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You're misinterpreting what they mean by "50% false positive rate". Let's say there are 10 child traffickers in the country. A 50% false positive rate might mea

You're misinterpreting what they mean by "50% false positive rate". Let's say there are 10 child traffickers in the country. A 50% false positive rate might mean this system detects 7 of them, but then also detects 7 people who are not child traffickers. The reason it's an absurdly good rate is because the thing they are looking for is so rare. If one in a million people are child traffickers, and you have a false positive rate of 50%, it means that the average person has no more than a one in a million chance of being a false positive. Let me put it another way. Let's say you are an Egyptian Pharaoh and a man tells you he can predict when solar eclipses will happen. You give him a calendar and he marks down 20 days in the next few decades where he claims there will be an eclipse. On 10 of those marked days, there actually is an eclipse. That would be a 50% false positive rate. By the standards of an Egyptian Pharaoh, that probably looks like an absurdly good false positive rate.

rendaw 11mo ago
I agree the GP math is wrong. But still, is this good? So 14 cases are referred to law enforcement. They catch 7 people doing really terrible things, and they also catch 7 who are innocent. The police are notorious for treating weak signals as strong and forging causes for suspicion, terrorizing suspects, getting them fired from their job, killing their pets, upending their lives, etc. If you ruin as many lives as you save, will you sleep well at night? This is why a 50% false positive rate is terrible and privacy advocates are against this. The consequences of a false positive for an eclipse when one is predicted is trivial, unless there's something about eclipses I don't know. Maybe there's some diffuse monetary loss across society.
- intended 11mo ago
  Yes, this is good. I urge anyone who thinks otherwise to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find. It is incredibly easy to be on the sidelines and hold an opinion. It is your right to do so. However if even a tiny bit of you is the kind of person who is driven to understand, and to hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork. Personally, I keep an arms length from the child safety side of things, simply because I know my tolerances.
  - throwaway938761 11mo ago
    The innocent people caught in the net aren't the only victims though. Entire families will be broken by the 50% false positive rate. You can easily end up doing more harm than the abusers with your line of thinking. Granted, assuming law enforcement is reasonably competent, the false positives shouldn't result in anything other some wasted time for whoever has to look into it...but that's quite the assumption to make.
    - intended 11mo ago
      Everyone has the freedom to hold their opinions. I am saying that if you are type of person who wants to be accurate, you should look deeper into this space. There’s many opinions that are easier to hold when not having to test them. I had to change my positions.
  - pona-a 11mo ago
    Why does the emotional intensity of the crime justify accepting massive collateral damage to innocent people? It's an appeal to trauma. Why can't we turn the tables on this? Have you been woken up at 3 AM by police battering down your door? Had your home torn apart, computers seized, children screaming? Waited months for an apology that never comes while your name sits in search results next to 'investigation'? I urge anyone who thinks aggressive enforcement is worth the cost to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find. Personally, I keep an arm's length from these stories, simply because I know my tolerances. But if even a tiny bit of you is driven to understand and hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork.
    - intended 11mo ago
      The emotional intensity of the crime of child abuse? So we are removing the emotional valence of crimes, and then comparing it to the emotional state of being in fear of police over reach? I mean, if you need that level of handicap to make your position become defensible, then you don’t really have an apples to apples comparison. As for leg work, would you feel better to know that I have been on the other end of doxxing attempts, and that team mates I know have had it worse?
brigandish 11mo ago
> It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio
swiftcoder 11mo ago
> The reason it's an absurdly good rate is because the thing they are looking for is so rare If their 50% false positive rate resulted in 100,000 false positives among the German population of 85 million... it's not as rare as all that - you have greater than 1-in-1,000 odds of being a false positive.

rendaw 11mo ago

I agree the GP math is wrong. But still, is this good? So 14 cases are referred to law enforcement. They catch 7 people doing really terrible things, and they also catch 7 who are innocent. The police are notorious for treating weak signals as strong and forging causes for suspicion, terrorizing suspects, getting them fired from their job, killing their pets, upending their lives, etc. If you ruin as many lives as you save, will you sleep well at night? This is why a 50% false positive rate is terrible and privacy advocates are against this. The consequences of a false positive for an eclipse when one is predicted is trivial, unless there's something about eclipses I don't know. Maybe there's some diffuse monetary loss across society.

intended 11mo ago
Yes, this is good. I urge anyone who thinks otherwise to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find. It is incredibly easy to be on the sidelines and hold an opinion. It is your right to do so. However if even a tiny bit of you is the kind of person who is driven to understand, and to hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork. Personally, I keep an arms length from the child safety side of things, simply because I know my tolerances.
- throwaway938761 11mo ago
  The innocent people caught in the net aren't the only victims though. Entire families will be broken by the 50% false positive rate. You can easily end up doing more harm than the abusers with your line of thinking. Granted, assuming law enforcement is reasonably competent, the false positives shouldn't result in anything other some wasted time for whoever has to look into it...but that's quite the assumption to make.
  - intended 11mo ago
    Everyone has the freedom to hold their opinions. I am saying that if you are type of person who wants to be accurate, you should look deeper into this space. There’s many opinions that are easier to hold when not having to test them. I had to change my positions.
- pona-a 11mo ago
  Why does the emotional intensity of the crime justify accepting massive collateral damage to innocent people? It's an appeal to trauma. Why can't we turn the tables on this? Have you been woken up at 3 AM by police battering down your door? Had your home torn apart, computers seized, children screaming? Waited months for an apology that never comes while your name sits in search results next to 'investigation'? I urge anyone who thinks aggressive enforcement is worth the cost to wade into this arena themselves and see what they find. Personally, I keep an arm's length from these stories, simply because I know my tolerances. But if even a tiny bit of you is driven to understand and hold opinions based on defensible positions, do your legwork.
  - intended 11mo ago
    The emotional intensity of the crime of child abuse? So we are removing the emotional valence of crimes, and then comparing it to the emotional state of being in fear of police over reach? I mean, if you need that level of handicap to make your position become defensible, then you don’t really have an apples to apples comparison. As for leg work, would you feel better to know that I have been on the other end of doxxing attempts, and that team mates I know have had it worse?

brigandish 11mo ago

> It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio

swiftcoder 11mo ago

> The reason it's an absurdly good rate is because the thing they are looking for is so rare If their 50% false positive rate resulted in 100,000 false positives among the German population of 85 million... it's not as rare as all that - you have greater than 1-in-1,000 odds of being a false positive.