7 ms·

A lot to unpack here, let me try. Are machine learning algorythms capable of stereotyping people? How accurate does a stereotype have to be before it's a useful

A lot to unpack here, let me try. Are machine learning algorythms capable of stereotyping people? How accurate does a stereotype have to be before it's a useful predictor? If these models lead to good data, then what's wrong with them? If people who follow the NBA do in fact default on their loans more, shouldn't they pay higher interest? I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance? It seems you primarily see things along racial divides, grouping people into black, white, and asian. There are, more nuanced ways to group people, which is exactly what these agorythms are doing. Also, what's wrong with wealth inequality? I'd be much more concerned about absolute quality of life, which has increased dramatically for everyone in the last half century.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Algorithms: - May be based on bad, inaccurate, or nonrepresentative data. - May be based on factors intrinsic to individuals which they cannot change. - May mask underlying bias factors (as in the NBA example above.) - May reflect existing biases in behaviours. E.g., arrest, promotion, recruitment, or admissions data used to encode an AI selector, which merely codify biases reflected in the underlying historical data. - May reverse causality, implying A causes B, when in fact B results in A. - Amplify existing inequalities. Starting points in life matter, and an algorithm which simply amplifies the existing inequities of wealth, race, place of birth, religion, health, etc., compound rather than address these issues. - Fail to consider fairness or equity in decisionmaking. This is the underlying fundamental problem in credit-based resource allocation. People need access to resources regardless of their creditworthiness, though there might well be cases in which allocations are modified or managed given behavioural issues. Reinforcing standing biases does not address the underlying inequities.
- thegrimmest 6y ago
  I would say that accuracy is a greater concern than "fairness" or "equity" since it's quite hard to agree on the meanings of the latter terms (and as pointed out above, these are political, not statistical concerns, and the distinction is meaningful). I would expect that inaccuracy in such models would be iteratively improved. If the models are already more accurate than existing methods, doesn't that make them better? Doesn't a more accurate model in fact ensure that fewer people are lumped into groups they don't belong to, and that more deserving people (ie. people who are likley to repay loans) have access to credit?
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    All these criteria are value judgements and exquisitely political. I give you Karl Marx: As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. ... Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ... The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public. ... The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. ... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. ... A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. ... No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. ... Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. ... POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. The first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people. Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1#lf0206-01_head_052 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-... As well as your politics and economics, your morals and statistical understanding are deeply flawed.
throwaway189262 6y ago
> I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance? Because it makes health insurance impossible to get when you need it most. It makes health insurance a scam because any serious illness and your company will fire you and you won't be able to get any other insurance. Insurance becomes cheap because it's useless. Wealth inequality is a problem because money = power. Extreme wealth concentration is not compatible with democracy because eventually these people and corporations are so wealthy they can just buy votes. Spiraling wealth inequality gets you a Russia situation, an Oligarchy in everything but name. Your argument is not a far stretch from "why don't we just let poor and sick people die". It's pretty much equivalent to "why don't we allow anyone to discriminate however they want", which got us great things like slavery
- thegrimmest 6y ago
  My argument is that all human interactions should be consensual. Slavery is clearly and obviously out of the questions. Discrimination is the act of making choices, you do it every time you order something to eat. I do belive people should be able to make whatever choices in personal and professional association they please, without anyone trying to peek into their heads and guess at their intentions. I strongly beleive in caring for the poor and the sick. That is one of the oldest definitions of the virtue of charity. I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so?
  - throwaway189262 6y ago
    > I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so? I'm only explaining the world as I see it, just as you did in the comments above. You shouldn't be so dismissive of dissenting opinions. In my opinion, your viewpoint that you should be able to choose everything you want to pay for will never work. A sizable portion of the population will decide to pay nothing while still receiving benefits, leading the rest to stop paying. It's not like you can deposit a nickel for every street light you pass, or every crime prevented by the police. Some services must be paid by everyone if they are to exist at all because their value is not directly tangible. Education is a good example. You may not go to a school and say "well, I don't go so I shouldn't have to pay for it". Yet you still reap most of the benefits of the rest of the population being able to read and write. If most of the population couldn't read or write the affect on GDP and job availability would be terrible and definitely effect you directly. The value is provided to some extent to everyone in society. The only way to avoid any personal benefit is to live isolated from the rest of society in the middle of nowhere. Another clear example is government provided healthcare for infectious diseases. The government does a lot of vaccinations and it's impossible to avoid benefitting from that without cutting off all interaction with other humans. You directly benefit from others being vaccinated by having a lower personal risk of getting infected. I think your view is too narrow and focuses on transactional exchanges, like buying gas or paying a toll. But it doesn't capture the larger benefit to everyone including yourself for things like having less criminals, illiterate people, and junkies running around. Which is the societal benefit to a lot of government programs and why everyone is expected to pay for them. Your idea of not paying for services you don't use falls apart when considering that many of these services directly benefit you even if you don't directly consume them. And the only way to avoid the benefits is to avoid society completely.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning? Basically, loans should only be given to those who are 99% likely to pay them back. Anyone who is at risk of default, say because they lost their job should be denied, making a permanent descent into poverty and misery even more likely. Health insurance should only be given to those who are already healthy. Anyone who is sick enough to significantly benefit from insurance should be rejected. Even if they have an easily treatable condition that costs $50 in medicine a month, they should be rejected, guaranteeing their health gets worse. In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother? In your world, the slightest shock in someone's life would mean all safety nets get pulled, guaranteeing they will never recover. Then that data gets fed back to an ML model, confirming that yes indeed, people who need money or healthcare never do well anyways, so why bother with a lost cause? Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization.
- tryptophan 6y ago
  The purpose of risk assessment isn't to only give loans/insurance to 0 risk people. It's to quantify the level of risk. Once you know the level of risk you can then give loans, adjusting the interest rate to make up for the risk. By hiding information from lenders, you actually make them less likely to give a loan, rather than more likely. An unknown level of risk is 100x worse than a known high level of risk.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Maybe credit-based loans are the problem. What are the alternatives?
- thegrimmest 6y ago
  > Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning? In fact I have. In my estimation, if we adopted a model of interaction that emphasizes consent, the incapable and unfortunate among us would rely on charity to have their needs met, as they have for most of history. This seems much more ethical than to rely on force through taxation. It can't be compassionate to impose your idea of compassion onto other unwilling people. It is also worth noting that as long as we consume goods made by people in conditions we don't tolerate domestically, we're being wildly hypocritical. All we've done is offshore the suffering, and in the process massively harm the environment shipping things to and from more lenient jurisdictions. > In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother? It should be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it. If you want a modern operating theatre, filled with expensive equipent and highly educated people, someone has to pay for it regardless of whether it's for yourself or for your horse. I'm only saying that the person who pays should do so consensually. Likewise, if all you can afford is a street dentist with rusty tools, then I don't see from where one derives entitlement to anything else. As mentioned earlier, we already buy things made by people who live in such conditions, so the point is moot. > Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization. This all may be, but I will be dying with my dignity intact, not greedily reaching into the pocket of a stranger, deluded into thinking I'm entitled to what's inside.
dredmorbius 6y ago
[T]he healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance? TDR-TB.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Algorithms: - May be based on bad, inaccurate, or nonrepresentative data. - May be based on factors intrinsic to individuals which they cannot change. - May mask underlying bias factors (as in the NBA example above.) - May reflect existing biases in behaviours. E.g., arrest, promotion, recruitment, or admissions data used to encode an AI selector, which merely codify biases reflected in the underlying historical data. - May reverse causality, implying A causes B, when in fact B results in A. - Amplify existing inequalities. Starting points in life matter, and an algorithm which simply amplifies the existing inequities of wealth, race, place of birth, religion, health, etc., compound rather than address these issues. - Fail to consider fairness or equity in decisionmaking. This is the underlying fundamental problem in credit-based resource allocation. People need access to resources regardless of their creditworthiness, though there might well be cases in which allocations are modified or managed given behavioural issues. Reinforcing standing biases does not address the underlying inequities.

