6 ms·

Depends - I would say 4% is probably accurate enough evidence to support an arrest (i.e. they are detained someone in order to investigate a crime they are susp

by Closi 3y ago

Depends - I would say 4% is probably accurate enough evidence to support an arrest (i.e. they are detained someone in order to investigate a crime they are suspected of committing), but not enough to support a conviction. Arrest != conviction. However 4% probably isn't accurate enough to support jailing someone (in my view, depending on other evidence), so there is nuance here. Besides, while you are innocent until proven guilty, this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for investigation) if you are a suspect.

godelski 3y ago
> Besides, while you are innocent until proven guilty, this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for investigation) if you are a suspect. I was with you till here. While I disagree with a bit prior, like you say, nuance. But this sentence is egregious. An arrest record is still particularly damming to one's life. Even if one is never convicted it can still greatly impact one's ability to get a job, credit, or other things. You may say that that is a different problem, and in part I will agree, but this aspect is likely easier to address and I do not think it is wrong to suggest we should have a high bar for detaining someone and placing them on record.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > An arrest record is still particularly damming to one's life. The solution then, IMO, is that if you're arrested for being suspected of a crime, and later found innocent or the charges are dropped, then the arrest should be removed from your record.
  - godelski 3y ago
    I'm perfectly fine with this solution and will even advocate for it. But many others have been trying to unsuccessfully. So I think let them continue their efforts, do bring attention to is, but also not be reliant on them fixing the problem. I should also add that arrests are public. So even if you are not convicted the arrest record may be found by a third party who is going to be less incentivized to expunge that data. So there's extra complexity to this too and why we should also not be reliant upon that solution.
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      > I should also add that arrests are public. That's a good point. My knee-jerk reaction is to think that maybe they shouldn't be, but there's a million reasons why they should.
      - godelski 3y ago
        Yeah it is quite a tough call really. But I think this is why it is so important to consider nuance. I think it is easy not to and we forget that what explicitly makes an expert is consideration of nuance. By definition this needs be true because if it was obvious you wouldn't require significant education lol. I want to also add that there are no globally optimal solutions. So everything has a downside and I think we often fall for this trap in an effort to support our priors and do not accurately compare. So it is easy to get into polarizing arguments because while we argue about the same problem we often do not have similar optimization criteria. I've found clarifying optimization criteria helps defuse these types of arguments. I hate to say it, but CS people also have a bad reputation around this. My hypothesis is that programmers often work in many different domains and are exposed to domain knowledge, but as we all know, it is exceptionally easy to deceive one's self into thinking they know more than they do (just go on any social media platform, including HN, if you doubt this lol. My personal favorite is to watch people who can't do calculus argue with Judea Pearl on Twitter)
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    Exactly. The solution is simply to have had the system work differently in the past.
- Closi 3y ago
  That sounds like a problem with arrest records across the board then, rather than a problem with drug testing.
shkkmo 3y ago
> this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for investigation) if you are a suspect. Being arrested and being detained for investigation are legally different things. You need only "reasonable suspicion" to detain but you need "probable cause" to arrest.
hedora 3y ago
Accepting that a four percent false positive rate is enough to establish probable cause means the police could decide to screen everyone attempting to attend a political rally, and then toss 4% in jail. Most people would think twice about attending, given the 1 in 25 chance of being arrested, especially since that creates a de facto criminal record in the US (commercial arrest databases exist and are often used in background checks). Of course, the police could also run an assay of a few dozen tests for different substances, each with a 4% false positive rate, and lock up 99% of potential attendees, or they could run the test every day on every person that takes a common commute route in an neighborhood they don't like.
- SubiculumCode 3y ago
  There is supposed to be probable cause before asking for a test; so blatant testing could and would be contested.
  - godelski 3y ago
    I've been stopped when there was no probable cause, and contested. I was visiting the Golden gate Park a decade back and asked a ranger for some directions. They stopped me and my friend because "they smelled weed". We still got searched. We did not smoke and there was no way we could have smelled. We did have a still sealed container from a local dispensary that was not know in it's container, but a ziplock bag. The bar for probable cause is so low that it can be normal things (any given location in SF has high likelihood of smelling like weed). And remember, this is because I walked up to a fucking park ranger and said "hey do you have a map?" Even the second ranger protested and asked to be off record. Couldn't contest without going back to SF and that's technically federal property. I'm just saying, I wouldn't rely on this being a sufficient safety mechanism. Abuse is rampant and difficult to prove.
    - Closi 3y ago
      Sure, but probable cause probably can't be justified if you are drug screening everyone attending a political rally - that would probably be easier to argue as abuse than a stop of a single person on the street.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
the next time you take a drug test for employment go see if you're ok with a 4% chance of losing that job. And then consider how mild that is compared to being arrested, where you'll often lose your job on top of everything else.
- Closi 3y ago
  Well drug testing for employment usually will be similar to a field test in the first stage, but at failure will then get sent to a lab for proper analysis (at least in my experience). Laboratory analysis should (obviously) be required for all non-negative results.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    should, but isn't. what happens instead is they'll collect enough urine for multiple samples, but that's not the point. The point is that the false positive rate is far below 4% and even they take precautions and the negative outcome of a false positive on a drug test is _far_ less catastrophic than getting arrested. The real point here is that 4% is unacceptable and the only reason you, and others, would ever think it's acceptable is because you don't imagine yourself at risk.

