andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> - You fail to indicate what exactly is condescending in your opinion so 
> that leaves me guessing.

  Talking with someone else about me and apparently my typical negative
behavior as if I were some kind of child who must be understood. It sounds
patronizing.

  When you write "IME a thread with Warp dies when there is nothing left
for him than to apologize" it gives the strong impression that you are
saying "he always writes controversially, he is usually wrong, but always
too stubborn to admit it even though we show him how wrong he is, so he
is either forced to apologize, or the thread dies because nobody else
wants to continue". It sounds like you are implying some negative personality
traits. The worst thing is that you aren't telling me about it, but someone
else, making it sound like "you just have to understand him", which sounds
extremely patronizing and condescending. (Maybe it was not how you intended
it, but it *does* sound like that.)

  "We have made progress", in this context, also gives an impression of
being patronizing. And since you are not telling that to me but to someone
else, it makes it sound like you were ganged up with others (or at least
want to be, like with a mentality of "we are right, he's wrong").

  That's the impression your post gave me, which is why I replied in the
way I did.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 5-5-2010 13:32, Warp wrote:
> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:

> >> and then claim - quite counterintuitively, that you don't see race.
> > 
> >   I have made no such claim. (Why do I feel like I'm repeating myself?)
> > 
> >   What I have claimed is that to me race is exactly as important and
> > unimportant as any other personal factor, such as gender, age, shoe size
> > or hair color. I don't care about race any more or any less than about
> > any of those other things. It's all the same.

> That is what Jim's 'you don't see race' also means. It is a way of 
> expressing oneself. There is also a literal interpretation possible, but 
> that is so preposterous that you can easily rule out that Jim meant that.

  You mean "you don't see race" was meant as "you don't consider race to
be any more significant than any other feature"? Then I honestly don't
understand what he meant with:

"That's because you keep saying "profiling based on race isn't a problem"
and then claim - quite counterintuitively, that you don't see race."

  I honestly don't see how contrasting the two things are counterintuitive.
Maybe he means something with "profiling based on race isn't a problem" that
I didn't understand.

  After all, if race isn't any more or less important than other features,
then the above expression is quite equivalent to, for example, "profiling
based on age".

  Even if he meant that *all* profiling is wrong, regardless of what is being
used to do the profiling, I still can't understand what the "you don't see
race" meant in that context.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 5-5-2010 13:15, Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> In this conversation, for example, Warp says "If 90% of illegal immigrants 
>> look Mexican, wouldn't it be more efficient to focus on people who look 
>> Mexican?"[1]   I answer "No, the math doesn't work that way, because... for 
>> example..."[2]  And then Warp, instead of saying "Oh, I see, that's a good 
>> point I hadn't considered" before continuing the conversation, instead says 
>> "Stop nit-picking the math."  Or instead doesn't respond at all, giving the 
>> impression they haven't even read the answer.[3]  It would be far better to 
>> respond "Yes, I see what you're saying. However, I disagree because..." Then 
>> it wouldn't turn into a dead-horse-beating-fest.
> 
>   The problem is that you are misinterpreting my response, even *after*
> I explained it more clearly.
> 
>   Originally I was comparing "concentrate the resources on people who fit
> the profile better" vs. "distribute the resources evenly among all people".
> That last part is important.

Part of the problem is that the police is never trying to solve a crime 
by stopping every person. In that sense your comparison is between two 
things that never happen. What has happened is that at various places 
police have stopped almost anyone that matches certain external criteria 
(race, colour, nose, religion, culture, country of origin). That has 
almost invariably led to disasters.
In any decent country that is also forbidden. The Arizona law tries to 
not only make it legal but even mandatory.
You seemed to support that law or at least didn't condemn it. Thereby 
attracting all criticism of that law. That may be a bit unfair, but it 
is understandable. What we wanted to know is to what extend you will 
follow the reasoning behind that law. The first assumption was that you 
didn't really meant what we though you said, because it is so bloody 
obviously wrong (to us). So that resulted in a number of replies 
explaining why you could (or should) not have meant it. Even if the tone 
was sort of accusing, it was still meant to figure out what you really 
meant.

