilities when she is willing to trust the latent criminals to bring Yellow-Green to justice. She knows that they will be able to find a way to determine if he is the actual murderer or not, and that the law must, sometimes, be skirted around (aka Kogani’s interesting methods of information retrieval) in order to find the truth and enforce the rules.

Ghost in the Machine

The big reveal of our second set of episodes, that the Sybil system determines Crime Coefficients by analyzing a scanned person's brain and comparing it to a vast catalogue of "deviant" brains collected over the years and which comprise the intelligence of Sybil itself, continues a running theme I've noticed in recent years. I think I could make an argument for having dystopia as a recognizable sub-genre.

The theme is this; a Dystopia either is the polar a bad utopia (in the sense that the writer intends for reader to not want to live there) or has a lie or a series of  lies which support the supposed Utopian society. We've seen a few examples of the latter this semester, namely Psycho Pass and Minority Report, but many others support this definition, including classics like Make Room (aka Soylent Green).

One Law, victim or villain.

One of the most striking moments in the first five episodes of Psycho Pass comes at the end of the first episode, when we learn that the psychological instability caused by trauma or high-stress situations is not differentiated from actual criminal behavior. The reason for this becomes evident later, but it is an apt parallel to the real world stigmatization of trauma victims. Japan has this issue as much as we in the US do, but for different reasons. The extreme societal pressure to excel at your work, to do it stoically and without complaint, regardless of suffering or negative physical and mental health consequences, created a similar sense that someone who suffers a breakdown due to stress or other factors is to blame for it.

Crime Prevention

“Being a detective isn't about bringing someone down; rather, it should be about protecting someone.” Enforcer Shinya Kogami, Ep2

In the first episode, Akane’s instinct was to protect the victim, and she even knew how to manipulate the Sibyl System so the woman would get paralyzed rather than injured or killed, but she had to explain her choices. Is the Sibyl System of Psycho-Pass a more or less effective system of crime prevention than the Precrime of Minority Report? Additionally, what does the concept of stopping crimes before they happen say about human nature?