White House Worried About Discrimination Through Analytics 231
Cludge writes "Describing concerns about the potential for big data methods to inadvertently classify people by race, religion, income or other forms of discrimination, the White House announced it will release a report next week that reviews the adequacy of existing privacy laws and regulations in the era of online data collection. The review, led by Obama's senior counselor, John Podesta, will outline concerns about whether methods used for commercial applications may be inherently vulnerable to inadvertent discrimination. 'He described a program called "Street Bump" in Boston that detected pot-holes using sensors in smartphones of citizens who had downloaded an app. The program inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods, where people were more likely to carry smartphones and download the app.' 'It's easy to imagine how big data technology, if used to cross legal lines we have been careful to set, could end up reinforcing existing inequities in housing, credit, employment, health and education,' he said."
Crossing a Line is Easy for Some (Score:4, Insightful)
The other side of this discussion are false positives. In any system where discrimination is allowed, power hungry climbers can throw a rival under the bus with a quick click. The system won't care if you and your family are labeled enemies of the state suddenly and put on all the blacklists that exist, your loved ones taken away without a trial and all because some person you work with wants your job.
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You mean like Afghans who sold out rivals (often relatives) to the USA, to become some of the longest-serving Guantanamo captives? Yeah, that happens. Has for centuries in any regime that takes people away upon suspicion. That's what's wrong, not the information-gathering system; why you don't circumvent the protections of due process. I'm not sure what's new about this particular complaint system.
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More to the point, this inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods. Typically, repair crews are intentionally directed to wealthier neighborhoods.
I have damn good negotiation skills compared to the average man, but not to the professional. I'm trying to improve these in a number of ways--better study, better writing, public speaking training from lawyers. But the result of my menial advantage is obvious: I can call the city and make them do things for me for free.
12 years a burn
Pfft... (Score:4, Insightful)
.. they got to be joking. Considering everyone is racing to total information awareness to gain competitive advantage (NSA, GCHQ, etc). There's no stopping this, this is all token bullshit at this point. The only way to deal with this is to make the opaque institutions more transparent. You create data wherever you go, modern technology is so embedded in everyday life that it's impossible not for someone to build any kind of profile on you. Corporations have long been buying and selling data six ways to sunday, we can already assume they (NSA and helpers) will turn the packets they are harvesting off the net from anything you've ever posted into a permanent dossier on you.
Let's just be honest the leaders don't give a fuck, Obama is a moderate right republican. Most voters in North america are completely and totally politically illiterate.
What the elite are worried about is political awakening... Many in the bottom billions of poor on planet earth are in abject poverty and oppression. Elites want to keep those people in their place, hence the elites desire to control the internet.
People are waking up to the fact that the governments are all power hungry and corrupt and are not there to serve the interests of the people, but that of the global elite and the multi-billion dollar corporations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Let's just be honest the leaders don't give a fuck, Obama is a typical statist.
FTFY. If you're making this about (R) vs (D), you're part of the problem.
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"FTFY. If you're making this about (R) vs (D), you're part of the problem."
If you're making this about your libertarian or other capitalist fantasies you are part of the problem.
War is a racket
http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack... [amazon.com]
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
On elites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I... [amazon.com]
"We now live in two Americas. One—now
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No, look at the top comments here on /.
There is no confusion about the universe of discourse that this move is relevant in. The debate further carries a simple, concrete example of what went wrong and why.
I really think this is the real deal: the unicorn.
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You just need to see what the insurance industry is doing for example in Germany to be horrified.
Not familiar with German insurance practices. Please elaborate.
White House is way ahead of its time. (Score:2)
Re:White House is way ahead of its time. (Score:5, Insightful)
"To derive individual-level predictions, algorithms trawled for patterns between these opinions and the data points the campaign had assembled for every voter—as many as one thousand variables each, drawn from voter registration records, consumer data warehouses, and past campaign contacts.
So, exploit the demographics (e.g. profile and discriminate) when it helps your party, but wag your finger at the rest of the world when they do it even "inadvertently".
