site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31268 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

14
Top New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

But as a milestone it's probably the first time anyone even attempted to define AI ethics, isn't it?

I don't think it's the first time. There are a few serious attempts to do this which mostly fall short and also fall into the trap of being super careful to obfuscate what they are actually saying so the rest of academia doesn't cancel the researchers.

I vaguely recall seeing /r/sneerclub sneering at someone who gave a talk where he put these multiple disparate ideas into the same powerpoint and said "can't catch em all".

Why would academia cancel the researchers? Is believing in X-risk from AI cancellable?

The academics doing AI ethics tend to be doing simpler things, e.g. trying to figure out what a "fair" lending algorithm is.

The technical challenge is finding an algo which spots hidden patterns that predict loan repayment except for the biggest pattern that predicts repayment (namely that blacks are much less likely to repay them, holding all else equal). But stating it in such explicit terms is a cancellable offense.

AND doing that without including the race variable during training.

The effect size is very strong, so it's pretty easy to find features correlated with race that capture it. One public graph I've seen is fig 7 in this paper which shows a 10-20% racial gap in non-delinquency (i.e. at a FICO score of 600, 40% of blacks and 20% of asians go delinquent for the particular loan product in that dataset).

If you train on all variables except race and black people are ceteris paribus less likely to repay, won't that just create a distinct cluster unexplained by any visible variables? Sounds simple enough to then take an average of all such clusters.

You pretty much need to include it as a variable and then 'correct' for it -- otherwise any half-decent AI will just route around its absence, as you suggest.

If you just leave race out of the input set, most likely the system will find some proxy for race which works, and your model will still show "bias". (A very strict reading of "ceteris paribus" would mean you couldn't find such a proxy, but that's not what is meant). If you leave race out of the input set, and train it with the goal of being "unbiased", you can get an "unbiased" predictor (that is inferior at prediction), but it's a little too obvious.

It kind of sounds like the whole discriminating against black people thing was a bright idea the AI hit upon when it was instructed not to discriminate against poor people.

Sounds simple enough to then take an average of all such clusters

Why would you do that if you want to make money on the loans you give?

Because the algorithms are not being written by greedy bankers.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats