netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Sorry, I wasn’t clear.
Expectations are the basis for loans. People would take smaller mortgages if it wasn’t for insurance coverage. I’m not claiming that mortgages would be invalidated.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
You’ve lost me.
I’m not arguing for this law. I’m arguing that disparate impact is useful, even necessary, to achieve goals about disparate treatment. Given that I find the latter legitimate, I’m willing to give more slack to the former.
Let’s say an unsavory developer made your hypothetical product with one change. Like Golden Gate Claude, it tries to work one topic into its answers, except instead of a bridge, it’s Puerto Ricans. This tool just hates ‘em. Any time real Reddit would have come up with a sick burn, it’s now directed at this one nationality. It never has anything good to say about them, and tries its best to convince users to hate and fear (looking like) them. Textbook disparate treatment, right?
Now prove it. How are you going to show that this oracle is a huge racist? Examples? Good luck. Statistical comparison to real Reddit? Thin ice. You’re left with “I know it when I see it,” which is a pretty rough standard for lawsuits.
Of course, the point is moot, because an edgy fashion AI isn’t doing any direct harm. It’s not illegal in the same way as denying a loan or a promotion. But that’s true of your hypothetical, too. Neither of them makes a “consequential decision,” so neither must remain unknowable under this law.
Sure they are. Expectations are definitely the basis for loans. Would people take a mortgage if they expected to be left footing the bill after a fire?
But that’s what I’m trying to get at. Imagine some city in California becomes uninsurable against fire. By default, the demand curve for homes will move left as fewer people are willing to risk holding all that debt. That drags down the clearing price of housing.
I can think of several reasons why the government might step in and put a finger on the scales. Some of them might apply to college debt, too.
[Edit: unclear wording]
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Hm. Perhaps the Articles of Confederation avoided it. If so, it’s only because they assumed states would handle the process.
You’re defining the term too narrowly. Think “40 acres and a mule”—the government has always sent people out to develop land in its interest. Maybe the 40 acres don’t count, if they weren’t taken from other citizens, but the mule? The garrisons, the infrastructure, the subsidies? They blur the line between buying favor and provision of public goods.
When we broke free of Britain, we spent American lives to give others a more favorable regime. When we bought French territory, we used American tax dollars to procure new land for our expanding population. By the middle of the century, we’d decided to redistribute the Southern economy rather drastically.
Governments exist because they provide a service which is otherwise hard to coordinate. Within a state, that implies redistribution.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
What are you talking about?
I graduated from a state school in the 2010s. Our dorms had been standing since the mid century. They did demolish some even older ones to put up new dorms, and those fit your description, but nobody wanted to live in them because they were too expensive. I think they were either a donor earmark or part of the athletics rat race.
I paid $400/mo for my room in a bedsit, and it showed. Could have gone cheaper, too, in one of the complexes with a reputation for fire risk. I only wish my current town had anything close to those prices.
Most people I know either worked, or had parents rich enough to pay their way. Occasionally both. The best scholarships (outside of athletics) just wiped out the outrageous out-of-state tuition without covering housing or the ridiculous fees. Wait, unless you were Native American, in which case they gave a better stipend as a mea culpa.
Boomers like to complain about Chipotle or whatever. Sure, I guess the standard for fast casual raised a lot. Want to take a shot at how many burritos it takes to meet the average $11,000 tuition?
Nobody did delivery, either. If we really needed to get off campus, we walked to the shitty Asian restaurant across the street and came back with fried rice, as God intended. Same goes for the bars. They probably made most of their money on game day, anyway.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Although the district had historically elected Republicans since 1980, in 2018 a Democrat, Joe Cunningham, won in an upset. Mace defeated him in 2020 by less than 1%.
…and then tried to shuffle the boundaries so those 49% would never win again. No wonder they go for Biden.
I can’t believe that “we did it to make their votes worth less” is considered a legitimate defense. That’s obviously against the spirit of the Constitution and (in my opinion) ought to be illegal. Them’s the rules, I guess.
As for credit—I think we’ve got to distinguish between the different laws governing disparate impact.
