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> African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s Fucking hell, man.

• nickthemagicman 5y ago
  ?
  • fidesomnes 5y ago
    You did not demonstrate enough navel gazing and bemoaning of original sin all non people of color are guilty of. If I knew were you worked I could have you fired.
• claylevering 5y ago
  ...YIKES.
  • nickthemagicman 5y ago
    ?
• CyanBird 5y ago
  I completely fail to see what's the issue with what OP said, care to explain? It is completely accurate, algorithms are built by people whom live inmersed on their own temporary and geographically atomized cultures, just look at modern supposed ""unbiased"" algorithms used to ""prevent crime"", it is just racial biases baked in
  • nickthemagicman 5y ago
    I am super confused as well. Lol. This website is really strange.
    • ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      I suspect the "may have" is what set people off.
      • nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Thanks for letting me know. So strange. The 'algorithm' is the noun object of the preposition. Not society or history . Is modern English education really that poor? Or is there purposeful misinterpretation in order to be offended? I just don't get it.
        • rincebrain 5y ago
          When I read it, as a native speaker, I read "treated poorly by the algorithm" as being a term for the behavior of culture and systems of the time, and not a hypothetical algorithm from the future that took as input the culture of the time and made decisions about fairness. I think it was the use of "the algorithm" and not "an algorithm" that most affected my reading there - "poorly by an algorithm" comes across, to me, as "poorly by some algorithm", rather than "poorly by _the_ algorithm", implying a specific instance of a thing, already known by the reader or referred back to later, doing it. Consider "treated poorly by the system" versus "treated poorly by such a system", which has an even clearer connotation, to me.
          • noduerme 5y ago
            My first reading as a native speaker was that "the algorithm" meant "the Man". But after several readings, I think he meant that this algorithm would categorize someone who was legally considered less than a citizen as a more likely recidivist. Which is an interesting point. Particularly in the US where there's a notion of illegal immigrants having already broken the law. Would this algorithm consider them to be more likely to be repeat offenders if it were weighted to treat noncitizenship as a factor, or overstaying a visa as a crime? And if so, then why wouldn't it weight slaves as more likely to reoffend. And if it did that, what would stop it from weighting the descendants of slaves the aame way?
            • 5y ago
  • ljm 5y ago
    > African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s Tell me about how your algorithm enslaved people.
    • nickthemagicman 5y ago
      If you're asking if I took a time machine back to the 1700's to use an imaginary algorithm, to enslave people, I assure you good sir I did not. This is indeed one of the potential problems with inventing an algorithm to sentance people, as I mentioned before, is that it would be written to match the biases of the time period.
  • ljm 5y ago
    For context, the issue was, as many posters said, this: > African Americans may have been treated poorly On my part, I'm british. "Fucking hell, man!" for me is a way of being exasperated; I was surprised with reading that. It's not a condemnation, it's surprise. And a phrase containing 'may have' is begging for equivocation, especially when referring to black people as 'african americans' while talking about their treatment. > Black people may have been treated poorly ^ this is the sentence that I read
• jeffypoo 5y ago
  Your outrage radar is a little too sensitive pal.
  • crooked-v 5y ago
    You don't see any problem with the "may have"?
    • tdeck 5y ago
      I think what OP meant is "if the algorithm were designed (or perhaps implemented) in the 1700s according to standards of fairness held by those in power at that time, then it might have treated African Americans unfairly (despite being an algorithm)". I'm not a mind reader but that seems to make some sense given the context of the discussion.
      • jarcane 5y ago
        You don't have to go back to the 1700s to find African Americans being treated poorly by the judicial system. It's a weird shifting of the sands that isn't necessary to the conversation, when the context is a subject that is causing real harm now.
        • nickthemagicman 5y ago
          That supports my point even more. If certain groups of people are being treated poorly in modern times then an algorithm that sentences people would possibly include that bias as well. Is that statement offensive to you?
          • masklinn 5y ago
            > If certain groups of people are being treated poorly in modern times then an algorithm that sentences people would possibly include that bias as well. I’d even change the word “would” to “will” as that has already occurred time and again. I think you two are violently agreeing with one another, but misunderstanding one another as well.
• deleted 5y ago
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