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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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You (and others) have said this, that there's nothing new, everyone knows how this works, etc. Matt Yglesias didn't seem to know that. It's "wild" to him. Perhaps it is likewise "wild" to many others.

Just posting "despite..." in the right context is a meme. Yglesias said "This precrime paper is kind of wild". Thinking this implies he had no idea about the demographics of crime is kind of wild. Google trends seems to indicate that since 2004 "black on black crime" is about a common a trend as the highly secret sport of "pingpong". Just searching "black crime", it's about a common as searching for "Ethiopian food". (Random aside: I like spicy indian food, and Ethiopian food is like a cousin, which I also like. They frequently offer a spiced raw beef dish (kitfo). Veggies are good, sometimes too oily. All dishes pair well with beer).

Are you under the impression that all the algorithm determining likely victims does is look at race?

No. If it helps clarify things, I'm under the impression that looking at race might be the most important factor, perhaps tied with zip code.

I don't think that any one factor delivers an actionable level of accuracy. Given that actionable is the term under debate, really. The point of the data analysis, which I've seen done before without the mystical AI reference, is that it's actually a tiny sliver of poor Black men who are likely to be involved.

I don't think that people are shocked to find out about Black crime. Most PMC white libs actually vastly OVER estimate the frequency of crime among Black populations, they think everything is their little fantasies from trap music and the wire. What's shocking is that we can achieve a degree of discrimination where we CAN exclude the vast majority of blacks who won't be involved in a crime, and rather those that will.

You might life Manguels Criminal Injustice which talks about, in part, the degree of discrimination we can achieve. One block in NYC might have a 10x difference in violent crime rate, stable for 50 years. The geography of crime is wild. I recall some reporting circa 9/11 about the violent death rate in Compton being higher than in Iraq or Baghdad during times of crisis (vague memories here) Even contemporary Chicago is a fairly safe city if you never go to the 10% of areas which accounts for 80% of the crime. It's good general knowledge to have.

Thinking this implies he had no idea about the demographics of crime is kind of wild.

Let's walk through this, then. What do you think his tweet does imply?

Its wild that an algorithm can predict crime before it happens.

...and why would one say that it is wild?

Because it a SciFi concept come to life

Now I'm just very confused. I thought this was all just old hat, been done before, obviously out there for anyone who cares to see. Now it's a SciFi concept come to life. I have no idea anymore...

Indeed there are multiple things to track: the technology (precrime by ML) and the demographics which, according to you, "cannot be said". I commented exclusively on the latter - pointing out that it's a common enough topic of discourse to be memeified and reliably the subject of entire books.

the demographics which, according to you, "cannot be said"

I mean, that's not really what I said. So, perhaps that's the fundamental misunderstanding that led to my confusion going all the way back to your first comment, which seemed strange to me, as if you really just wanted to jump off from my comment to something else that was different.

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