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They claim 91% accuracy on a balanced dataset. E.g. where there the ratio of gays to straights is 50:50. To get a ratio of correct:incorrect of 91:9 on such a d

They claim 91% accuracy on a balanced dataset. E.g. where there the ratio of gays to straights is 50:50. To get a ratio of correct:incorrect of 91:9 on such a dataset, their test must increase or decrease the odds a person is gay by 10. Now in the general population, the ratio of gays to straights is about 16 to 984 (1.6%)†. So if their test gives someone a positive reading, that increases the odds to 162 to 984, or 14%. So you can't use this test to accurately guess someone's sexual orientation. Simply because gay people are so rare that even a few percent of straight people misclassified will overwhelm the number of actual gay people. But nonetheless it is much more accurate than humans or the base rate. And it is scientifically interesting that there are physical features that strongly correlate with sexual orientation. EDIT: another article claims this: >However, when asked to pick out the ten faces it was most confident about, nine of the chosen were in fact gay. If the goal is to pick a small number of people who are very likely to be gay out of a large group, the system appears able to do so. †These estimates vary by a lot and could be 3 times that, which would make the test much more accurate. Perhaps as high as 42% accuracy. And some people believe sexuality is more of a spectrum than a binary straight/gay. If so the test might be identifying straight individuals that lean more gay/bisexual than normal, and it's misclassifications wouldn't be so unreasonable. The test may also give varying degrees of confidence, and it may give much higher confidence to some people than others. The edit I made confirms that, and there are some individuals that it can tell are definitely gay or straight. But for most it is more uncertain.

svantana 9y ago
You're assuming every trial is of equal difficulty, which seems unlikely. I would guess that the system can classify some images with very good confidence, while others are more of a coin toss. But you're correct that the 'straight' prior is very strong.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
Before you bother to look at all this, you have to ask: why would a person's orientation (or identity?) be evident in their pictures, or their face? This is the fundamental assumption the paper makes- and then they go about "proving" it by training an algorithm. That's all shades of biased. If you're starting from a premise that's very likely to be rooted in social prejudice, you're equally likely to get results that confirm the same, but are entirely wrong. There's no point in trying to reason rationally about work that's already so far past the gates of unreason. This is completely unnecessary, completely pointless research that is most probably flawed in ways that are not evident to someone simply reading the paper.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  This is the absolute worst kind of unscientific nonsense. You have no argument against the paper whatsoever. You are just rejecting it because you don't like the conclusion. >why would a person's orientation (or identity?) be evident in their pictures, or their face? Because sexual orientation is biologically determined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation This isn't new or even controversial. Identical twins are much more likely than chance to have the same sexual orientation. This paper would seem to prove this theory conclusively. >If you're starting from a premise that's very likely to be rooted in social prejudice, you're equally likely to get results that confirm the same, but are entirely wrong. No this is how science works. You have a theory, you do an experiment to gather evidence for or against it. This paper is super strong evidence for their theory. All science works like this.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    >> This is the absolute worst kind of unscientific nonsense. You have no argument against the paper whatsoever. You are just rejecting it because you don't like the conclusion. I have no argument against the multitude of homeopathy papers published each month, either. Because I haven't read them. And I haven't read them because the premise is flawed. If I devoted any amount of time picking apart every two-bit charlatan's paper to formulate an "argument" I wouldn't have time to do anything else. On the rest of your comment: there is ongoing debate regarding whether sexual orientation (or, indeed, any other behavioural trait) is determined by this or that factor, including biology. Additionally, like I say elsewhere, a paper never "proves" anything, unless it's a paper on a formal proof for some theorem. Machine learning results in particular neither can, nor do, prove anything. >> No this is how science works. I appreciate that you want to fight the good fight and strike a blow for science, but you should know that no self-respecting scientist ever accepts a claim in a paper (or anywhere, really) at face value. Even formal proofs must be checked and verified before they are accepted.

svantana 9y ago

You're assuming every trial is of equal difficulty, which seems unlikely. I would guess that the system can classify some images with very good confidence, while others are more of a coin toss. But you're correct that the 'straight' prior is very strong.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

Before you bother to look at all this, you have to ask: why would a person's orientation (or identity?) be evident in their pictures, or their face? This is the fundamental assumption the paper makes- and then they go about "proving" it by training an algorithm. That's all shades of biased. If you're starting from a premise that's very likely to be rooted in social prejudice, you're equally likely to get results that confirm the same, but are entirely wrong. There's no point in trying to reason rationally about work that's already so far past the gates of unreason. This is completely unnecessary, completely pointless research that is most probably flawed in ways that are not evident to someone simply reading the paper.

Houshalter 9y ago
This is the absolute worst kind of unscientific nonsense. You have no argument against the paper whatsoever. You are just rejecting it because you don't like the conclusion. >why would a person's orientation (or identity?) be evident in their pictures, or their face? Because sexual orientation is biologically determined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation This isn't new or even controversial. Identical twins are much more likely than chance to have the same sexual orientation. This paper would seem to prove this theory conclusively. >If you're starting from a premise that's very likely to be rooted in social prejudice, you're equally likely to get results that confirm the same, but are entirely wrong. No this is how science works. You have a theory, you do an experiment to gather evidence for or against it. This paper is super strong evidence for their theory. All science works like this.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> This is the absolute worst kind of unscientific nonsense. You have no argument against the paper whatsoever. You are just rejecting it because you don't like the conclusion. I have no argument against the multitude of homeopathy papers published each month, either. Because I haven't read them. And I haven't read them because the premise is flawed. If I devoted any amount of time picking apart every two-bit charlatan's paper to formulate an "argument" I wouldn't have time to do anything else. On the rest of your comment: there is ongoing debate regarding whether sexual orientation (or, indeed, any other behavioural trait) is determined by this or that factor, including biology. Additionally, like I say elsewhere, a paper never "proves" anything, unless it's a paper on a formal proof for some theorem. Machine learning results in particular neither can, nor do, prove anything. >> No this is how science works. I appreciate that you want to fight the good fight and strike a blow for science, but you should know that no self-respecting scientist ever accepts a claim in a paper (or anywhere, really) at face value. Even formal proofs must be checked and verified before they are accepted.