On Wed, 05 May 2010 07:32:46 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> That's because you keep saying "profiling based on race isn't a
>> problem"
> 
>   The problem is that when you say "profiling based on race", you are
> implying some kind of prejudiced discrimination and abuse based on race.
> When I say "profiling based on race" I mean "making statistics based on
> race, and *if* those statistics could be used to do something more
> efficiently, then do it". That doesn't imply discrimination nor racist
> prejudice.
> 
>   You can argue that race can *not* be used as a profiling factor to
> distribute police resources more efficiently. Well, my answer to that
> is: If that's so, then don't use race as a profiling factor, it's that
> simple. My *point* is, however, that *if* race *could* be used to catch
> criminals more efficiently, then it would make sense to do so. (But I do
> understand that many people could get offended by that, so there are
> also practical reasons why it cannot be done.)
> 
>   Personally I don't see race as such a holy element that must be
>   protected
> from such things. It's no different from gender, age or any other
> personal feature.

Perhaps if you lived in or grew up in a country where racism was pretty 
extreme and practiced not just by "normal" people but also by law 
enforcement, your view would be different.  It's not been so long ago 
that in parts of the US, just being black could get you killed by so-
called "vigilante justice" and those who were supposed to actually 
enforce the law would look the other way.

Go do a little reading on Jim Crow laws (which doesn't get into lynchings 
and the like, but is a starting point for understanding why institutional 
use of race as a differentiator is a problem here), for example - then 
maybe you'll understand better why it's such a hot button over here.

>> 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.

Well, I could go back and find where you seemed to be saying that, but I 
don't have the time at the moment to do so.  I could swear, though, that 
you said something to that effect.

>> >> What we have here is a failure to communicate.  Plain and simple. 
>> >> You simply refuse to acknowledge that you play a role in this
>> >> failure to communicate, and that everyone ELSE must be stupid.
>> > 
>> >   See, here we go again. You are putting words in my mouth. Words I
>> >   have
>> > never said. This is your idea of "communication"?
> 
>> Oh FFS, I AM NOT PUTTING WORDS IN YOUR MOUTH.
> 
>   You wrote quite directly above, that in my opinion "everyone else must
> be stupid". I have not said nor implied any such thing. If that's not
> putting words in my mouth, then what is?

It's a logical inference (IMO) from the way you write, at least, that's 
how you come across.  You may not *write* those specific words, but when 
you say "why do I feel like I'm repeating myself", you come across as 
implying "god, you're stupid".

Jim

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On Wed, 05 May 2010 08:37:48 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   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 profiling based on race assumes guilt rather than innocence.  
"The person is of hispanic descent, therefore they must (or even are 
highly likely) to be in the country illegally."

That is not probable cause in US legal terms to stop someone.

Jim

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On Wed, 05 May 2010 06:57:21 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   So if I have responded several times already that "I did not claim
>   that",
> and even *after* that you still keep saying "you claimed X", then what
> else is it than lying?

What I see is you saying that you didn't claim X, and then asserting X in 
a later post, and then when you're called out on it, you say "I never 
said that".  Again, I could probably find specific examples for you to 
clarify, but this thread has gotten quite long and I simply don't have 
the time to search it for those instances.  Maybe next time.

>   If you misunderstood something I wrote, that's ok. 

Clearly that is a likely option here.  So instead of saying "you're a 
liar" in response, make what you're writing clearer, and when you're 
asked for clarification (such as "earlier you said X, now you seem to be 
changing your stance", instead of screaming "NO!  I've been saying that 
all along", see that as an opportunity to *clarify* what you mean and 
reconcile the two seemingly contradictory statements.  When you start 
going into "liar liar pants on fire" mode, that's when you start coming 
across as the persecuted soul who everyone's lying about, being 
condescending to, and patronising.  For my part, I generally never 
*intend* to do that, I want a genuine conversation.  If I don't want a 
genuine conversation, I'll go do something else.

> When I later say
>   that
> what you interpreted was not what I was trying to say, the correct thing
> to do is to stop saying "you claimed X" over and over.

What I'm trying to do is reconcile two seemingly contradictory 
statements.  So when I say "you claimed X" (which I don't think I've said 
directly, but if I have, <shrug>) in response to something that to me 
appears to contradict claim X, then what I'm looking for is some sort of 
reconciliation - or even a "you know, I didn't think of it that way 
before, and that's not what I really meant".  But you get so defensive 
that you seem to never back down and say "hey, I made a mistake".

