Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#31

Post by gotostatement »

curryst wrote: post #28
dslkfjg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Race is a socially constructed category. This is Mao telling me I'm reactionary. It's Freud telling me I am going after his theories because I am projecting and have an Oedipal Complex. You missed the point I was making. When 23andMe tells me I'm Jewish and I share 99% of my profile with fellow Jews whether or not "race is a social construct" used by some people for nefarious ends, the facts remain where they are.…

"Race is a socially constructed category" is a semantic argument, not a real debate point. An ethnicity indicates you are descended from some set of people, and share genetics and/or culture with them. A race is a group of people whose membership is almost entirely arbitrary. Just as an example, many (maybe most?) people who are Hispanic have some amount of Spanish heritage (the country, not the language). Spanish pe…

The point in saying "race is a socially constructed category" is to counter the ideology that says that "race is a meaningful categorization of people" and, in particular, "it says meaningful things about people's nature and abilities." While ethnicity does pass along, the traits that it carries with it are so scattered and superficial that it's not meaningful in most contexts to categorize people as such, genetically speaking (though of course they can become unified by how they are treated in society).

Analogy: having brown hair is a genetic trait. But it wouldn't make sense if we categorized people as "brown-hairs" because it's just not a meaningful category that says anything much about anything except the color of their hair.

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#32

Post by dslkfjg »

curryst wrote: post #28
dslkfjg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Race is a socially constructed category. This is Mao telling me I'm reactionary. It's Freud telling me I am going after his theories because I am projecting and have an Oedipal Complex. You missed the point I was making. When 23andMe tells me I'm Jewish and I share 99% of my profile with fellow Jews whether or not "race is a social construct" used by some people for nefarious ends, the facts remain where they are.…

"Race is a socially constructed category" is a semantic argument, not a real debate point. An ethnicity indicates you are descended from some set of people, and share genetics and/or culture with them. A race is a group of people whose membership is almost entirely arbitrary. Just as an example, many (maybe most?) people who are Hispanic have some amount of Spanish heritage (the country, not the language). Spanish pe…

I agree with your post overall. Especially wrt to intelligence I think that it's composed of thousands of microtasks some of which are specific enough, likely coming complete with dedicated brain functions, to be helped or hurt by genetics. If we knew what they were, we could develop compensatory strategies for each distribution of abilities / deficits.

That is one of the (many) reasons I always argue for fearlessly understanding the full measure of reality as opposed to practicing a new form of Lysenkoism called "we're all equivalent and interchangeable, so the problem lies elsewhere...".

In a sense, all pro-social behavior is a kind of learned compensation which counters an innate desire to just club that other fellow over the head. Compensating for a "lack" in your genes is the stuff civilization is founded on.

That said, this is just wrong:

> If we demonstrate some ethnicity can run faster, they'll start getting picked more to be professional athletes.

You aren't picked to excel; you're born to it and other peple observe that fact. If people were picked to excel then just anyone could be in the NBA. We have all run the 100 yd dash. We've all had opportunities to distinguish oureslves there. Not many of us did. Even fewer did and failed to notice this in themselves.

You can't socially engineer raw talent but you can impose conditions which overwhelm it. That is always a tragedy.

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#33

Post by robin21 »

gotostatement wrote: post #20
robin21 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> murdered by police *killed by police

*murdered in cold blood by police

If Chauvin is not convicted of murder then BLM will most certainly still campaign for him.

Therefore “killed” is more accurate.

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#35

Post by loonster »

dslkfjg wrote: post #23
paul_f wrote: post #6

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The fundamental problem with automated moderation. (Who watches the watchers?)

It makes sense to have watchers to watch the watchers because their respective job descriptions are different. One's task is to watch for "bad actors" and the other's job it to watch for bias within rendered judgments. Those are two different tasks requiring two different microskill sets and bodies of experience. Exemplars at each task may also represent two different personality types.

Who watches the 2nd set of watchers?

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#36

Post by paul_f »

loonster wrote: post #35
dslkfjg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to have watchers to watch the watchers because their respective job descriptions are different. One's task is to watch for "bad actors" and the other's job it to watch for bias within rendered judgments. Those are two different tasks requiring two different microskill sets and bodies of experience. Exemplars at each task may also represent two different personality types.

Who watches the 2nd set of watchers?

That's where the turtles start?

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#37

Post by tacitusarc »

loonster wrote: post #35
dslkfjg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to have watchers to watch the watchers because their respective job descriptions are different. One's task is to watch for "bad actors" and the other's job it to watch for bias within rendered judgments. Those are two different tasks requiring two different microskill sets and bodies of experience. Exemplars at each task may also represent two different personality types.

Who watches the 2nd set of watchers?

Vimes

Re: Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist

#38

Post by darkarmani »

waheoo wrote: post #19
darkarmani wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise Parler would never have been shut down like it was, people would simply ignore it. Even with the "inciting and encouraging violence"? Why should people ignore platforms with calls to violence?

I agree, we should shutdown Twitter and Facebook today. Better take down AWS too, they host all kinds of awful shit.

> Better take down AWS too

Go ahead and complain to their service provider and see if they are violating their ToS.

The big difference is that Twitter and Facebook actually (poorly) police their content where Parlor refused to do anything to block calls to violence. They were warned and continued to violate the ToS and AWS decided to walk away from the relationship.

What good if having a contract if you aren't allowed to terminate it once a party violates it?

Post reply on HN