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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#271

Post by crowdpleaser »

viraptor wrote: post #129
crowdpleaser wrote: post #34

I really wish people would at least skim the wikipedia page to figure out the vocabulary of the field they're about to opine on. The left-progressive use of the word 'bias' is completely different than the way statisticians use the word. If bias increases accuracy/precision, it's not bias. The more interesting question is this - is it permissible for models to consider protected characteristics if those characteristi…

> The left-progressive use of the word 'bias' is completely different than the way statisticians use the word. There's lots of words people use that don't match up with exact scientific definition. Infer from context which version applies, or ask, and you'll be fine. Also applies to: force, resistance, acceleration, etc. We know that startup accelerators help companies grow faster and not actually increase their phys…

I don't disagree that people use words in ways that don't match up with their use in science. However, when people are criticizing science, it'd be helpful if rendered their argument in language that obfuscates important distinctions.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#272

Post by fiter »

hannasanarion wrote: post #206
50656E6973 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's pseudo-social-science because it falsely assumes outcomes are solely determined by external variables and is completely ignorant of internal variables, such as differing cultural values. Some cultures value family life over money, others value money over family life, for example.

I'm sorry, this reply doesn't make sense to me. What does "different cultures are different" have to do with whether computer systems can be discriminatory or not?

The FICO example from another thread shows a different outcome based on race without any data in the computer system about race.

If the computer system doesn't have access to race, like in the FICO example, then can it be discriminating based on race (racist)?

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#273

Post by eutropia »

claudiawerner wrote: post #265
eutropia wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They even have an essay about _cultish countercultishness_: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBma88LH3CLQsqyfS/cultish-co... I think some of the feeling of cultishness might stem from a homogeneity of expression, but it kinda makes sense for a community of people dedicated to being rational -- after all, two rational agents with identical priors cannot "agree to disagree" in the mathematical sense. The community would…

Have they ever addressed the criticisms of rationality, technological rationality and instrumental rationality of the Frankfurt School in the 50s and 60s? Or, more generally, the critique of positivism and the collapse of rationality to facts connected with formal logic? These are fairly big topics in philosophy, so it would seem really naive if they haven't covered them.

I'm not personally familiar with those critiques and I haven't exhaustively read anything close to all the content from LessWrong, but I can point out that Yudkowski himself has a number of criticisms of Traditional Rationality. I think the most helpful thing I can add is that the paradigm embraced at LW is Bayesian rationality and not pure formal logic. Being massively reductionist, it seems to boil down to updating your expectations to be more in line with reality -- that being less wrong is about having an accurate account of your uncertainty of the beliefs that you hold, taking into account your priors, inherent bias, model complexity, etc.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#274

Post by tunesmith »

ad_hominem wrote: post #156
tunesmith wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those words are "systemic" or "implicit" or "institutional", etc. All you really need is a proof or example that racist/sexist outcomes are possible even when there is no overt intent. And there are plenty of examples like that out there. Failure to accept that those examples exist, however, is something beyond just looking at intent instead of outcome.

I don't see how those adjectives add any clarity to the situation, since you can swap them out interchangeably and you're still describing the same vague, handwavy sense of racism somewhere being a cause for an unequal outcome. Larry Elder had an interesting take on "systemic racism" IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM

This isn't about unequal outcomes, it's about racist/sexist outcomes. It's very possible to have unequal outcomes without them being racist/sexist. And despite what seems to be commonly believed, liberals/left/progressives/democrats/etc don't tend to have a problem with that.

It's also not vague and handwavy. If you'd like to explore an example of institutional racism, check out the Parable of the Polygons. It's a clear, simple model with repeatable results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://ncase.me/polygons/

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#275

Post by benj111 »

EpicEng wrote: post #248
benj111 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works in a specific case it isn't impossible. I agree that its the general case that matters. Impossible is a very strong word though. How wide do you want to cast the 'general' net? You can still have limited scenarios that are useful. You don't have to model the entire universe.

The GP's claim is that yes, it is _literally_ impossible. He cites a source[1]. If you have a disagreement with that theorem then by all means, share. Right now you're just saying "Nah I don't think so", which isn't very convincing. [1]: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/pubs/slides/crunchconf_2018/sl...

That article gives an example of the Scotsman and Englishman.

