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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard about a story that appeared on CNN on September 9, 2016.
From targeted advertising and insurance to education and policing, Cathy O'Neil's new book 'Weapons of Math Destruction' [WMD] looks at how algorithms and big data are targeting the poor, reinforcing racism and amplifying inequality.
[...] In a vacuum, these models are bad enough, but O'Neil emphasizes, "they're feeding on each other." Education, job prospects, debt and incarceration are all connected, and the way big data is used makes them more inclined to stay that way.
"Poor people are more likely to have bad credit and live in high-crime neighborhoods, surrounded by other poor people," she writes. "Once ... WMDs digest that data, it showers them with subprime loans or for-profit schools. It sends more police to arrest them and when they're convicted it sentences them to longer terms."
In turn, a new set of WMDs uses this data to charge higher rates for mortgages, loans and insurance.
[...] "Big Data processes codify the past," O'Neil writes. "They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that's something only humans can provide."
I'm not interested in the story. I'm interested in what it says about once proud CNN's current quality of journalism. Fox News: Left Division?
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-destruction/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Monday October 03 2016, @01:15AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @02:20AM
You're right, except that there are far more poor white people than poor black people! But it is true that a higher percentage of blacks are poor than whites.
(Score: 1, Troll) by mojo chan on Monday October 03 2016, @08:18AM
It's not about numbers, really. It's about there being issues that affect coloured people specifically. Issues that need specifically addressing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @02:35AM
Yes, however it does write the narrative as a race issue instead of a class issue, and deflects attention from the perpetrators of the inequality.
While control over your privacy is paramount, casting this as a race issue, which is mostly of interest to minorities, instead of a privacy issue, which is of interest to all, is just divisive at its core.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Monday October 03 2016, @03:37AM
Working As Intended.
"While control over your privacy is paramount, casting this as a race issue, which is mostly of interest to minorities, instead of a privacy issue, which is of interest to all, is just divisive at its core."
Exactly. The American people must remain divided if they are to be properly plucked. Any strategem that turns them against each other, on class, race, or other lines, will be on the table. SJW or Stormfront doesn't really matter from one point of view - all that matters is creating polarization, one way or another.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 03 2016, @02:46AM
I brought up the title of this submission as a humorous one-liner to a mathematician and he said that there is actually a strategy to equate inequality with racism. I pointed out that people may find it a but stupid, but I guess that is one way to tackle both problems... I'm a bit shocked that academia would put it forth like this, personally it just undermines the issues.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Monday October 03 2016, @10:37PM
That's racist. When anything is wrong with black people--it's racist! Haven't you been reading the news. The fault is never their own. If something is wrong with any other race(like being bad at math) they just need to work on it.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 05 2016, @02:47AM
Surprised nobody here has mentioned -- and everyone seems to be rushing to defend -- the one word that springs to my mind here: Aristocracy.
That's what this really is. People who are at the top get to stay at the top. They get lower interest rates, they get easier credit, they get hired for jobs more readily. People at the bottom get screwed. Can't save up when you've got a crap job and massive interest rates on any credit. Can't move to a better neighborhood or get a better education or start a business because you can't get credit. And your starting credit score is so often based on your parents' -- if they're rich, you get credit for their payments, you get credit for their money, you get credit for their home. If they're poor, at best you start with nothing. And if you start with nothing, the algorithms decide you're too risky, so you stay at nothing.
(Score: 0, Troll) by justinb_76 on Monday October 03 2016, @01:36AM
to (mis)quote the Duke - life's hard, it's even harder when you're stupid
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday October 03 2016, @01:54AM
I suspect "getting ahead" has less to do with "moral imagination" and rather more to do with temporary lapses of attention on the part of the gatekeepers.
The neophyte steps up to the plate and says "hey, why don't I do this?" and the old guard thinks "what the heck - why not?" This is how reputations are built and people are trusted with ever-increasing amounts of responsibility and resources. Additionally; under this system; if the attempt fails, one simply moves on to another situation and another gatekeeper.
The "big data" version simply involves "computer says no".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 03 2016, @08:14PM
>The "big data" version simply involves "computer says no".
You'd be amazed how final that computer "no" can be. Sure, there are still opportunities not guarded by a computer, but they are becoming less and less common.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @01:58AM
It's been years to my knowledge since CNN basically gave up any pretence of neutral journalism.
Mind you, the story itself is at least interesting. It's worth considering that upliftment programmes could just as easily be guided by the same algorithms. That's not something that's really being mentioned in the article.
Sorry, I got off-message. Big Data badcreepyevil. Because numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @02:13AM
You see this kind of shit all the time these days. Lots of whining, very few solutions.
