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This. Slippery slope to denying credit based on a consumer's decision to avoid using Facebook or to search using DuckDuckGo.
DDG is more popular in the tech-literate crowd, most of whom are earning large salaries and therefore we'd expect that DDG usage should be positively (not negatively) correlated with credit worthiness
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If these sources of data are actually more accurate predictors of creditworthiness, then shouln't we be applauding their use? If it so happens that tall people are less likely to repay loans, why is it wrong to charge tall people higher interest? Otherwise aren't we just socializing the cost imposed by artificially fuzzy criteria?
I agree with the premise, but the problem is that it gets ethically, uh 'interesting', if you replace 'tall' with say, 'black', in your argument.
Let's take a similar case: kill switches on cars. As you may know, not too long ago industry innovated a feature that allows remote disabling of a parked vehicle. This feature was used as an assurance of reposession and payment by automotive financing. They just stop the car from working on late payment. The result: lots of people who were previously unable to access automotive financing now could. This was a very good thing for everyone!
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If these sources of data are actually more accurate predictors of creditworthiness, then shouln't we be applauding their use? If it so happens that tall people are less likely to repay loans, why is it wrong to charge tall people higher interest? Otherwise aren't we just socializing the cost imposed by artificially fuzzy criteria?
When I have this conversation with myself, here's what I come up with: Shouldn't we be allowed to everything into account when determining credit worthiness? Even if it's socially uncomfortable? We get locally more accurate pricing / risk assessment that way, but we also create feedback loops that we as a society have decided we want to not contribute to. The cost for this is the pricing inaccuracy which we collectiv…
[digression into risky territory, here be dragons]
...at least, that's the idea if you believe that racial differences are 100% socially constructed. It gets super tricky if it turns out there is an inherent component, which is why the very idea is such a taboo. It wouldn't be especially shocking, from a scientific standpoint, if it turned out that different "races" tended to have subtly different inherent personality traits that might be of interest to creditors or insurers. But it would cause major headaches, if you want to convince people to break those feedback loops! Even if the inherent differences are only a seed, and the feedback loops account for most of the differences in outcome, you have a massive "political" problem on your hands.
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DDG is more popular in the tech-literate crowd, most of whom are earning large salaries and therefore we'd expect that DDG usage should be positively (not negatively) correlated with credit worthiness
You are completely missing the point and just making up assumptions to argue, stop
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Using the algorithm is addressing the problems by not hiding them.
Should we legalize drunk driving, and address the problem by trying to solve alcoholism?
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Rather, I found that to be the most relevant point That's what editorializing is. You can point out the thing you found salient in a comment, you can find another piece that better represents the interesting thing, etc. You can't make up the title, though.
The HN submission guidelines do allow for changes in title, though usually it's to combat undue sensationalism. Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In this case, the problem is an excess of bureaucratese, euphemism, jargon, and vagueness. As Orwell wrote in "Politics and the English Language" on five badly w…
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I agree with the premise, but the problem is that it gets ethically, uh 'interesting', if you replace 'tall' with say, 'black', in your argument.
I don't think it gets ethically interesting, only politically, which isn't very interesting. Let's take a similar case: kill switches on cars. As you may know, not too long ago industry innovated a feature that allows remote disabling of a parked vehicle. This feature was used as an assurance of reposession and payment by automotive financing. They just stop the car from working on late payment. The result: lots of p…
Do we want a society where it is okay to charge red heads more for car insurance because they are red heads? Why should people have to bear the sins of others who happen to look like them?
[0]And isn't intrinsic, e.g. people with big feet might pay more for shoes, but not for mortgages.
I think the first question needs to be "mu". Unask the question of how, or even whether, individuals' entire personal and informational histories should be deposited in the perpetual datastores of banks, credit lenders, collections agents, slumlords, and repo agents across the world.
Why the heck are we basing all transactions on credit in the first place?
Why aren't we paying people enough to live?
Why aren't we ensuring that at a time when shutting the world down to the maximum extent possible for a relatively brief period of time is the best way to return to a full and normal state of commerce?
Why don't we have mechanisms for distributing trust such that risks of transactions aren't extreme. E.g., do I really need to be able to transact a purchase by connecting to a website continents and oceans away, only to have my payor suddenly get paranoid, deny the deal, and call me back hours later to ask if I'd in fact attempted the purchase? Meantime neither I, the vendor, the payor, our various software, systems, and communications vendors, and others involved in the current state of transactions, trusts one another at all.
Do advances in communications technology inherently degrade interpersonal social trust? I'm inclined to think they do: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...
Do people need accounts that can drain their life savings globally accessible to anyone (or any algorithm), any where, at any time?
What would a system in which these are not implicitly assumed or quietly-accepted aspects look like? How do we simply engineer / design around the unstated problem at the heart of this proposal?
Why evil? The dangers of data and surveillance have long been pointed out by key participants in the development of information technology itself. I've compiled a list of pre-1980 warnings from Paul Baran (co-inventor of packet-based switching) and Willis Ware, both of RAND, Shoshana Zuboff, of Harvard University, Arthur R. Miller, and Richard Boeth: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193
Thanks heartily to da_big_ghey for submitting this and working around the inerhent evil banality of the IMF proposal by Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven, Lev Ratnovski, signatories to the death of all privacy and the opening of universal surveillance in all commercial and financial dealings. Remember their names.
I'd certainly missed it entirely.
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I don't think it gets ethically interesting, only politically, which isn't very interesting. Let's take a similar case: kill switches on cars. As you may know, not too long ago industry innovated a feature that allows remote disabling of a parked vehicle. This feature was used as an assurance of reposession and payment by automotive financing. They just stop the car from working on late payment. The result: lots of p…
The politics do get ugly around skin color, but ethically it comes down to whether it is 'fair' to judge someone for something they have no control over[0] (genetic skin color, or genetic tallness.) Do we want a society where it is okay to charge red heads more for car insurance because they are red heads ? Why should people have to bear the sins of others who happen to look like them? [0]And isn't intrinsic, e.g. pe…
If some groups wants to charge redheads more, it's their choice. If someone else sees that as a market inefficiency, they can start their own shop where they don't do that. Who cares if you or I think it's "fair"?
Edit: My original point was, the more nuanced we can be about whom we decide to give credit to, which these sorts of techniques provide, the less someone will find themselves lumped into a group in which they don't belong, and the more deserving people will have access to credit.