Warp wrote:
>   I said that if the vast majority of illegal immigrants can be distinguished
> by how they look, it makes sense to concentrate more on those people than on
> people who are much less likely to be illegal immigrants.

And you're ignoring the fact that
A) they can't be, because they live where the majority of people look like 
them, and
B) there are dozens of traits more useful for distinguishing legal from 
illegal residents than looks.

>> I'm trying to. You're arguing that using statistics would make the process 
>> more efficient. I'm showing you that mathematically, no, it wouldn't.
> 
>   No, you aren't. You are simply taking my simplified example and directly
> applying it to a more complex situation and showing how it doesn't work
> there. 

Not at all. I'm showing you (A) it's more complicated than you think, and 
(B) not related to "looks".   I'm offering you examples of other 
distinguishing features (besides genetics) that will get you a much better 
chance of efficiently catching the criminal, and showing how if you base it 
on something irrelevant to immigration status (like looks or religion) you 
wind up with prejudiced yet ineffective enforcement.

>   If you argued that the idea doesn't work for practical reasons (eg. because
> it causes unrest and riots), then that could be more valid of an argument.

That too.

>   No. I'm saying that stop nitpicking on the specific example I gave
> (using the 90% example, etc, because that's what you are doing), and start
> discussing the idea this example is trying to convey.

I did. You ignore when I discuss the general idea.

>   The opposite of concentrating resources on likely suspects is to spread
> the resources equally to all people.

Now you're back-pedaling more. You were talking about "likely suspects" 
before. Even in this very post, you're using "looks mexican" as "likely 
suspects." I'm using the math to show you how "looks mexican" isn't the same 
as "likely suspects."  Yet you're ignoring that fact.

Concentrate on likely suspects?  No problem!

Concentrate on people who look mexican?  Bad idea!

>   What I think is happening here is that we are talking about different
> things. I think you are talking about "use resources to check random
> people" vs. "use resources to check only those who are very suspicious
> because of eg. having been reported by someone", while what I am talking
> about is "distribute random checks according to statistics" vs. "distribute
> random checks equally".

Yet you haven't mentioned any "statistics" other than "looks mexican."

>   I found it so incoherent and outlandish that I didn't know what to say.
> Maybe that's what you were after.

Why did you find it outlandish?  If 90% of illegal immigrants look mexican, 
and 90% of illegal immigrants are christian, why is it better to focus on 
people who look mexican than to focus on people who look christian?

The very fact that you're calling it outlandish is *exactly* the point I'm 
making. *That* is why focusing on people who look mexican is racist and not 
just statistics.

*This*, right here, is the crux of where you are wrong. You're asking me to 
adjust my nit-pick of your math so that you turn out right. OK, if 80% of 
illegals look mexican, and 90% are christian, would you still feel it's 
outrageous to stop people going into churches and ask them for proof of 
citizenship?  If not, then your proposal hasn't anything to do with 
statistics of efficient policing.

If you agree with that, then maybe you'll agree that when we find most 
illegals shop at Wal-mart, buy groceries from food stores specializing in 
mexican food, and have jobs paying minimum wage, then we should find people 
who engage in all three of those behaviors and go around banging on their 
doors, asking for proof of citizenship?

Why is that a bad idea?

>   Maybe it could be a good idea to change that, then? It's not like it's
> something unheard of.

Welcome to democracy.

> country, you are pretty much safe because nobody will ask you if you
> really have the right to be there".

No. Random people walking down the street won't have the right to ask you if 
you're doing nothing wrong.  Everyone whose behavior is affected by them 
being illegal already has to prove their legality.

-- 
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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   That doesn't mean that testing random people for citizenship is right.
> > It means that the *argument* that general random testing is wrong is invalid.

> Except we aren't talking about random testing.

  The subject which led to this sobriety test comparison was about the
morality of testing people without probable cause. I simply pointed out
that testing people without probable cause is not *always* immoral, as
there exists at least one legit example where it's not.

  So yes, in *this particular context* we were talking about random testing.
The original post might not have been talking about that, but this comparison
was not directly related to that.

  You are trying to invalidate my example by dragging it back to the
original subject (in other words, that Arizona law) and comparing it
directly to that, rather than what really prompted the comparison.

> You're arguing that based on statistics, racist testing should be applied.

  That's a different context, not related to this sobriety test example.

