Algorithms replace your biases with someone else’s
▻https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2017/07/05/algorithms-replace-your-biases-with-someone-elses-biases
Weapons of Math Destruction
How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy
▻https://mathbabe.org
▻https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/blog
#data #algorythmes
Links about big bad data
▻http://mathbabe.org/2015/08/26/links-about-big-bad-data
Via nakedcapitalism
I play chicken with men on the street | mathbabe
▻http://mathbabe.org/2015/06/24/i-play-chicken-with-men-on-the-street
I decided to start an experiment. I would choose a moment when I am walking in broad daylight (no visibility problems) and when someone else is walking directly towards me, by all accounts looking around themselves (no distractions by cell phones or the like), and moreover where there was plenty of room to do the “silent tacit agreement” thing which we all learn to do as New Yorkers.
Once that scene was set, which actually happens multiple times every day as a New Yorker, here’s what I’d do next: I’d mimic the person coming at me. If they moved to the right, I would too, as soon as I could react to their movement. It was nearly simultaneous. I’ve become very good at reading body language and knowing when they would swerve, and swerving myself. It’s almost always like that, and those are valuable data points. Let’s call those successful games of chicken, where nobody gets bumped.
But sometimes there are unsuccessful games of chicken. This is when I am fully prepared to move out of the person’s way, but it never happens. I never see their body acknowledging mine, and getting prepared to move out of the way. And, as part of my data-collecting experiment, whereby I mimic that person, I also never move. What ends up happening is a bump. I’ve never gotten hurt, and neither have I ever hurt anyone, because that’s not the point. The point is to see who is ignoring common courtesy.
And, as you might have anticipated, it’s predominantly men. White men. Women, all women, and black and Hispanic men all get out of my way, especially Hispanic men, as do most white men for that matter. But there is a certain subcategory of white men that just don’t seem to know the rule about mutual accommodation, and the result is I’ve bumped into hundreds of white men on the streets of New York over the years. Some of them even turn around and say things like, why didn’t you get out of my way?
Just to be clear, this is similar but not the same as a phenomenon known as manslamming, whereby one refuses to move out of the way for anyone. That’s much more rude, and I don’t do it. To be clear, I move out of the way in almost all interactions.
I’ve told people about my experiment, and they are sometimes offended by it (other times they find it hilarious, or want to try it themselves). They often suggest that certain people are simply lost in their own thoughts, and shouldn’t be bumped because of that. But I think the question is, who gets to get lost in their thoughts on a busy street? Getting lost in one’s thoughts is a form of carefree behavior that only certain people have regular access to.
Also, mitigating factors: I’m a white woman. I have no idea how this experiment would play out for other people. Also, I’m a large person. I’m also not sure if small people would have the same experience. I’d love to hear from other people.
Big Data Is The New Phrenology | mathbabe
▻http://mathbabe.org/2015/02/26/big-data-is-the-new-phrenology
Have you ever heard of phrenology? It was, once upon a time, the “science” of measuring someone’s skull to understand their intellectual capabilities.
This sounds totally idiotic but was a huge fucking deal in the mid-1800’s, and really didn’t stop getting some credit until much later. I know that because I happen to own the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was written by the top scholars of the time but is now horribly and fascinatingly outdated.
(...)
Here’s the thing. What we’ve got is a new kind of awful pseudo-science, which replaces measurements of skulls with big data. There’s no reason to think this stuff is any less biased or discriminatory either: given that there’s no actual science behind it, we might simply be replicating a selection method to get people who we like and who remind us of ourselves. To be sure, it might not be as deliberate as what we saw above, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.