First, you have the employment restrictions downstream of Title VII and Griggs. I think these are most likely to apply disparate impact, but also have the most explicit protections. We just don’t think about them as much because age and sex discrimination aren’t as politicized today. Construction, warehousing, meat packing…they’re obviously going to favor young men, but their “business necessity” precludes disparate impact. Cue commenters explaining how this is totally a feminist agenda. But I digress.
Gerrymandering isn’t covered by employment law. The opinion makes it clear that it’s a constitutional question. So I’m not surprised that disparate impact doesn’t come into it.
Neither of those laws apply to housing, which imports disparate impact via the Fair Housing Act. Like Title VII, that law is explicitly interested in racial justice.
Where does this leave credit scores insurers, and other actuarial pursuits? They’re certainly not mentioned in the Constitution. None of the titles of the 1964 CRA cover them. If there’s a later civil rights bill that does, I couldn’t find it. Instead, it appears that insurers are regulated by the states.
There is no third step. A neutral factor’s disproportionate impact on a protected class does not constitute unfair discrimination under any controlling state insurance law.
In other words, federal civil rights legislation doesn’t apply. There are guiderails on state regulations, but they date back to 1945 and use a more narrow definition of discrimination. Congress recognized that they shouldn’t mandate a product while also forcing it to be insolvent. Coming on the heels of the New Deal, this is pretty wild stuff!
Does credit get a similar exemption? Hell if I know. My point is that there’s a legal, intentional basis. Sometimes it’s not actually a corrupt bargain.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Okay, who are these “workers” you have in mind? Because looking at the press release, it’s something like 10% of loan holders. Not much spread across…welders. Or baristas, or whatever.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
I’m with Tomato. Assuming this is constitutional (apparently a big ask), it’s just as legitimate as tax cuts or farm subsidies or energy credits or every other education program. The minarchist pipe dream of a government without redistribution is not and never has been on the table.
It’s not ascribed to social justice, either. Sometimes that shows up, because it is fashionable, but messaging like the linked press release have nothing to say about the subject. No, it’s framed as relief for economic hardship.
Many of these loans were taken out with the expectation of securing a valuable job. If that didn’t materialize, who’s to blame?
- The lender, due to irresponsible bets
- The lender, due to bad luck
- The borrower, due to bad luck
- The borrower, due to being a dumb idiot who doesn’t know that history is a fake degree
If you believe 1 or 2, you have an excuse to support redistribution. Even if you subscribe to 3, there’s a possible justification; the government does have an interest in an educated populace. I think it’s the most compelling out of these, because teaching a generation that aspiring to a better job will actually prevent them from affording kids is burning the candle on both ends.
But it’s 4 that underpins the opposition. For those who believe that the beneficiaries are stupid, there’s barely any reason to soften the blow. And if one thinks they’re malicious, abusing the system to get an education they never intended to pay off…well. Might as well take one’s own slice, right?
That’s not to say I actually agree with the policy. It sucks and it only has the thinnest veneer of a justification outside of the class warfare. If nothing else, it’s contributing to the credential inflation which devalued degrees in the first place.
But throwing helicopter money at some other group? That’s the worst option. There’s no reason to do it unless you’re playing tit-for-tar against the least charitable version of your enemies. At that point, it’s all over but the crying.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
I kind of like that building. It’s certainly not the worst brutalist design.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
I want to say that I appreciate you laying this all out. There’s certainly some continuity to be found, and you’ve done a better job elaborating on it than most people who make the attempt.
With that said…doesn’t this argument work a little too well?
There didn't have to be a war, or a famine, or a disease -- or even anything palpably wrong -- in order for [Americans] to heap blame on the [communists]. [Every President] urged his followers to look for the tentacles of [communist] oppression in every event, no matter how small, and they generally obliged.
The Reds made a near-perfect bogeyman. As a result, the American immune response had an obvious rallying point. Compare our wartime propaganda against the Germans or Japanese. After all, they really could have been infiltrating or at least sympathizing.