  Also, I don't appreciate your denigrating terminology on what I may be
arguing for.

> >   (Of course *you* might disagree with random sobriety tests not being wrong,
> > but in Finland nobody is complaining, so I'm not the only one who agrees that
> > they are important.)

> People complained less about random testing than about racists testing here too.

  No, your original argument which prompted this was that testing people
with no probable cause is always wrong. Don't change the context here.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>> You're arguing that based on statistics, racist testing should be applied.
>   That's a different context, not related to this sobriety test example.

Fair enough.

>   Also, I don't appreciate your denigrating terminology on what I may be
> arguing for.

Well, when you say "we should test people who look like illegal immigrants 
look", then that's pretty much the textbook definition of racist. You're 
saying "we should act as if those with the same genetics as criminals are 
more likely to also be criminals" is racist.  I don't know any other word 
for it, especially when you're claiming that genetics is a factor, but not 
religion or shopping habits or anything like that.

-- 
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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   I said that if the vast majority of illegal immigrants can be distinguished
> > by how they look, it makes sense to concentrate more on those people than on
> > people who are much less likely to be illegal immigrants.

> And you're ignoring the fact that
> A) they can't be, because they live where the majority of people look like 
> them, and

  You are using a different meaning of the word "distinguish" than I am.

  Take 100 illegal immigrants. If 90 of them are of mexican origin and
the rest are of European origin, you certainly *can* distinguish the majority
of them by how they look.

  That's different from what you are arguing, which is: Take 100 mexicans.
You know that 10 of them are illegals. Try to distinguish them by how they
look.

  What I am saying is:

  Take 100 mexicans and 100 canadians. You know that there are approximately
9 illegals of mexican origin and 1 of canadian origin (hence "90% of illegals
are of mexican origin", as in the example). Hence if you check all the 100
mexicans you will most probably get the 9 illegal mexicans even if you miss
that 1 illegal canadian.

  However, if you checked the 100 people completely at random, you will
only catch about 4 or 5 illegals in average.

  So exactly where is the flaw in this math?

> B) there are dozens of traits more useful for distinguishing legal from 
> illegal residents than looks.

  That may well be true.

> Concentrate on people who look mexican?  Bad idea!

  Maybe it's a bad idea, but not because of statistics, but because of
people's feelings and sense of privacy. That has nothing to do with math.

> >   I found it so incoherent and outlandish that I didn't know what to say.
> > Maybe that's what you were after.

> Why did you find it outlandish?  If 90% of illegal immigrants look mexican, 
> and 90% of illegal immigrants are christian, why is it better to focus on 
> people who look mexican than to focus on people who look christian?

  You might as well argue "100% of illegals look like people, so why not
concentrate on people?"

> The very fact that you're calling it outlandish is *exactly* the point I'm 
> making. *That* is why focusing on people who look mexican is racist and not 
> just statistics.

  What do you even mean by "racism"? Usually "racism" implies prejudice and
forming preconceptions about people based on their ethnicity. A policeman
thinking "most mexicans are criminals and deserve to be beaten" is racism
because it's a prejudiced opinion based on ethnicity.

  Statistical profiling based on ethnicity might be *technically* labelled
"racism" in the sense that it segregates people based on ethnicity. However,
if it's purely hard neutral statistics, there's no prejudiced intent. It's
simply the result of keeping up records and calculating the statistics from
them.

  One could argue that keeping statistics based on ethnicity is wrong, but
curiously that happens only if the statistics make *certain* ethnicities
look bad, while with other ethnicities it's ok. (For example, if a statistical
study showed that, let's say, Japanese people are in average more intelligent
than Finnish people, it wouldn't cause any commotion. However, heaven forbid
if such a statistic said that, for example, Finnish people are in average
more intelligent than, let's say, Nigerians. The outrage! That kind of
statistic would immediately be labelled "racist". Of course if it happened
to be the other way around, nobody would complain.)

> *This*, right here, is the crux of where you are wrong. You're asking me to 
> adjust my nit-pick of your math so that you turn out right. OK, if 80% of 
> illegals look mexican, and 90% are christian, would you still feel it's 
> outrageous to stop people going into churches and ask them for proof of 
> citizenship?  If not, then your proposal hasn't anything to do with 
> statistics of efficient policing.

