Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#51

Post by dllthomas » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 7:38 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #32

RIMR wrote: post #17

"However, the courts sided with the lower police department. In its ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that the city did not discriminate against Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test. In other words, no one who was deemed “too smart” for the job after taking the intelligence test was hired." You can apply that logic to race too: "We tested ALL appli…

True, but there are specific attributes that constitute classes legally protected against discrimination. Race is one of them. Intelligence is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class I am not a lawyer, but it sounds like Jordan attempted to argue that intelligence should be considered an additional protected class, like race or religion, but the courts disagreed. Since intelligence isn't a protected class,…

There is also (though on a skim it might well not be relevant here) the notion that something else might be used as an excuse while someone is actually not being hired because they are part of a protected class. That is where "but we do this consistently" often enters in...

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#52

Post by dllthomas » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #50

> The test, which is used by other employers, not just law enforcement, poses questions such as: “In the set of words below, what word is different from the others? A. Beef. B. Mackerel. C. Veal. D. Bacon E. Lamb.” I hate that kind of question. There are at least two obvious answers: B. The others are all food that comes from domesticated land mammals. Mackerel as a food comes from a fish. Mackerel is also different…

Also possibly, "D. Bacon is treif/haram, the others can be kosher/halal."

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#53

Post by iveqy » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

I cant see anything wrong with this. It's just smart hiring.

The error is first done when you hire detectives and excutives exclusively from the cop force, because then you start with a bad selection (since beeing a good cop and a good detective is two different things).

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#54

Post by sosuke » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 8:33 PM UTC

nishonia wrote: post #48

sosuke wrote: post #4

Having independent thought is hard to control in making a force of people. To have a force, an army, a unit of people, they have to respond predicatively to all commands. If you put together a force you must believe without doubt that they will follow your command. Police are selected and conditioned accordingly. The military does this as well, training people to kill, and be killed. In previous engagements having pe…

What you are describing might be true of other countries, but that isn't the way it works in the US. You aren't too far off on the military training issue, immediate obedience to orders is incredibly important - at the lowest ranks. The US military has an extremely long institutional memory, and over a couple hundred years they've figured out a way of doing this that works pretty well. The conditioning for immediate…

I think you're right, and as someone else said the commanders, chiefs and detectives are promoted, not hired in, which makes limiting intelligent hires a terrible plan for longevity.

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#55

Post by mikeash » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 8:49 PM UTC

Lendal wrote: post #46

mikeash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you figure out your strategy for being in the right place at the right time, and what sort of stuff did it consist of?

You learn the people of your town over time. When calls come out they usually come from certain areas of town at certain times of day or certain days of the week. You learn where all the bars are, when they let out, where those people are likely to go and what the odds are that that area will produce a new fare. Companies that are hiring a lot of workers at once house their workers in certain preferred hotels. Longer…

Interesting stuff, thanks. Too bad about the safety trouble.

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#56

Post by steanne » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 12:16 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #50

> The test, which is used by other employers, not just law enforcement, poses questions such as: “In the set of words below, what word is different from the others? A. Beef. B. Mackerel. C. Veal. D. Bacon E. Lamb.” I hate that kind of question. There are at least two obvious answers: B. The others are all food that comes from domesticated land mammals. Mackerel as a food comes from a fish. Mackerel is also different…

i was going to go with: all words except for bacon use only the vowels e and/or a.

Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?

#57

Post by steanne » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 12:21 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #41

javajosh wrote: post #23

This implies we have a police force that is unable to sense or react to nuance in a situation, and who implement a fast but error prone pattern matching algorithm to identify criminality - which is entirely consistent with their behavior. I suppose this wouldn't be a problem if we had a justice system that, presumably powered by better brains, could quickly throw out the inevitable false positives this quick and dirt…

The justice system is "broken" only if you believe that it's ultimate goal is justice. The truth however is that it's simply double-speak. 1984 illustrated this beautifully. The Ministry of Truth was in charge of fabricating lies. The Ministry of Love was in charge of punishing and torturing dissidents. The Ministry of Peace was in charge of conducting perpetual war. In our case, the justice system is in charge of in…

side note: my hazy recollection of 1984 didn't include the names of the ministries, so when you went from truth to love, i assumed the next one, a la ultima, would be courage.