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In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

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Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#121

Post by nielsole »

cbg0 wrote: post #73
arrrg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How and why do you have to back it up? It’s just a type of argument that is actually quite common with its basic idea being that just because something is effective, doesn’t mean it’s right or just to do. Transferred to racial profiling the argument is this: Even if racial profiling is effective, employing it is still ethically indefensible and plain wrong. Put another way: Even if we agree on a goal (e.g. catching m…

> How and why do you have to back it up? With arguments, and to support your point of view. Maybe I wasn't clear. I wanted some real evidence that racial profiling is effective (as well as how effective it is), I wasn't looking to get into an argument about the morality of the issue.

My main message is that racial profiling is unethical whether or not it is effective.

Especially in the case I cited, it is obvious that racial profiling works better than random sampling (or based only on other features). People out of an ethnic minority will always have different rates of citizenships compared to the general population. So if you pick someone from a minority group that are less likely to be citizens, your chances are higher to pick someone who doesn't have the citizenship compared to the general population of citizens.

While the principle is quite simple, I don't have any empirical knowledge and can only refer you to Google Scholar if you desire more insights ;)

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#122

Post by InclinedPlane »

scarejunba wrote: post #76
InclinedPlane wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but you also raise the requirements for grocery / department store shopping. In principle all you need to shop at most stores is cash and being able to get to the physical location of the store. With Amazon Go you need a smartphone with a data plan, an amazon account, and a bank account. Even in America not everyone has all of those, or even any one of those. I personally spent a few years as an adult w…

Dude, Amazon owns Whole Foods. The "you have to have money to use this store" market already exists.

A homeless person could walk into Whole Foods and buy something with cash. And there are many items at Whole Foods which are not outrageously expensive. There's a very distinct difference between a store which has expensive items and a store which has a minimum level of affluence to even use. A poor person could conceivably "splurge" on an expensive item at an expensive store, but that is only possible if they have access.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#123

Post by fjsolwmv »

andrewchambers wrote: post #101
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a great way to ignore basically any complaint, by dismissing it as a lone outlier. All other things being equal, it should be pretty clear that a given black person is more qualified to speak about the black experience than a given white person is to refute them. If you have reason to believe that this particular writer is unreliable or not representative, then by all means share them.

I didn't say the writer is unreliable or wrong, and didn't meant to seem dismissive. > it should be pretty clear that a given black person is more qualified to speak about the black experience than a given white person is to refute them I think people are only qualified to speak about their own feelings and experience, just not for other people unless those people requested that.

Your opinion on what people are qualified to speak about is irrelevant, according to your own logic.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#124

Post by JeanMarcS »

When I was a teenager, I dressed like a metal fan.

Anytime I get in any shop, I had my own guard following me thinking I didn't noticed him or her.

So I started playing "How many times can we make the whole shop again and again" with them. I hade spare times back then !

But seriously, it was not something likable, and I guess when it happens not because you choosed a look, but because you're born with one tone of skin, it might be a nightmare.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#125

Post by expathacker »

jowsie wrote: post #82
expathacker wrote: post #63

This reminds me somewhat of a non-profit retail store in San Francisco where I volunteered to pay off a pile of parking tickets. The store itself sold local artisanal housewares to help support a number of local AIDS/HIV-related charities. What really made a lasting impression on me was their loss-prevention training me was that not everybody is strong enough to carry an item, a bag, or push a cart while shopping. Wh…

Is simply sticking something in your pocket enough reason for them to kick off? In the UK at least I've been shoving stuff in hoodie pockets if I can't carry it all in my hands. You might occasionally get funny looks but no one has said anything to me, or the other people I know that do it.