The Attorney General . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:White House is way ahead of its time. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, exploit the demographics (e.g. profile and discriminate) when it helps your party, but wag your finger at the rest of the world when they do it even "inadvertently".
Maybe it's more like, "Exploit demographics when determining who you can persuade and sell things to, but use the same level of analysis when analyzing demographics to hand out public benefits, in order to make sure the benefits are provided equitably."...?
Because it seems to me that they're not saying, "We shouldn't analyze this data," but more that, "We should be careful when analyzing this data to prevent bias that would result in unjust public policy." So therefore in that line of thinking, targeting your campaign ads to likely voters would be fine. Targeting your tax cuts to the same likely voters would not be fine. Targeting your tax cuts to only benefit rich white men would be even less fine.
LOL (Score:2)
How about they look at themselves? (Score:3)
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"Race: Human. Mostly."
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1) NASCAR
2) Kentucky Derby
3) Tour de France
4) Boston Marathon
5) Indianapolis 500
6) Other/unknown
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Then they started asking me questions about income, the race of everybody in the home, etc. I did not tell them.
I said "The Constitution provides that you take an enumeration of the population. You have done so. You have no other business here. Goodbye."
Close door.
Nationality (Score:3, Insightful)
Years ago I was flipping through TV channels and came across a scene from a movie based on The Little Prince. He's on an asteroid that's divided up into little countries and some bureaucrat is telling him that he can't cross from one country to the next without extensive paperwork - but the asteroid is so small the only a couple steps would take him into the a neighboring country.
And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed ridiculous to try to coerce people to live out their lives in which ever arbitrary geographical boundaries they were born into - an egregious affront to principle of individual freedom. Would it be so wrong for a person to live a few years in one country and a few in another? Is there really a fundamental need to keep everyone on the planet penned up in arbitrary geographical boundaries?
But while many people become quite sanctimonious in defending laws against discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and perhaps even such things as religious and political views, many of these same people will nod approvingly of laws that not only allow, but actually require, discrimination on the basis of nationality.
Certainly there is progress to made in reducing the last vestiges of racial and gender discrimination. But to ignore discrimination of the basis of nationality seems both oblivious and inconsistent.
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Such controls are only fairly recent and are typically more about control than anything. Hopefully they are a fad that will pass though the welfare states of many nations make it troublesome to remove.
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No, such distinctions are as old as time. There will always be the in groups and the out groups. You can't even call it human nature as many animals form hierarchical groups that collectively lay claim to territory and compete with one another for resources.
Discrimination (Score:3)
The whole point of big data is to identify common properties of groups of people to be able to exploit them. While big data could also be used to find diseases, protect us from natural disasters, its is only utilized to such efforts when their is a financial gain or a gain in control of the population. For companies, it is only used for exploitation. Now wondering about that is hypocritical.
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Re:Discrimination (Score:4, Interesting)
What's wrong with pricing insurance based on the risk being taken on? Why should I pay higher insurance premiums so higher risk people pay lower ones?
I'm going to dispense with the arguments about being civilized and so forth. The real reason for doing it is to piss off people like you. Even though both my personal health and my family's history are pretty good, hence I would get lower rates under the system you suggest, it's worth the price just to increase the blood pressure (and hence health risk) of people like you.
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In that case, why have insurance at all? Why not simply scrap the insurance middle-man and have each person pay their own expenses out of pocket?
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Darwin doesn't take care of it. Nature does.
And that approach basically says we should throw up our hands at this whole civilization thing, and let nature take it's course in every human endeavor.
The whole point of insurance is to share risk. So yes, if insurers are allowed to discriminate, then there is really no point to insurance, other than as being a middleman for the end-user's savings plan.
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What's wrong with pricing insurance based on the risk being taken on? Why should I pay higher insurance premiums so higher risk people pay lower ones?
