h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To what extent is it reasonable to look at what goes on in the real world, and base your actions on that?

When does it stop being reasonable, if it results in something that *appears* "unfair"? (whatever "fair" is...)

Before we start, let's be clear - I want to talk only about things where there is a clear, unambiguous data set available. No "I think" or "everyone knows", followed by your personal prejudices. On the other hand, don't allow your personal politics to blind you to realities, either.

The trend in the world seems to be away from allowing people, governments or businesses to make inferences from visible patterns, to base policies on data, and towards forcing them to pretend everyone is entirely equivalent, even as the data shows that to be false.

Even as we become more and more dependent on good science, on good data, and on basing on policies on what is really happening rather than what we think is happening or what we'd like to be happening, even while all that is going on, society seems to be increasingly sticking its fingers in its collective ears and going "lalalalala".

So... is it OK to prevent people from using, or perhaps even SEEING, real world data?

Some examples, in no particular order of controversiality...
(note: ALL of what follows are generalisations based on what actually happens in the real world. Don't waste time pointing out that there are exceptions. OBVIOUSLY there are exceptions. Unless the exceptions are very prevalent, they don't make the rule less valid.)


- men cost car insurers more, because they make more claims. But you can't charge them more to make up for it, because that would be sexist.

- women cost employers more, because they take maternity leave. But you can't pay them less to make up for it, because that would be sexist.

- certain ethnic or religious minorities are more likely to commit certain crimes. But you can't target them for investigation, because that would be racist.

- women live longer than men. But you can't pay them lower pensions, because that would be sexist.

Is it a good idea to ignore the evidence of the real world in favour of a fantast world of "fairness"?

Some big questions there....

The first point to make is that most philosophers think that it's not possible to derive moral conclusions from non-moral premises. Or, to put it another way, you can't base an "ought" statement on an "is" statement. No statement about data leads directly - in itself - to any particular course of action. There's always another premise there, something about values, about desires, about needs, or about wants. Sometimes the other premise is very well hidden because it's so obvious or shared.

For example:
"it is raining, therefore I should put up my umbrella" has the missing premise that I want to stay dry.
"people are starving, we should give to charity" has the missing premise that preventing people from starving is the right thing to do.

Data in itself never mandates any particular course of action. Just because X is Y, doesn't mean we should do Z. Particularly one piece of data and one finding in isolation. The fact that women live - on average - longer than men is surely a much weaker predictor of longevity than overall health, genetics, and lifestyle.

So I guess in general the arguments against acting on any specific finding could be something like:

a) It's not the most significant, relevant, or important finding in that area. In which case, why act on that rather than on something else? I always suspect that there's a degree of cherry-picking going on to suit individual agendas.

b) It would have other undesirable consequences that would outweigh any gain. For example, let's assume for the sake of argument it's the case that the police stopping young black men driving expensive cars (in particular) does have a measurable effect on car crime. Is the reduction in crime worth the costs of that policy - namely, the resentment and the mistrust of the police of a whole section of society? Other undesirable consequences might include cost, complexity, state intrusion, and so on. So the reason why we don't pay differing levels of state pension depending on gender, lifestyle, genetic disposition, general health etc is presumably a combination of all of these. Does anyone seriously think we should ban men from working as primary school teachers or youth leaders?

In policy terms, it's always about the bigger picture.

"The fact that women live - on average - longer than men is surely a much weaker predictor of longevity than overall health, genetics, and lifestyle"

As far as insurance companies go, that's a case of practicality and profit.

Ultimately, they want to offer the lowest premiums they can in order to get the most customers they can. That's balanced against the need to make a profit. Now, their actuarial calculations *could* include genetics and lifestyle... but *measuring* the effect of genetics and lifestyle is a LOT of extra effort... for what? Not much EXTRA benefit to them. So they won't take the time. It may be a weak predictor, but in the overall scheme of things it's strong ENOUGH, and that's all that matters to an insurance company.

Young black men in flash cars MAY be a strong predictor of criminal activity, but as you so rightly point out, even if it were, you might choose not to act on that knowledge for a perceived greater good, i.e. not pishing off the large majority of the black population who aren't criminals, and especially not the small minority of young black men in flash cars who aren't criminals who are therefore most likely to be lawyers or similarly vocal middle class people who can get their treatment by the police in the media...

Good answer though, thanks

"why act on that rather than on something else? "

As I say, I suspect the answer to that one is often "acting on this one is easy and cheap".

I think the point is that we can to some extent choose what sort of society we want to live in. As Otto pointed out - facts don't imply choices. Facts have to be taken into account, but we can choose how we respond to them.

So for example, it may increase economic costs to society as a whole to require children go to school and don't get sent down t'mines but it makes the world a much nicer place to live in.

