5 ms·

I agree with you. However, without trying to take your points down a slippery slope, your points don't apply to safety concerns. We can't have robo-cars hitting

I agree with you. However, without trying to take your points down a slippery slope, your points don't apply to safety concerns. We can't have robo-cars hitting black people because the designers neglected to test the pattern recognition libraries on dark-skinned people. That, you can probably admit, is different from a bar of soap making peoples' skin a bit dry, or lotion not taking into account melanin, or the game designer neglecting the Linux community.

CryptoPunk 7y ago
The accident rate should be decreased in the most efficient way possible, to save as many lives as possible. That might not mean targeting R&D resources at reducing the accident rate for one minority group that experiences a higher-than-average malfunction rate. Here's a thought experiment to illustrate the principle I'm trying to get across: if we find out that members of a very small ethnic group suffer disproportionately from some deficiency in software that does a poor job at recognizing features common to them, and this leads to an extra 50 people dying each year, and that the resources it would take to fix this deficiency would allow the software to be improved to reduce the accident rate by 5%, leading to 5,000 fewer people dying each year, but only 5 fewer members of that ethnic group dying each year, should we target the resources at reducing the accident rate for the ethnic group, just because the group they find themselves in happens to be ethnic?
- mannykannot 7y ago
  You did not really have to demonstrate the scope for tendentious arguments, we got that already, but seeing as you raised the issue, human rights is not a strictly utilitarian concept. If it costs a bit more to do the right thing, so be it.
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    My argument is not tendentious. You're not addressing it. And software not working as well with a particular group as a result of the group having less common features is not a violation of human rights. It's an unfortunate reality of the finiteness of our resources and the limitations of our technology. Expanding the performance of the softare by focusing on how it performs with some arbitrarily selected subset of the group, rather than the whole of it, is misguided. >>If it costs a bit more to do the right thing, so be it. In this case, the cost is more lives being lost, and the right thing is only the right thing according to an arbitrary and flawed value system that you are submitting as the ideal.
    - mannykannot 7y ago
      > ...arbitrary and flawed value system All ethical guidelines are, in some sense, arbitrary, but the one that says one should try to treat people equally is a pretty good one, and better than any that needs tendentious arguments to make. One of the reasons that it is a good one is that there is, as you have pointed out, an almost unlimited range of variation from which to fabricate tendentious arguments. Slippery-slope arguments are not, in general, very good ones, but in this case, the number of times that various factions have actually gone down the slope from "these people are not the same as us" to "it's better if we get rid of them" (just in the 20th. century, even) is good reason to stay away from it. And your argument is, indeed, tendentious -- too much for its own good, in fact. As, in your view, saving the most lives for a given expenditure is the only thing that matters, then all expenditure on facial recognition should immediately be redirected into life-saving activities that save more lives for the buck, of which there are plenty. But this is moot, because your arguments are just armchair pedantry, devoid of real-world relevance.
      - CryptoPunk 7y ago
        >>All ethical guidelines are, in some sense, arbitrary, but the one that says one should try to treat people equally is a pretty good one If the software has a less than 100% success rate, then it does not treat people equally. What you're actually arguing is that inequality between ethnic/racial/gender groups is more important to eliminate than inequality between other groups. And the fact that you keep calling my argument tendentious is thoroughly intolerant and unconstructive. I see my position as a completely reasonable response to the topic at hand, and just because you have a different view on the issue, you attack my motives. >>because your arguments are just armchair pedantry, devoid of real-world relevance. You realize that trying to ridicule and demean people like this is a terrible way to address views you disagree with, right? Please don't act like this.
        mannykannot 7y ago
        Well, I have given you the benefit of the doubt as to your motives here, and I continue to do so, because I will also assume that you think you are making a good argument. > What you're actually arguing is that inequality between ethnic/racial/gender groups is more important to eliminate than inequality between other groups. What I am actually arguing is for dealing with bias wherever we find it, and against your position that this is invalidated by possible existence of other biases, no matter how small, and even though they continue to be hypothetical. As I wrote in an earlier post, "if you have any actual evidence that the other groups you name are being measurably affected, make your data known, so we can make corrections in those cases as well." You have consistently failed to show any real-world evidence for your position. Ethics is primarily a matter of what people do in response to real-world situations, not some sort of hypothetical trolley problem from an intro. to philosophy course. Your argument is tendentious in the way it arbitrarily takes certain fixed positions, such as the above insistence on not doing anything unless you can guarantee 100% success, and your insistence that maximizing the number of lives saved being the only justification for expenditure, only so far as it justifies (in your view) doing nothing in the case of ethnicity, race and gender, but no further. It is also rather telling that you seem to think that a noticeable bias with regard to gender, of all things, would be some sort of corner case (not that ethnicity and race are small issues, globally, either.) As for your excuses, in the other thread, for not showing evidence, well, evidence exists in the cases in question, so I will continue to regard your argument as a hypothetical one.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

