Warp wrote:
> No matter how
> clearly I try to put it, it doesn't seem to matter.

As I said, I understand what you're saying. I'm giving you the answer:

> In other words, my question was whether
> people are objecting to the law purely because they have an automatic
> aversion to anything that makes a distinction between races, or whether
> there are *logical* reasons to oppose the law.

There are logical reasons to oppose the law. The number of false negatives 
found by avoiding investigating those who lack feature X is unrelated to the 
number of false positives caused by investigating those who possess feature X.


Do you understand that? Because you still seem to be asking the question, 
instead of going "Oh! I see now!  I no longer have to ask the question, 
because you answered it."

It's not simply because the profile is based on race. It's because no 
profile will work, period, when you're talking about things that aren't 
close to at least 50% of the population having the trait (criminality) 
you're looking for.

>   Well, since I don't think I can express myself more clearly,

You seem to be ignoring the fact that I'm telling you I understand what 
you're saying. I'm trying to give you an answer to exactly what you asked, 
and you say "Well, I guess nobody understands."

>   My personal opinion is that *if* in some contexts crime could be more
> efficiently stopped by making the distinction, then it would make sense
> to do so.

I completely understand. And I'm telling you "the math shows that there are 
no contexts in which crime could be more efficiently stopped by making the 
distinction," in any case where you don't already know something about the 
specific criminal you seek.  And yet, you still haven't said you understand 
this. Do you?

Even when you use race to find a mugger reported (say) to be a black man, 
you're not using race to decide who to question. You're using location (near 
the time and place of the mugging) to decide who to question and you're 
using race to *eliminate* suspects from questioning. You don't question all 
black men. You question all people *near the crime scene*, *except* for the 
people you know *cannot* be the mugger.  Which is entirely different than 
"focusing your attentions on those of the right profile."

It's like you're saying "If you could safely go free-climbing up rock faces 
while falling-down drunk, I don't see why you shouln't."  Then someone 
points out that safe rock climbing while "falling-down" drunk is 
mathematically impossible, and you complaining about how people hate drunks. :-)

Sure, if it worked, it might be useful. But it doesn't work, so why are we 
insisting? It's not necessarily that people are particularly sensitive about 
it. It's that it doesn't work, it's known not to work, the only reason to 
propose it here is to hassle the brown people, and saying "but if it only 
worked, how much more efficient could we be" tends to set off all the alarm 
bells of all the people so hassled.

Not to goodwin it or anything, but this *is* exactly how the holocaust was 
sold. "Most jews are evil. Oh, maybe the jews *you* know are nice people, 
but trust us, if we round them all up, we'll be better off."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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