A couple of specific points:

> women cost employers more, because they take maternity leave. But you can't pay them less to make up for it, because that would be sexist.

As I said on the other thread, the risk to employers only accounts for a fraction (I think less than a half) of the pay gap between men and women, even based on the most pessimistic assumptions about the costs.

> certain ethnic or religious minorities are more likely to commit certain crimes. But you can't target them for investigation, because that would be racist.

Actually, the rationality of doing so is highly disputable. Firstly, the argument only really applies to random stop and search type investigations, and these are in most cases not very cost effective. What they are is politically effective for a certain type of person. Secondly, the logic of racial profiling for random stop and search would suggest that your optimal strategy would be to only stop and search people of the race that is statistically most likely to be committing a crime, and this policy would mean a de facto legalisation of the crime for people of other races. In fact, it is true that white people tend to get treated much more leniently for e.g. drugs related offences than black people. (Although in this case, I believe that a lot of evidence actually shows that white people are more likely to take drugs than black people, making the whole argument moot.)

"your optimal strategy would be to only stop and search people of the race that is statistically most likely to be committing a crime"

That's a very naive first order strategy which wouldn't survive long in the wild.

A superior strategy would be to weight your stop and searches so that the number applied to each ethnic group match the likelihood of that group committing crimes, with a random element.

Twaggers, here's a thought from something you posted in another thread. Hopefully it's not a breach of hootiquette to post it here.

"I don't find the burkha intimidating, I find it rude. It is, to me, the equivalent of wearing a "behead the infidel" t-shirt, or simply walking round screaming "pervert" in the face of every single man you see at the top of your voice."

Now... I have no interest in reprising the discussion about the burkha - that's been round in enough circles already. But your objection to the implicit assumption that you can't be trusted around women is an interesting one. And it's one that I share, to be honest. But.... from a brute data point of view, our hypothetical woman in a burkha is right to be cautions, isn't she? There's a pretty strong association between men and, well, the kind of behaviour she doesn't want directed towards her.

It really doesn't feel good to be on the receiving end of one of those 'brute' data judgements based on assumptions about very broad categories of people. Especially when you've done nothing - absolutely nothing - to deserve it. That's worth reflecting on.

In all of the examples listed, the only one in which a white male would lose out is the car insurance example. And frankly, that's pretty trivial.

Burkhas give me the horn.

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> A superior strategy would be to weight your stop and searches so that the number applied to each ethnic group match the likelihood of that group committing crimes, with a random element.

Why is that superior? You'd catch less people with that strategy.

"Why is that superior? You'd catch less people with that strategy."

Consider a chess piece based society.

For whatever reason, of the white pieces, only the kings pawns commit crimes.

For whatever reason, of the black pieces, only the pawns commit crimes. ALL the pawns.

Now, with your strategy, you simply stop and search all black pieces. You've a fifty fifty chance of catching a crim who's black. But you've a ZERO chance of catching a crim who's white. And pretty soon the other white pawns will cotton on, so soon the prevalence of crime on the white side will be the same as on the black side, except you won't be stopping ANY of it. Plus, the black pieces will be up in arms, will stop cooperating with police etc. You might even *provoke* crime with that policy.

With my strategy, out of every three stop and searches I do, one of them is of a white piece. Every S&S of a black piece has a 50:50 chance of a bust. S&S on white pieces has a lower hit rate, only 25% - so that means my OVERALL hit rate goes down from a half to five twelfths (I think), i.e. slightly less than a half. BUT now I can say I'm targetting both communities fairly, the white crims know I'm breathing down their necks, and while overall my hit rate is down, the effect on societal cohesion and likely future crime rates is better. In order to keep them on their toes I need a random factor, too, to prevent them being able to tell who I'm going to stop and when, but that's detail.

"from a brute data point of view, our hypothetical woman in a burkha is right to be cautions, isn't she? There's a pretty strong association between men and, well, the kind of behaviour she doesn't want directed towards her."

Maybe, in whatever backward tribal desert that kind of culture originated in. But this is England in the 21st century, where boorish behaviour is at least frowned upon and sometimes even criminalised. Treating all gentlemen of this civilised, modern country as though they're 15th century middle eastern rapists is, to be as charitable as I can be, contemptible.

>> But this is England in the 21st century<<

And yet even still people like you go around thinking that they have any say in what a woman is wearing.

Back on topic:

Fairness is an inherently partial notion, there's no example of a universal, objective fair act or scenario. Fairness is very important to me and, even when you know it's unachievable, it's good to aim for it anyway.

But what do I know?

> And pretty soon the other white pawns will cotton on, so soon the prevalence of crime on the white side will be the same as on the black side, except you won't be stopping ANY of it.

And if that was the case, you'd either change your racial profiling or stop profiling at that point.

> Plus, the black pieces will be up in arms, will stop cooperating with police etc.

That was part of Otto's point.

> my OVERALL hit rate goes down from a half to five twelfths (I think)

Yes, it's a worse strategy.

> BUT now I can say I'm targetting both communities fairly, the white crims know I'm breathing down their necks, and while overall my hit rate is down, the effect on societal cohesion and likely future crime rates is better

Well, I don't see why it would be considered fair. In the case of racial profiling of stop and search, it's typically the case that most of the stops and searches are of black people, but there are some of white people. However, the black population is a small minority, so the chance of being stopped and searched if you're black is vastly higher than if you're white. So, the black community won't (and don't) see that as fair, and white people are still vastly less likely to be stopped and searched than black people, so the white crims won't feel like you're breathing down their necks.

"Maybe, in whatever backward tribal desert that kind of culture originated in. But this is England in the 21st century, where boorish behaviour is at least frowned upon and sometimes even criminalised. Treating all gentlemen of this civilised, modern country as though they're 15th century middle eastern rapists is, to be as charitable as I can be, contemptible."

Treating everyone of an ethnic minority as though they're criminals is surely just as contemptible. That's my point - acting according to brute data with no other considerations means treating large numbers of people in ways that they don't deserve. It's just that in this case, it's white males who are getting unfairly treated.

"Fairness is an inherently partial notion, there's no example of a universal, objective fair act or scenario."

Hmmm. Well, it's interesting that pretty much all political parties are trying to claim "fairness" as their own. However, it's worth a quick read of A3136042 - John Rawls had plenty to say on justice as fairness.

How embarrassing.... not only has HI read it, he also edited it for me. Ooopps....

"people like you go around thinking that they have any say in what a woman is wearing"

I'm not asking them to change what they're wearing. I'm expecting them to take the consequences without bleating about it.

Bleating like this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/27/religion.islam

If you want to dress in the style of a foreign country here, feel free. If you want to be made welcome here... well, you might like to think about what you're wearing. Your choice. But don't, please, disingenuously pretend that you don't know the effect your clothing choices have on others' impression of you.

"Treating everyone of an ethnic minority as though they're criminals is surely just as contemptible"

Who recommended that? When?

Surely the whole point of random stop and search is that it potentially treats EVERYONE, from every community, as though they're criminals.

I entirely agree that if you followed your strategy, that's contemptible. My strategy, on the other hand, is even handed in its treatment of black and white, to the extent that it's statistically justifiable. And if the black chess pieces who aren't pawns have got a problem with being stopped more than the comparable white pieces, it's the black pawns they ought to be complaining to, not me.

"Who recommended that? When?"

No one recommended it as such, but it was one of your examples from your first post. I wasn't referring to the pawns example.

But.... by extension, isn't it other men you/we should be complaining to, rather than women who wear a burkha?

"isn't it other men you/we should be complaining to"

Demonstrably not. As I pointed out, the tradition of covering yourself up because if you did not the men around you would be driven by uncontrollable lust to rape you was not a tradition that originated in this country or this century.

Lacking a TARDIS with which I could travel back to eighth century Arabia or wherever, there's nobody I can complain to.

The difference between that and my example is that innocent black people getting stopped and searched are suffering the consequences of the actions of other black people TODAY, right there in their own community.

>>Maybe, in whatever backward tribal desert that kind of culture originated in.


Try your own woman-hating culture. You think you don't have women where you live who make decisions about how they look and act so that they can avoid sexual harrassment and assault and/or so they can have some power and control in their lives? You're not in any position to criticise another culture you don't understand whilst you don't even understand your own.

Do you know what rape culture is? It's the set of ideas, values and practices within a culture that creates an environment where rape is acceptable. For example, it's still fairly common to hear the idea that some women ask for it (by how they dress, act, exist). Every time someone says that, and no-one challenges it, it reinforces deep attitudes within the culture that the raping of some women is acceptable. That you personally would never rape is not the issue. That you support or refuse to oppose rape culture is.

Some of the things that support and promote rape culture are obvious and some are subtle.

The reason that that it's reasonable for some women to be wary of all or most men, is because men, in *your* culture, still won't take responsibility for the fact that so much sexual assault and harassment happens. I think it's really sad that women have to view men like this. But until men actually act to stop rape culture, there's no way out of that. For any of us.



>>As I pointed out, the tradition of covering yourself up because if you did not the men around you would be driven by uncontrollable lust to rape you was not a tradition that originated in this country or this century.<<

Not it's not, but it is something that your culture endorses. And it's not that men would be driven by uncontrollable lust to rape, it's that men already rape and sexually harass women, and the covering of bodies is a common strategy for avoiding that. Do you see the difference?