What do you want - for banks to give money to people with bad credit? For colleges to accept more idiots with bad grades? For businesses to hire people without any qualifications?
Math isn't racist. Math is math. What you do with the answers you get is up to you. Obviously most decision-makers aren't going to sabotage themselves by hiring based on political correctness instead of merit. Smart people understand that. The exception is our government where simply hanging around the longest gets you promoted and it's not your own money you're spending.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Monday October 03 2016, @02:30AM
Colleges do accept more people with shit grades because of their color, including medical colleges. Ask me what color my doctor is. And it's not because I'm racist, it's because I don't want to die.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @03:33AM
Just a thought--what if medical colleges were to implement some sort of post-acceptance evaluation system, such that not all their students would automatically become medical doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 03 2016, @04:01AM
There are a LOT of barriers in front of anyone who wants to become a doctor. I don't think playing the race card due to affirmative action is an accurate portrayal of reality. Even if a person gets into a school because they are a minority doesn't mean they are a worse doctor. They still have to pass med-school and there is nothing in affirmative action that makes a professor be lenient on a minority student.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @06:36AM
They still have to pass med-school [...]
That is what I was hinting at. Too oblique?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @04:09PM
Ya, for those of us not knowing enough info off the cuff during an Interneconversation, yes always include a direct reference. Too easy to write off comments.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jmorris on Monday October 03 2016, @08:04AM
Nice idea. Too bad it is illegal. Ever heard of "Disparate Impact" as a legal concept? It says that if you are handing out licenses to practice medicine and your process doesn't have the same percentage of any 'Protected Minority" (and the list grows, MENA in currently being split from White for the next Census and will certainly get included in all of the quotas) on the output (licenses) as input (applications) that any judge or Diversity Czar at the DOJ, EEOC, HHS, etc., can declare "Disparate Impact" and order you to change your discriminatory process. Knowing this, you ensure you award licenses in carefully measured and documented quotas.
It is a fact that every graduating class has above average, average and below average doctors. It is a fact that unless you spend a fair amount of effort can't know which group YOUR doctor is in. It is a fact any minority (other than Jew or Asian) was awarded bonus points on admission and special consideration to ensure as many as possible graduated. In light of both facts (neither disputable) that the winning move if picking between two doctors you know nothing about but race/sex, you should pick the Jew/Asian/White and go for the dude. And probably a Jew/Asian/White female over a black/hispanic man but I'd have to look at the current college bonus point system to run that math, Hispanic man might beat white woman. What a colorblind society we have created.
Of course the real winning move is to learn more about something as important as your doctor and we should be making that easier. If we could see that the black female Dr. who studied hard has better measurables vs a white bro who partied too much in college and it impacts his patient outcomes, it would totally eliminate the need for crude stereotypes. If somebody has the hard numbers and still wants to be racist on something so important... well think of it as evolution in action. Which gets to the topic of today, big data. It shouldn't just be for the huge faceless megacorp.
Imagine if poor people, who now have the same Internet as everyone else, could run a search on a proposed bank loan and see what percentage of loans of that class (i.e. to people like themselves) go bad (remember, failing to pay back a loan hurts both sides, often unequally; hence predatory loans) and what the average interest in the industry is, etc. If they could quickly see what changes, of those within their means, to their credit score would have the biggest impact. Some of these things are actually beginning to appear and if they become widespread would do more to help the poor than any of this proposed whining about racist math.
But bottom line? Racist math? First we started seeing headlines in the eight years of Obama's "Post Racial" Presidency that looked ripped from The Onion. Now we are so far beyond, The Onion never would have tried to pass this crap off as satire.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday October 03 2016, @08:53AM
Nice idea. Too bad it is illegal. Ever heard of "Disparate Impact" as a legal concept? It says that if you are handing out licenses to practice medicine and your process doesn't have the same percentage of any 'Protected Minority" (and the list grows, MENA in currently being split from White for the next Census and will certainly get included in all of the quotas) on the output (licenses) as input (applications) that any judge or Diversity Czar at the DOJ, EEOC, HHS, etc., can declare "Disparate Impact" and order you to change your discriminatory process. Knowing this, you ensure you award licenses in carefully measured and documented quotas.
