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It does. That's the problem. Take an 18-year old with a red Mustang and a 58-year old with a midlife crisis and a 3-series. Both drive like assholes. Both will

It does. That's the problem. Take an 18-year old with a red Mustang and a 58-year old with a midlife crisis and a 3-series. Both drive like assholes. Both will inevitably cause an accident. The latter is more likely to be wealthy enough to be able to pay cash for repairs and keep the entire incident off the radar. No insurance claim, no citations, no evidence. The 18-year old has no choice but to make an insurance claim, go to court and take points on their license. Can we truly conclude that 18-year olds with red Mustangs are worse drivers than their elder counterparts? (And yes, I realize that in the case of insurance, it's in their interest to minimize claims so in that context this is a valid conclusion. But this same skewed data gets shared outside of the industry as well.)

leetcrew 8y ago
> Take an 18-year old with a red Mustang and a 58-year old with a midlife crisis and a 3-series. Both drive like assholes. Both will inevitably cause an accident. this is not a fair example; by assumption we have much more information about the 58yo than the 18yo. remove the bit about the midlife crisis and there's no reason to think the 58yo is anywhere near the same risk to insure. as a group, young people are less experienced drivers, have less facility for judgement, and the males probably drive more aggressively. unless you disagree that the goal of insurance is to spread risk among a bucket of people who have relatively similar risk factors, I'm not really sure where you're going with this. and by the way, I'm a young male who drives a fast car.
- jstarfish 8y ago
  > unless you disagree that the goal of insurance is to spread risk among a bucket of people who have relatively similar risk factors, I'm not really sure where you're going with this. I don't disagree. In this context, if older men make fewer insurance claims, they're better customers. On paper, he's less of a risk (to the insurer). In reality, they're both risks to other drivers. But only the 18-year old will be held accountable. But assuming the under-25-and-male crowd are the worst drivers on the road based on number of insurance claims is not necessarily true, yet it's the basis for this oft-repeated assertion. That's my point. What isn't the insurance industry's data telling us when we use their data to make these conclusions? To get more accurate numbers, you need to be looking at the demographics of all body shop customers and the nature of their repairs. What demographics get the most front-end work done that isn't covered by an insurance check? This new age of computing seems to be to make machines understand how the world works by putting blind faith in statistics, without ever stopping to question where the stats came from or how accurate they really are. The numbers aren't handed to us on golden tablets carved by God himself-- we get them from imperfect systems designed by imperfect humans. And then we teach dynamic algorithms how reality works based on this data and sell them as solutions, which we trust absolutely. > and by the way, I'm a young male who drives a fast car. No offense intended. I once was, too.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    I think I misunderstood the point of your argument. at first I thought you were specifically singling out car insurance as being unfair, which seemed odd to me, as it seems pretty close to WAD to me. if you are just using it as an example of a misleading dataset, we are probably in agreement.
maximente 8y ago
are you assuming the event to be inevitable? if so, you're really opening up a can of worms here, bc insurance doesn't really function with p(event) = 1.0 a better argument would be something like: suppose we detect a gene that indicates probability 1.0 of disease that causes the person's left arm to fall off. it's then not a matter of "insurance" but a matter of "are we as the pool willing and able to pay for this?" recall company needs some profit as well as cost of coverage to maintain overhead so it's a different argument now.

leetcrew 8y ago

> Take an 18-year old with a red Mustang and a 58-year old with a midlife crisis and a 3-series. Both drive like assholes. Both will inevitably cause an accident. this is not a fair example; by assumption we have much more information about the 58yo than the 18yo. remove the bit about the midlife crisis and there's no reason to think the 58yo is anywhere near the same risk to insure. as a group, young people are less experienced drivers, have less facility for judgement, and the males probably drive more aggressively. unless you disagree that the goal of insurance is to spread risk among a bucket of people who have relatively similar risk factors, I'm not really sure where you're going with this. and by the way, I'm a young male who drives a fast car.

jstarfish 8y ago
> unless you disagree that the goal of insurance is to spread risk among a bucket of people who have relatively similar risk factors, I'm not really sure where you're going with this. I don't disagree. In this context, if older men make fewer insurance claims, they're better customers. On paper, he's less of a risk (to the insurer). In reality, they're both risks to other drivers. But only the 18-year old will be held accountable. But assuming the under-25-and-male crowd are the worst drivers on the road based on number of insurance claims is not necessarily true, yet it's the basis for this oft-repeated assertion. That's my point. What isn't the insurance industry's data telling us when we use their data to make these conclusions? To get more accurate numbers, you need to be looking at the demographics of all body shop customers and the nature of their repairs. What demographics get the most front-end work done that isn't covered by an insurance check? This new age of computing seems to be to make machines understand how the world works by putting blind faith in statistics, without ever stopping to question where the stats came from or how accurate they really are. The numbers aren't handed to us on golden tablets carved by God himself-- we get them from imperfect systems designed by imperfect humans. And then we teach dynamic algorithms how reality works based on this data and sell them as solutions, which we trust absolutely. > and by the way, I'm a young male who drives a fast car. No offense intended. I once was, too.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  I think I misunderstood the point of your argument. at first I thought you were specifically singling out car insurance as being unfair, which seemed odd to me, as it seems pretty close to WAD to me. if you are just using it as an example of a misleading dataset, we are probably in agreement.

maximente 8y ago

are you assuming the event to be inevitable? if so, you're really opening up a can of worms here, bc insurance doesn't really function with p(event) = 1.0 a better argument would be something like: suppose we detect a gene that indicates probability 1.0 of disease that causes the person's left arm to fall off. it's then not a matter of "insurance" but a matter of "are we as the pool willing and able to pay for this?" recall company needs some profit as well as cost of coverage to maintain overhead so it's a different argument now.