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You and pessimizer have just demonstrated pretty clearly why Techcrunch's language choices are bad. Pessimizer thinks the article is discussing inaccurate conc

You and pessimizer have just demonstrated pretty clearly why Techcrunch's language choices are bad. Pessimizer thinks the article is discussing inaccurate conclusions and that race realism is wrong ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158797 ). You think race realism is accurate but we should ignore it. You both read the same article but drew totally different conclusions due to it's imprecise language. Many examples in the article don't fit your description of the problem at all (e.g. difficulties in image processing, Tay the trolled chatbot, filter bubbles), so I don't think you are correctly describing what the article means by "bias" either. I can't figure it out either; the best I can come up with is "AI-related things that make the author have negative feelings". I didn't argue in favor of or against your mysterious "vernacular-discrimination" - how could I when I don't even know what it is? The only thing that I argued is that the imprecise language used by Techcrunch is confusing people and that this is bad.

smallnamespace 10y ago
You seem to be missing a key point, which is that the definitions of racial bias are and have always been contentious and up for debate. The definitions have always been in flux and have evolved heavily over time. This is basically true for many politically contentious topics, as different parties repeatedly try to redefine and reframe terms to their advantage. If you insist on precise language, then we basically can never have any conversation about race, racial bias, or any other topic where the terminology hasn't been completely nailed down.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The only thing I'm advocating for in this thread is clear thinking and clear communication - in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, not some mysterious unobservable thing that emanates from crystals. What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? It's almost as if you want to use a Motte-and-Bailey argument to confuse people ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric... ). Which is of course something that people do on this very topic: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    > in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. The overloading happened the other way around... > What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? Similarly, what benefit do we gain when we use a term of art in settings where most of the audience doesn't have the technical background to be quite sure what they're even discussing? Also, there is a notion that's distinct from statistical bias and that is highly political and controversial. Today we can say "bias" and most everyone will know we're talking about that topic. Whatever word or phrase we use in place of "bias" will be just as muddy and ill-defined. And probably some mathematician will come along and build some incomplete model and name if after that new word. And then we'll have this conversation again. The problem you're trying to avoid is unavoidable.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    It's 100% clear from the article that 'bias' is in the political, or common sense of the word. It's an existing, established usage, and not one that the authors simply made up. I fail to see why you insist that the authors use a word in its statistical sense when they clearly aren't making a statistical argument -- especially since the the statistical sense of the word bias is ultimately derived from the common usage, and not the other way around. The use of 'bias' in the sense of 'prejudice' in English dates from the 1570s, well before the development of statistics [1]. If anything, we should complain that the statisticians overloaded a perfectly good English word, instead of coming up with some Greek or Latin neologism for their own technical use. [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias > Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, Sounds like a stilted way to look at the world. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual?
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      If you read your source, you'll realize the term "bias" referred to a slant in the floor of a ball game providing an advantage to one player. This slant would (I'm inferring) cause one player to have an advantage over another equally matched player depending on which side of the slant they are on. This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. I agree with you that this techcrunch reporter is using the term in some other mysterious "vernacular" way. It's this usage that I'm objecting to since it's misleading and confusing. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual? If an article were discussing how coal is more "energetic" than nuclear energy, but was actually referring to energetic in the psychological sense (or maybe in the hippy energy crystal sense), I would in fact object. That would be similarly misleading.
throwaway729 10y ago
> You think race realism is accurate but we should ignore No, I do not think race realism is accurate. I just think that race realism is not an adequate defense of racial discrimination, AND ALSO that race realism is inaccurate. Pessimizer and I agree. > Many examples in the article don't fit your description of the problem at all You asked me what I think the problem is, not what I think the article's author thinks the problem is. The fact that I emphasize different things is not proof that I misunderstand the article's author. > The only thing that I argued is that the imprecise language used by Techcrunch is confusing people and that this is bad. Who, exactly, is supposed to be confused? Subject matter experts should know the difference, and if they don't, that's really their own problem. The public at large doesn't even know what statistical bias is, so why in the world would they be confused? No matter how confusing the current state of affairs is, it would be far more confusing if suddenly everyone starting using bias to mean statistical bias. Mostly because 99.9% of the people using the term wouldn't have an adequate grasp of mathematics to even know to which object they are referring. So if your priority is clarity, then keeping around the messy moralized and politicized vernacular notion of bias is far preferable. > I didn't argue in favor of or against your mysterious "vernacular-discrimination" - how could I when I don't even know what it is? Not everything in the world can be mathematically formalized. Most things don't even have fixed meaning over time. If your criticism is genuinely about imprecision, you've got a lot of much lower hanging fruit than "discrimination" and "bias"...
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The precise problem is that things like skin color etc. often have strong predictive power...Notice that an algorithm can exhibit this behavior without being (statistically) biased. - throwaway729, 2 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13159539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13159539 No, I do not think race realism is accurate. - throwaway729, 22 minutes ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160709 Whoops! The fact that I emphasize different things is not proof that I misunderstand the article's author. Fine - what do you believe the author thinks "bias" means? I.e. what is the underlying concept behind all his examples? Who, exactly, is supposed to be confused? Pessimizer, for one, who thinks the problem is inaccurate predictions. 2 hours ago you disagreed with this, but 22 minutes ago you agreed. I'm getting kind of confused. If your criticism is genuinely about imprecision, you've got a lot of much lower hanging fruit than "discrimination" and "bias"... Sure, but this is my field. I give talks about misuse of p-values and the multiple comparison problem, even though there might be other issues worth worrying about. It's just what interests me. The fact that bigger problems exist doesn't mean we shouldn't fix this one.

