pattern recognition devices, not scientific tools Isn't science all about pattern recognition? If the pattern exists, in the real world, then a good theory is

pattern recognition devices, not scientific tools Isn't science all about pattern recognition? If the pattern exists, in the real world, then a good theory is one which encodes this. What you're asking for in a "moral" way of applying the model is that our actions should abide by your moral preferences. Perhaps even universal preferences. But it seems useful to me to keep logically separate these ideas about how we ought to do things. They don't flow naturally from observations of how things are. The example of adjusting drug & dosage based on race is a good one. The science backing this is exactly the same kind of statistical correlation as backs the rental decision. The training input is what race some test patients ticked on a form, and their tick mark sure as hell isn't the causal factor... that's some gene which is correlated, maybe, or some diet difference, or what's on TV, who knows. Nevertheless the correlation is there, as far as we can tell: the peer-reviewed science process isn't infallible. The reason we're OK with using this information is, I guess, that it aims to improve things for the patient. (Not every single patient, only statistically.) We make a moral judgement that this is more important than a landlord's wish to avoid bad tenants (again statistically).