07mk
1yr ago
A model with no anti-bias applied will consider men by by default to be extremely likely offenders, especially for violent crime. It is likely that any model can get a good training score by just looking at the gender and ethnicity, and if it's e.g. an Asian woman just let her off the hook immediately.
This effect will be sufficiently extreme to get noticed, and counteracted, by adding bias in favour of men or against those women
And this is where I think you're missing the point. Perhaps the effect will be sufficiently extreme to get noticed; extreme discrepancies refuse to get noticed all the time depending on political expediency, but this could be one of those that does get noticed. It doesn't follow that there will be any desire to counteract this by people who tend to push for de-biasing such algorithms for the purpose of demographic-based justice.
Also, I don't know how to square your above explanation with:
I am not claiming that society will demand AI models that necessarily treat men more fairly than we do today!
Today, people notice that human-based sentencing systems are "biased" against men in the sense that men and women with equivalent records and crimes get sentenced very differently, with men getting more harsh sentences. People evidently have no issue with this apparent "bias" regardless of whatever lip-service they might pay.
You seem to be claiming that people will notice that AI-driven sentencing systems are "biased" against men in the sense that men and women with equivalent records and crimes get sentenced very differently, with men getting more harsh sentences, and that people noticing this will want to counteract that "bias" by putting their thumb on the scale in favor of men in these AI models. This seems to me to be similar to society demanding that AI models treat men more "fairly" than we do today.
07mk
1yr ago
But it's strawmanning them to pretend that they are simply arbitrarily canceling a bunch of math. They are canceling the building of software tools that impersonate black rappers, as a legitimate endeavor out of quasi religious reasons.
No, that's not a strawman, that's a description. By your reasoning, the concept of "canceling a bunch of math" simply doesn't seem to exist; if I decided that "2+2=4" is blasphemous and demanded that all books and teachers making such statements be "canceled," I wouldn't be "canceling a bunch of math," but rather, say, "canceling the expression of certain mathematical equations out of quasi religious reasons." Mathematical equations and algorithms - whether they state some arithmetic fact or they allow the creation of some string of letters that some people find meaningful - aren't just lying around for people to discover; they are expressed and created by humans. Objecting to people expressing and creating such things is exactly what is described when something is described as "canceling a bunch of math."
07mk
1yr ago
So by your lights, what would it take for a generative AI model to be discriminatory against someone? An "AI that does everything like DALL-E except it doesn't need prompt engineering to make 'diverse' pictures" would necessarily involve discriminating against someone when creating the training set; if no such discrimination were required, then the 2 models would be identical. You seem to be saying that that doesn't count. So what would count?
07mk
1yr ago
If I oppose you shooting a bunch of cannon balls at my house, I'm not canceling ballistics, I'm canceling your use of ballistics in this particular way.
This isn't analogous to the actual situation in any way, though. It's more akin to you opposing anyone shooting any cannons at any direction. In which case it'd be fairly appropriate to claim that you are canceling ballistics.
The software that generates rap lyrics is a bunch of maths. More specifically, it's an algorithm that takes some set of inputs (I'm guessing some sets of strings and some random numbers?) and produces some set of outputs (in the form of a string of lyrics). It's a bunch of maths much like how the proof that the square root of 2 is irrational is a bunch of maths. In my hypothetical "what-if" scenario that we are talking about, the "cancelers" have a problem with this bunch of maths being used whatsoever, regardless of the characteristics of the individuals involved in creating or running the rap-generation software. This is accurately described as "canceling a bunch of maths," rather than the social context around the usage of such.
07mk
1yr ago
Yes, but this conversation isn't about an AI that explains things to blind people or summarizes news articles or generates sport news from the match records or whatever. It's about a piece of software that generates rap lyrics about tough black life in the hood while throwing about the word nigga. That specific piece of software - as in, the software that generates those rap lyrics because it has been trained - is a bunch of maths. In my hypothetical, "they" want to "cancel" that. No, they don't want to "cancel" the entire notion of training AI to do stuff (which would also be a type of "canceling" a bunch of maths). They want to "cancel" one particular instantiation of that concept, which is itself a bunch of maths. They don't want anyone using that specific piece of software that generates rap lyrics - i.e. a bunch of maths.