thegrimmest 6y ago
I would say that accuracy is a greater concern than "fairness" or "equity" since it's quite hard to agree on the meanings of the latter terms (and as pointed out above, these are political, not statistical concerns, and the distinction is meaningful). I would expect that inaccuracy in such models would be iteratively improved. If the models are already more accurate than existing methods, doesn't that make them better? Doesn't a more accurate model in fact ensure that fewer people are lumped into groups they don't belong to, and that more deserving people (ie. people who are likley to repay loans) have access to credit?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  All these criteria are value judgements and exquisitely political. I give you Karl Marx: As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. ... Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ... The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public. ... The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. ... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. ... A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. ... No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. ... Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. ... POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. The first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people. Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1#lf0206-01_head_052 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-... As well as your politics and economics, your morals and statistical understanding are deeply flawed.

throwaway189262 6y ago

> I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance? Because it makes health insurance impossible to get when you need it most. It makes health insurance a scam because any serious illness and your company will fire you and you won't be able to get any other insurance. Insurance becomes cheap because it's useless. Wealth inequality is a problem because money = power. Extreme wealth concentration is not compatible with democracy because eventually these people and corporations are so wealthy they can just buy votes. Spiraling wealth inequality gets you a Russia situation, an Oligarchy in everything but name. Your argument is not a far stretch from "why don't we just let poor and sick people die". It's pretty much equivalent to "why don't we allow anyone to discriminate however they want", which got us great things like slavery

thegrimmest 6y ago
My argument is that all human interactions should be consensual. Slavery is clearly and obviously out of the questions. Discrimination is the act of making choices, you do it every time you order something to eat. I do belive people should be able to make whatever choices in personal and professional association they please, without anyone trying to peek into their heads and guess at their intentions. I strongly beleive in caring for the poor and the sick. That is one of the oldest definitions of the virtue of charity. I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so?
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  > I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so? I'm only explaining the world as I see it, just as you did in the comments above. You shouldn't be so dismissive of dissenting opinions. In my opinion, your viewpoint that you should be able to choose everything you want to pay for will never work. A sizable portion of the population will decide to pay nothing while still receiving benefits, leading the rest to stop paying. It's not like you can deposit a nickel for every street light you pass, or every crime prevented by the police. Some services must be paid by everyone if they are to exist at all because their value is not directly tangible. Education is a good example. You may not go to a school and say "well, I don't go so I shouldn't have to pay for it". Yet you still reap most of the benefits of the rest of the population being able to read and write. If most of the population couldn't read or write the affect on GDP and job availability would be terrible and definitely effect you directly. The value is provided to some extent to everyone in society. The only way to avoid any personal benefit is to live isolated from the rest of society in the middle of nowhere. Another clear example is government provided healthcare for infectious diseases. The government does a lot of vaccinations and it's impossible to avoid benefitting from that without cutting off all interaction with other humans. You directly benefit from others being vaccinated by having a lower personal risk of getting infected. I think your view is too narrow and focuses on transactional exchanges, like buying gas or paying a toll. But it doesn't capture the larger benefit to everyone including yourself for things like having less criminals, illiterate people, and junkies running around. Which is the societal benefit to a lot of government programs and why everyone is expected to pay for them. Your idea of not paying for services you don't use falls apart when considering that many of these services directly benefit you even if you don't directly consume them. And the only way to avoid the benefits is to avoid society completely.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning? Basically, loans should only be given to those who are 99% likely to pay them back. Anyone who is at risk of default, say because they lost their job should be denied, making a permanent descent into poverty and misery even more likely. Health insurance should only be given to those who are already healthy. Anyone who is sick enough to significantly benefit from insurance should be rejected. Even if they have an easily treatable condition that costs $50 in medicine a month, they should be rejected, guaranteeing their health gets worse. In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother? In your world, the slightest shock in someone's life would mean all safety nets get pulled, guaranteeing they will never recover. Then that data gets fed back to an ML model, confirming that yes indeed, people who need money or healthcare never do well anyways, so why bother with a lost cause? Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization.

tryptophan 6y ago
The purpose of risk assessment isn't to only give loans/insurance to 0 risk people. It's to quantify the level of risk. Once you know the level of risk you can then give loans, adjusting the interest rate to make up for the risk. By hiding information from lenders, you actually make them less likely to give a loan, rather than more likely. An unknown level of risk is 100x worse than a known high level of risk.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Maybe credit-based loans are the problem. What are the alternatives?
thegrimmest 6y ago
> Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning? In fact I have. In my estimation, if we adopted a model of interaction that emphasizes consent, the incapable and unfortunate among us would rely on charity to have their needs met, as they have for most of history. This seems much more ethical than to rely on force through taxation. It can't be compassionate to impose your idea of compassion onto other unwilling people. It is also worth noting that as long as we consume goods made by people in conditions we don't tolerate domestically, we're being wildly hypocritical. All we've done is offshore the suffering, and in the process massively harm the environment shipping things to and from more lenient jurisdictions. > In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother? It should be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it. If you want a modern operating theatre, filled with expensive equipent and highly educated people, someone has to pay for it regardless of whether it's for yourself or for your horse. I'm only saying that the person who pays should do so consensually. Likewise, if all you can afford is a street dentist with rusty tools, then I don't see from where one derives entitlement to anything else. As mentioned earlier, we already buy things made by people who live in such conditions, so the point is moot. > Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization. This all may be, but I will be dying with my dignity intact, not greedily reaching into the pocket of a stranger, deluded into thinking I'm entitled to what's inside.

dredmorbius 6y ago

[T]he healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance? TDR-TB.