From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 22:58:23 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> If 10% of whites are criminals and 20% of blacks are criminals, that
> means your fear of a black person being a criminal is wrong 80% of the
> time.
Correct, but that is not the assumption.
Let us remove the emotionally charged black/white and put it
in terms of food. You collect two kinds of mushrooms, the
fleebs and the kloongs. 10% of the fleebs will give you
diarrhea, whereas 20% of the kloongs will. You know that
most will not harm you at all, but you know that devouring
a kloong is twice as dangerous as eating a fleeb.
> What good is a "measurement" or "behavioral/ability characteristic"
> if it is wrong four times as often as it is right? Furthermore, if
> blacks are only 10% of the population, there would be more white
> criminals than black criminals.
If kloongs made up only 10% of your mushroom collection,
eating a kloong is still twice as dangerous as eating a fleeb.
> Any security measure that focused on blacks would only be aiming at
> a smaller percentage of criminals while ignoring the larger
> percentage. What good is a statistical correlation that emphasizes
> the lessor possibilities?
These are tough questions, we must all admit, ones which
must be handled delicately. If one could somehow know a
person's income, assets and criminal record by looking at
the person, it could form a very effective security tool. A
rich person is not a danger to you or me, or perhaps a rather
lower danger than a poor person. Violent criminals are
generally poor, right? Rich criminals are generally not
violent, right?
Which criminal would you rather have living next door to
you, a person who steals a million dollars using a computer,
or a person who steals a hundred dollars using a knife?
Which would be a greater danger to you personally?
We will soon have the tools to tell a person's income
and criminal record by looking at them. Face recognition
in a wearable computer, along with some kind of universal
(even if sketchy) database with info on people's
criminal past, work history, address, etc, will soon
take the place of our current very error prone system
of judging threats by skin color, gender or size. Would not
this be a faaaar better means of estimating your risk
when coming in contact with a stranger? Would
not a shop owner love to have a system that would give
a head's up when a paroled armed robber entered
her store? Would not this tool be the end of racism? spike
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