3 ms·

Sex would have a major impact. At least in the US our justice system is extremely sexist, far more than it is racist. I once saw sex offender guidelines that

Sex would have a major impact. At least in the US our justice system is extremely sexist, far more than it is racist. I once saw sex offender guidelines that automatically put the default sex offender sentence as medium for males and low for females (the default was used before an official evaluation was completed, and I would bet some money that the official evaluations discriminated based on sex). While I don't disagree our legal system is also racist, the racism pales in comparison to the current level of sexism.

dTal 9y ago
That's not a bug, it's a feature! User jawns posted some of their marketing copy elsewhere in this thread: "COMPAS offers separate norms for males, females, community and incarcerated populations" And they call that "defensible decisions"! In other words, they want to make sure the software doesn't rock the boat. If there's a bias, they want to preserve it so it doesn't look like their algorithms are "weird".
- a3n 9y ago
  > In other words, they want to make sure the software doesn't rock the boat. If there's a bias, they want to preserve it so it doesn't look like their algorithms are "weird". Isn't that what judges do when they follow precedent?
  - cryptarch 9y ago
    Legal precedents tend not to explicitly single out one gender, race or religion.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    No, and judges don't always follow precedent (they theoretically have to when it is binding, but no precedent is binding on the highest court, even it's own.) When they follow precedent, they are not matching outcomes to outcomes to avoid looking wierd, they are applying what was previously established as the formal decision rule. That's a very different thing that attempting to preserve biases that may not even reflect the formally-annoubced decision rules in the cases that produced them, but may represent silent deviations from the formal rules.

dTal 9y ago

That's not a bug, it's a feature! User jawns posted some of their marketing copy elsewhere in this thread: "COMPAS offers separate norms for males, females, community and incarcerated populations" And they call that "defensible decisions"! In other words, they want to make sure the software doesn't rock the boat. If there's a bias, they want to preserve it so it doesn't look like their algorithms are "weird".

a3n 9y ago
> In other words, they want to make sure the software doesn't rock the boat. If there's a bias, they want to preserve it so it doesn't look like their algorithms are "weird". Isn't that what judges do when they follow precedent?
- cryptarch 9y ago
  Legal precedents tend not to explicitly single out one gender, race or religion.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  No, and judges don't always follow precedent (they theoretically have to when it is binding, but no precedent is binding on the highest court, even it's own.) When they follow precedent, they are not matching outcomes to outcomes to avoid looking wierd, they are applying what was previously established as the formal decision rule. That's a very different thing that attempting to preserve biases that may not even reflect the formally-annoubced decision rules in the cases that produced them, but may represent silent deviations from the formal rules.