> From what I've seen, your suggesting that slicing further will eliminate the predictiveness of race doesn't seem to be true... The idea that we can avoid thes

> From what I've seen, your suggesting that slicing further will eliminate the predictiveness of race doesn't seem to be true... The idea that we can avoid these ethical questions by slicing data in the exact right way is probably not true Are you taking the position that some races are genetically pre-disposed to these behaviors - that their race is the root cause of them? I personally don't think so, not because it would be an unpopular position (popularity has little place in a discussion of truth), but because I have seen little compelling evidence of it. If you agree, then you must also agree that slicing data around causes would necessarily provide better predictive metrics. In this day and age of intense data collection, I find it hard to believe that we can't do better than "Oakland" or "Asians" or "Blacks". You'd probably go bankrupt pretty soon while your competition does real data analysis. Still, it is undeniable that race - the way society is currently structured - can provide easy and useful proxy to a whole host of predictable behaviors. If we were econobots, concerned only with maximizing immediate economic gains, we'd maybe use it. But this is an old idea. We know we are paying slightly in short term economic benefits, for human social benefits, as well as long term economic benefits. That's why we have affirmative action, and mix low income housing with rich housing, and similar programs: because we discovered that ghettos are self perpetuating, and make it more difficult to change one's standing. So we pay a little now in economic effeciency for a better aggregate economic future.