Rallying the home team against outsiders is tribal psychology 101. That rather takes away from its predictive value. Were our wartime ancestors right to be suspicious? Were the wartime Soviets? How about today’s anticommunists, looking for the ghosts of our old enemies? And what about the progressives?
The shoe fits. It fits enough different movements that you’d need to narrow it down.
I guess I look forward to part 4.
As an aside, when I checked on the Julianne Hough thing, it appears she was immediately attacked and released an apology. While the pushback looks tame by 2020s standards, it’s not exactly ignoring the event, is it? Leaves me a little skeptical of your other links.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
That’s what I’m talking about. Old school /u/Mcjunker posts in particular.
Policy wonks is probably the wrong phrase.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Fringe suggestion:
Each week, make a random user a “read-only mod.” They don’t get to hand down decisions, but they get to see what goes into the report queue.
The idea is that you’d get a look at the rest of the iceberg. For every dramatic top-level rage post, there’s a dozen uncontroversial bans. Thrice as many warnings. And God knows how many that we judge tolerable, marginal, or otherwise unworthy of a modhat.
By the time someone earns a thousand-character Supreme Court opinion, we’ve seen them in the queue quite a bit. We get a decent idea of how often they trigger a fight. And, perhaps more importantly, whether they have shown any respect for the rules, or if they view previous actions as a tax to get back to their usual.
I can’t actually endorse this idea. It’s too much work and security risk for the value. But I suppose there’s a more mild version, where the mod notes are public? Then when someone gets banned you can go “wow, he had a lot of warnings!”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
God. That would be so nice.
I’ve said before that I think the motte is populated by two circles: culture warriors and policy wonks. The CW side has value—it’s particularly good at our stated goal of “testing arguments.” But I know which circle I enjoy more.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Well…yes.
I’m saying a disparate-treatment-only law might work for humans, since in theory, you can prove they’re doing it on purpose. So maybe dumping disparate impact is alright.
But the standard of proof for our language models is currently really bad. Removing the category of disparate impact, then, would give bad actors and lazy entrepreneurs a ton of plausible deniability.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Well, except when they did.
That summary honestly left me more confused about Title VII.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
I’m not going to go full devil’s advocate, here, because this looks like a textbook case of reactionary, something-ought-to-be-done legislation. But I’d like to hone in on one particular aspect.
Even without this law, I would expect AI decision making to fail disparate impact tests due to illegibility. Good luck proving business necessity!
But that cuts both ways. Once RLHF has beaten the racial slurs out of an AI, how are you going to prove that it was going for disparate treatment, even if it’s absolutely refusing to hire/promote/train a protected class?
No, seriously, I would like to see a standard which can distinguish between disparate treatment and impact. You can get a human on the stand and ask about intent, animus, whatever. I don’t think you can expect that to work for a computer program.
AI companies should be afraid of causing disparate treatment. It’s wrong, even when it makes more money. But an unregulated market doesn’t have much reason to care about right or wrong. Until we find a better way to draw the line, disparate impact is going to remain useful.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
any condition in which the use of an artificial intelligence system results in an unlawful differential treatment or impact that disfavors an individual or group of individuals
That particular form of discrimination has already cleared its legal hurdles, as far as I know.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16d ago
What, you mean this case?
It doesn't appear to involve normal crimes so much as misuse of the office. Or perhaps I'm misreading. I don't see why eternal immunity from states would be on the table.
Also, wow, that sounds absolutely horrendous. Would a murder charge require Congress to convene and impeach?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16d ago
Quite.
Between the backseat moderation and the general antagonism, you've made it very clear that you'd rather wage political battles than understand them. You've done so by breaking a number of rules, but more importantly, you're missing the point of this forum. Do you think you'll convince anyone by sniping away instead of defending your bold statements? Do you think you or anyone else will learn something from it?
Take a day to cool off.
Uh huh. And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
You’re quoting a very popular historical excuse to keep the Catholics down and/or out. I hear JFK was controversial for the same reason. But if you’ve got to split hairs to figure out why it doesn’t apply to this particular guy, perhaps it’s not actually a reasonable stereotype?
When was the last time you saw one betray the U.S. for Rome, anyway?
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