Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe • Hacker News Board

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#161

Post by acjohnson55 » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #148

acjohnson55 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. It wasn't that long ago the mortgage industry was rife with blatant gender discrimination, which contributed to this issue. I've learned this from the compliance training at the mortgage lender where I currently work.

I don't doubt it, but I think it's far more complicated than that. I think a great deal of potentially low hanging fruit is actively overlooked by the tendency the world has to go looking for ill intent. In cases where the explanation is something like "No, seriously, she simply cannot afford it." efforts to root out presumed bias are not only unhelpful, they are actively counterproductive. I need more income. Period…

Totally agree. When I taught high school in a impoverished area, someone somewhere said that poverty is acute lack of money, period. Everything else is a symptom (or feedback cause). So we spend all this time creating convoluted strategies to address poverty, except actually giving people money. Obviously, doing so wouldn't fix all problems on Day One for all people, but I now suspect it would be a lot more efficient than a lot of our efforts, and it would make the remaining problems more tractable.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#162

Post by acjohnson55 » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #147

acjohnson55 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in compliance training, as mentioned in a different reply to you, we talk about disparate impact. As I'm sure you can guess, this principle implies that sexism can be thought of as an outcome, not just the result of explicitly "evil" attitudes. In other words, I think he's right to say that Apple should be accountable for the issue he has pointed out, regardless of how it happened, which you rightly point out th…

I desperately wish that I knew a different word for the negative impacts that harm the lives of so many women. Both allies and others seem incapable of hearing that I would like to see better outcomes when the only word available is sexism. To far too many people, that words means "It's done on purpose by evil people with a heart of darkness." This actively interferes with effective communication because "good guy" a…

As a black person, I know what you mean. I suppose I'd rather fight the battle of expanding people's notions of what these isms are. They're not just horrifically bigoted beliefs with harmful intentions. They're all beliefs they hold with the best of intentions that are nonetheless harmful to some people (e.g. paternalism towards marginalized people). But they're also impacts they have that don't have and explicit belief at all. I just personally believe that personal responsibility entails doing the work to uncover the ways in which we ignorantly step on other people.

I recently wrote something along these lines: https://acjay.com/2019/10/07/ableism-the-sneakiest-ism/

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#163

Post by belorn » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #123

zamalek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> credit scores for women skew lower than for men. Which is crazy, because for most of my guy friends (myself included), saying that their significant others/women make significantly better financial decisions is putting it far too lightly. I basically wasn't making decisions at all (besides savings) until my s/o set me right. This discrimination is tragic and disgusting.

Women tend to have lower incomes and lower net worths. Here is a recent article squeeing about women finally being willing to buy homes on their own: https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/the-rise-... One of the statistics in it: Single women can only afford about 39% of homes. Single men can afford more than half. Historically, couples with traditional marriages (primary breadwinner husband, wife whose…

> If you get divorced, the person with a real career and resume to match will likely continue having a good income

Since I believe that gender roles is about splitting benefit and responsibilities, I asked myself what the outcomes of a divorce should result in in gender stereotypical situation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5992251/

A man who focus on the traditional gender role of breadwinner and a woman who focus on the traditional gender role of social management will results in decreased income for the woman and decreased social support for the man past divorce. This puts the woman at increased risk of poverty, while the man has an increased risk of loneliness.

There is also some implied finding that women who remarry has on average a decrease in house income, while men do not gain persistent increase in loneliness. I do not think there is a major mystery why that is considering differences in inter-sex competition for men and women.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#164

Post by lawnchair_larry » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #143

kennywinker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There a many people chiming in that they have had the same experience, and nobody saying they had the opposite. If the credit limit difference was unrelated to sex there would be random distribution of couples with the inverse experience. So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems…

So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems like you are wrong that it was an overreaction. That's basically a dismissive personal attack. One of the most frustrating and crazy-making aspects of participating on HN as openly female is the frequency with which one must politely endur…