Interesting choice of garments actually. Wearing a hoodie in America, especially if you're a young black male, gets you instantly profiled as a criminal. Whether or not the law says you're legal until you leave the store, if a clerk called the police on you, you'd be arrested in that scenario / under those conditions.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#126

Post by cirgue »

retsibsi wrote: post #34
pentae wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, if you'd swapped out the word "Caucasian" for "African American" your post would be downvoted and you'd be called a racist. But because we're DEFINITELY not racist mentioning you targeted white people is totally fine in 2018.

I'm annoyed by some of the same things as you, but you shouldn't pretend there's not an important difference here. Racially profiling against a disadvantaged minority group with a history of appalling treatment at the hands of the majority is one thing; doing the same to members of a group with none of those characteristics is another. It's pretty obvious why one might be significantly more hurtful, offensive, contro…

Just because profiling someone based on their skin color or gender is less bad for some groups than for others doesn’t in any way make it less wrong to do. I understand the argument for focusing more on profiling minorities, but profiling white people for being poor isn’t exactly something to aspire to.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#127

Post by andrewchambers »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #123
andrewchambers wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say the writer is unreliable or wrong, and didn't meant to seem dismissive. > it should be pretty clear that a given black person is more qualified to speak about the black experience than a given white person is to refute them I think people are only qualified to speak about their own feelings and experience, just not for other people unless those people requested that.

Your opinion on what people are qualified to speak about is irrelevant, according to your own logic.

No, its not irrelevant, but it is just my opinion. I'm not saying it is more than my opinion.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#128

Post by sieabahlpark »

expathacker wrote: post #125
jowsie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is simply sticking something in your pocket enough reason for them to kick off? In the UK at least I've been shoving stuff in hoodie pockets if I can't carry it all in my hands. You might occasionally get funny looks but no one has said anything to me, or the other people I know that do it.

Interesting choice of garments actually. Wearing a hoodie in America, especially if you're a young black male, gets you instantly profiled as a criminal. Whether or not the law says you're legal until you leave the store, if a clerk called the police on you, you'd be arrested in that scenario / under those conditions.

Hello /r/politics

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#129

Post by mattigames »

matt4077 wrote: post #58
mattigames wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are saying is that profiling against a group with a history of appalling treatment at the hands of the majority is one thing, but doing the same with a different profiling is wrong, because clothing is clearly a choice but skin color is clearly not; despite being white boys raised among hundreds of people with the same clothing preference we should expect such young men to go against their surroundings an…

No, they're not saying that. Although there's a bit of merit to the idea, and it's part of the justification for choice of groups protected by anti-discrimination laws. Here's two more arguments: - When such profiling is actually a contradiction of the traditional, racist stereotypes, it is far easier to believe that it's actually the result of learned experience, and therefore part of an honest attempt to be effecti…

Yeah, in a sociological level I totally understand how being discriminated for being black is more serious than being discriminated for something unlikely like being a redhead, but a major thing at play here is machine learning, should the engineers add code to the system in order for it to skip looking skins colors? What if skipping skin color is not enough and the machine "bypasses" such restrictions by detecting the shape of the nose (e.g. black people have slightly different noses than white people); at the end of the day what the machine is doing is just statistics and if you poke too many holes on it -for moral reasons or else- you may as well don't use statistics at all.

Re: In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing

#130

Post by deialtrous »

gonehome wrote: post #92
deialtrous wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so they weren't targeted because they're white, they were targeted because they proved to be the highest risk. Which is precisely why blacks are "profiled" or "targetted" even by computers. And yet the media tells us this is because "AI is racist" and because of the "legacy of colonialism" and absurd nonsense like that.

That’s a jump that is a problem. The issue is that the pattern matching reinforces the problem based on race when race is not the cause. There are lots of historical reasons someone could be be a bad credit risk for example, but it isn’t because they’re black or some other race. You want the algorithm to account for cause not correlated patterns that reinforce racial divisions and then perpetuate the inequality.

You simply want race to not be the cause. But all available evidence says it is. When people try to "fix" the evil racist computers by restricting the algorithm from using race, it simply finds proxies for race like "number of liquor stores per capita".
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