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I don't really know what you mean by political - I think you are defining it pretty expansively. What, exactly, would count as NOT political to you? If there's

I don't really know what you mean by political - I think you are defining it pretty expansively. What, exactly, would count as NOT political to you? If there's a society with mistreatment of certain races built in, then that mistreatment must first be addressed. It's a bit unreasonable to ask adwords engineers to layer on some post-hoc fix many miles downstream when they can't even measure the mistreatment or reasonably predict the effect of the fix. It's also completely unfair to the individual humans (individual humans are the only ones I care about) who didn't mistreat anyone and are now obligated to pay for the actions of someone else (in the form of fewer clicks on ads). And of course, built into all of this is the assumption that statistical disparities are all caused by mistreatment. That is unlikely to be true. Incidentally, as per the description given in your edit, unintentionded consequences of ad serving algorithms can only be interpreted as "political" in the broadest sense. So can anything else. So if you just mean "political" in the sense of "anything that ever affects anything", then sure - ad serving is political.

pron 12y ago
Politics = human actions that affect distribution of power in society. See the end of this comment for examples of political and non-political things. > It's a bit unreasonable to ask adwords engineers to layer on some post-hoc fix... Maybe so. But this article notes the interesting fact that failing to do so is a political action. We can leave the discussion of what we should do to another time. Right now it's just important to understand what it is that we are doing. > also completely unfair to the individual humans Again, that is a question of policy and values. You may find it unfair and I may think the opposite is unfair; that's a matter of political orientation. But this article is not about what's fair and unfair, but an objective observation of the role computers play in the dynamics of society. > And of course, built into all of this is the assumption that statistical disparities are all caused by mistreatment. Not quite. What's built into this is the fact that human actions -- intentional or inadvertent -- affect the distribution of power in society. Whether or not there's mistreatment is a specific question pertaining to the specific histories of specific countries and societies. > That is unlikely to be true. Well, this is a question of fact, and research has conclusively shown a direct link from slavery and Jim Crow (that lasted for 250 + 100 = 350 years more or less, and ended, as official legal policy, only 50 years -- one generation -- ago) to the current distribution of power among races in American society. EDIT: people who hold liberal values do make one relevant assumption: that it is very unlikely that certain groups would voluntarily (i.e. free of any influence and persuasion) yield power (over them) to others. Theoretically, this assumption could be wrong, but so far we have no reason to believe so. Also, this seems like a sensible assumption, and the burden of proof should be on those who think it's false. > "political" in the sense of "anything that ever affects anything", then sure - ad serving is political. I mean political as in political[1]: human actions that affect distribution of power in society. If a volcano erupts and destroys a town -- that's not political. If however, the volcano is known to be dangerous and therefore only poor people buy houses in its vicinity, there may be politics involved. The invention of the locomotive is purely technological, but choosing which cities the railway passes through might be political. Machine learning is technological. But programming computers to take actions which may affect the distribution of power based on machine learning extracting information from past data is political. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academic_discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academi...
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  ...research has conclusively shown a direct link from slavery and Jim Crow... A link. They haven't shown that every disparity is caused by it. And the rapid social movement of various other groups (e.g., vietnamese, filipinos, mexicans) suggests that historical explanations don't have great explanatory power anyway. I retract what I said. According to your definition of "political", ad serving, dating, renting a house, playing video games, etc, are all political acts. Very few actions by humans are not political.
  - pron 12y ago
    > They haven't shown that every disparity is caused by it. True. But all they needed to show -- and they have -- is that this is the largest contributing factor, which explains most of the observed effect (in fact, they didn't even need to show that, only that it's a large contributing factor; if you were born with one weak leg and I take a hammer to the other one, doesn't mean that I'm not responsible for you being confined to a wheelchair). What, AFAIK, hasn't been found is other contributing factors (that you seem to allude to), but I won't deny their theoretical existence. > According to your definition of "political", ad serving, dating, renting a house, playing video games, etc, are all political acts. No. First, this is not "my definition" but the real definition, which you are free to look up on Wikipedia at your leisure. Here's the link -- again -- for your convenience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academic_discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academi... Second, many actions by humans can be political, if they influence the distribution of power in society. Note that this is not a binary definition: one action can be more or less political than another. Finally, why are you trolling? Are you trying to understand this science or make fun of it?
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      What, AFAIK, hasn't been found is other contributing factors... Clearly you aren't that familiar with the research then. There are many disparities in work and academic effort, labor force participation, criminal propensity, IQ and career choice. I've not seen any analysis that controls for all of these or any remotely accurate predictive model. I guess given your voluminous command of the literature, you'll provide one? Finally, why are you trolling? Are you trying to understand this science or make fun of it? I was merely linking to some interesting and relevant articles on causal calculus that relate to the issues in the article. You are the one who went on a random tangent about how everything is political and I should use the most expansive possible definition for certain words, and somehow I'm denying science if I don't.
pixl97 12y ago
From Wikipedia on the first line of politics. >Politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a global, civic or individual level. So yes, ad serving clearly falls under that scope.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Pretty much anything is - buying food, negotiating with an auto driver, asking a girl for a date. As I said, in the broadest interpretation, everything is political and the word is now meaningless.
  - pron 12y ago
    This again? The word is not meaningless just because you say it is (after insisting on misinterpreting it). This is a discussion at the intersection of technology and political science, a vast academic field you clearly have no knowledge of and no interest in learning the basics of. Obviously, the complete definition is nuanced. What you said right now is as knowledgable (and -- excuse me -- as intelligent) as someone saying in a discussion of physics, "general relativity is meaningless". I simply don't understand why you even insist on arguing matters in a field of study you have absolutely no clue in, and no interest in. Last time you asked me for papers that you had no intention of reading. So I've found something more manageable for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political). You can manage reading at least that. Then, look up "Politics" in Wikipedia.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      The more ideas a word describes, the less information using it conveys. Similarly, "a human" conveys far less information than "pron", and "an animal" conveys even less information than "a human".
      - pron 12y ago
        Thank you. Nevertheless, the word "political" conveys just as much information as needed to study it as a field -- like the word "physics". Physics covers a lot (in fact, it encompasses politics, too, so it carries even less meaning), and yet there are some things in nature that you'd study through the prism of physics while others through the prism of biology, so the word physics seems to be quite useful to define a field of study. So is the word politics (or political). There are, of course, many sub-types of politics -- as you'd have known if you'd bothered to look it up on Wikipedia. But your intentional ignorance combined with obsessive pedantism makes it very hard to provide the full science with every HN comment. Like I've said so many times: either learn this topic or don't, but why do you insist on flaunting your ignorance with such vigor? You seem almost proud of how little you know and how little you wish to understand.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Modern political campaigning and modern marketing are becoming the same business. Whether voting or buying, the techniques are the same and often so are the agencies. Also, being able to say what people want to hear at the time that is most beneficial to you, by running the statistics on giant datasets, is one of the biggest existential risks democracy has ever faced.