[other points for later, I am spending to much of this day at home on 
this discussion anyway]

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On 5-5-2010 14:37, Warp wrote:
> andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> On 5-5-2010 13:32, Warp wrote:
>>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 
>>>> and then claim - quite counterintuitively, that you don't see race.
>>>   I have made no such claim. (Why do I feel like I'm repeating myself?)
>>>
>>>   What I have claimed is that to me race is exactly as important and
>>> unimportant as any other personal factor, such as gender, age, shoe size
>>> or hair color. I don't care about race any more or any less than about
>>> any of those other things. It's all the same.
> 
>> That is what Jim's 'you don't see race' also means. It is a way of 
>> expressing oneself. There is also a literal interpretation possible, but 
>> that is so preposterous that you can easily rule out that Jim meant that.
> 
>   You mean "you don't see race" was meant as "you don't consider race to
> be any more significant than any other feature"? Then I honestly don't
> understand what he meant with:
> 
> "That's because you keep saying "profiling based on race isn't a problem"
> and then claim - quite counterintuitively, that you don't see race."
> 
>   I honestly don't see how contrasting the two things are counterintuitive.
> Maybe he means something with "profiling based on race isn't a problem" that
> I didn't understand.

Because the first implies that you think that race may be important in 
same cases and the latter that you don't believe so.
But I can also see your confusion, because it might be about different 
people and different cases.

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> You seemed to support that law or at least didn't condemn it.

  I think that's the core issue in this whole thread.

  It was not my intention to support that law. What I was really objecting
to was (what I perceive to be) the hypersensitivity many people have with
anything which deals with "race". 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. (No need to answer that
for the umpteenth time. I am explaining here, not asking.)

  There are people (but not anybody here, as far as I can tell) who are
*so* hypersensitive about "racism" and racial issues that they are
promoting outright banning the entire concept of "race", and are saying
that *anything at all* which makes any kind of distinction between "races"
is extremely bad and should be banned. Naturally even any kind of honest
police work which does anything at all that distinguishes between racial
features, is also automatically bad, even if there is absolutely nothing
in that police work that could be considered discriminatory or racist.

  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. Race shouldn't be something to be so hypersensitive about. It's
just another human trait as anything else.

  That doesn't mean I'm claiming that race *is* a trait that can be used
to more efficiently catch illegal immigrants in the southern US. What I am
saying that *if* it would be, then it would make sense to use it. (And I
do acknowledge that even if that was the case, it would still be problematic
because of other reasons, mainly people getting angry about it.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 5-5-2010 14:28, Warp wrote:
> andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> - You fail to indicate what exactly is condescending in your opinion so 
>> that leaves me guessing.
> 
>   Talking with someone else about me and apparently my typical negative
> behavior as if I were some kind of child who must be understood. 
Oh, but you are ;)
> It sounds patronizing.

I know. It wasn't meant that way, but other than starting an e-mail 
discussion behind your back (which you would also not have liked if you 
knew about it) there is no other way to communicate. That is the curse 
of a public discussion.

>   When you write "IME a thread with Warp dies when there is nothing left
> for him than to apologize" it gives the strong impression that you are
> saying "he always writes controversially, he is usually wrong, but always
> too stubborn to admit it even though we show him how wrong he is, so he
> is either forced to apologize, or the thread dies because nobody else
> wants to continue". It sounds like you are implying some negative personality
> traits. The worst thing is that you aren't telling me about it, but someone
> else, making it sound like "you just have to understand him", which sounds
> extremely patronizing and condescending. (Maybe it was not how you intended
> it, but it *does* sound like that.)

Darren noticed that some threads suddenly drop dead without any feedback 
that somebody has changed his mind or ended with 'I see your point, but 
I still disagree'. I can only confirm that and that is what I did. It 
has annoyed me again and again over the years.
I don't think this is new to you, I vaguely remember having said this 
before.
Also not that there is another sentence behind what you quoted. This was 
  meant as a point for you to drop in into the discussion with your own 
points of view if you would have wanted to. In stead you chose to go 
into meta immediately, now I still don't know what your motivation was. 
More importantly, there is no indication from your part if you are 
prepared to end discussions in a more grown up way (sorry for the 
patronizing term). Remember: people are not going to apologize to 
someone who never apologized when an apology was badly needed.

>   "We have made progress", in this context, also gives an impression of
> being patronizing. And since you are not telling that to me but to someone
> else, it makes it sound like you were ganged up with others (or at least
> want to be, like with a mentality of "we are right, he's wrong").

