Live data from Hacker News

A Way to Detect Bias

paulgraham.com

221–224 of 224 posts

Re: A Way to Detect Bias

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women musicians started getting orchestra positions in much greater numbers after auditions were made blind. If biases affect how a professional musician hears music, is it so shocking to think unconscious bias might affect someone's judgment a candidate based on multiple fuzzy factors like ability, culture, and personality? And that's just for job applications. You really think the criminal justice system has remove…

Criminal justice and orchestra employment are non-market phenomena. The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great and are not accountable if innocents go to jail and murders spree freely and the tubas clank. So of course the bosses pick out their friends and cronies. And a decent polity should restrain their corruption with blind auditions and accountable audits of prosecutions. But investors should b…

The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great

Have you ever actually worked for an orchestra? I have. The Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony and other top orchestras take quality very seriously.

Do you think, say, Georg Solti or Daniel Barenboim were happy with "just pretty good" musicians? Their reputations (and fortunes, for top conductors are very well paid) depend on consistently outstanding performances.

And I don't know how you call it non-market. When you're income depends on millionaires donating vast sums of money, you damn well better care about quality.

It's like saying a football coach doesn't benefit if his team drafts the best players.

Re: A Way to Detect Bias

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal justice and orchestra employment are non-market phenomena. The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great and are not accountable if innocents go to jail and murders spree freely and the tubas clank. So of course the bosses pick out their friends and cronies. And a decent polity should restrain their corruption with blind auditions and accountable audits of prosecutions. But investors should b…

The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great Have you ever actually worked for an orchestra? I have. The Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony and other top orchestras take quality very seriously. Do you think, say, Georg Solti or Daniel Barenboim were happy with "just pretty good" musicians? Their reputations (and fortunes, for top conductors are very well paid) depend on consistently outstanding perfor…

http://www.advancedfootballanalytics.com/index.php/home/rese...

Re: A Way to Detect Bias

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for literature and links. Hope I'll find the time to read this. The article from vdare.com seems really emotional to me. Not very reputable. "Don`t believe any of this. It`s merely a politically-correct smoke screen that Cavalli-Sforza regularly pumps out to keep his life`s work — distinguishing the races of mankind and compiling their genealogies — from being defunded by the leftist mystagogues at Stanford."…

This may be a better place to start -- https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/about/ . VDare tends to preach and agitate to the already converted, that is the peril of having to survive on donations. That said, while Steve Sailer is snarky, he is also reputable. He takes good care to not get things wrong. I've been following him for a while, and when some bit…

Understanding Human History is one of my favorite books. I finished it and immediately reread it. This was especially instructive given that a decade ago I read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel twice as well, quite innocent of the political subtext.

Re: A Way to Detect Bias

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If feel the addition: "C" the applicants you're looking at have roughly equal distribution of ability. makes the reasoning more tautological/weak. If we take two dart boards (one for female -, one for male founders) as a visual, where hitting near the bull's eye counts as "startup success". If we take "C" to be true, then the darts would be thrown at random. Now we draw a circle around the bull's eye. Anything landin…

Doesn't this logic assume that there are the same number of darts thrown total at both boards? The issue with founder funding is there are fewer female applicants than male applicants, and the applications aren't published.

I am sorry for all posts in this thread (including this one). Imagine being PG and reading 200+ negative replies to a blog post you did. I could have reasoned in line with Graham and learned a lot more than when resisting and attacking a viewpoint different than yours.

I feel that a different number of darts is salvageable for this logic, but having thought about this blog post some more, I feel bias is inherently non-compute-able. Our decision on how to compute influences our results.

What PG did for me was show that there is no Pascal's wager in statistics: All outcomes/data/measurements/views are equally likely. The view that the female variable alone is able to divide skill/start-up success is weak. The assumption of non-uniform points is weak. The assumption of no variance/unequal rankings is weak. The assumption that a non-random sample is significant is weak. The assumption that VC's are unbiased in their selection procedure is weak. The assumption that nature/environment favors skilled women is weak. The assumption that decisions of who to fund does not influence future applicants. The assumption that women are still selected for capability is weak. The assumption that women ignore nature/environment and keep focusing on start-up capability is weak. It is much more likely that any other thing happens. PG's alternative is certainly a sane one, but one of many.

Perhaps women perform better because, while VC offers the same chance to men and women, they are better at picking capable women than capable men. Bias in favor of capable women.

Perhaps women perform better because, they are naturally better than men.

Perhaps women perform better because, VC is biased against women, and only the strong survive.

Perhaps women perform better because, affirmative actions to remove the inequality in performance (perceived bias) actually increased our objective bias.

Perhaps women perform better because, VC is bad at picking capable women, so they pick incapable women, of which there happen to be a lot more.

Perhaps women perform better because, now the smart and capable women start to act like the mediocre ones (bad funding decisions influence actors looking for reward)

Perhaps women perform better because, nature is "biased" against older risk-averse, but available, men and, older, unavailable women who have children, and nature favors both young males (who have to compete with the old males) and females (who compete only among themselves).

Perhaps women perform better because, our sampling method was biased.

Perhaps women perform better because, our measurements were 5 years old and we are seeing an old static state of a highly complex dynamic system.

Perhaps women perform better because, they are more variant. The good ones are really good and the bad ones are really bad, making it easier on VC's to pick the cream of the crop.

All I know is how little I know. That (algorithmic) bias is an important subject, worth thinking about, and that we need very smart people working on this subject. I would never have gotten away with upvotes on my posts in this thread if the subject was cryptography. I clearly know very little about both subjects (and only now I know that, which I hope is at least a start).

PG showed that we (I), perhaps too easily, go along with the status quo: Our measurements are all correct, our conclusions are all correct. While, if you think about it.. objectively I agree that women and men are equal in capability. If you believe this to be so, then you may have a selection bias, if you observe that men and women perform differently.

I think the least all views could do is to make sure the environment for female founders to flourish is healthy and in line with skill/capability. Then let nature do its thing.

P.S.: If we know that females actually perform better than males, what is the ethical thing to do? Fund even more female founders and make it harder for men? It would make you richer. Affirmative action? It would not remove a bias, it would introduce one.

Post reply on HN