pron 12y ago

Politics = human actions that affect distribution of power in society. See the end of this comment for examples of political and non-political things. > It's a bit unreasonable to ask adwords engineers to layer on some post-hoc fix... Maybe so. But this article notes the interesting fact that failing to do so is a political action. We can leave the discussion of what we should do to another time. Right now it's just important to understand what it is that we are doing. > also completely unfair to the individual humans Again, that is a question of policy and values. You may find it unfair and I may think the opposite is unfair; that's a matter of political orientation. But this article is not about what's fair and unfair, but an objective observation of the role computers play in the dynamics of society. > And of course, built into all of this is the assumption that statistical disparities are all caused by mistreatment. Not quite. What's built into this is the fact that human actions -- intentional or inadvertent -- affect the distribution of power in society. Whether or not there's mistreatment is a specific question pertaining to the specific histories of specific countries and societies. > That is unlikely to be true. Well, this is a question of fact, and research has conclusively shown a direct link from slavery and Jim Crow (that lasted for 250 + 100 = 350 years more or less, and ended, as official legal policy, only 50 years -- one generation -- ago) to the current distribution of power among races in American society. EDIT: people who hold liberal values do make one relevant assumption: that it is very unlikely that certain groups would voluntarily (i.e. free of any influence and persuasion) yield power (over them) to others. Theoretically, this assumption could be wrong, but so far we have no reason to believe so. Also, this seems like a sensible assumption, and the burden of proof should be on those who think it's false. > "political" in the sense of "anything that ever affects anything", then sure - ad serving is political. I mean political as in political[1]: human actions that affect distribution of power in society. If a volcano erupts and destroys a town -- that's not political. If however, the volcano is known to be dangerous and therefore only poor people buy houses in its vicinity, there may be politics involved. The invention of the locomotive is purely technological, but choosing which cities the railway passes through might be political. Machine learning is technological. But programming computers to take actions which may affect the distribution of power based on machine learning extracting information from past data is political. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academic_discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academi...