I don’t see how what he said to you is a personal attack, nor is it different from how men talk to each other here on a daily basis. Saying someone is wrong is routine.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#165

Post by gwd » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

elvinyung wrote: post #72

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #57

I guess it worked for him to throw a hissy fit, but there's absolutely no reason to actually believe they're conditioning on gender. It could be "it's a new product, we randomly assign credit limits to see how it affects behavior". It could be "it's a community property state and we're overexposed to this household if we give the second card the same limit as the first". It could, realistically, be almost anything ex…

I mean, don't you think it's kind of a strawman to assume anyone thinks machines are explicitly sexist? It seems much more likely that whatever method they use to do feature selection on this obviously high-dimensional data just happens to end up picking something that was a proxy for gender. You can be implicitly biased without being aware of it. This is true for both humans and algorithms.

> It seems much more likely that whatever method they use to do feature selection on this obviously high-dimensional data just happens to end up picking something that was a proxy for gender.

Yes, this is exactly what everyone thinks happened.

Nobody thinks people at Goldman-Sachs wrote

    if (applicant.gender == "F")
        limit /= 20

somewhere in their algorithm.

But regardless of how the thing happened, if millions of people are treated significantly differently for no reason other than their plumbing, that's a major problem. People have been talking about this "accidental proxy for gender" for years now; there's absolutely no excuse for no doing a basic sanity check to make sure that this kind of thing isn't happening.

edit: typo

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#166

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #162

DoreenMichele wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I desperately wish that I knew a different word for the negative impacts that harm the lives of so many women. Both allies and others seem incapable of hearing that I would like to see better outcomes when the only word available is sexism. To far too many people, that words means "It's done on purpose by evil people with a heart of darkness." This actively interferes with effective communication because "good guy" a…

As a black person, I know what you mean. I suppose I'd rather fight the battle of expanding people's notions of what these isms are. They're not just horrifically bigoted beliefs with harmful intentions. They're all beliefs they hold with the best of intentions that are nonetheless harmful to some people (e.g. paternalism towards marginalized people). But they're also impacts they have that don't have and explicit be…

In some cases, they are beliefs people hold and don't even realize they hold.

My ex was career military and we arrived at a new duty station and he became fast friends with a coworker. He talked all the time time about his coworker "John" this and "John" that (John is not his real name). He rather got on my nerves with how much he blathered on about John.

In all those months, he never once mentioned that John was black. It wasn't anything that made his radar at all as worthy of noting.

When I met John and his family, I was very surprised that he (and his family) was black. I had assumed he was white. With seeing him, I realized in an instant that I had made this assumption because I grew up in the Deep South and if you didn't mention skin color, the signal there was that they had to be white. If they weren't white, you should give other white people the head's up.

I realized in that instant that this was a racist assumption and I wasn't as immune to the racism around me as I had thought I had been. I still had been inculcated with practices I was oblivious to as being a problem in that regard.

The surprise showed on my face and I was not able to figure out how to explain that I didn't care that he was black, I was just shocked and appalled to realize that I had made this assumption and was having a come-to-jesus moment with myself. It made for a very awkward meeting.

After that, I tried to just let my kids model race stuff from their father and did my best to butt out. It's an uncomfortable incident that I thought of quite often for some years afterwards.

In part because of that incident, I can be pretty thick skinned about a lot of low level, run of the mill sexism because I'm aware that a lot of people are doing pretty much that same thing without realizing it. In most cases, it is easier to combat if I don't try to point fingers, make them feel guilty, publicly embarras them, etc.

I do sometimes make pointed remarks to try to educate people, but I spend a lot of time trying to simply be the change I would like to see and letting other people react to that as they see fit.

Thank you for engaging me. I did read your piece (and the piece it links to at the start as background).

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#167

Post by sdinsn » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #18

dghughes wrote: post #9

Hopefully anything linked to gender is looked into for example car insurance? Men typically signifigantly more than women for car insurance.