The problem with this is that it only works when very few people are adversely affected by such an approach. As the ability to predict risks increases, then you'll find people falling into two categories - people who realize that they don't need insurance, and people who are too expensive to insure. Then the whole industry collapses as nobody will be willing or able to buy insurance unless it comes with a big fat disclaimer that it only covers injuries due to accidents.
In theory the ACA attempted to fix t
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In practice I don't know if the law really went far enough with this, as lots of people still choose not to be insured.
I wonder how many low-income people in the United States chose not to be insured because they don't make enough to get an Obamacare subsidy but make too much to get Medicaid. Under the ACA, a Medicaid denial letter eliminates a taxpayer's individual shared responsibility obligation.
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Sharing is based on equality. If there's a disease which costs $1 million to fix, and 1 million people (each with a 1 in 1 million chance of getting the disease in a particular year) want to mitigate that financial risk, they pool together and each pay $1 each per year (this ignores profit and overhead). It's a way of equitably avoiding an un-affordable situation for all.
Now, someone with a 1 in 10 chance of getting the disease comes along. They can't be allowed in the pool paying t
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What about health insurance companies? They could use the data to black ball people who have family histories of certain diseases.I know that people with a family history of certain cancers are routinely asked to under go "screening" which involves detailed questioning about family medical history rather than any sort of clinical testing. What are the ethics of supplying this information about your extended family? What are the privacy guarantees? Health insurance companies only make money by denying claims; they avoid what they perceive as a high risk by denying coverage or making such coverage worthless. The abuse of big data would already be much worse except for the incompetence of those looking to gain from it.
The first part (screening for health insurance based on genetics/family history) has been illegal under GINA since 2009. Ditto for screening during hiring. The second part (giving that info to third parties) is illegal under HIPAA, with some squishiness surrounding who constitutes a "third party".
Newsflash: Rich have advantages, poor do not (Score:3)
They have more money, more political access, are better educated and have access to more resources.
Even if Boston dispatched street repair based on complaints, wouldn't they end up fixing roads in wealthier areas before poor areas simply because the more money people have the more likely they are to own cars and drive more? And are more likely to call and complain, and so on?
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Sensors on any municipal vehicle that covers a lot of geography would be great -- cop cars, garbage trucks, busses. Busses and garbage trucks would be especially useful because you'd get regular coverage -- equip enough busses and you might have near real-time info on many streets.
They should consider some kind of ultrasonic or laser surface scanning over just vibration sensors (which would need a lot vehicle-specific calibration). Surface scanning would give them actual road surface measurements and may
America!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of a discussion on privacy, and liberty, we are moved the much more state-friendly discussion of skin color and class. After all, Americans are all racist, greedy, and hate-filled, and only the state can protect us from one another. I, for one, support the drones.
NSA? (Score:3)
Let's apply the same standards to the NSA collecting data on all Americans. Since white people are more likely to own cell phones and use the internet, the NSA data collection will be racially biased and should be ended in the name of equality.
Not discrimination (Score:2)
He described a program called "Street Bump" in Boston that detected pot-holes using sensors in smartphones of citizens who had downloaded an app. The program inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods, where people were more likely to carry smartphones and download the app.
This is a perfect example of something that's NOT discrimination. The "wealthy" neighborhood committed more time and energy towards reporting potholes; this is not discrimination based on their person, but these p
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BUT people who can afford gas for a $5000 for a car can afford a $50 smart phone capable of running the apps.
The purchase price of a smart phone is only a fraction of how much it costs to run over a 24-month period. Or are the applications also designed to run with no data connection, logging data for later upload through Wi-Fi?
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The purchase price of a smart phone is only a fraction of how much it costs to run over a 24-month period.
And yet... so far my admittedly limited observation is that in the US -- most people have cell phones, even people who are poor ---- their cell phone may have replaced their landline. The monthly cell phone plan is one of those essential things that people seem to buy, just after water food, essential medicine, and electricity, even when they don't have any disposable income.
Or are the ap
iPhone only. Android users need not apply. (Score:2)
so far my admittedly limited observation is that in the US -- most people have cell phones, even people who are poor ---- their cell phone may have replaced their landline.
