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Very well said, especially the last paragraph. One wonders if we have the procedures we do because it gives a thin veneer of scientific respectability over a s
by harryh 11y ago
Very well said, especially the last paragraph.
One wonders if we have the procedures we do because it gives a thin veneer of scientific respectability over a system that might otherwise appear biased, racist & otherwise distasteful even if it's statistically valuable.
- mikeash 11y agoIt might even go further. I could see where a system that allows officers to search based only on their own suspicion to actually be biased, racist, and distasteful, while one where they have to call in the dog, and where they believe the dog actually gets results, might be much more evenhanded. There does seem to be a lot of "this is 'scientific' so it's good" in law enforcement. A lot of forensic techniques are just BS, but are accepted because they're "scientific." Or look at the recent article posted to HN about how polygraphs are nonsense.
- harryh 11y agoIndeed. One is forced to wonder what the solution is to this particular problem. I do not have a good answer.
- mikeash 11y agoIt's hard for me to come up with an answer, because I want to just say, "Don't search them at all, the War on Drugs is stupid anyway." Of course, it's the job of the police and the courts to come up with an answer, so we should be able to let them do it. But it seems they can't be trusted to reason about it well.
- harryh 11y agoWell sure but that doesn't really get to the core of the problem because I could just as easily substitute "guns" for "drugs" and all the issues will stay much the same (unless you're also a 2nd amendment purist in which case I might have to struggle to come up with another example.)
- tertius 11y agoExcept that they would still only deploy the dogs on cars that meet their bias.
- mikeash 11y agoRight, but your biases still get filtered through your thought processes. If all you need is your own suspicion, it could be easy to let one's bias against purple people run rampant, and search every purple person's car and nobody else's. If you have to call in a dog which you believe to be effective (even if it may not be) then you may only go to that trouble when you actually have some legitimate suspicion, rather than just going based off your anti-purple racism.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]