Charging different rates on car insurance based on gender is illegal in some places, including California.

But there is still a discrepancy between genders in CA.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#168

Post by kennywinker » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 8:34 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #143

kennywinker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There a many people chiming in that they have had the same experience, and nobody saying they had the opposite. If the credit limit difference was unrelated to sex there would be random distribution of couples with the inverse experience. So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems…

So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems like you are wrong that it was an overreaction. That's basically a dismissive personal attack. One of the most frustrating and crazy-making aspects of participating on HN as openly female is the frequency with which one must politely endur…

Not all attempts by men to advocate for equality or call out bullshit are “white knight”-ing. White knighting implies that it is unwanted. I am charging in to “rescue” someone when they do not want to be rescued. It is legitimate for a man to call out a bias when he sees it. To ignore it and leave it for women to point out is... frankly helping maintain the status quo.

I’m sorry you found my comment dismissive and a personal attack. I found your use of the term “sjw” dismissive of the issue, since it’s such a loaded term. So my tone was a bit... glib... in reaction to that.

I also definitely didn’t read your username, so don’t take anything i said to be a reaction your female handle. I definitely assumed a male writer (which is it’s own problem).

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#169

Post by kyrieeschaton » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #165

elvinyung wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, don't you think it's kind of a strawman to assume anyone thinks machines are explicitly sexist? It seems much more likely that whatever method they use to do feature selection on this obviously high-dimensional data just happens to end up picking something that was a proxy for gender. You can be implicitly biased without being aware of it. This is true for both humans and algorithms.

> It seems much more likely that whatever method they use to do feature selection on this obviously high-dimensional data just happens to end up picking something that was a proxy for gender. Yes, this is exactly what everyone thinks happened. Nobody thinks people at Goldman-Sachs wrote if (applicant.gender == "F") limit /= 20 somewhere in their algorithm. But regardless of how the thing happened, if millions of peop…

"for no other reason than their plumbing" is exactly what you just excluded in the prior sentence.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#170

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Nov 11, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #168

DoreenMichele wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems like you are wrong that it was an overreaction. That's basically a dismissive personal attack. One of the most frustrating and crazy-making aspects of participating on HN as openly female is the frequency with which one must politely endur…

Not all attempts by men to advocate for equality or call out bullshit are “white knight”-ing. White knighting implies that it is unwanted. I am charging in to “rescue” someone when they do not want to be rescued. It is legitimate for a man to call out a bias when he sees it. To ignore it and leave it for women to point out is... frankly helping maintain the status quo. I’m sorry you found my comment dismissive and a…

I also definitely didn’t read your username, so don’t take anything i said to be a reaction your female handle. I definitely assumed a male writer (which is it’s own problem).

It is, in fact, a much larger problem.

To my mind, white knighting is about men playing hero in order to enhance their ego and public reputation as the primary or sole goal such that actually addressing sexism is not only incidental, it's actually counter to their goal.

Being chewed out by you and lectured about how I'm wrong to find any of this offensive amounts to mansplaining.

At every turn, no matter how much men theoretically decry the existence of sexism in the world and pretend to fight against it, when push comes to shove, they expect to be treated with respect by women while not themselves being respectful to women. That expectation amounts to demanding deference from women.

Start by working on treating actual women you are actually interacting with in the here and now with actual respect instead.

That includes not assuming everyone you speak with on HN is male. If you don't know, don't assume. That assumption based on the odds is a fundamental part of sexism, racism, etc. It's a really huge issue.

If you really want to see change in the world, get with the man in the mirror and work on his bad habits. He's the person you have the most control over.

If every man who ever beat his chest about how sexism is a bad thing spent more time working on his bad habits, things would change.

Instead, what happens is every time I comment, multiple people treat me like shit and then come up with justifications for their behavior and reasons why the problem is me and then fail to see the irony in decrying sexism while basically telling me "Shut up, woman." in the same breath.