8 ms·

> they are not racist "having racist effects" counts as a perfectly valid usage of the word. This is a cheap sophistry: 1. It's only racist if it was intend

> they are not racist "having racist effects" counts as a perfectly valid usage of the word. This is a cheap sophistry: 1. It's only racist if it was intended to be. 2. You can't read minds. 3. Therefore, you can't say "this is racist." This isn't a useful usage of the term, except for attempting to deflect people from calling out racist effects.

concordDance 5y ago
I really wish the word "racist" had a single meaning.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  It is the norm, not the exception, for words to have multiple meanings.
- MichaelGroves 5y ago
  Any word with powerful meaning in one context will inevitably be repurposed in other contexts by people who want to borrow some of that power for their own uses. Here is an example: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize
- a9h74j 5y ago
  In general that won't happen, but one can do close readings of presumed valid arguments, and spot cases where equivocation (e.g. bringing in different meanings of a word within different premises) can invalidate a superficially good argument.
nine_k 5y ago
Would you call a virus that predominantly infects a particular ethnic group "racist"? Would you call alcohol or milk "racist" because Europeans, North Siberian and Alaskan peoples, and East-Asian peoples react differently to them? I'd say something like "race-biased" or "race-sensitive" would be a more proper term. You can't read minds, but you can read laws. Laws state the intent expressly, and also state the policy expressly. This is why "racist" can be very exactly applied to some laws (like those mandating segregation, different rights, etc, depending on the race). So, to my mind, using the word "racist" to denote intentional action makes enough sense.
- davidgerard 5y ago
  I would call the thing we're actually talking about, a machine set up and administered by humans and applied by humans, something that involves human agency. "Racist" is a perfectly applicable word for its effects when applied by the humans applying it. Some unrelated hypothetical about things not involving human agency is irrelevant to the question, and is functionally just another attempted deflection.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsanr2 5y ago
    I'm confused and slightly alarmed by the insistence on doing everything possible to scrub the prospect of human agency from matters that affected by and that effect humans. If we see some social ill, shouldn't be combing the systems that are related to thei existence for the flaws that let those ills happen, instead of just pointing at the system and saying, "Well, a human didn't make that specific decision, so it must be objective and fair." It's high-tech ventriloquism.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding the concern. As seen in stories like the x-ray race detection thing (https://www.wired.com/story/these-algorithms-look-x-rays-detect-your-race/ https://www.wired.com/story/these-algorithms-look-x-rays-det...), there's a lot of people in the AI field who believe that any correlation with race in a model is a "bias" which should be corrected. If a radiology AI model stumbles across some unknown condition like sickle cell anemia with a strong racial correlation, I think we should learn about it, and I worry that under the kinds of practices the source article suggests it would just be bias adjusted away.
      - bsanr2 5y ago
        You're misunderstanding the article. It's talking about a situation where an AI model replicated the unscientific classification of people by race. That means that, far from uncovering race-correlated health issues, it could perpetuate unscientific and damaging associations that could put people's health at risk: for example, throwing out disease diagnoses commonly associated with white people that show up for a black person. Of course, the central issue is that we wouldn't know why the model came to any portion of its conclusions. Additionally, you're privileging possible advantages over concrete and known issues. That's the opposite of risk mitigation.
dabbledash 5y ago
I think when the person you’re responding to says “they are not racist” he is referring to the texts being analyzed, not the model. I.e, “your model can take texts about or against racism as inputs and from these texts form an association between negative sentiment and certain races.”
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jhgb 5y ago
Computers are not sapient, and therefore can't be prejudiced (which would be a necessity for them to be racist) because prejudice is a feature of sapient entities. That would be like calling an elevator that had a malfunction and fell to the ground floor killing everyone inside "a murderer".

concordDance 5y ago

I really wish the word "racist" had a single meaning.

user-the-name 5y ago
It is the norm, not the exception, for words to have multiple meanings.
MichaelGroves 5y ago
Any word with powerful meaning in one context will inevitably be repurposed in other contexts by people who want to borrow some of that power for their own uses. Here is an example: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize
a9h74j 5y ago
In general that won't happen, but one can do close readings of presumed valid arguments, and spot cases where equivocation (e.g. bringing in different meanings of a word within different premises) can invalidate a superficially good argument.

nine_k 5y ago

Would you call a virus that predominantly infects a particular ethnic group "racist"? Would you call alcohol or milk "racist" because Europeans, North Siberian and Alaskan peoples, and East-Asian peoples react differently to them? I'd say something like "race-biased" or "race-sensitive" would be a more proper term. You can't read minds, but you can read laws. Laws state the intent expressly, and also state the policy expressly. This is why "racist" can be very exactly applied to some laws (like those mandating segregation, different rights, etc, depending on the race). So, to my mind, using the word "racist" to denote intentional action makes enough sense.

davidgerard 5y ago
I would call the thing we're actually talking about, a machine set up and administered by humans and applied by humans, something that involves human agency. "Racist" is a perfectly applicable word for its effects when applied by the humans applying it. Some unrelated hypothetical about things not involving human agency is irrelevant to the question, and is functionally just another attempted deflection.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bsanr2 5y ago
  I'm confused and slightly alarmed by the insistence on doing everything possible to scrub the prospect of human agency from matters that affected by and that effect humans. If we see some social ill, shouldn't be combing the systems that are related to thei existence for the flaws that let those ills happen, instead of just pointing at the system and saying, "Well, a human didn't make that specific decision, so it must be objective and fair." It's high-tech ventriloquism.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding the concern. As seen in stories like the x-ray race detection thing (https://www.wired.com/story/these-algorithms-look-x-rays-detect-your-race/ https://www.wired.com/story/these-algorithms-look-x-rays-det...), there's a lot of people in the AI field who believe that any correlation with race in a model is a "bias" which should be corrected. If a radiology AI model stumbles across some unknown condition like sickle cell anemia with a strong racial correlation, I think we should learn about it, and I worry that under the kinds of practices the source article suggests it would just be bias adjusted away.
    - bsanr2 5y ago
      You're misunderstanding the article. It's talking about a situation where an AI model replicated the unscientific classification of people by race. That means that, far from uncovering race-correlated health issues, it could perpetuate unscientific and damaging associations that could put people's health at risk: for example, throwing out disease diagnoses commonly associated with white people that show up for a black person. Of course, the central issue is that we wouldn't know why the model came to any portion of its conclusions. Additionally, you're privileging possible advantages over concrete and known issues. That's the opposite of risk mitigation.

dabbledash 5y ago

I think when the person you’re responding to says “they are not racist” he is referring to the texts being analyzed, not the model. I.e, “your model can take texts about or against racism as inputs and from these texts form an association between negative sentiment and certain races.”

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jhgb 5y ago

Computers are not sapient, and therefore can't be prejudiced (which would be a necessity for them to be racist) because prejudice is a feature of sapient entities. That would be like calling an elevator that had a malfunction and fell to the ground floor killing everyone inside "a murderer".