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Great to hear that some of my "no duh" thoughts have mathematical backing! I've always found ethnic profiling rather strange. If we assume, correctly, that the

Great to hear that some of my "no duh" thoughts have mathematical backing! I've always found ethnic profiling rather strange. If we assume, correctly, that the vast majority of people are not "malfeasors" and the fact that said "malfeasors" will plan against any and all barriers which we put into place, why on Earth would you think that those you "nab" at airports and the like would be anything but innocent? Seems like you'd only nab "malfeasors" who would've failed anyway, and in turn antognized a large population for little to no benefit. What better way to breed "malfeasors" than to select and irritate a large number of people for long periods of time for no particular reason? Contempt breeds contempt breeds contempt. One last thought: Malfeasance is a result of some cause. Treating malfeasance is all well and good. But I always assumed that it would've been better to address the root cause that creates "malfeasors", which are (in no particular order); brutal poverty, constant assault and general mistreatment by those other than themselves. I wonder what would have happened had we flooded the Middle East with cheap food/consumables and paid for hospitals, schools and infrastructure instead of going in and starting a rather prolonged war. I suppose it probably doesn't matter now - the damage is done.

bermanoid 14y ago
Don't overstate the result here: this paper says that (mathematically speaking) if you want to find terrorists in a crowd with as few checks as possible, it is optimal to profile rather aggressively, you just shouldn't do so directly in proportion to the probability that each person is a terrorist, but instead sample in proportion to the square root of that probability. This is not super surprising mathematically - there's no reason we ever should have assumed that P(terrorist|race) is exactly proportional to the optimal sampling frequency if we want to find terrorists when all we know is race, all we'd assume up front is that there's some relation.
CWuestefeld 14y ago
I always assumed that it would've been better to address the root cause that creates "malfeasors", which are (in no particular order); brutal poverty, constant assault and general mistreatment by those other than themselves. Actually, a recent study shows that malfeasors are the result of the local political posturing in their own countries: The effort poured into diplomacy and public relations to counter anti-American sentiment among some Muslims has so far ignored the main source of their anti-US feeling - competing political factions in their own countries. ... Blaydes and Linzer conclude that the main explanation for high levels of anti-American opinion in a given country depends, not as previously thought on Muslim perceptions of what America is culturally or what it does politically, but on the degree of competition between the political elites within that country itself. http://phys.org/news/2012-06-muslims-america-intriguing.html http://phys.org/news/2012-06-muslims-america-intriguing.html
yummyfajitas 14y ago
Um, you do realize that this paper proves that (subject to certain assumptions) a specific form of racial profiling is mathematically optimal, right?

bermanoid 14y ago

Don't overstate the result here: this paper says that (mathematically speaking) if you want to find terrorists in a crowd with as few checks as possible, it is optimal to profile rather aggressively, you just shouldn't do so directly in proportion to the probability that each person is a terrorist, but instead sample in proportion to the square root of that probability. This is not super surprising mathematically - there's no reason we ever should have assumed that P(terrorist|race) is exactly proportional to the optimal sampling frequency if we want to find terrorists when all we know is race, all we'd assume up front is that there's some relation.

CWuestefeld 14y ago

I always assumed that it would've been better to address the root cause that creates "malfeasors", which are (in no particular order); brutal poverty, constant assault and general mistreatment by those other than themselves. Actually, a recent study shows that malfeasors are the result of the local political posturing in their own countries: The effort poured into diplomacy and public relations to counter anti-American sentiment among some Muslims has so far ignored the main source of their anti-US feeling - competing political factions in their own countries. ... Blaydes and Linzer conclude that the main explanation for high levels of anti-American opinion in a given country depends, not as previously thought on Muslim perceptions of what America is culturally or what it does politically, but on the degree of competition between the political elites within that country itself. http://phys.org/news/2012-06-muslims-america-intriguing.html http://phys.org/news/2012-06-muslims-america-intriguing.html

yummyfajitas 14y ago

Um, you do realize that this paper proves that (subject to certain assumptions) a specific form of racial profiling is mathematically optimal, right?