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It's not equivalent: it's designing a procedural system that produces certain outcomes. There's no reason to think those outcomes are inherently superior, but i

by scarmig 10y ago

It's not equivalent: it's designing a procedural system that produces certain outcomes. There's no reason to think those outcomes are inherently superior, but it's also unreasonable to think that it's equivalent to particular people doing the approval or rejection. It's similar to a hiring process: which is better, having a known procedure and rubric for choosing which candidates to hire, or just allow a manager to go with their gut and choose their nephew? There's a sense in which they are the same--at some level, designing a system must still take into account human values and biases. But that's still a huge step forward from having people, even smart people, make gut decisions just based on what's in their head, even if that's still a decision driven by human values and biases.

zardo 10y ago
>But that's still a huge step forward from having people, even smart people, make gut decisions just based on what's in their head, even if that's still a decision driven by human values and biases. I don't see how that follows. The biases of an algorithm or beurocracy aren't inherently superior, they are just inherently repeatable.
- scarmig 10y ago
  Being repeatable is valuable in itself: it makes the procedure testable and inherently more transparent. Yes, someone could come up with a hiring decision procedure that has as its first step "first, immediately reject all women and nonwhites." But that'd be subject to auditing and discovery in a way that a single grumpy old man finding arbitrary reasons to reject all women and nonwhites is not. You can iterate and improve on designed systems; you can't iterate and improve on human fallibility.
  - zardo 10y ago
    There's a basic assumption you have to make, anything we don't know how to quantify isn't worth considering. That's how we got standardized testing. We get fairness by treating everyone equally, without compassion, without empathy.

by scarmig 10y ago

zardo 10y ago

>But that's still a huge step forward from having people, even smart people, make gut decisions just based on what's in their head, even if that's still a decision driven by human values and biases. I don't see how that follows. The biases of an algorithm or beurocracy aren't inherently superior, they are just inherently repeatable.

scarmig 10y ago
Being repeatable is valuable in itself: it makes the procedure testable and inherently more transparent. Yes, someone could come up with a hiring decision procedure that has as its first step "first, immediately reject all women and nonwhites." But that'd be subject to auditing and discovery in a way that a single grumpy old man finding arbitrary reasons to reject all women and nonwhites is not. You can iterate and improve on designed systems; you can't iterate and improve on human fallibility.
- zardo 10y ago
  There's a basic assumption you have to make, anything we don't know how to quantify isn't worth considering. That's how we got standardized testing. We get fairness by treating everyone equally, without compassion, without empathy.