I don't know about ganging up, but anyway it is not about being right or 
wrong in the discussion. It was about the use of invalid discussion 
tricks to not apologize for insulting people.

>   That's the impression your post gave me, which is why I replied in the
> way I did.

And this was my motivation.

Post a reply to this message

andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Because the first implies that you think that race may be important in 
> same cases and the latter that you don't believe so.

  Maybe originally I expressed myself poorly. When I said "race is not
important" I meant that "race is not something which, IMO, would deserve
special protection over other human traits; it should be considered as
important or unimportant as anything else".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Originally I was comparing "concentrate the resources on people who fit
> the profile better" vs. "distribute the resources evenly among all people".
> That last part is important.

I *still* understand what you're saying. You *still* aren't saying what 
"profile" you're talking about. Using a profile based on race is *still* not 
as efficient as a profile based on probable cause, regardless of the 
political correctness.

And people aren't complaining about profiles based on actual causal 
relationships to the crimes being investigated. Nobody is complaining about 
"profiling" people who are driving badly for sobriety tests, and nobody is 
complaining about "profiling" people who don't pay their taxes for 
immigration status testing.

And people aren't complaining about random testing, but you repeatedly seem 
to conflate "random" testing with "random testing of people who fit a 
profile", which are two entirely different things. Plus, random testing 
might have a deterrent value in the case of sobriety tests, but it's not 
really possible to deter someone from having their ethnicity.

Yet you still haven't indicated that you understand that.

> when you narrow your input by some factor, the same resources will be more
> efficiently used compared to if you distributed the resource evenly to the
> entire input.

Yes. And again, nobody is disputing that. Nobody is saying that if you know 
something about a criminal, you should use that information to not 
investigate people who could not be the criminal.

A profile of the type you seem to be recommending is not that sort of thing, 
for reasons I have repeatedly tried to explain and you *seem* to be ignoring.

>   Your argument was that "using ethnicity as a basis of narrowing down the
> possible suspects is not the *best* factor". In other words, you were not
> disagreeing with what I was saying (in other words, that narrowing the
> input by using some known factor helps utilize resources better), you were
> simply disagreeing with the notion that ethnicity would be the best factor
> to do that.

No, I was disagreeing on several fronts:

1) You *cannot* use the statement "Most of the criminals have trait X, hence 
we should focus our questioning on people with trait X." The math doesn't 
work that way. You have yet to acknowledge that you understand why the math 
doesn't work that way.

2) You *can* use the statement "Most of the criminals have trait Y, hence we 
should *not* focus our question on people who *lack* trait Y."  Again, this 
is how the math works.  Again, you have yet to acknowledge that you 
understand this point.

This is a tremendously fundamental part of the whole "profiling" 
conversation. You waved it off with "don't nit-pick the math." This implied 
to me that you didn't understand why it's important.

It's like having a debate with someone who thinks "A implies B" implies "Not 
A implies Not B".  And then the correction is waved off with "Oh, you know 
what I mean."  No, really, I don't.

Basically, the problem is related to the rate of false negatives not telling 
you anything about the rate of false positives. Maybe that phrasing helps.

>   That's also fine, and I said that many times. I didn't claim that
> ethnicity is the *best* factor. I simply said that narrowing factors can
> be used to distribute resources better and increase the likelihood of
> success, and that *if* ethnicity were such a factor 

And I gave examples where ethnicity *can* be used that way (e.g., medicine), 
and explained why linking genetics to criminal behavior is *not* an 
effective means of profiling (because of (1) and (2) above).  Which, as far 
as I could tell, you didn't read or didn't understand.

> I even gave a simple example where this indeed gave a positive result.

Other than the rapist bit?  See (1) vs (2) above. You're not going to get 
many false negatives be eliminating female rapists. You're going to get a 
lot of false positives by considering all or random subsets of males as 
rapists.

I didn't see any example where you wound up with a positive result other 
than the rapist bit. Note that the stopping of SUV drivers has the same 
problem as (1). Your example of eliminating the bus drivers is an example of 
(2). The sparsity of false negatives in a group does not imply a sparsity of 
false positives in the compliment of that group.

> The example was not intended to depict a real situation, but as a simple
> demonstration of the basic principle of narrowing down the samples.
> 
>   The problem is that you kept sticking onto the "ethnicity" part and
> wouldn't understand what I was *really* saying.

