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I agree with you in general. My issue with this line of thinking for policy decisions, is that I personally believe relying solely on objective probability theo

by _qbxp 10y ago

I agree with you in general. My issue with this line of thinking for policy decisions, is that I personally believe relying solely on objective probability theory to associate people with _______, without looking at the larger picture, and then building policies from that, could exacerbate the reason the association is being payed attention to in the first place. Let's say theoretically, that people who wear red shirts are objectively more likely to commit a crime. Policies are made such that people with red shirts are targeted for extra policing. People with red shirts who are not criminals feel discriminated and overly watched, and because of that, generate a resentment against society and (I admit this is a jump), ultimately end up with a higher disposition towards committing crimes. And then it just goes on ad infinitum. So in some situations, I would argue that society benefits from ignoring these objective probabilities entirely, if there's evidence that taking action based on them could cause downstream negative consequences.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
I've seen this argument brought up in discussions about racial profiling, and... I think this may be a real - and in some situations significant - phenomenon. I currently have no idea how to model it in a way that could plug into the probability calculations. I need to think about this some more. I say in some situations, because the typical case is that if something (e.g. wearing red shirts) is likely to attract attention you don't want, you'll tend to avoid doing that thing (you'll stop wearing red shirts in order for the police to leave you alone). So there's a negative feedback loop. But I can see how this loop can fail in case of things one can't (easily) change - like skin color, cultural background, religion, etc. This leads me to believe that just looking for probability-based signals may be a good thing in case of guns and encryption, but a bad thing in case of race and religion.

by _qbxp 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I've seen this argument brought up in discussions about racial profiling, and... I think this may be a real - and in some situations significant - phenomenon. I currently have no idea how to model it in a way that could plug into the probability calculations. I need to think about this some more. I say in some situations, because the typical case is that if something (e.g. wearing red shirts) is likely to attract attention you don't want, you'll tend to avoid doing that thing (you'll stop wearing red shirts in order for the police to leave you alone). So there's a negative feedback loop. But I can see how this loop can fail in case of things one can't (easily) change - like skin color, cultural background, religion, etc. This leads me to believe that just looking for probability-based signals may be a good thing in case of guns and encryption, but a bad thing in case of race and religion.