>   If you don't like being called a liar, neither do I. If you don't
> acknowledge me when I say "I did not claim that", then you are,
> effectively, calling me a liar, as you keep insisting that I made the
> claim.

Fair enough, but again, understand that I'm trying to reconcile something 
you've said earlier with something you've said now - so help us reconcile 
those two statements by either clarifying or by saying "I was wrong".  
It's not so hard, and nobody is right 100% of the time.

>> >> Maybe it's time for me to filter your posts again, because you take
>> >> such an irrational approach to discussion.  But of course, you'll
>> >> see that as some sort of insult, no doubt.
>> > 
>> >   If that makes you feel better, who am I to stop you?
> 
>> It doesn't make me feel better.  I like *reasoned* debate.  But when I
>> come up against someone who takes an absolutist position and then turns
>> around and accuses me of twisting what they said and then accusing me
>> of lying, when I'm actually TRYING TO UNDERSTAND, yeah, I get pissed
>> off to the point of saying "there's no point in continuing the
>> discussion."
> 
>   I simply can't understand your rationale with the post filtering
>   thing.

Because when I start getting wound up, scoring posts as "ignore" from 
someone who pisses me off (whether intentionally or not) reminds me not 
to engage.  I still see the posts, but it's a visual reminder to me that 
I should just walk away rather than try to understand or engage in 
constructive conversation, because the conversation has turned to a point 
of not being constructive any more, but a screaming match about who said 
what and who's lying about what.

That's simply not fun for me, so it's better to remind myself that I 
don't want to get drawn into that kind of discussion.  Sadly, that 
happens with you here more than just about anyone else (well, I can think 
of one other individual, but he's been absent for a while now and things 
have generally been a lot calmer as a result), and you *seem* to not care 
how you are perceived (that's probably not the case, but it's how you 
come across).

One of the reasons debating with you is so frustrating to me is that you 
don't seem to put yourself in anyone else's shoes in order to understand 
a different perspective.  In this instance, you've said over and over 
that you don't see why race shouldn't be used to identify illegals (at 
least that's what you seem to be saying).  I and others have tried to 
explain, both in a cultural context and in the context of how US 
jurisprudence is supposed to work, and you've pretty flatly rejected 
those explanations instead of saying something like "that's not how it 
works here, but I can understand why people in the US might feel this way 
given the history".

When you do that, you come across as having an air of superiority - not 
you personally, but culturally certainly - and it is interpreted as 
"we're better than you".

You need to understand and acknowledge that there is more than one way to 
do things in the world, and the way it's done in Finland isn't the way 
it's done in the US or other countries, and that perhaps there's 
something you can learn from us.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> When you do that, you come across as having an air of superiority - not 
> you personally, but culturally certainly - and it is interpreted as 
> "we're better than you".

And even if you (Finland, whatever) are, it still doesn't mean you can't 
understand. You can be superior in many ways and still understand why the 
other person's/country's/etc inferiority exists.  You can say "that's wrong" 
without saying "I can't understand why you don't know that's wrong."

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

Thank you. This was a *clear* explanation.

> aversion to anything that makes a distinction between races,

One item to note: One of the reasons people say "there's no such thing as 
race" is because "race" is really a mixture of a whole lot of features, and 
the variation between those features in any particular "race" (regardless of 
how you cut up the races) is larger than between separate "races".

It's not people denying genetics. It's people denying that there's any 
feature that occurs in one "race" that doesn't occur in another "race" with 
enough frequency to warrant the distinction.

It's taking 100 genes that determine different factors of your make up and 
chopping you into one of 3 or 5 or 10 buckets, then dealing with you based 
on those buckets instead of the 100 or so genes.

> promoting outright banning the entire concept of "race",

Yes. It's deep down a meaningless term. I've seen twins born of "mixed race" 
families where one twin looked like he was from finland and the other looked 
like she was from kenya. Yet they were both born of the same parents. Are 
they the same race?

Why is Obama "black" but not "japanese"?  I believe even you once pointed 
out the absurdity there.

Kenyans are tall, but not all of them, and some British are tall too. I'm 
sure you know some people born where you are that have dark curly hair.

