Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings • Hacker News Board

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#61

Post by devtul » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

retortio wrote: post #52

sudosysgen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage theft in the US is the majority of theft. Tell me, are people in socio-economically disadvantaged areas committing more wage-theft? You have to ask yourself why there is more crime in poor areas. The answer is that we don't go looking for or don't care about the crime that happens in other areas as much, and that the socio-economic conditions lead to more crime. You can't fix these issues by sending police there…

I'm sorry but I don't take your anecdotes seriously. I've seen too many legitimate uses of police force described as "police brutality" recently to take accusations of police brutality at face value. It seems that people have convinced themselves of police brutality through popular narrative and twisted anecdotes. Removing criminal elements from communities creates safer communities, which is a prerequisite for peopl…

duuuuude chillax, if police stop reporting crime, crime will naturally disappear.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#62

Post by romwell » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

Uhhrrr wrote: post #37

tj-teej wrote: post #20

A lot of comments here are missing the point of boycotting, it's an expression of power with the concrete goal, it's not individual decisions of whether the mathematicians feel the work is "ethical". Yes, having more liberals working in policing is probably more inline with the goals of those liberals than not, but that's not the point of a boycott. If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians becau…

If they can't get help from mathematicians, they'll try to do their own analysis with Excel spreadsheets or just use their gut instincts.

And if they can get by with Excel just as good, then they didn't need mathematicians in the first place.

If not, this will make someone unhappy. And this is the whole point of boycott.

The police is making mathematicians unhappy. Bad cop, no donut in any dimension.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#63

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #46

sudosysgen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cases of reactive police patrols. For example, at a protest, as a response to a people feeling that it could help their community, and so on. I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community". That's not something you need a mathematician for. Mathematicians are optimizing the ability of police to maximize the number of arrests by deciding which areas they should pat…

> I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community". How, is this your line of work?

My guess is that it is hard to measure "moving and visual presence in the community" and input it into a machine. Not that it wouldn't be nightmarish to communities that have already been overpoliced if that's what was being maximized. I don't want armed guards exclusively patrolling the streets of poor and minority neighborhoods.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#64

Post by devtul » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #48

oh_sigh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The victim's desires for police involvement is usually not very relevant. The victim can not provide any information to the police, but that doesn't mean that the police can't or shouldn't do anything. Respecting the victim's wishes is basically giving tacic approval of spousal abuse and honor killings.

You don't fix spousal abuse nor honour killing by sending police to arrest people in poor neighbourhood. You fix spousal abuse by social interventions and honour killing by targeted response combined with social interventions.

Are you saying that the visible presence of the police won't stop any type of crime, or just specifically your spousal abuse example?

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#65

Post by catalogia » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

retortio wrote: post #14

catalogia wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they inaccurately predict where crime will occur, their recommendations could cause an elevated number of patrols in some neighborhoods.

And if they accurately predict where crime will occur, they will reduce crime in those neighborhoods. It's likely that they would be able to get good results.

> And if they accurately predict where crime will occur

That's a very big "if"

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#66

Post by ummonk » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #53

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but to me having academics even ask questions on the ethics of their work is the most important thing; if one's work affects the real world then you can't duck responsibility for it.

Academics often ask ethical questions about their work. There are a huge number of physicists who devote time to non-proliferation work, cleaning up the ethical detritus from generations past.

Well even that is not an ethically straightforward issue. Nuclear proliferation reduces the frequency and typical intensity of violent conflicts, in exchange for risking an extremely high intensity conflict.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#67

Post by jariel » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but to me having academics even ask questions on the ethics of their work is the most important thing; if one's work affects the real world then you can't duck responsibility for it.

That responsibility includes helping the police (and others) do their jobs well. It's just as much about participation as it is non-participation.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#68

Post by oh_sigh » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #48

oh_sigh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The victim's desires for police involvement is usually not very relevant. The victim can not provide any information to the police, but that doesn't mean that the police can't or shouldn't do anything. Respecting the victim's wishes is basically giving tacic approval of spousal abuse and honor killings.

You don't fix spousal abuse nor honour killing by sending police to arrest people in poor neighbourhood. You fix spousal abuse by social interventions and honour killing by targeted response combined with social interventions.

You're arguing against a different point than what I was addressing.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#69

Post by SomeoneFromCA » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

I wonder if any of the scientist or commenters in this thread have ever lived in a bad hood. The hoods require more and better policing, the worst offenders, who kill orders of magnitude more people are criminal gangs. You remove police - you'll get spike in homicides.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#70

Post by coffeemaniac » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #26

sudosysgen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using math to improve the effectiveness of police is not necessarily a good thing, because this kind of works really works to perpetuate proactive policing and over-policing, as well as encodes bias.

So maybe address the biases? People who live in areas that experience high incidence of criminal activity also want to have crime reduced. They want someone to establish order—when you have a vacuum, someone will fill it, usually someone with even less oversight, though occasionally you can luck out with a benevolent dictator of sorts. So yes people in those areas want policing —though they may also want some reform…

Well, when you're witnessing multiple instances of officers willingly and enthusiastically assaulting defenseless and innocent citizens/journalists on the street every day, you're past the point of "bias" correction.

These instances are not the result of some nebulous ingrained tendency to view others as less than themselves, they're the result of a coordinated and deliberate attempt to assert power.

Your assertion that removing police would create a "vacuum" assumes incorrectly that there is currently a sense of "order" established. This is not the case, as there is no set of behaviors black men in particular can adopt which will not result in their extrajudicial execution. Police are more accurately viewed as an occupying militia and I see no reason to believe it would just as soon be replaced by something similar.