SCP Foundation

The concept here is of a small metal unadorned crown with an inscription inside the rim in Hebrew that reads, “Crown Of Sin”. Upon wearing it, the wearer perceives numerals between 0 and 10 floating above people’s heads that correspond with how many of the Hebrew 10 commandments that person has violated.

Naturally, stating this explicitly is not a good idea from a writing perspective, so I wanted to brainstorm some other ways to go about it. It could be extremely vague, or it could posit a hypothesis about it, although confirming such a hypothesis is difficult by its nature. Testing might hint at it, or it might just be observed vaguely that the numbers are always 0 for infants and most children, but can vary widely for adults or even elderly subjects.

I also think such an object would probably have to have a few special rules around its use, because the temptation would be there for foundation members to treat other members poorly based on the numbers viewed (despite the fact that there’s no realistic way to know WHICH commandments were broken). The foundation doesn’t want researchers going around saying, “I don’t want to be around Bob, he’s a 7 for crying out loud.”

Thoughts?

What you have here is pretty barebones, but there are some ideas in this that I do find quite interesting.

“I don’t want to be around Bob, he’s a 7 for crying out loud.”

I think you need a backstory, incorporating this element. Like you said, never explicety say what it does, but… maybe imply that there were some people who got into some real fights over it. Or that someone was hurt over being "impure" according to it. Or even that they deserved it.

the numbers are always 0 for infants and most children

I see an issue with this. At around 1-2, kids are gonna start covetting their peers things like there's no tomorrow. Jealously kicks in very quickly. When you're daycare age, you're probably old enough to steal. I still remember that twerp who took my toy dino when I was like 4. Honoring your mother and father? Forget it for toddlers. What about kids who believe in different religions? A Hindu child, for instance, who is old enough to recognize some parts of Hinduism, is gonna have broken the "no other dogs before me" thing… Keeping the Sabbath holy? Nope, they're smearing paint on the walls while bullying their little brother. Children and toddlers and even infants are horrible would not be keeping to the commandments very well.

Basically everyone has broken at least 3-5 at some point. Maybe capitalize off that, show how percieved purity leads people astray. I can legitimately imagine circumstances where someone who is an 8 is actually a good person, etc.