It's like arguing over whether a programming language is "high level" or 
not. Sure, SQL is "high level", and machine code is "low level", but that 
doesn't mean you can categorize most programming languages into one or the 
other of those categories in any non-arbitrary way.

That's why people argue against using race for *any* purpose.

HTH.

-- 
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:
> 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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Warp wrote:
>   Personally I don't see race as such a holy element that must be protected
> from such things. It's no different from gender, age or any other personal
> feature.

Those are also protected here. ;-)  So right, it's no different.

-- 
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 09:28:55 -0700, Darren New wrote:

>>   I think that's the core issue in this whole thread.
> 
> Thank you. This was a *clear* explanation.

+1, definitely makes the position clear.

Jim

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Warp wrote:
>   (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.)

You had a very clear explanation. The problem seems to be that when people 
say "I understand exactly what you mean. Here is why you're wrong" then your 
response seems to be "you must not understand what I mean."

We (at least I) do actually understand what you're trying to say. But the 
conversation is going:

You:  "If X then Y."

Us: "Never X."

You:  "Yeah, but *if* X, then Y!"

Us: "We understand. But X is never the case. Do you undertand that?"

You: "But all I'm saying is, *if* X, then Y! I'm not saying X. I'm just 
saying If X Then Y. There's no need to be afraid of X. X isn't special."

Us: "No, X isn't special. But X, regardless of which specific X, is never true."

We're trying to figure out why you keep advocating "If X then Y" when X is 
never true, and to figure out if you understand that X cannot now or ever be 
true, regardless of what specific traits you plug into the formula for X.

-- 
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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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> In this instance, you've said over and over 
> that you don't see why race shouldn't be used to identify illegals (at 
> least that's what you seem to be saying).

  That's the problem. You only read *part* of what I write, not the whole
thing.

  Maybe if I emphasize it would help: *IF* race could be used as a trait
to catch criminals more efficiently, *THEN* it would make sense to use it.

  When I write that sentence over and over, it seems that you only read
"it makes sense to use race to catch criminals more efficiently".

  There is a difference. If you can't understand the difference, then
I really don't know what else I can do.

  (Well, I have been emphasizing like that many times already, and it isn't
helping, so I'm not very hopeful it will help this time either.)

>  I and others have tried to 
> explain, both in a cultural context and in the context of how US 
> jurisprudence is supposed to work

  Yes, and I have many, many times written sentences along the lines of
"(but I understand why this wouldn't work in practice because eg. people
would get angry)", but once again it doesn't seem to register. Do the
parentheses confuse the meaning or something?

> and you've pretty flatly rejected 
> those explanations instead of saying something like "that's not how it 
> works here, but I can understand why people in the US might feel this way 
> given the history".

  And now you are once again putting words in my mouth. I'm sorry I have
to say that, but it's just true.

  I have never said anything even remotely resembling "that's not how it
works here" when talking about racial profiling.

  What you are doing there is to mix two completely different contexts.
The issue of "can a policeman check someone without probable cause?" was
a completely different line of discussion which had nothing to do with
racial profiling or anything. I did not discuss that in response to the
Arizona law nor to racial profiling, nor anything relating to race.
I discussed it purely on the context of "checking without probable cause"
because that separate issue came up in a post.

  Now you are confusing my "in Finland the police can make sobriety tests
on drivers without the need for probable cause, which is an example where
it's sensible" with a completely different line of discussion of "is racial
profiling to catch criminals acceptable?" They are completely different
contexts.

  And yes, you are not talking about the driver sobriety test here because
you started the paragraph with "you don't see why race shouldn't be used
to identify illegals" and then immediately proceeded in the same paragraph
to say ''I and others have tried to explain, both in a cultural context and
in the context of how US jurisprudence is supposed to work, and you've pretty
flatly rejected those explanations instead of saying something like "that's
not how it works here"...''. So you are mixing up two completely different
things here.

> When you do that, you come across as having an air of superiority - not 
> you personally, but culturally certainly - and it is interpreted as 
> "we're better than you".

  I don't think that "I'm surprised that the police is not allowed to do
random sobriety tests on drivers there" shows an air of superiority.

> You need to understand and acknowledge that there is more than one way to 
> do things in the world, and the way it's done in Finland isn't the way 
> it's done in the US or other countries, and that perhaps there's 
> something you can learn from us.

  What makes you assume that racial profiling is acceptable in Finland?
I have never said such a thing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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