Each are equal, 25% get 1200 on the sat, there is no allocative harm.

It is therefore fair, no?

If it is _literally impossible_ I must be misunderstanding something. Because I don't see the things he's mentioning as being mutually exclusive.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#277

Post by pdkl95 »

jpmcglone wrote: post #55

It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. We need better words.

The right[2] looks at intent because that's what matters in a hierarchical view of society. This division is from a fundamental difference in what societies are. This can be observed din how they use language; from one of the most enlightening articles[1] I've ever read:

> One of the biggest problems of the entire Culture Wars is that people like us [the left[2]] use language impart information. We usually are not aware that a nice big chunk of population does not use language in that way at all. Their use of language is that of Phatic Language [...] In a hierarchical society [the right[2]], language is [often] not used for exchange of information [...] It is used to establish social hierarchy.

For a good explanation of how this works, George Lakoff's lecture[3] "Moral Politics".

[1] https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-res...

[2] The "left"/"right" labels are being use in a general psychological sense, which doesn't always match the political groups with the same names.

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#278

Post by yourbandsucks »

stcredzero wrote: post #226
yourbandsucks wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Surely'? Why must it 'surely' fit into a preconceived ideological straightjacket? (One who's adherents are like 90% white, FWIW). The answer is that asian immigrants are a self-selected subset of 1.5B asians in asia. The social justice mental toolkit doesn't have an answer to this anomaly. American census numbers and the assumption of a normal distribution within them don't square with the highly-motivated subset of…

Given that: 1) Cultural factors often raise people from poor to middle class 2) The above often happens with little monetary input 3) Culture is transmissible In contrast, giving people money and resources has a very poor track record for increasing wealth long term. Why aren't social justice people all about the transmission of wealth building cultural knowledge? If anything, on the whole, they seem ideologically in…

I hope you're not asking me, because I don't understand the social justice people at all.

My guess is a combination of social media obsession and limited life experience cause them to optimize for 'sounding woke' over 'things that help real people'.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#279

Post by claudiawerner »

eutropia wrote: post #273
claudiawerner wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they ever addressed the criticisms of rationality, technological rationality and instrumental rationality of the Frankfurt School in the 50s and 60s? Or, more generally, the critique of positivism and the collapse of rationality to facts connected with formal logic? These are fairly big topics in philosophy, so it would seem really naive if they haven't covered them.

I'm not personally familiar with those critiques and I haven't exhaustively read anything close to all the content from LessWrong, but I can point out that Yudkowski himself has a number of criticisms of Traditional Rationality. I think the most helpful thing I can add is that the paradigm embraced at LW is Bayesian rationality and not pure formal logic. Being massively reductionist, it seems to boil down to updating…

This just seems like a very strange and restrictive way to model real-life problems, and it just seems to export the meat of the problem (taking into account priors, what exactly is bias, and if it's possible to be aware of it); for instance, I imagine that many people who subscribe to LW thought are probably uncritical of the ideological function of liberal democracy, for instance - or rationality being used to justify the status quo. These sort of things were taken up by critical theory, so there seems to be some overlap between critical theory and what it is to be rational.

I fear that a faith in mathematical reasoning for all problems can easily make you come out the other end thinking your opinions are mathematically correct, with minimal reflection on core issues such as the applicability of classical logical models or a mechanistic view of how people do (or ought to) behave - this kind of uncritical historically divorced reflection has not fared well in the past, with even economists admitting their model of the economic man is as much fiction as their worldwide Robinson Crusoe from a century earlier.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#280

Post by tunesmith »

ad_hominem wrote: post #204
tunesmith wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Systemic" doesn't even have to be left/right though, that's the point. It can simply be well-meaning people that keep ignorantly doing things they way they did before, unaware that their system has racist/sexist impact. I don't know what you mean by social engineering, by the way. I've only heard it in the context of hacking, like calling customer support and pretending to be someone else to try to get their mother'…

Not the person you're responding to but I took their meaning to be social engineering in the sense of someone's purposeful planning and intercession in areas where there is a social output, fiddling with whatever knobs are available to shape the desired output. For example, Harvard admitting less Asians because they are over-represented compared to other races. If you take your view that racism is an emergent phenome…

That's not my view, so that seems a straw man.
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