10

When the crime coefficient of an individual rises high enough, the Dominators are set to kill them when possible, seemingly by exploding them from inside. This causes some problems:

  • The police lose their chance to question their suspect, possibly hampering ongoing investigations (including information on Makishima).
  • It is ethically questionable to destroy someone's body; Japanese culture would probably want an intact body for a proper mourning and funeral.

Of course, maybe the Lethal Eliminator just looks cool enough, but are there better explanations?

Arturia Pendragon
  • 2,399
  • 2
  • 21
  • 23
  • Did you see the whole anime? ;-) – Rinzwind Apr 27 '13 at 21:08
  • 3
    @Rinzwind If the answer is later in the series, you're welcome to post it (with appropriate spoiler tags, of course). – Cattua Apr 27 '13 at 21:41
  • 1
    @Rinzwind, I did watch the whole anime, and I would be mortified had I missed something so important :( – Arturia Pendragon Apr 28 '13 at 06:11
  • Hmmmm... As a bit of conjecture: 1) Involvement with Makishima is probably the exception (and could potentially be inferred from additional factors), and you'd be dealing with dangerous people regardless. 2) In order to get to a state where the Dominators go for 'kill', you're not likely to have been interacting with anyone closely for a while... or not anyone that 'matters'. Mourning would have the potential to disrupt someone's score, but if they just disappeared? – Clockwork-Muse Apr 29 '13 at 18:32
  • but a Dominator that launched bullets in Lethal Eliminator mode would be no less useful than today's guns in law enforcement, returning the benefit of questioning. – Arturia Pendragon Apr 30 '13 at 13:40

5 Answers5

7
  • The police lose their chance to question their suspect, possibly hampering ongoing investigations (including information on Makishima).

The premise in the series is that Sybil can identify any criminal with a simple mental scan, and most of the city is scanned constantly for stress levels and such. Hence, killing off a criminal won't hamper any sort of investigation, because all criminals are found just in time. In other words, there is no such thing as organized crime, because the rigorous scanning measures always detect everything in the city.

... Which is of course flawed. Individuals like Makishima can't be detected. However, as we learn later in the series, such "criminals" have a special role in the system, so we can ignore them.

  • It is ethically questionable to destroy someone's body; Japanese culture would probably want an intact body for a proper mourning and funeral.

Sybil has crafted a peaceful society by making objective, calculated decisions. It has determined that an individual with a criminal coefficient greater than 300 has no salvation, and is only a danger for everyone else. I think it is a key feature of the series to display a society that is culturally different from ours.

Saturn
  • 4,242
  • 5
  • 32
  • 68
2

The Sybil system has largely replaced most of the cultural values and critical thinking.

Later in the series a way to circumvent the system is found, and someone begins to mercilessly beat a woman to death on a crowded sidewalk. No one cares or even flinches. The only problem the system detects is that the woman is under a great deal of stress. It kindly suggests she chill out. Since it reports no real problems, people just curiously look on, if they bother at all.

We could argue that our instincts would lead to some reaction, but in this story they are completely unphased.

The loss from instant execution is the price paid to have such assurances that you are safe and do not have to think. In our world, execution is performed on extreme criminals after sufficient evidence has been found. Sybil was a way to get that evidence business handled in a second, rather than months or years.

As a side note, part of the motivation for the 'bad guys' is the torpor and ennui caused by this state of non-criticality and predetermined lives.

zibadawa timmy
  • 3,479
  • 13
  • 21
2

The idea behind a Dominator is two fold:

First the most common reason for the kill state is that the person is no longer capable of rehabilitation. Their psycho-pass is so far gone that rehabilitation is a waste of time and means and Sibyl sees it as pointless, thus elimination.

Second, Sibyl has an agenda. Sibyl can seek to silence a specific person for it's own sake or for another reason.

On the flip side of the coin Sibyl can also choose to keep someone alive that it knows is evil for it's own purposes.

It is usually the first case as the number of people Sibyl truly has interest in is very small but Sibyl is by no means objective.

Curtis Sumpter
  • 376
  • 1
  • 5
  • Even if someone is incapable of rehabilitation? Isn't killing that person immediately making it hard to gather intelligence against organized crime? The Chief even admitted that the system is not foolproof and thus requires human detectives. – Arturia Pendragon May 01 '13 at 05:37
0

In the Psycho-Pass universe, they don't care as much about catching guilty people, they care more about eliminating people (either by death or rehabilitation) who they see as a threat to their society.

It's also established that in their society has been going on so long that people are so unused to crime (outside people that have identified by Sybil), that they are very unlikely to commit a crime or even really comprehend it. This is shown by the fact that "normal" people have no idea how to deal with any sort of crime if they were to witness one. That implies to me that crime, despite how much its shown in the show, is supposed to be very rare, and most people are pretty incapable of committing one.

People believe that the Sybil system will generally catch people before that point where they are in a mindset where they are capable of committing a crime, and therefore they do not have time to commit a premeditated crime like organized crime.

Lastly, people believe that Sybil will inevitably catch anyone who has committed a crime eventually anyways, since they believe those people will always have a high crime coefficient.

So I assume that most have the most likely erroneous belief that because of these factors, things like organized crime do not exist, and therefore investigations aren't all that necessary anyways.

Kai
  • 946
  • 4
  • 11
0

Psyco-pass is a dystopia and AI controlled society anime.

In story of this category, All human was dominated by AI.

The world of Psyco-pass is controlled by AI (Sibyl System). AI will decide everything include who should be killed.

  • The police lose their chance to question their suspect, possibly hampering ongoing investigations (including information on Makishima).

If police side people (like protagonist) know something, nothing changed. Because AI decide the penalty instead of human.

  • It is ethically questionable to destroy someone's body; Japanese culture would probably want an intact body for a proper mourning and funeral.

Right, Japanese have funerals with body. Maybe that scene was created for emphasize how AI is cold and dark side of AI controlled societies.

kumagoro
  • 2,883
  • 18
  • 25