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

#181

Post by xrd » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #134

pizza wrote: post #81

The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it's intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD. For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. I…

There is no austerity. Here is state-and-local spending as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to present: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-re... And here is GDP in 2010 dollars: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location... State and local governments went from spending 10% of $23,000 per person to 15% of $55,000 per person. Per-person state and local spending went up by a factor…

So, why are we spending so much for so little?

Inefficiencies or corruption when building new things?

Pension benefits for an aging workforce?

Pure incompetence at the top or pure incompetence at the bottom of the org chart?

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

#182

Post by javagram » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

xrd wrote: post #181

rayiner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no austerity. Here is state-and-local spending as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to present: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-re... And here is GDP in 2010 dollars: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location... State and local governments went from spending 10% of $23,000 per person to 15% of $55,000 per person. Per-person state and local spending went up by a factor…

So, why are we spending so much for so little? Inefficiencies or corruption when building new things? Pension benefits for an aging workforce? Pure incompetence at the top or pure incompetence at the bottom of the org chart?

A mix of inefficiency and corruption.

Transit capital projects in the USA, for instance, are typically delayed for many years by lawsuits over environment laws, etc. For instance, near the nation’s capital: https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/transportation/pu...

> “PLTC and its member companies should not be required to finance the hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs for issues that are out of its control, not of its making …,” Risley wrote.

> More than 970 days of project work were affected by delays caused by the MTA, he wrote, which included third-party lawsuits, delayed right-of-way acquisition, and changes to regulations and third-party agreements after the project started.

And on the other hand, there’s straight up corruption and fraud. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/nyregion/cuomo-andy-byfor...

> “They are working here?” Mr. Cuomo asked. Not a soul was in sight. “Yes, sir,” the man replied, nodding vigorously. “They must be very short people,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Or invisible.” About 130 people were being paid to work until 11 p.m., though their day had clearly ended well before that.

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

#183

Post by munk-a » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:09 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #135

munk-a wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction is a really powerful tool that can be used to warn us of societal dangers while sparing us actually needing to live through them. It is fiction, so it isn't a history book and there are plenty of assumptions on how things will work. However, in good fiction, those assumptions are plausible and highlight a future that may happen. Dismissing fiction is just like having a stock manager that dismisses quarterly r…

Many science fiction writers would tell you, and have publicly stated in the past, that they don't predict the future and that's not their job. Just by chance, you can go back and find stories from the past that seem prophetic now, but not going forward.

I don't think any sci-fi writers (that aren't dishonest) would claim their work is prophetic, but good sci-fi is taking how things are and changing just one thing and trying to describe how that might look as accurately as you can imagine.

The details are total BS, but sci-fi is absolutely a good vector for allegories and societal insights.

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

#184

Post by mikedilger » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

bitcurious wrote: post #131

mikedilger wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roland G Fryer's recent work shows that for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly wrongly, 179 extra people die due to the severe reduction in policing (up to 90%!) over the next two years. Roland G Fryer is a black economics professor at Harvard. His papers are working papers for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and as such not peer reviewed. When he discovered in 2016 that…

I found that work fascinating, and I’ve linked to it here before. Your summary of the finding is misleading. >for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly This is false. Fryer saw the effect when investigations were in response to social media outrage. In fact, he called out that the effect is not seen when investigation are started in response to complaints through the regular channels.

I stand corrected.

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

#185

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #176

chrisseaton wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally just made up in someone's head. It's a hypothesis without an experiment. You can hypothesise anything and everything. If I similarly just made up a book where police surveillance was the best thing in the world would you cite that as an argument in favour? How can you use a made up story to argue something when someone else could make up another story that disproves your point and proves theirs?

All theory is made up until we have a practical example to compare against. Using the logic you've already employed, one could conclude that the entire anthology of philosophical texts also have zero bearing on reality because "they're all made up".

What do you think about my point that anyone could write a fiction book saying absolutely anything, and argue against you using that as their source. The two of you could go back and forth forever, both making up stories to fit your argument. What on earth is the point?

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

#186

Post by munk-a » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #148

munk-a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly where the "Defund the Police" movement comes from and seems like an extremely good movement to pursue - shift that budget balance back in favor of specialized agencies that can better support social needs rather than forcing it all onto the police force. I really just wish it had gotten a better name since that title for the idea really divides people before they even open their minds.

The US actually spends a low amount of money on policing compared to the EU, where police kill fewer people. Further, the US also has a low number of police officers. https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2019/01/09/charts-poli... ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... The defund the police narrative isn’t based on any actual examination of US police spending, or general public spending. Th…

> The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc

Police unions, poor training and qualified immunity are really serious issues - but ones that are intractable to fight for on the national stage due to political gridlock. Just breaking up the unions as they stand right now and enforcing transparent employment history for law enforcement would make worlds of difference, but the action can't be taken unilaterally by a particular district - that district can ensure that incident reports are preserved but officers moving into the district may have had their employment history purged.

Defunding the police is an actual policy decision that can be made on a local scale to address issues of over policing and start reinvesting in crime prevention rather than punishment.

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

#187

Post by pochamago » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:18 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #168

lazyjones wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-... . 3 people "screened and analyzed" 1.1 million calls and found out that there was a (presumably temporary) effect on minorities after one much-discussed incident involving minorities? The rest is cherry-picked examples and wild conjecture and not thorough analysis of the data. > illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears. Um, that's beca…

It doesn't look great when you are presented with evidence then try to find some reason to disbelieve it.

I disagree, I think that's how we should expect dialogues to proceed. To uncritically accept any evidence presented to you is a much less effective method for reaching the truth.

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

#188

Post by decebalus1 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

x87678r wrote: post #146

pizza wrote: post #81

The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it's intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD. For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. I…

> private education, private healthcare, privatized transit After defunding the police, they'll have private security as well.

We already have that https://mynorthwest.com/152537/growing-number-of-seattle-nei...

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

#189

Post by RhysU » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:30 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #66

ISL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also about the only direction left. There's hardly any lawful, paid proliferation to go around.

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

#190

Post by RhysU » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 12:37 AM UTC

raarts wrote: post #16

There is no question that the advancement of science has been good for humanity as a whole. Using math to improve the effectiveness of the police is a good thing. This effort - however well intended maybe - would throw out the baby with the bathwater.

If science ultimately kills us all due to climate change or nuclear war or global pandemic or alerting hostile aliens to our presence or (other-crazy-thing-of-nonzero-measure) then I claim that science will not have been good for humanity as a whole. The verdict is unknowable. We comically forgot to run a scientific experiment on the matter.