Unless you get someone who buys a dumbphone because he doesn't want to have to pay extra for a data plan [slashdot.org]. Or perhaps he buys an Android phone because it's cheaper than the iPhone that Street Bump requires because he didn't buy the phone with the specific intent of running Street Bump.
records an entire trip
Thank you for clarifying. But it still requires specifically an iPhone, and I was under the impression that iPhone ownership, as opposed to dumbphone or Android phone ownership, was correlated with higher socioeconomic status.
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But it still requires specifically an iPhone
They are working on it [google.com]
The poor can get smart phones thru SafeLink et al (Score:2)
Yet... (Score:2)
This is Good News! (Score:2)
Describing concerns about the potential for big data methods to inadvertently classify people by race, religion, income or other forms of discrimination ...
This is good news, and I'm surprised people upthread have said little about that. Very few people in the general public seem to give a damn about invasion of privacy, or perhaps are even all that aware of it, but if you can frame the debate in terms of hot button issues like discrimination it will go a long way in helping to bring about awareness of this issue. Have you ever heard of the media not jumping on a discrimination issue (except age discrimination of course)? If we ever return to a system of gover
Selective case to prove point (Score:2)
Podesta argues that pothole repairs will be disproportionately skewed towards smartphone-toting folks in the suburbs, not the low income areas, really?
What happens when a city bus load of smartphone-toting commuters hit a pothole? Thirty or fourty simultaneous alerts will all go out for the same pothole.
Don't poor/lower income areas, by definition (almost) have orders of magnitude more traffic that the affluent neighborhoods? Wouldn't the greatly increased traffic, even with disproportionately fewer smartph
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What happens when a city bus load of smartphone-toting commuters hit a pothole? Thirty or fourty simultaneous alerts will all go out for the same pothole.
Only if 1. the application's data filter is tuned for bus suspensions and not just passenger car suspensions, and 2. that route's driver hasn't mastered swerving to miss it every time.
Mr. Podesta appears to have forgotten that the FCC has expanded it's lifeline phone service (which, though initiated under Pres. Reagan, is commonly referred to as Obamaphones) to include 2 Gb/month data plans and free smartphones
I wasn't aware of that either. Have final rules been adopted? If so, I'd like to read these rules to see who qualifies, particularly whether already having (or appearing to have the means to pay for) Internet access at home would disqualify someone.
Nobody ... (Score:2)
Wha Do Be Dah Interview? (Score:2)
We knowingly discriminate based on analyitics (Score:2)
Another problem is that many of these analyses - let's assume they're generally accurate and not misleading - could result in numbers that are not politically correct. Like the sort of statistics that might drive law enforcement policies, or new laws targeting certain lifestyles or races. I don't know how we can differentiate between statistical analysis driving action and action born of discrimination, but simply ignoring the issues is not the correct decision.
There are whole sets of these sorts of probl
Oh noes! (Score:2)
He described a program called "Street Bump" in Boston that detected pot-holes using sensors in smartphones of citizens who had downloaded an app. The program inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods, where people were more likely to carry smartphones and download the app.'
Oh noes! More tax money might be spent on the undeserving rich! Someone might raise a big stink about this, increasing the number of people who get this app! If too many people get the app, how can they justify hiring as many telephone operators for in-person reports, think of all the lost jobs!
In other news, one more person has discovered that when collecting data you need to account for inherent biases in collection if you want unbiased data.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Interesting)
Black people are generally less intelligent than others and it's our fault.
It could be partly our fault. A generation ago, the difference in IQ scores between protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland was almost as wide as that between blacks and whites in America. But today, that gap has completely disappeared. Social conditions have some impact.
The IQ score gap between different races in America is why it is illegal [wikipedia.org] to use any test of general intelligence for hiring or promotion. It is not enough for the inputs to the hiring/promotion process to be "race neutral", the output/result must be as well.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not enough for the inputs to the hiring/promotion process to be "race neutral", the output/result must be as well.