07mk
1yr ago
OK, so it sounds like based on this post that when you wrote:
Does it require discriminating against anyone?
about a theoretical generative AI model based around a world that could be (instead of the world as is), you were making a general statement about how no generative AI model could possibly discriminate against someone. Which seems like a strange thing to say about 1 specific type of generative AI model (i.e. based on a world that could be) when discussing 2 different theoretical types of models that are both generative (i.e. the other one being based on the world as it is), but technically true, I suppose.
07mk
1yr ago
I figured it would just take a long time but eventually get full, but is there some equivalent to "water pressure" where it takes more work to get that last 10% in?
This is basically correct. Same reason that quick charge batteries in phones can charge the 1st 60% in like 15 minutes but the remaining 40% take hours. To charge the battery, you need a voltage difference between the charge source and the battery, and that difference gets smaller the more the battery gets charged.
07mk
1yr ago
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what a dogwhistle is but if I wrote on here “the rootless cosmopolitan bankers are conspiring against white christians” everyone would understand it’s an antisemitic dogwhistle.
It does sound like you're misunderstanding what a dogwhistle is. If everyone would understand that it means something else, then, by definition, it cannot be a dogwhistle.
Of course, imperfect dogwhistles can exist, as can dogwhistles that no longer work due to information spread (at which point it is no longer a dogwhistle).
07mk
1yr ago
From the conservative perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.
I find this a strange statement. What about this is particular to the conservative perspective? I wasn't under the impression that someone's perception of the physics of an altercation was all that defined by someone's political perspective. E.g. I'm not a conservative, and having watched a video of the encounter, from my perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress (upon) someone holding a loaded weapon.
07mk
1yr ago
So, any acquittal on self-defense grounds says little about what the jury thought of the defendant, and certainly is not an indication that they decided that he was the "real victim" nor that the decedent was the "real bad guy."
The post to which you're replying was quoting a part that was referring to:
they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.
Which is different from any statement about who's a "real victim" or the "real bad guy." Given that the jury decided that the prosecutors were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse did not act in self defense, it seems reasonable to conclude that all the evidence they saw led them to conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.
07mk
1yr ago
I am an American, and honestly, I don't think there's a way to tell. I don't know of any polls trying to measure this stuff, and even if there were, their accuracy would be quite questionable given the lizardman constant. From my own personal experience, I don't know of anyone who buys into QAnon, but that's 99.9999% a function of the insularity and polarization of where I live, which is basically filled with and run by people I would consider to have QAnon-like beliefs in terms of epistemic rigor, but has no actual QAnon believers AFAICT.
Given the patterns of progressives and the lesson many of us learned from The Boy Who Cried Wolf, gun to my head I would guess this is just the umpteenth example of a tiny, inconsequential portion of the population being blown up like the boogeyman for a politically convenient narrative. But that guess of mine is itself a politically convenient narrative, so should be taken with at least one ocean's worth of salt.
07mk
1yr ago
That's a fair point, and I was erroneous when I wrote "beyond a reasonable doubt" there. Rather, what I should have written was that the evidence led the jury to conclude that, by the criminal justice system's standards, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.
07mk
1yr ago
It's hard to imagine this drama as anything other than dead and buried. Chick-fil-A hasn't funded these groups for a decade now, sticking to safer investments in summer camps and youth leadership.
I had thought that the drama was dead and zombified rather than buried, but perhaps it really is buried by now, from seeing this news about Chick-fil-A opening in Boston last year, 9 years after Boston's mayor had publicly announced that Chick-fil-A would be kept out of Boston specifically for their perceived anti-gay politics.
07mk
1yr ago
However, the actual principles behind self-defense will include phrases like "reasonable belief." What is reasonable? Different people could disagree. One person might say that if you are a minor, and an adult is running after you, yelling at you, and throwing things at you, that you reasonably believe they are trying to (and able to) harm you, while another might say that isn't a reasonable belief. Or the law will contain terms like "reasonable means to escape." Again, what is reasonable?
Indeed, but none of this seems conservative to me. Just knowing basic scientific facts about biology and physics, my conclusion is that the video I saw of Rittenhouse shooting and killing someone was an example of self-defense in the face of aggressors aggressing upon someone who was holding a loaded weapon. What about this is specifically conservative?
07mk
1yr ago
IANAL, but what laws would you expect to be in the books that that would violate?