[lots more blathering deleted]
Two questions for you, jmorris:
1. Have you ever heard of Medical Board Exams [wikipedia.org]?
2. Where did you get your law degree?
I'll have to make sure never to employ an attorney who attended that school. What's that? No law degree? No wonder it smells so bad here -- because you're talking out of your ass, as usual.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Funny) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @09:28AM
I had not written clearly. I attempted sarcasm, but neglected to identify it as such. Later I explained what my meaning was:
/comments.pl?sid=15807&cid=409284#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Apparently you didn't see the clarification, so my writing style caused you to waste nearly an hour and a half of your time. Please accept my apology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @01:59PM
It is a fact that every graduating class has above average, average and below average doctors. It is a fact that unless you spend a fair amount of effort can't know which group YOUR doctor is in. It is a fact any minority (other than Jew or Asian) was awarded bonus points on admission and special consideration
ha ha ha
[citation needed]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:22PM
Stuff like this does happen, [slashdot.org] but I hardly think it happens everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @03:24AM
I guess you missed the point and just want to espouse your own politics. The whole concept of credit and using statistics to make decisions on human lives is the problem. Lots of poor people need a break, but I'm sure your answer would be something along the lines of "bootstraps".
Smart people tend to write off other human beings, but we got here together and that is the only sane way forward.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @03:51AM
What do you want - for banks to give money to people with bad credit? For colleges to accept more idiots with bad grades? For businesses to hire people without any qualifications?
The article is about, among other things, criticism of banks for charging different interest rates to people based on where they live, and criticism of employers for making hiring decisions based on potential employees' credit records. It's not about the things you mentioned, which of course are more defensible. Why don't you have a look at the article, and, if you feel that the practices described in it are valid and desirable, explain to us why you feel that way?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday October 03 2016, @08:16AM
The interest rate you are charged (vs other customers) is based on risk. Every factor which influences risk should be fair game, both when it gives some customers a better rate and when it charges some others more. Live in a bad neighborhood? It means your property value (often the object of the loan or the collateral) is lower AND it generally means it will be on a downward slope. Contrast to a similar valued property in a good neighborhood that generally goes up in value over the life of the loan. Life in a rough neighborhood tends more toward the brutish and short, also impacting ability to repay. You might be a standup guy (equal to the similar fellow in a good neighborhood) but your odds of being killed in random street violence / home invasion, etc. is greater. As it is for your spouse and children, any of which could disrupt your life and impact your earning power, again influencing your ability to repay. The word for these things is risk premium.
It isn't supposed to be 'fair' in the cosmic sense, only the economic and mathematical senses. The only other option is to charge everyone else more and 'redistribute' it to bad risks. There is also a word for that philosophy.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 03 2016, @09:01AM
Consider, idiot with bad credit inherits the house next to yours. Suddenly the interest rate on your credit card goes up and the limit goes down. Sound reasonable?
Of course, property values fall and people with worse credit move in. Within a year, you are a bad credit risk even though nothing about you changed.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 03 2016, @09:57AM
Alternatively: Someone who's personally OK, but unfortunately falls into a high risk group and therefore has a bad credit rating, inherits the house next to yours.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @10:11AM
The only other option is to charge everyone else more and 'redistribute' it to bad risks. There is also a word for that philosophy.
The word, of course, is "insurance."
[...] your property value (often the object of the loan or the collateral) is lower AND it generally means it will be on a downward slope [...]
The sort of reasoning expressed in the article was: "people in your zip code tend to be riskier borrowers." ZIP codes are the postal codes used in the United States.
SoylentNews recently had a story about them, "How ZIP Codes Nearly Masked the Lead Problem in Flint" [soylentnews.org]. SunTzuWarmaster commented on it:
The problem comes when you use the Mail Delivery Code for segregating people into water zones, or "affluent neighborhoods", demographic characteristics, or other features which are _not_ mailing letters. Like every engineering tool, it has advantages, disadvantages, and limits.
What you're writing about is different. Like the original poster, you are proposing practices that are different, and perhaps more defensible that the ones the article is about. Certainly the value of something being offered as collateral is pertinent to a loan. This is commonly evaluated in an appraisal. I can see how the overhead in making and collecting on micro-loans could be greater, as a percentage, than that for mega-loans. If a bank were to charge higher rates for smaller loans, that could be justified (then again, a default on a large loan could render the bank insolvent)--but again, that's not what the article says. I'm not sure how future changes in value are assessed, or whether conventional bankers make the attempt. Someone who could reliably predict such trends could become very wealthy indeed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @04:20PM
Yes, because what humanity really needs is a sociopathic system that does not value human life. Or worse, that values human life with an actual numeric value.