smallnamespace 10y ago

You seem to be missing a key point, which is that the definitions of racial bias are and have always been contentious and up for debate. The definitions have always been in flux and have evolved heavily over time. This is basically true for many politically contentious topics, as different parties repeatedly try to redefine and reframe terms to their advantage. If you insist on precise language, then we basically can never have any conversation about race, racial bias, or any other topic where the terminology hasn't been completely nailed down.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The only thing I'm advocating for in this thread is clear thinking and clear communication - in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, not some mysterious unobservable thing that emanates from crystals. What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? It's almost as if you want to use a Motte-and-Bailey argument to confuse people ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric... ). Which is of course something that people do on this very topic: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. The overloading happened the other way around... > What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? Similarly, what benefit do we gain when we use a term of art in settings where most of the audience doesn't have the technical background to be quite sure what they're even discussing? Also, there is a notion that's distinct from statistical bias and that is highly political and controversial. Today we can say "bias" and most everyone will know we're talking about that topic. Whatever word or phrase we use in place of "bias" will be just as muddy and ill-defined. And probably some mathematician will come along and build some incomplete model and name if after that new word. And then we'll have this conversation again. The problem you're trying to avoid is unavoidable.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  It's 100% clear from the article that 'bias' is in the political, or common sense of the word. It's an existing, established usage, and not one that the authors simply made up. I fail to see why you insist that the authors use a word in its statistical sense when they clearly aren't making a statistical argument -- especially since the the statistical sense of the word bias is ultimately derived from the common usage, and not the other way around. The use of 'bias' in the sense of 'prejudice' in English dates from the 1570s, well before the development of statistics [1]. If anything, we should complain that the statisticians overloaded a perfectly good English word, instead of coming up with some Greek or Latin neologism for their own technical use. [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias > Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, Sounds like a stilted way to look at the world. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    If you read your source, you'll realize the term "bias" referred to a slant in the floor of a ball game providing an advantage to one player. This slant would (I'm inferring) cause one player to have an advantage over another equally matched player depending on which side of the slant they are on. This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. I agree with you that this techcrunch reporter is using the term in some other mysterious "vernacular" way. It's this usage that I'm objecting to since it's misleading and confusing. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual? If an article were discussing how coal is more "energetic" than nuclear energy, but was actually referring to energetic in the psychological sense (or maybe in the hippy energy crystal sense), I would in fact object. That would be similarly misleading.

throwaway729 10y ago

> You think race realism is accurate but we should ignore No, I do not think race realism is accurate. I just think that race realism is not an adequate defense of racial discrimination, AND ALSO that race realism is inaccurate. Pessimizer and I agree. > Many examples in the article don't fit your description of the problem at all You asked me what I think the problem is, not what I think the article's author thinks the problem is. The fact that I emphasize different things is not proof that I misunderstand the article's author. > The only thing that I argued is that the imprecise language used by Techcrunch is confusing people and that this is bad. Who, exactly, is supposed to be confused? Subject matter experts should know the difference, and if they don't, that's really their own problem. The public at large doesn't even know what statistical bias is, so why in the world would they be confused? No matter how confusing the current state of affairs is, it would be far more confusing if suddenly everyone starting using bias to mean statistical bias. Mostly because 99.9% of the people using the term wouldn't have an adequate grasp of mathematics to even know to which object they are referring. So if your priority is clarity, then keeping around the messy moralized and politicized vernacular notion of bias is far preferable. > I didn't argue in favor of or against your mysterious "vernacular-discrimination" - how could I when I don't even know what it is? Not everything in the world can be mathematically formalized. Most things don't even have fixed meaning over time. If your criticism is genuinely about imprecision, you've got a lot of much lower hanging fruit than "discrimination" and "bias"...

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The precise problem is that things like skin color etc. often have strong predictive power...Notice that an algorithm can exhibit this behavior without being (statistically) biased. - throwaway729, 2 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13159539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13159539 No, I do not think race realism is accurate. - throwaway729, 22 minutes ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160709 Whoops! The fact that I emphasize different things is not proof that I misunderstand the article's author. Fine - what do you believe the author thinks "bias" means? I.e. what is the underlying concept behind all his examples? Who, exactly, is supposed to be confused? Pessimizer, for one, who thinks the problem is inaccurate predictions. 2 hours ago you disagreed with this, but 22 minutes ago you agreed. I'm getting kind of confused. If your criticism is genuinely about imprecision, you've got a lot of much lower hanging fruit than "discrimination" and "bias"... Sure, but this is my field. I give talks about misuse of p-values and the multiple comparison problem, even though there might be other issues worth worrying about. It's just what interests me. The fact that bigger problems exist doesn't mean we shouldn't fix this one.