The accident rate should be decreased in the most efficient way possible, to save as many lives as possible. That might not mean targeting R&D resources at reducing the accident rate for one minority group that experiences a higher-than-average malfunction rate. Here's a thought experiment to illustrate the principle I'm trying to get across: if we find out that members of a very small ethnic group suffer disproportionately from some deficiency in software that does a poor job at recognizing features common to them, and this leads to an extra 50 people dying each year, and that the resources it would take to fix this deficiency would allow the software to be improved to reduce the accident rate by 5%, leading to 5,000 fewer people dying each year, but only 5 fewer members of that ethnic group dying each year, should we target the resources at reducing the accident rate for the ethnic group, just because the group they find themselves in happens to be ethnic?

mannykannot 7y ago
You did not really have to demonstrate the scope for tendentious arguments, we got that already, but seeing as you raised the issue, human rights is not a strictly utilitarian concept. If it costs a bit more to do the right thing, so be it.
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  My argument is not tendentious. You're not addressing it. And software not working as well with a particular group as a result of the group having less common features is not a violation of human rights. It's an unfortunate reality of the finiteness of our resources and the limitations of our technology. Expanding the performance of the softare by focusing on how it performs with some arbitrarily selected subset of the group, rather than the whole of it, is misguided. >>If it costs a bit more to do the right thing, so be it. In this case, the cost is more lives being lost, and the right thing is only the right thing according to an arbitrary and flawed value system that you are submitting as the ideal.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    > ...arbitrary and flawed value system All ethical guidelines are, in some sense, arbitrary, but the one that says one should try to treat people equally is a pretty good one, and better than any that needs tendentious arguments to make. One of the reasons that it is a good one is that there is, as you have pointed out, an almost unlimited range of variation from which to fabricate tendentious arguments. Slippery-slope arguments are not, in general, very good ones, but in this case, the number of times that various factions have actually gone down the slope from "these people are not the same as us" to "it's better if we get rid of them" (just in the 20th. century, even) is good reason to stay away from it. And your argument is, indeed, tendentious -- too much for its own good, in fact. As, in your view, saving the most lives for a given expenditure is the only thing that matters, then all expenditure on facial recognition should immediately be redirected into life-saving activities that save more lives for the buck, of which there are plenty. But this is moot, because your arguments are just armchair pedantry, devoid of real-world relevance.
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      >>All ethical guidelines are, in some sense, arbitrary, but the one that says one should try to treat people equally is a pretty good one If the software has a less than 100% success rate, then it does not treat people equally. What you're actually arguing is that inequality between ethnic/racial/gender groups is more important to eliminate than inequality between other groups. And the fact that you keep calling my argument tendentious is thoroughly intolerant and unconstructive. I see my position as a completely reasonable response to the topic at hand, and just because you have a different view on the issue, you attack my motives. >>because your arguments are just armchair pedantry, devoid of real-world relevance. You realize that trying to ridicule and demean people like this is a terrible way to address views you disagree with, right? Please don't act like this.
      - mannykannot 7y ago
        Well, I have given you the benefit of the doubt as to your motives here, and I continue to do so, because I will also assume that you think you are making a good argument. > What you're actually arguing is that inequality between ethnic/racial/gender groups is more important to eliminate than inequality between other groups. What I am actually arguing is for dealing with bias wherever we find it, and against your position that this is invalidated by possible existence of other biases, no matter how small, and even though they continue to be hypothetical. As I wrote in an earlier post, "if you have any actual evidence that the other groups you name are being measurably affected, make your data known, so we can make corrections in those cases as well." You have consistently failed to show any real-world evidence for your position. Ethics is primarily a matter of what people do in response to real-world situations, not some sort of hypothetical trolley problem from an intro. to philosophy course. Your argument is tendentious in the way it arbitrarily takes certain fixed positions, such as the above insistence on not doing anything unless you can guarantee 100% success, and your insistence that maximizing the number of lives saved being the only justification for expenditure, only so far as it justifies (in your view) doing nothing in the case of ethnicity, race and gender, but no further. It is also rather telling that you seem to think that a noticeable bias with regard to gender, of all things, would be some sort of corner case (not that ethnicity and race are small issues, globally, either.) As for your excuses, in the other thread, for not showing evidence, well, evidence exists in the cases in question, so I will continue to regard your argument as a hypothetical one.