The "system" exists to serve humanity but there are always those who want to game the system for their own selfish goals. Insurance is already a scam of sorts which could be replaced by a coop system. Trying to squeeze every last bit of change out of people, and specifically targeting those who have the hardest lives, is a sociopathic activity. If you defend this practice simply because you understand the logic of because A then B so we charge C, well then please get yourself to a psychologist asap. The only way to mitigate sociopathic tendencies is to know they are there and make a choice to behave differently.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Monday October 03 2016, @02:59AM
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the way that people interpret different kinds of writing mistakes. Essentially, writing "properly" results in hiding any informal grammar and usage you may have learned as a child, and writing "improperly" reveals your background.
Of course, if everyone at home speaks in a style that's closer to the cultural ideal of proper grammar and usage you have an advantage. Even if you are equally talented as a writer as someone without that background, the mistakes you make are likely to be judged less harshly than the mistakes they make.
Mathematically, you can model the amount of similarity of one person's writing and some standard in terms of Kullback-Leibler divergence of distributions of word and construction selection. Objectively, some dialects should have greater similarity to the standard than others.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @10:38AM
My grammar made the best fried chicken ever.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @03:42AM
I'm used to seeing green accompany nonsense like this shit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday October 03 2016, @03:45AM
Submit more stuff, and you won't have to see the trash.
I just submitted 4 sane stories.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @10:40AM
Then you missed the whole point of it being submitted. It wasn't to talk about the subject, which is laughable, but the quality of journalism that lead to it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @01:32PM
That is the point of the complaint. Its just another buzzardshit post, purely ideological with the transparent facade of impartiality.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @03:04PM
Impartiality? I seriously doubt I've ever claimed that as my modus operandi. We're not a news site, we're a news discussion site. And unless I'm talking about official site policy, my views are my own. The only time I'm impartial is when I'm doing admin duties because nobody else is handy to cover them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 03 2016, @01:55PM
If you don't want to actually talk about the article itself, just wait for the next submission that everybody doesn't like. Don't submit another one that everybody doesn't like.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @02:58PM
Why not? We do enjoy a good trashing of crappy articles round these parts.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 03 2016, @03:26PM
Speak for yourself. "We" sounds doubtful.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @08:59PM
I'll speak to the numbers if it's all the same to you. Obviously crap articles get nearly as many comments as the ones on highly controversial topics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 03 2016, @06:06AM
I'm pretty sure policemen are not (yet?) sent by big data algorithms, but by their bosses who are still biological beings. Also, I'm pretty sure that sentencing is still done by biological judges, not by computers.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @08:25AM
you're a little behind the times. No joke. I believe I've seen articles about convicts who got out early because of a "computer glitch" as well as people trying to appeal decisions (regarding parol maybe? I forget) that had been handed down by an algorithm. Police departments using some software hocus pocus to decide when and where they are going to patrol is also a thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday October 03 2016, @08:43AM
I'm pretty sure policemen are not (yet?) sent by big data algorithms, but by their bosses who are still biological beings.
And in a bunch of places, those bosses get their priorities from big data algorithms [wikipedia.org].
It's not widespread. Yet. But I expect it will be coming to a constabulary near you Real Soon Now™.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by nishi.b on Monday October 03 2016, @08:54AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @09:05AM
Data is basist.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday October 03 2016, @09:53AM
The biggest problem in the Black community is that 90%+ vote for Democrats. This means they get pretty talking points and dog whistles from them, and are ignored by Republicans who have given up.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @12:55PM
The biggest problem in the Black community is that 90%+ vote for Democrats. This means they get pretty talking points and dog whistles from them, and are ignored by Republicans who have given up.
It is so messed up that you put the problem on minorities. The republican party has been the party of proud racism ever since the dixiecrats left the democratic party. The democrats don't go far enough, but the republicans are the ones actively embracing racism. Proof? Just look at the donald's support - the strongest predictor of support for the donald is not economic anxiety (donald voters average $11K/yr more income than democrat voters [fivethirtyeight.com]), it is racial animus. [wordpress.com] You can't blame non-whites for seeing the obvious and saying, "Hell no!" to that shit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday October 03 2016, @03:01PM
It isn't about math. It's about the use of algorithms to affect peoples' lives without serious attempt to make sure the algorithms are actually making the right decisions.
The problem is the following mentality:
It's hard to decide what's the right thing to to, so we'll program a computer. Never mind about figuring out what the right thing is that the computer is supposed to do. It's a computer, so it must be right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @05:53PM
"I'm not interested in the story. I'm interested in what it says about once proud CNN's current quality of journalism. Fox News: Left Division?"
That sounds like an excellent reason to post it on a different, perhaps politically oriented, website. Big data's role in our lives is interesting to me. Whining about CNN's left-leaning tendencies is not, and is not what this website is for.