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I was expecting the crux of the issue to be over some indefensible action, but not something as horrid as marketing predictive urban crime software to city poli
by devmor 4y ago
I was expecting the crux of the issue to be over some indefensible action, but not something as horrid as marketing predictive urban crime software to city police.
I don't expect everyone to share the same moral values that I do, but if Professor Manson does not grasp the reason that so many people are horrified by such software and continues to blame it on "Woke" culture - I think it's better off that he doesn't teach any more students.
After all, we as a society have had decades of books, thought pieces and popular movies about exactly why this kind of thing is monstrous and inhumane.
- seibelj 4y ago“Horrified” “monstrous” “inhumane” The language the left uses to describe anything they disagree with is shrill and argumentative. Very tired of it. Also crime prediction software isn’t making any alarm bells go off for me, especially if it is effective at reducing the murders and gun violence that happens all the time in my city.
- dataflow 4y ago> Also crime prediction software isn’t making any alarm bells go off for me Do you see any similarities with redlining? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
- seibelj 4y agoConsidering the criticism here is that it's racist, isn't it odd that black Americans want increased police presence in their communities when compared to whites? > The share of Black adults who say police spending in their area should be decreased has fallen 19 percentage points since last year (from 42% to 23%), including a 13-point decline in the share who say funding should be decreased a lot (from 22% to 9%). The share of White and Hispanic adults who say funding for local police should be decreased also declined over this period, but not as much. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-sha...
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- the_only_law 4y agoWhat exactly does this have to do with crime prediction software? Or do you just assume that the vauge concept of increased police presence expands to crime prediction software in their minds?
- dataflow 4y agoYou avoided my question. Moreover I don't believe they're asking for software to make this decision for them. Rather, I would think they want to be able to decide how much police presence they get. Just because I'm fine with X outcome in the present, that doesn't imply I am fine with arbitrary software that happens to lead to X outcome in the present.
- seibelj 4y agoIf some algorithm says crime is more likely to happen in neighborhoods ABC and XYZ, and therefore put more police there, doesn't seem like a problem. I would prefer more police everywhere given the crime rates. But I'm someone who likes to be safe, YMMV
- dataflow 4y ago> If some algorithm says crime is more likely to happen in neighborhoods ABC and XYZ, and therefore put more police there, doesn't seem like a problem. Again, I must ask: do you see any similarities to redlining?
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- devmor 4y ago"The left" is far from the only section of society that criticizes this issue. It's been pretty universally panned by all corners of society - save for those on the far, far right obsessed with an imaginative idea of social purity that can somehow be enforced by a hard line drawn in the sand.
- seibelj 4y agoAh yes - anyone who disagrees with you is "far, far right". Mm hmm
- devmor 4y agoIt has nothing to do with anyone's disagreement with anyone and everything to do with the fact that predictive criminology was the core "science" behind the entire Nazi movement. If you want to defend the core of Nazi beliefs for use as a modern technology, you should expect some societal pushback don't you think?
- seibelj 4y agoStraight to calling people nazis! This must be parody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- ziddoap 4y agoMy god, they didn't call you, or anyone, a Nazi. They stated a fact regarding Nazi's relationship to predictive policing. The fact that you read that and somehow viewed it as being called a Nazi is something that might deserve some self-reflection.
- yamanawabi 4y agoThings got so bad in 1930s Germany that Hitler justified the killing of lawbreakers, Jews, Gypsies and other groups with an idea that they had a criminal biology. They believed that their hereditary factors could predict criminology. Of course there was no truth to that, but Nazi germany ate it up anyway. Kinda sounds familiar, huh.
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- mikeyouse 4y agoAlso, making a big stink "giving up tenure" after decades of teaching there to become a professor emeritus who's receiving a full pension and launching your IDW blog seems like a good hustle.
- Imnimo 4y agoYeah, the intro went from "And let’s say you watch as a colleague, previously held up as a paragon of those values, is ostracized and smeared for a thought crime that was not considered a thought crime until about five minutes ago. Maybe he made a bad joke. Or maybe he used the phrase “guys” instead of folks. Or Hispanic instead of Latinx." Not really what this is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PredPol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PredPol PredPol is legitimately pretty fucked up. I agree with your assessment that this isn't an issue of "Woke" culture. This is just a guy peddling pseudoscience with the trappings of academia. I would expect any rationalist to reject this on the simple basis that it does not work.
- david38 4y agoI’m biased, so I would give the most weight to what the computer science department says. Predictive policing absolutely does work in some aspects. The opposite of predictive policing is to have all beat cops equidistant from each other in their jurisdiction. This is clearly wrong. The next step is to have cops near population centers, then around areas where there have been more reports, requests, etc. After that you move to time to day. Where you place cops during the day vs night is clearly different. Shops close, bars open. Places where young adults vs seniors gather will clearly have different coverage. Pretty much every study in the subject shows people age out of crime. This is used as supporting evidence against lifetime sentences and geriatric incarceration. I have to assume only the most naive software will have an algorithm that uses secondary indicators / simplest predictive techniques would get such attention. For example “black neighborhoods” (that happen to be poor, with no other stats other than other departments say they have issues with black neighborhoods) and self fulfilling prophecies (we put most cops at location X and what a surprise, that location had the most arrests, w/o looking at the arrests themselves)
- francisofascii 4y agoI think the problem here it is not obvious, on the surface, that predictive urban crime software is horrid and inhumane. Only after digging deeper and perhaps reading the books and popular movies you mention does it become apparent. You can't simply say, if it is not obvious to this person, then they are unfit for teaching. The "obvious" parts need to be spelled out in detail.
- devmor 4y agoI should have worded my intention more clearly. I don't mean to say anyone unaware of this sentiment is unfit to teach, rather that someone working in cultural anthropology for as long as he has is unfit to teach if he didn't even take the time to uncover this point of contention before blaming it on the "Woke" crowd.
- _yb2s 4y agoI had the same experience... I ended up wanting to make sure my locale isn't using this software, and not sympathizing at all with this professor.