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Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

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Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#611

Post by dang »

sgnelson wrote: post #607
drysine wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia ... have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight What do you mean? In the last 25 years life expectancy in Russia has risen by almost 10 years [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN?locat...

[flagged]

> You're a special type of stupid aren't you?

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. No more of this, please.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#612

Post by lazide »

makeitdouble wrote: post #610
lazide wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These arguments are bizarre. Is it easier and more convenient to round up people when you have a literal list of people, along with the attributes that someone might want to round them up based on? Of course. Is it still possible to do it without said list? Yes, of course. It is just harder. And more likely some or many will be missed, if those attributes aren’t super obvious and impossible to change. So why make it…

It is indeed a bizarre discussion: nazis round up people with or without these lists, anyone could point the finger at a neighbor and they'd be gone tomorrow. The question becomes if it mattered whether the people sent in were actually Jewish or depraved or whatever motive was invoked. To me it doesn't matter, it is was horrible either way.

The bizarre part is that someone like you seems to think making a nice convenient list isn’t helping them in a material way.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#613

Post by mthoms »

lazide wrote: post #493
mthoms wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the original comment, you used the present tense. I think that's what was being questioned.

As I said, look around. China has been (and still is) doing it today with Uighurs. It’s not a new behavior.

Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc."

I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do.

But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#614

Post by lazide »

mthoms wrote: post #613
lazide wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, look around. China has been (and still is) doing it today with Uighurs. It’s not a new behavior.

Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc." I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do. But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.

Reading is fundamental. I made no such claim. I said many were using it to target people (which they are), and some are even using it to murder people using that data. Which they are.

Or do you think that is actually not happening right now?

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#615

Post by estearum »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #339
SadErn wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should be able to comfortably go searching for evidence to falsify it and support the alternative, and fail to find such evidence, confident in your assumption that you won't find it. The system is confidentially designed to provide little to no evidence of the fraud it allows. Even simple signature and ID checking is banned in California. The system itself is the evidence of the fraud. It is purposefully desig…

The fun part about this is that it depends on facts that nobody actually knows. If you don't check ID then anyone with a list of registered-but-unlikely voters (or who registers unlikely voters ahead of time without their knowledge) could be voting multiple times and there is nothing to detect it. If you check ID then that doesn't happen as easily, but you still have no way to know if it would have happened in the al…

Not really. You can audit ballots and match their ballot signature to the registration signature.

In fact this is done regularly.

We know for a statistical fact that there is no meaningful amount of this type of fraud (unless you're also supposing that these people somehow also acquire a copy of each person's signature).

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#616

Post by testing22321 »

lazide wrote: post #586
testing22321 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the old “bad guys did it 50+ years ago, therefore we shouldn’t collect data that will improve our country” It’s no shock the standard of living continues to fall in what was once ostensibly the greatest country.

‘Gov’t consistently threatens to do x which is bad, does x which is bad. collecting data which makes it easier to do x is… good?’ Do you even listen to yourself? How would collecting that data in this environment actually improve the country, instead of clearly being used to do bad things - which will make the situation worse? Notably, this is the gun registry problem, and exactly why gun registries are also bad.

Sigh.

There is only one OECD country where this conversation has any merit.

Your gun registry example is great proof.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#617

Post by makeitdouble »

lazide wrote: post #612
makeitdouble wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a bizarre discussion: nazis round up people with or without these lists, anyone could point the finger at a neighbor and they'd be gone tomorrow. The question becomes if it mattered whether the people sent in were actually Jewish or depraved or whatever motive was invoked. To me it doesn't matter, it is was horrible either way.

The bizarre part is that someone like you seems to think making a nice convenient list isn’t helping them in a material way.

I can't think of any such event where the issue came down to having a list or not.

We can see a similar thing happening with ICE raids: do they have clean and tidy lists? No, they're supposed to know what they're doing, but in practice they're just going after anything they want, anyone that crosses their path, and they don't stop at any specific criteria. We had testimony of arrest quotas, and random people shoved in to clear the numbers.

There will always be a convenient target when the point is cruelty.

[edit: rephrased last part]

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#618

Post by Dylan16807 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #527
Dylan16807 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose your favorite candidate is the first choice of 20% of the population, your second favorite is 25% and the two candidates you hate are at 25% and 30% respectively. RCV makes you give your top pick to the second candidate so they can beat one of the two candidates you hate and ensure the runoff isn't between both of the candidates you hate. Let's call those candidates A B X Y. I don't see the issue. I vote my…

> If this scenario isn't super weirdly convoluted, more of those votes shift to B than X, so X is eliminated next. It doesn't have to be that convoluted, all it takes is for the eliminated candidate to be a moderate so their votes go in two different directions. But you're right that I messed up that example; the percentages are wrong. The problem case is when your second most favored candidate would otherwise be eli…

> A B X Y

It's very unlikely that the two candidates I hate are on opposite extremes and both popular.

> Score voting is a Condorcet method.

That gains it a point but there are much better methods. Ones where I don't feel the need to balance risk versus reward for candidates I moderately dislike. Then the guarantee of the pairwise winner coming out on top is actually using accurate information on what everyone wants.

> Except that doesn't really help them because doing that also makes it more likely that their least favorite candidate wins, which is a significant incentive not to do it. The only reason to do that is if you're confident your favored candidate could only lose to your second choice, in which case it was really a two candidate race to begin with.

If I'm moderately confident then I'm likely to do it despite the risk.

> It doesn't matter if they're in the same party or not.

The whole framing of the problem was that one of the candidates in the minority party wins. If there are four unrelated candidates that problem goes away. The more popular moderate won, not a big deal.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#619

Post by [deleted] »

lazide wrote: post #614
mthoms wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc." I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do. But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.

Reading is fundamental. I made no such claim. I said many were using it to target people (which they are), and some are even using it to murder people using that data. Which they are. Or do you think that is actually not happening right now?

[deleted]

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#620

Post by mthoms »

lazide wrote: post #614
mthoms wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc." I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do. But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.

Reading is fundamental. I made no such claim. I said many were using it to target people (which they are), and some are even using it to murder people using that data. Which they are. Or do you think that is actually not happening right now?

>Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.

You were asked to back up this claim but haven't cited an example of any country currently "using census data" to "round up and murder" people.

Is China currently using census data to do horrible things? Are other countries? Maybe. I have no idea. I wouldn't be all that surprised TBH. You may be correct for all I know.

But that's not the point... The point is that you made a very specific claim and you still haven't provided any specific examples or evidence.

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