by Closi 3y ago

godelski 3y ago

> Besides, while you are innocent until proven guilty, this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for investigation) if you are a suspect. I was with you till here. While I disagree with a bit prior, like you say, nuance. But this sentence is egregious. An arrest record is still particularly damming to one's life. Even if one is never convicted it can still greatly impact one's ability to get a job, credit, or other things. You may say that that is a different problem, and in part I will agree, but this aspect is likely easier to address and I do not think it is wrong to suggest we should have a high bar for detaining someone and placing them on record.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> An arrest record is still particularly damming to one's life. The solution then, IMO, is that if you're arrested for being suspected of a crime, and later found innocent or the charges are dropped, then the arrest should be removed from your record.
- godelski 3y ago
  I'm perfectly fine with this solution and will even advocate for it. But many others have been trying to unsuccessfully. So I think let them continue their efforts, do bring attention to is, but also not be reliant on them fixing the problem. I should also add that arrests are public. So even if you are not convicted the arrest record may be found by a third party who is going to be less incentivized to expunge that data. So there's extra complexity to this too and why we should also not be reliant upon that solution.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > I should also add that arrests are public. That's a good point. My knee-jerk reaction is to think that maybe they shouldn't be, but there's a million reasons why they should.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Yeah it is quite a tough call really. But I think this is why it is so important to consider nuance. I think it is easy not to and we forget that what explicitly makes an expert is consideration of nuance. By definition this needs be true because if it was obvious you wouldn't require significant education lol. I want to also add that there are no globally optimal solutions. So everything has a downside and I think we often fall for this trap in an effort to support our priors and do not accurately compare. So it is easy to get into polarizing arguments because while we argue about the same problem we often do not have similar optimization criteria. I've found clarifying optimization criteria helps defuse these types of arguments. I hate to say it, but CS people also have a bad reputation around this. My hypothesis is that programmers often work in many different domains and are exposed to domain knowledge, but as we all know, it is exceptionally easy to deceive one's self into thinking they know more than they do (just go on any social media platform, including HN, if you doubt this lol. My personal favorite is to watch people who can't do calculus argue with Judea Pearl on Twitter)
- jrflowers 3y ago
  Exactly. The solution is simply to have had the system work differently in the past.
Closi 3y ago
That sounds like a problem with arrest records across the board then, rather than a problem with drug testing.

shkkmo 3y ago

> this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for investigation) if you are a suspect. Being arrested and being detained for investigation are legally different things. You need only "reasonable suspicion" to detain but you need "probable cause" to arrest.

hedora 3y ago

Accepting that a four percent false positive rate is enough to establish probable cause means the police could decide to screen everyone attempting to attend a political rally, and then toss 4% in jail. Most people would think twice about attending, given the 1 in 25 chance of being arrested, especially since that creates a de facto criminal record in the US (commercial arrest databases exist and are often used in background checks). Of course, the police could also run an assay of a few dozen tests for different substances, each with a 4% false positive rate, and lock up 99% of potential attendees, or they could run the test every day on every person that takes a common commute route in an neighborhood they don't like.

SubiculumCode 3y ago
There is supposed to be probable cause before asking for a test; so blatant testing could and would be contested.
- godelski 3y ago
  I've been stopped when there was no probable cause, and contested. I was visiting the Golden gate Park a decade back and asked a ranger for some directions. They stopped me and my friend because "they smelled weed". We still got searched. We did not smoke and there was no way we could have smelled. We did have a still sealed container from a local dispensary that was not know in it's container, but a ziplock bag. The bar for probable cause is so low that it can be normal things (any given location in SF has high likelihood of smelling like weed). And remember, this is because I walked up to a fucking park ranger and said "hey do you have a map?" Even the second ranger protested and asked to be off record. Couldn't contest without going back to SF and that's technically federal property. I'm just saying, I wouldn't rely on this being a sufficient safety mechanism. Abuse is rampant and difficult to prove.
  - Closi 3y ago
    Sure, but probable cause probably can't be justified if you are drug screening everyone attending a political rally - that would probably be easier to argue as abuse than a stop of a single person on the street.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

the next time you take a drug test for employment go see if you're ok with a 4% chance of losing that job. And then consider how mild that is compared to being arrested, where you'll often lose your job on top of everything else.

Closi 3y ago
Well drug testing for employment usually will be similar to a field test in the first stage, but at failure will then get sent to a lab for proper analysis (at least in my experience). Laboratory analysis should (obviously) be required for all non-negative results.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  should, but isn't. what happens instead is they'll collect enough urine for multiple samples, but that's not the point. The point is that the false positive rate is far below 4% and even they take precautions and the negative outcome of a false positive on a drug test is _far_ less catastrophic than getting arrested. The real point here is that 4% is unacceptable and the only reason you, and others, would ever think it's acceptable is because you don't imagine yourself at risk.