Can we get the political system thrown out on this basis? There's only one black man in the US Senate - should be about twelve. Even the House is 'missing' about fifteen members.
Racist (and misogynistic) system has to go. The result is *far* from equal.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't there more asian basketball or football players?
Some jobs need people with specific skill sets. Developing those skills is not encouraged equally among every culture.
Under representation of blacks in the senate may suggest that being a bunch of backstabbing bullshitters while smiling and saying jesus wants them to win may not be something that's important to many blacks. Then again, I don't think any culture has a lot of respect for these parasites, so maybe it's just that political donors are a bunch of racists.
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No, it's the result of the election process. Many smaller districts voting will tend to reflect the biases of those districts, not an agregate average of the total. Minorities will be protected somewhat but also kept out of the game to a degree.
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smiling and saying jesus wants them to win may not be something that's important to many blacks.
You really don't know any blacks then. A LOT of them are VERY Christian. I'm atheist myself, and I RARELY find a black person who is also atheist. It's really strange too, because you see atheists of pretty much every ethnicity, but almost never blacks.
Of course, that's my experience, yours may differ.
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I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, but democracy will be kind of racist if the voters are racist. It does seem like a problem.
True. Witness Marian Barry and Ray Nagin.
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I remember a crew of guys that I worked with once. All 3 of them hung out together, worked together, played golf together and partied together. Two were white and one of them was black. They had worked together for about 3 years or so when one day they were sitting in the break room and I was at the table with them. We were kind of swapping stories and such and laughing a lot when one of them started talking about him and his brother going fishing on the lake one day. He said they were in a cove catch
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Social conditions have some impact.
That's absurd apologist political correctness. The real answer is that there has been rapid genetic mutation that has lessened the IQ gap between Catholics and Protestants.
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I take it by "social conditions", you mean that you've finally gotten rid of all the lead pipes in the plumbing in Catholic neighborhoods?
Note that lead pipes in plumbing (fairly common once upon a time, now only found in older, poorer neighborhoods) has a fairl
Re: Oxymoron (Score:2)
Nice theory, but there are more poor whites than blacks, therefore more poor white folks exposed to lead plumbing than poor blacks.
Just a statistical fact - while 13% of blacks are poor, 6% of whites are also classified as poor [ucdavis.edu], yet whites out-number blacks almost five to one [census.gov]...
It's incorrect to assume the majority of the poor are minorities.
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However, looking purely at percentages, you're more likely to be poor, violent, and stupid if you're black (in the USA. other countries have other issues).
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Nice theory, but there are more poor whites than blacks, therefore more poor white folks exposed to lead plumbing than poor blacks.
Poor blacks and poor whites don't live the same lifestyle. Poor blacks tend to be urban. Poor whites are much more likely to be rural. When I was growing up, the blacks lived downtown, and the white trash lived in trailer parks on the outskirts of town. The trailers are likely to have far lower levels of lead plumbing and lead paint.
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The same thing here. All the poor live in homes with lead contamination. And the government will not force landlords to take care of it. Lead poisoning makes kids dumber and violent. Simply forcing slumlords to remove lead from all homes they rent, would make a huge change, as large as we saw by going with lead free fuel.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]
http://science-beta.slashdot.o... [slashdot.org]
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Some research has been done on the matter in the UK: http://www.irishtimes.com/news... [irishtimes.com]
Re:Oxymoron (Score:4, Insightful)
Disparate impact... it's going to be with us for a while. Might as well get used to it. Black people are generally less intelligent than others and it's our fault.
While you state that black people are generally less intelligent then others, I think these politicians thoughts are a big drive towards that... they are in effect stating that poor neighborhoods are incapable of reporting their own pothole problems. In the end, the "Street Bump" app is another avenue of personal responsibility - people took the initiative to improve their driving route, installed an app to report problems, and ran that app to ensure the problems were reported. In poorer neighborhoods, people are not taking the personal responsibility to report the problems. They can call in to report problems, and by reporting those in sufficient numbers (similar to the app) Boston's street maintenance crews could be alerted. They don't, though, because they have been conditioned over generations to believe they don't matter and it requires someone else to fix their "problems".
