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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32255 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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this was a hilarious story. the cops gassing this technology up when all it really tells you is "it was a black guy", which they already knew from the suspect description by the victim, was hilarious. the outraged reaction was interesting, though - would they have been as mad if the police just said 'it was a black guy'? perhaps it's just how generic that face looks.

But it doesn't look generic. In fact, it looks a bit like one of my former students, but not at all like the vast majority of my (African American) students. That image provides vastly more information than does "it was a black guy."

My very strong prior is that the added information is fictitious. If I use DNA to isolate the region of the world you were born in, and then I grab 100,000 passport photos from that region and average them out into a composite face, the result is not actually going to be a likeness of you, beyond basic stuff like race. Assuming this is roughly what the cops did, the picture they put out is probably significantly less useful than a simple description of "black male, such and such a height..."

And yet, after teaching at a heavily Asian-American school for many years, I could fairly reliability distinguish among people from China, Vietnam, and Korea (that's an easy one). And I am certainly able to distinguish people from East Africa from people from West Africa. So maybe your prior is not as strong as you think it is.

I am not claiming that chinese do not look different from vietnamese or koreans. I am claiming that chinese men do not look similar enough to each other that an average of all chinese male faces gives more accurate data about a particular male chinese face than the text string "chinese male". the picture contains more detail, but that detail is not accurate to the actual face in question, and may in fact be notably inaccurate. In short, my prior is that members of a race do not, in fact, all look alike.

But my point is not that a picture of a generic Chinese male gives more information than the text string "Chinese male." My point is that a picture of a generic Chinese male gives more information than the text string, "Asian male." Because that is the analogy to the initial claim, which was that the picture, which is a generic picture of a guy whose DNA indicates ancestry from a specific part of Africa, is no better than the text string, "a black guy." That is what OP said: "all it really tells you is 'it was a black guy.'"

That makes more sense, but I'm still skeptical. Does the added specificity of an ethnic average face move people closer to a specific subject's face, or further away? I would expect the latter, but am open to the idea that I'm wrong. I think if I was on the run for a crime, I'd rather the cops be circulating a picture of the average Caucasian mutt than a generic description, because I would expect the generic description to prime people to suspect me more than an averaged picture.

Mostly, it sounds like a pretty good PhD for someone who wants to test the theory...

I think the problem is that there are risks of both false positives and false negatives, and there is generally a tradeoff re reducing one versus reducing the other. When you say that the added specificity might move people further from a specific suspect, I take that to mean that it increases the risk of a false negative. But the added specificity decreases the risk of a false positive.

There is also the practical issue of which is more likely to prompt citizens to report their suspicions to police. "The suspect is a black male" reduced the risk of a false negative, but it is useless if it does not result in reports from citizens. That description applies to my doorman, but it is not going to cause me to report his as a potential suspect. A more specific description might, however.

I agree that it is a good research topic, though, perhaps using the analytic tool advocated here

Gotta say, you've changed my mind on this one. thanks much.

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hmm. possibly true? I'd like to see a demonstration of effectiveness before I put any faith in it. Police have been caught using pseudoscientific statistical approximations in place of a positive ID before.

The image does, but I didn't really see anything in the story indicating that the technology could reliably determine specific facial features, just that the composite was a "scientific approximation", whatever that means. I'd like to see them run the DNA of people whom we already have photographs for before I determine whether this is actually useful.

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