yummyfajitas 12y ago
...research has conclusively shown a direct link from slavery and Jim Crow... A link. They haven't shown that every disparity is caused by it. And the rapid social movement of various other groups (e.g., vietnamese, filipinos, mexicans) suggests that historical explanations don't have great explanatory power anyway. I retract what I said. According to your definition of "political", ad serving, dating, renting a house, playing video games, etc, are all political acts. Very few actions by humans are not political.
- pron 12y ago
  > They haven't shown that every disparity is caused by it. True. But all they needed to show -- and they have -- is that this is the largest contributing factor, which explains most of the observed effect (in fact, they didn't even need to show that, only that it's a large contributing factor; if you were born with one weak leg and I take a hammer to the other one, doesn't mean that I'm not responsible for you being confined to a wheelchair). What, AFAIK, hasn't been found is other contributing factors (that you seem to allude to), but I won't deny their theoretical existence. > According to your definition of "political", ad serving, dating, renting a house, playing video games, etc, are all political acts. No. First, this is not "my definition" but the real definition, which you are free to look up on Wikipedia at your leisure. Here's the link -- again -- for your convenience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academic_discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics#Politics_as_an_academi... Second, many actions by humans can be political, if they influence the distribution of power in society. Note that this is not a binary definition: one action can be more or less political than another. Finally, why are you trolling? Are you trying to understand this science or make fun of it?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    What, AFAIK, hasn't been found is other contributing factors... Clearly you aren't that familiar with the research then. There are many disparities in work and academic effort, labor force participation, criminal propensity, IQ and career choice. I've not seen any analysis that controls for all of these or any remotely accurate predictive model. I guess given your voluminous command of the literature, you'll provide one? Finally, why are you trolling? Are you trying to understand this science or make fun of it? I was merely linking to some interesting and relevant articles on causal calculus that relate to the issues in the article. You are the one who went on a random tangent about how everything is political and I should use the most expansive possible definition for certain words, and somehow I'm denying science if I don't.

pixl97 12y ago

From Wikipedia on the first line of politics. >Politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a global, civic or individual level. So yes, ad serving clearly falls under that scope.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Pretty much anything is - buying food, negotiating with an auto driver, asking a girl for a date. As I said, in the broadest interpretation, everything is political and the word is now meaningless.
- pron 12y ago
  This again? The word is not meaningless just because you say it is (after insisting on misinterpreting it). This is a discussion at the intersection of technology and political science, a vast academic field you clearly have no knowledge of and no interest in learning the basics of. Obviously, the complete definition is nuanced. What you said right now is as knowledgable (and -- excuse me -- as intelligent) as someone saying in a discussion of physics, "general relativity is meaningless". I simply don't understand why you even insist on arguing matters in a field of study you have absolutely no clue in, and no interest in. Last time you asked me for papers that you had no intention of reading. So I've found something more manageable for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political). You can manage reading at least that. Then, look up "Politics" in Wikipedia.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The more ideas a word describes, the less information using it conveys. Similarly, "a human" conveys far less information than "pron", and "an animal" conveys even less information than "a human".
    - pron 12y ago
      Thank you. Nevertheless, the word "political" conveys just as much information as needed to study it as a field -- like the word "physics". Physics covers a lot (in fact, it encompasses politics, too, so it carries even less meaning), and yet there are some things in nature that you'd study through the prism of physics while others through the prism of biology, so the word physics seems to be quite useful to define a field of study. So is the word politics (or political). There are, of course, many sub-types of politics -- as you'd have known if you'd bothered to look it up on Wikipedia. But your intentional ignorance combined with obsessive pedantism makes it very hard to provide the full science with every HN comment. Like I've said so many times: either learn this topic or don't, but why do you insist on flaunting your ignorance with such vigor? You seem almost proud of how little you know and how little you wish to understand.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Modern political campaigning and modern marketing are becoming the same business. Whether voting or buying, the techniques are the same and often so are the agencies. Also, being able to say what people want to hear at the time that is most beneficial to you, by running the statistics on giant datasets, is one of the biggest existential risks democracy has ever faced.