07mk
1yr ago
Q has embraced all conspiracy theories. It is the platonic embodiment of Conspiracy Theory. And like all conspiracy theories, really, what it means is that the people have decided authority can't be trusted.
From what I learned about conspiracy theories and theorists before QAnon was a thing, this seems like something that's just common to all/most conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories seem to be very highly correlated, so that if someone buys into moon landing fakery, then they're also much more likely than the typical person to believe in Big Foot and/or flat Earthism and/or lizardmen rulers from outer space, etc. and vice versa. As if there's some sort of generic, say, c-factor in humans that predicts their likelihood to buy into conspiracy theories, and the specific conspiracy theory doesn't matter much. Perhaps QAnon is just the current in thing among conspiracy theorists that caught fire due to circumstance.
07mk
1yr ago
I don't think it is. For example, if a white constituent approached her with concerns, I don't think she would summarily ignore them because that person is white. She may choose to prioritize other constituents above them, but that's something all representatives have to decide on how to prioritize.
If this is the standard, it seems like every politician in the US can be said to represent all races, genders, sexuality, etc. I posit that being poorly represented, i.e. one's interest deprioritized based purely on one's race (or gender or sexuality or etc), is sufficiently close to being unrepresented in this particular context that you really can't split that hair.
07mk
1yr ago
OK, I'm genuinely curious then: if, say, during pre-Civil Rights America some black constituents complained to their mayor about the segregation at the public pool and the mayor decided to prioritize his white constituents' desires not to interact with blacks over the black constituents' desires to use those pool facilities, then black constituents have no grounds to complain that the mayor is not representing black constituents? It seems that, from your posts here, that by your lights, the answer is absolutely Yes, there is no way to state that this mayor is being unrepresentative of black constituents, only that he's poorly representing them. Which then would raise the question: what is the meaningful difference, by your lights, between being unrepresented and being poorly represented, where the rubber meets the road, i.e. actual impactful policy changes implemented by those in power?
07mk
1yr ago
The following is only glancingly related to this top-post, but I didn't want to make a top-post itself, and I'm also curious how it relates to Canadian polarization:
I stumbled on this article today about how "special consideration for Indigenous people accused of crime can be extended beyond sentencing into the trials themselves to reduce the effects of discrimination and disadvantage, Ontario’s top court has ruled." The specific case involves an indigenous person who shot and killed someone and the judge during the trial preventing parts (not all) of the defendant's criminal history from being told to jurors. According to the article, the defendant when requesting this made this argument on the basis that "because he was Indigenous and from a deeply disadvantaged background, special considerations should apply to what the jury could be told," which is something with precedent in the Canadian legal system, just not for this specific type of thing. The Ontario Court of Appeal which upheld this decision (the upholding being the actual topic of this article), stated "Trial judges must take notice of the fact that Indigenous people are often the objects of racism outside and inside the criminal justice system" as part of their reasoning.
As an aside, for this specific homicide, based on the description in this article, it seems to me that the acquittal was the correct decision; armed or not, if the person who was killed was running after the killer with clear intent to harm him, then the killer had every right to defend himself with deadly force. There are grey areas that different people can hold different opinions on depending on if the killer started the altercation or the person who was killed did, but it's my personal opinion that that doesn't matter if the killer was running away as described. As such, I don't know that this decision by the judge had impact on the jury's decision.
But more to the point, I'm wondering if anyone is familiar enough with the Canadian criminal justice system to say what, if anything, would be the outcome of this. This seems to give responsibility and a lot of power to judges to determine how to properly counter the racism Indigenous people face all throughout their lives in order to produce a fair process. Which I wouldn't think that judges are particularly qualified to do, but then again, they're judges for a reason, and it looks like it was already their responsibility to begin with; this just expands the scope of it. Is this sort of thing just "baked in" to Canadian politics, and will the various parties in the Canadian CW just not take notice?