  Well, if we have 100 christians and 100 non-christians, and we know that
approximately 9 of the christians are illegal immigrants and about 1 of the
non-christians is, then checking 100 christians would produce a higher
success rate than checking 100 randomly chosen people. It works the same.

  Statistically speaking it would be better to check only the christians
if we want to maximize the success rate of 100 random samples.

  You are arguing that "there are too many christians and there aren't
enough resources to check them all, hence it would be inefficient".
I didn't ever claim that checking all people of a certain group would be
*the most efficient* way. I said that it would be *more efficient* than
purely random checks. There's a difference between "more" and "most".

> >   Maybe it could be a good idea to change that, then? It's not like it's
> > something unheard of.

> Welcome to democracy.

  Democracy implies no citizenship-proving ID?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Well, when you say "we should test people who look like illegal immigrants 
> look", then that's pretty much the textbook definition of racist.

  Except that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that concentrating resources
on statistically more probable people is going to give a better success rate
than spreading the resources evenly on everybody. If the distinguishing
feature happens to be ethnicity, that doesn't change anything. You can call
it "racism" if you want. I am not prejudiced against any group of people
based on their ethnicity, nor am I claiming that some ethnicities are more
likely to be criminals than others, so I don't really appreciate the
insinuation.

> You're 
> saying "we should act as if those with the same genetics as criminals are 
> more likely to also be criminals" is racist.  I don't know any other word 
> for it, especially when you're claiming that genetics is a factor, but not 
> religion or shopping habits or anything like that.

  Now you are outright insulting me. Nowhere have I said that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   So exactly where is the flaw in this math?

The flaw in the math is that you're using the same number of mexicans and 
canadians.

The percentage of interest is the percentage of illegals to legals in each 
group you want to target, *not* the absolute percentages.


You said
>   Take 100 illegal immigrants. If 90 of them are of mexican origin and
> the rest are of European origin, you certainly *can* distinguish the majority
> of them by how they look.

This is factually incorrect, *if* you have 10,000 mexicans and 30 europeans 
in the community you're policing. You will spend 10,000 investigations to 
catch 90 illegal immigrants if you investigate the ones who look mexican, 
while you'll spend 30 investigations to catch 10 illegal immigrants if you 
investigate all the europeans.

Google for Bayesian math.

>> B) there are dozens of traits more useful for distinguishing legal from 
>> illegal residents than looks.
> 
>   That may well be true.

Yet acting on that is "outrageous"?

>> Concentrate on people who look mexican?  Bad idea!
> 
>   Maybe it's a bad idea, but not because of statistics, but because of
> people's feelings and sense of privacy. That has nothing to do with math.

Yes, really, it does.  You have absolutely no idea whether genetics is the 
best distinguishing factor, yet you take an example of a different 
distinguishing factor as "outrageous".

>>>   I found it so incoherent and outlandish that I didn't know what to say.
>>> Maybe that's what you were after.
> 
>> Why did you find it outlandish?  If 90% of illegal immigrants look mexican, 
>> and 90% of illegal immigrants are christian, why is it better to focus on 
>> people who look mexican than to focus on people who look christian?
> 
>   You might as well argue "100% of illegals look like people, so why not
> concentrate on people?"

That doesn't answer the question. And yes, I wouldn't go around trying to 
find out the legal immigration status of dogs and cats.

>> The very fact that you're calling it outlandish is *exactly* the point I'm 
>> making. *That* is why focusing on people who look mexican is racist and not 
>> just statistics.
> 
>   What do you even mean by "racism"? Usually "racism" implies prejudice and
> forming preconceptions about people based on their ethnicity.

Racism: Assuming people of a particular genetic background share a common 
(usually negative) trait unrelated to their genetic background.

>   Statistical profiling based on ethnicity might be *technically* labelled
> "racism" in the sense that it segregates people based on ethnicity. However,
> if it's purely hard neutral statistics, there's no prejudiced intent. It's
> simply the result of keeping up records and calculating the statistics from
> them.

Yet, when I apply exactly the same neutral statistics to religon instead of 
genetics, it becomes outrageous and unthinkable?

>   One could argue that keeping statistics based on ethnicity is wrong, but
> curiously that happens only if the statistics make *certain* ethnicities
> look bad, while with other ethnicities it's ok. 

We're not talking about that here.

