5 ms·

> I'm sorry, what? Does this person think that phrenology / physiognomy, two old pseudosciences that have been discredited for a hundred years or more, are actu

> I'm sorry, what? Does this person think that phrenology / physiognomy, two old pseudosciences that have been discredited for a hundred years or more, are actually at play within ML systems? https://callingbullshit.org/case_studies/case_study_criminal_machine_learning.html https://callingbullshit.org/case_studies/case_study_criminal... This shouldn't be a problem, because as you note phrenology is pseudoscience that's been discredited for over a century. And yet. To the broader point, I'd argue that in generally any attempt to predict criminality from facial structure/face picture is phrenological in nature. And people who do know what's at play with ML systems do agree with this take: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1276147230295166984 https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1276147230295166984

core-questions 6y ago
> And yet. Well, what's happening there is not a study of phrenology at all (which posited specific regions of facial/skull structure being indicators). It's actually a very interesting thing to look at. There was a previous one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML. Here's the thing: if this turns out to have actual predictive power, then it's a subject worthy of scientific study, whether you like the outcomes and conclusions or not. Plenty of other worthy areas of endeavour (e.g. psychometric IQ research) have also revealed uncomfortable truths. If instead these things turn out to not have any legitimate research value (i.e. can't make predictions that can be experimentally verified), then we can stop looking at them, but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality, they're as worthy a form of science as any other anthropological research is. We have a choice either face this head on, include it in policies, and build our sociology around the truth, or we can put our heads in the sand to make people feel better. I for one believe that truth is far more important than feelings, and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far slower if it had happened at all.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML Yes, which was also phrenological in nature. > one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML I've yet to see any "uncomfortable truth" from psychometric research that wasn't relatively easily explained as culturally tied. > but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality The point is that neither this study nor the homosexuality study have a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality. Your priors on us being able to predict, independent of social conditioning, some arbitrary social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very low. And "predicting" some arbitrary social attribute based on social conditioning is just encoding social bias into the model, which is bad. > and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far slower if it had happened at all. You mean like all the scientific progress that came out of phrenological research?
  - JoshuaDavid 6y ago
    > Your priors on us being able to predict, independent of social conditioning, some arbitrary social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very low. What does "independent of social conditioning" mean here? Can you give some examples of social attributes that arise independent of social conditioning?
    - core-questions 6y ago
      It's tactical nihilism. Guess what: most of us can make some pretty intelligent guesses about things just based on looking at them. The observation may not be perfect, it may not even be true, but if the goal of the observation is to inform a system for self-preservation, false positives might be totally acceptable if the cost of taking a preservative action is not too high. For example, avoiding a person your subconscious tells you is dangerous - you can ignore it and overrule it, or you can give in and take the safe action. Much of the time, the latter is the better choice, even if you didn't need to be scared, even if there was no danger, because you have no better way of knowing in advance what the situation truly is. Should we use this kind of heuristic in law enforcement? No, this is not Minority Report or the Asimov world of Multivac; while it may be useful for an aggregate at scale we will not get good enough accuracy to know much about individuals. However, it's entirely possible it will tell us about the behaviours of groups of people, and that could still be useful for policy decisions.

core-questions 6y ago

> And yet. Well, what's happening there is not a study of phrenology at all (which posited specific regions of facial/skull structure being indicators). It's actually a very interesting thing to look at. There was a previous one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML. Here's the thing: if this turns out to have actual predictive power, then it's a subject worthy of scientific study, whether you like the outcomes and conclusions or not. Plenty of other worthy areas of endeavour (e.g. psychometric IQ research) have also revealed uncomfortable truths. If instead these things turn out to not have any legitimate research value (i.e. can't make predictions that can be experimentally verified), then we can stop looking at them, but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality, they're as worthy a form of science as any other anthropological research is. We have a choice either face this head on, include it in policies, and build our sociology around the truth, or we can put our heads in the sand to make people feel better. I for one believe that truth is far more important than feelings, and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far slower if it had happened at all.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML Yes, which was also phrenological in nature. > one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was homosexual via ML I've yet to see any "uncomfortable truth" from psychometric research that wasn't relatively easily explained as culturally tied. > but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality The point is that neither this study nor the homosexuality study have a relatively consistent relationship to observable reality. Your priors on us being able to predict, independent of social conditioning, some arbitrary social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very low. And "predicting" some arbitrary social attribute based on social conditioning is just encoding social bias into the model, which is bad. > and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far slower if it had happened at all. You mean like all the scientific progress that came out of phrenological research?
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  > Your priors on us being able to predict, independent of social conditioning, some arbitrary social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very low. What does "independent of social conditioning" mean here? Can you give some examples of social attributes that arise independent of social conditioning?
  - core-questions 6y ago
    It's tactical nihilism. Guess what: most of us can make some pretty intelligent guesses about things just based on looking at them. The observation may not be perfect, it may not even be true, but if the goal of the observation is to inform a system for self-preservation, false positives might be totally acceptable if the cost of taking a preservative action is not too high. For example, avoiding a person your subconscious tells you is dangerous - you can ignore it and overrule it, or you can give in and take the safe action. Much of the time, the latter is the better choice, even if you didn't need to be scared, even if there was no danger, because you have no better way of knowing in advance what the situation truly is. Should we use this kind of heuristic in law enforcement? No, this is not Minority Report or the Asimov world of Multivac; while it may be useful for an aggregate at scale we will not get good enough accuracy to know much about individuals. However, it's entirely possible it will tell us about the behaviours of groups of people, and that could still be useful for policy decisions.