In the end, the politicians are stating the poor people / black people / whatever group of people are incapable of taking responsibility (unlike those wealthy people), so the Government must hold their hand and make things easier for them. Yes, it will be with us for a while, and short of a major event nothing will change it.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
In poorer neighborhoods, people are not taking the personal responsibility to report the problems.
Or maybe they don't have the time and resources to do that. It's easier for an unemployed trust-funder to have his smart-phone automatically report the problem than for someone who's working 2 different shitty full-time jobs to take time to call in to report the problem. It's also important to note that the poor sometimes creates even more work and expenses. You might need to be a lot more careful in timing your commute for public transportation because you can't afford a car. You might need to spend more time or money going to the bank or grocery store because your neighborhood doesn't have those things. Being poor isn't all fairy-dust and gumdrops.
I don't see what the problem here is. If you're going to be collecting statistics for decision-making, you should be looking for bias. If you're collecting those statistics from smartphone apps, you should be asking whether there are populations who will be over-represented or under-represented based on who owns smart phones, and who's likely to install apps. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to create policy based on those statistics.
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The "stay-at-home moms" in poor families are probably busy and may even have jobs. Poor unemployed people may not have money to be driving around with smart phones.
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OTOH, they'll be staying at home or inside playing Xbox.
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After all, it isn't like poor people don't have smart phones. I live in a lower income city and most other family's kids in my area had smart phones before I got one.
Putting your anecdotal evidence aside for a minute, I don't know if it's true that poor people own smart phones at the same rate. Also, are they equally likely to have a phone with the features that make it easy for them to report these issues? Are they as likely to have the proper app installed? Are they as likely to be driving around their own low-income neighborhood?
The thing is, I'm not pretending to know the answer to questions like these. There may even be good reasons why a city may prioritize f
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What it means in context of this particular article is that the fact
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I'm arguing more of the general point that we should *always* be careful when basing decisions on statistics, because statistics can be very biased depending on how you collect an analyze them. Unfortunately, while statistics can be analyzed to say almost anything and a poorly selected sample invalidates any analysis, using numbers give the illusion of objective certainty.
So in response to this, you're presenting me with statistics that black people own smartphones, and drawing the conclusion that therefore rich people take more personal responsibility for their environment.
Really, I'm not even interested in arguing that you're wrong. Your conclusion may possibly be true. I'm just surprised that your response to my post was to present such a dodgy statistical analysis.
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Smart phones don't have to cost $100's mine cost me 69 euro prepay not the biggest or the best but it has pretty much all the functionality of its pricier rivals. I get unlimited data if i top up by 20 euro for 30 days, compared to any other broad band package its around half the cost of most plans when you add in line rental and i get to use that credit for calls and texts i already get 3000 texts a month and 3000 weekend minutes any way for that month. How does that compare with your bills?
The one thing
Re: Oxymoron (Score:2)
Please explain the difference between an unemployed person with an unemployed person living in a poor neighborhood... I'd argue each has the same amount of time to report potholes.
Now, let's compare a working parent in an affluent neighborhood versus a less affluent working person living in a poorer neighborhood, I'd argue again they both have the same amount of free time to report potholes in their neighborhood...
Re: Oxymoron (Score:2)
Should read "Please explain the difference between an unemployed person WITH A TRUST FUND AND an unemployed person living in a poor neighborhood... I'd argue each has the same amount of time to report potholes"
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The pothole app was probably a poor choice of example, but is much simpler to understand than insurance risk pools, so that's probably why they chose it. There are plenty of examples of digital ghettos that don't open themselves up to this "personal responsibility" bullshit argument, and the economic bias the big data introduces into the system is going to negatively impact groups of people that are not so easily defined as by race, gender or poverty. It's a real and growing problem and without constant a
Re: Oxymoron (Score:2)
If you can get the name of the street in the hands of the tight person in government, you really don't need GPS-derived long & lat...