And certainly keeping statistics on ethnicity when you're talking about 
something genetic is different than when you're keeping statistics on 
ethnicity when you're talking about something entirely unrelated to genetics.

>   Statistically speaking it would be better to check only the christians
> if we want to maximize the success rate of 100 random samples.

Then why did you call it outrageous?

Note that if you're changing your mind about this, saying "I've changed my 
mind about this" is a good thing at this point.  Otherwise, I'm going to be 
confused about whether you've reconsidered and changed your mind or not. 
Because it sounds like earlier today you said "that's outrageous" and here 
you seem to be agreeing with me, so now I'm confused.

>   You are arguing that "there are too many christians and there aren't
> enough resources to check them all, hence it would be inefficient".

No, I'm arguing that if you're going to use something like that, then the 
most efficient property to use is one that most illegal immigrants all share 
and that most legal residents don't share. And "looking mexican" isn't on 
that list.

> I didn't ever claim that checking all people of a certain group would be
> *the most efficient* way. I said that it would be *more efficient* than
> purely random checks. There's a difference between "more" and "most".

Sure. But it's still far below "checking people who have done something that 
leads you to believe based on their *behavior* that they might be illegal 
aliens."

>>>   Maybe it could be a good idea to change that, then? It's not like it's
>>> something unheard of.
> 
>> Welcome to democracy.
> 
>   Democracy implies no citizenship-proving ID?

It does when the citizens consistently complain and vote against 
citizenship-proving ID. (To be clear: Of course we have citizenship-proving 
ID. We're just not required to produce it on random demand by police.)

-- 
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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Warp wrote:
> If the distinguishing
> feature happens to be ethnicity, that doesn't change anything.

Except it's not.  The best distinguishing feature is probable cause. That's 
why they call it that.

>> You're 
>> saying "we should act as if those with the same genetics as criminals are 
>> more likely to also be criminals" is racist.  I don't know any other word 
>> for it, especially when you're claiming that genetics is a factor, but not 
>> religion or shopping habits or anything like that.
> 
>   Now you are outright insulting me. Nowhere have I said that.

I'm confused. The only distinguishing feature you have mentioned in this 
whole thread is ethnicity, and my bringing up other distinguishing features 
is called "outrageous", and we're talking about how to catch criminals.

Maybe you're not racist. But it sure as heck sounds like you're condoning 
racist behavior on the part of the police here, in the name of efficiency.

-- 
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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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > If the distinguishing
> > feature happens to be ethnicity, that doesn't change anything.

> Except it's not.  The best distinguishing feature is probable cause. That's 
> why they call it that.

  That may be so, but it doesn't invalidate what I said. I said "*if* the
distinguishing feature happens to be ethnicity". I didn't claim it *is*.
Try to finally get your thick skull out of the "Arizona law" thing and read
what I'm writing.

> I'm confused. The only distinguishing feature you have mentioned in this 
> whole thread is ethnicity, and my bringing up other distinguishing features 
> is called "outrageous", and we're talking about how to catch criminals.

  What the fuck are you talking about?

  Do you have reading comprehension problems? Do you have a hard time
understanding the difference between an expression like "if the
distinguishing feature is ethnicity" and "the distinguishing feature
is ethnicity"?

  And where have I use the word "outrageous", and what does it have to
do with anything?

> Maybe you're not racist. But it sure as heck sounds like you're condoning 
> racist behavior on the part of the police here, in the name of efficiency.

  Then maybe you should learn to read.

  I don't appreciate you insulting me like that, so I suppose you just can
go fuck yourself.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sun, 02 May 2010 01:45:11 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> > Isn't there a problem that if somebody does not have papers you won't
>> > know where to send him/her?
> 
>> We have that situation already here in the US.  Typically people whose
>> country of origin can't be determined are detained indefinitely.
> 
>   Guess what's the most common tactic of people who want to get inside
> the European Union and not get deported? Make it as hard as possible to
> determine where they come from.

That's not just the most common tactic in the EU, I'd guess it's pretty 
common worldwide.

Jim

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On Sun, 02 May 2010 01:43:24 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   If he is an illegal immigrant, why should the country he illegally
> entered take responsibility? It's his own country's problem.

Because that's the way the world works, Warp.  In fact, some people who 
immigrate legally or illegally no longer have a country of origin because 
their country simply no longer exists....so what do you do with them?

Jim

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