And as an American, I'm curious if anyone knows enough of the differences between the American and Canadian legal systems to say the likelihood of this kind of thing being implemented in the US. Clearly the laws and legal history and the constitutions are very different, and currently there is no such explicit instruction to American judges to provide special treatment to individuals on the basis of the history of the demographic groups - but not of those individuals - to which they belong. But the philosophical principles behind the decision clearly exist in both Canada and the US, and certainly we see the exact same type of thing happen all the time in the US in non-criminal contexts (e.g. school admissions). Indigenous people seem to have a special spot in Canadian society in a way that Native Americans in the US don't, but in the US black people have a special spot due to its history with slavery and anti-black racism. Native Americans have various legal carve-outs in US law, but I'm not aware of any for blacks, and I'm not aware of any for anyone when it comes to criminal justice. Is it reasonably likely that, say, 20 years from now, the US criminal justice system will have standards for the judge to treat defendants differently based purely on the defendant's ethnicity/race/etc.? Again, the principles that led to this decision in Canada are about equally popular and powerful in America, so it seems possible if the proponents of those principles have their way, but I'm wondering how any sort of pushback in the American system might differ from the Canadian one.
07mk
1yr ago
Yes. Given how easy it is for someone to die just by hitting their head on the ground from a simple fall, if someone's rushing you with clear intent to harm, then that means either they've decided that your life is forfeit or that they've recklessly disregarded the value of you staying alive. Either way, this entitles you to defend yourself with deadly force in my view. Obviously kids should be arrested and punished for blowing up someone else's property, but getting your property blown up doesn't entitle you to carry out that punishment yourself.
07mk
1yr ago
Many academics posit that the concept of mammalian sexual dimorphism is a conspiracy of straight white men to oppress everyone else.
I don't think "conspiracy" is the right term for what they're positing. They don't believe in some smokey room where all the old straight cis men gather around to coordinate how to socially engineer everyone else to their liking. It's rather an emergent phenomenon in society that is downstream from all the old straight cis men oppressing everyone else. The upshot is that they get to claim vast nefariousness akin to a conspiracy but also get to stay strong in their views when all the evidence indicates that there's no actual men in smokey rooms coordinating anything of the sort. It really is an innovative worldview that has just enough layers of obfuscation to be acceptable to people who consider themselves intellectual while also retaining the passion and fervor that grand conspiracy theories can inculcate in true believers.
And notably, this phenomenon itself seems to be an emergent one, rather than the result of a bunch of power-hungry "academics" coordinating with each other to produce the ideology with the perfect combination of contagiousness and fervor for their audience. Rather, I think it's the result of simple evolution, as similar ideologies that were too conspiracy-minded or not totalizing enough got weeded out, leaving behind the highly optimized ideology that has been so successful in taking over so many institutions today.
07mk
1yr ago
This is the part that's so weird to me. There's not really any plausible proposed mechanism there, just a handwave at generic oppression.
One proposed mechanism I saw online about 5 years ago was the claim that, throughout history, men underfed women in their patriarchal society, resulting in women being undernourished and thus weaker than men on average and in the extremes. It seemed to subscribe to a Lamarkian-esque view of evolution except descent along sex instead of actual parentage, and also seemed pretty ahistorical with respect to the level of nutrition people used to get in the past. I wish I had saved it somewhere, because it was a really fascinating and deranged idea, and I recall it being passed around approvingly within my circles.
07mk
1yr ago
Man/lady were replaced with 'female-matching' and 'male-matching.'
Ultimate Frisbee? I'm still getting used to seeing "FMP" and "MMP" in team emails.
07mk
1yr ago
I feel similarly about ultimate Frisbee, which I think has a similar phenomenon as tennis. At the top levels, most male players can throw the full length of the field, and there's more room for error in bad throws due to higher acceleration, jumping height, and top speed, which results what I would consider mostly boring points where whichever team starts with the disc scores without trouble the majority of the time. But even at the top levels, there's only a handful of women in the world who can consistently throw the full length of the field, and the greater likelihood of a turnover from bad throws means there's much more volatility in every point, with possession changes being much more common.
Yes, that was the point of the analogy. Your own reasoning requires that the absurd model I described as "not discriminating against anyone." If you want to describe your theoretical uniform distribution model as "not discriminating against anyone" but my absurd one as "discriminating against someone," you
can'thave to rely on something other than "this isn't actual people I'm failing to generate or generating excessively" to justify your theoretical uniform distribution model.Well, I don't need your permission to deploy such a model, and I wasn't looking for it from you or anyone else. I was merely demonstrating one necessary conclusion from your line of reasoning, by describing a theoretical and intentionally absurd model.
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