In NYC they have 311 [nyc.gov] - you can dial 311 on any phone in the city and be connected to a city worker that takes such reports (potholes, open hydrants, fallen tree, etc.) and passes it on to the proper department... Had it for years, does your average affluent suburb have a similar service?
Generalizing about averages is bad science (Score:2)
Between 1972 and 2002 the average iq difference between blacks and whites shrunk from 15 points to 9 points.
Thats an average...not something that can be generalized to all black people. Im willing to bet that Neil Degrasse Tyson
is smarter than 99.9% of the white people in America including you.
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I agree with you, the variance of the distribution is such to make the difference in mean IQ utterly meaningless on an individual basis. It must be incredibly frustrating to an intelligent black man to have that average working unfairly against him.
If you think that's bad though, imagine a world where it is easy to determine the average IQ of a black man from Baltimore, with a dead father,and who drives a car more than 8 years old. Now imagine coming from such a background, and being a great computer progra
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Tyranny of statistics. Indeed. When looking at the rate of criminal, especially violent crimal activity, especially violent criminal activity resulting in death and dismemberment, the statistics point unfavorably in a particular group's favor.
I'm guessing everyone missed it when the Obama administration took over the census statistics -- the ones used by everyone for a variety of purposes including detecting voter fraud and all of that.
IQ might appear to be meaningless until you see the continuous results
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Tyranny of statistics. Indeed. When looking at the rate of criminal, especially violent crimal activity, especially violent criminal activity resulting in death and dismemberment, the statistics point unfavorably in a particular group's favor.
Odd. The statistics I've seen for the chance that a person will commit a death and dismemberment crime are equal for all races (within the margin of error) if you look only at the people with no criminal record. It's only when you arrest the minorities and prosecute them more heavily when you see differences appear. Racism causes the rift, not inherent qualities, as you imply.
Re: Oxymoron (Score:4, Insightful)
What I love about this is the focus on the fact that the poor don't have smartphones.
From the administration perspective, if they don't have smartphones, then how the hell is the NSA going to track them? This problem needs to be solved.
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Let me know how the million-webgamer march goes.
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That shouldn't be too hard as pedestrians have repeated acceleration/deceleration in the vertical axis as they take steps. Pothole accelerations are more infrequent and irregular (except in NYC).
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Seems to me in order to have "discrimination" you would have to use that data in a negative (or positive) way, say no loans for people that are "purple"
Are you aware that if you leave $1M in gold bullion lying on your front lawn, it's illegal to steal it? Are you aware that in the Federalist Papers it was recommended that federal judges be well paid in order to lessen the possibility of corruption? If you don't understand the importance of temptation and easy means to commit a crime, then you're woefully unrealistic.
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when you destroy culture
Pray tell what's destroying American culture? Once upon a time many said that about the Irish, Italians, Jews, assorted Eastern Europeans, etc. Forget immigrants - they said that about flappers and Elvis Presley too. Interestingly, despite the rough spots that are often glossed over in history, the destruction of American culture didn't come to pass. It did evolve, which is a good thing because cultures that don't evolve either die or become relegated to some anthropological curiosity. Do you think there's
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Interesting. Some truth must be in there somewhere...
One theory I've heard is that community is dead. A diverse community is possible but it has to be a functioning community with some common shared things between them. The common traits are gone in the schools and education and well, everything else has been gone for more than a generation. People don't know the neighbors, have community activities, even their religious activities are individualized and limited so those little communities are much weak
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The stereotype it confirms for me is that every country, every culture, every ethnic, racial, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc. has assholes. Sometimes I dream of a place where that isn't true, but thanks for helping to keep me realistic.
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Do you have citations for any of the above? No snark - I'm honestly interested.
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the app sounds like a stupid idea to run like that anyways.
however, just put the sensors on post cars.
(ok ok poor neighborhoods maybe don't get served their mail so often??)