Except when I tried substituting other examples with the same problem, such 
as profiling based on religion, you first ignored it, then called it 
outlandish. In this country, when you say someone's statement is 
"outlandish", it's generally of the connotation "What, are you crazy?"

Hence, it first looked like you were trying to ignore the example and 
continue the debate as if it hadn't been given (which is a mark of debating 
with someone unwilling to change their mind). Then it looked like you 
thought it was a terrible example because it *wasn't* based on ethnicity, 
and indeed the very thought of profiling based on something other than 
ethnicity was crazy talk.

Then you gave a bunch of examples like eye color and hair color, all of 
which are part of race/ethnicity/etc.

Then you got defensive when people were saying all your examples were 
racist.  (Not you, your examples.)

That's part of why I thought you were suggesting using ethnic profiling 
rather than some other type of profiling.


Here's a suggestion, tho, just in terms of personal-communication:

If you've made a mistake, and someone corrects you, don't berate them for 
correcting you.  If you give an example, and someone says "The math doesn't 
work that way," don't say "don't nit-pick the math."  Instead, say "sorry, 
that was a bad example, let me try again."

Otherwise, you're saying "You're clearly misinterpreting what I meant to 
say, because what I meant to say was something that's correct. Don't nitpick 
on the fact that what I actually said was wrong, but instead assume instead 
that I said something correct and go from there."

You sometimes get into this mode in a conversation and it makes it hard to 
get out, because you start thinking people are intentionally 
misunderstanding you.  You give bad examples, then complain when people use 
those examples even when you say "that's not what I meant." But you never 
actually express what you *do* mean, you just say "apply the appropriate 
corrections, then discuss that instead."

HTH.

And honestly, it was fun.  I learned a bunch how to express my thoughts on 
this subject. I hope I didn't offend you. That wasn't my intention. I don't 
think you're racist. I simply think in this case you either haven't thought 
through the math of the "statistics" you're proposing or you don't actually 
care enough about the topic (since you see it as irrelevant and it probably 
doesn't happen much around you) to really think about whether profiling 
really would work. I think because of this you might *sound* racist to some.

-- 
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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On Wed, 05 May 2010 07:43:28 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 May 2010 15:00:34 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> > Where did you conjure this "stupidity" thing
>> >   all
>> > of a sudden?
> 
>> You imply it when you say "I've explained it over and over again and
>> I'm not going to continue to repeat myself".  The undertone there is
>> "if you're too stupid to understand it, I'm not going to try any more".
> 
>   I have not implied any such thing. Any such "undertone" you are seeing
> is purely your own invention. I have never written anything with that
> kind of mindset.

Maybe you didn't imply it, but clearly it was inferred.

>   When I wrote that I wouldn't bother explaining the same things again,
> I was simply implying that I'm tired of doing so again and again, as the
> conversation is going in circles. "Stupidity" had absolutely nothing to
> do with any of this.
> 
>   (Well, I didn't actually keep my promise. I succumbed into trying to
> explain it, once again, to Darren in a previous post I made today. Let's
> see if it helps this time. If not, then I suppose this is hopeless.)
> 
>> When I engage in these conversations with you, Warp, it's never ever
>> ever ever EVER with the intention of "twisting your words".  It's with
>> the intention of trying to understand what you're saying.
> 
>   I understand it if someone misinterprets something I say. What I don't
> understand is why they keep misinterpreting it even *after* I say that
> they misinterpreted it.

You frequently try to explain by just saying the same thing again.  When 
you explain something a second time, taking a different approach can 
often help make your point clear.

>> Instead of trying to explain, you then get all defensive and blame
>> everyone else.
> 
>   But I have tried to explain. However, the conversation nevertheless
> goes in circles.

Then a different explanation is needed, not getting pissed off.

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I simply think in this case you either haven't thought 
> through the math of the "statistics" you're proposing

  *sigh*

  I have reached the limit of my ability to write, as the post you were
responding to was my best and most honest effort at explaining myself,
and I just can't think how I could explain myself better. No matter how
clearly I try to put it, it doesn't seem to matter.

  Well, since I don't think I can express myself more clearly, I suppose
I will have to simply stop and let you think whatever you want, to let
you have whatever notion of what I "have been proposing" you want. I'm
out of ideas. So I give up.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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