4 ms·

I like to bring Then Now up everytime precrime comes up. Until it goes off the rails in the end, its one of my favorite articles of all time. The paragraphs

by basch 6y ago

I like to bring Then Now up everytime precrime comes up. Until it goes off the rails in the end, its one of my favorite articles of all time. The paragraphs I yanked below, dont do its craziness justice. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... "But the oddest is STATIC-99. It's a way of predicting whether sex offenders are likely to commit crimes again after they have been released. In America this is being used to decide whether to keep them in jail even after they have served their full sentence. STATIC-99 works by scoring individuals on criteria such as age, number of sex-crimes and sex of the victim. These are then fed into a database that shows recidivism rates of groups of sex-offenders in the past with similar characteristics. The judge is then told how likely it is - in percentage terms - that the offender will do it again. The problem is that it is not true. What the judge is really being told is the likely percentage of people in the group who will re-offend. There is no way the system can predict what an individual will do. A recent very critical report of such systems said that the margin of error for individuals could be as great as between 5% and 95% In other words completely useless. Yet people are being kept in prison on the basis that such a system predicts they might do something bad in the future."

tomohawk 6y ago
Not sure what the answer is for pedophiles. Hopefully it is not this: https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208 https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-wit... The point being, some sort of predictive model is always used to evaluate sentencing and release. Is 5 years enough, or will that pedophile attack more kids when they get out? How about 10 years? Gee, they don't seem to be attacking children in prison, maybe we should release them early for good behavior?
- basch 6y ago
  What percent of a population will act is not a good gauge of the percent chance of an individual acting.
  - gweinberg 6y ago
    Unless you have special relevant information about the individual, the fraction of the group to which the individual belongs which will act in a certain way is the probability that the indivdual will act in that way.
treis 6y ago
The options here are having the judge make the decision based on their gut feeling or they can make it based on data. It's really hard for me to believe that gut feeling is better than data.
- r00fus 6y ago
  When the data is just as likely to be false as it is to be true then it’s worse than useless as a decision support mechanism.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  In both cases it doesn’t actually work. In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence. In this case it’s demonstrably worse. In the general case anything that’s “sciency” but doesn’t actually work leads to bad outcomes because people are far more likely to buy into it or at least less likely to call out obvious BS.
  - treis 6y ago
    >In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence. I'm not sure why you assume that it's keeping people in prison and not being used to let them out.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655017 (your GGP) and supposedly originally https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... : > In America this is being used to decide whether to keep them in jail even after they have served their full sentence. That may not be true, but the reason why they assume that is that basch and/or the BBC said that.
- ByteJockey 6y ago
  And if you want to use that argument for a parole hearing that's... I can accept that as an argument. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand the reasons someone might have for holding that position. We're talking about holding people after their sentence is done. That's not ok.

by basch 6y ago

tomohawk 6y ago

Not sure what the answer is for pedophiles. Hopefully it is not this: https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-with-pedophiles-for-30-years/a-53814208 https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-wit... The point being, some sort of predictive model is always used to evaluate sentencing and release. Is 5 years enough, or will that pedophile attack more kids when they get out? How about 10 years? Gee, they don't seem to be attacking children in prison, maybe we should release them early for good behavior?

basch 6y ago
What percent of a population will act is not a good gauge of the percent chance of an individual acting.
- gweinberg 6y ago
  Unless you have special relevant information about the individual, the fraction of the group to which the individual belongs which will act in a certain way is the probability that the indivdual will act in that way.

treis 6y ago

The options here are having the judge make the decision based on their gut feeling or they can make it based on data. It's really hard for me to believe that gut feeling is better than data.

r00fus 6y ago
When the data is just as likely to be false as it is to be true then it’s worse than useless as a decision support mechanism.
cgriswald 6y ago
In both cases it doesn’t actually work. In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence. In this case it’s demonstrably worse. In the general case anything that’s “sciency” but doesn’t actually work leads to bad outcomes because people are far more likely to buy into it or at least less likely to call out obvious BS.
- treis 6y ago
  >In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence. I'm not sure why you assume that it's keeping people in prison and not being used to let them out.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655017 (your GGP) and supposedly originally https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... : > In America this is being used to decide whether to keep them in jail even after they have served their full sentence. That may not be true, but the reason why they assume that is that basch and/or the BBC said that.
ByteJockey 6y ago
And if you want to use that argument for a parole hearing that's... I can accept that as an argument. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand the reasons someone might have for holding that position. We're talking about holding people after their sentence is done. That's not ok.