All of which comes back to Bayes’ theorem. If the prior is high enough you can get good results keying off it. The prior will only get high enough when you have enough parameters and they *aren’t *strongly correlated.
In the example above, it’s an error to think that [Arab plus Muslim] gives much better results than just [Arab] or just [Muslim] when (WAG) 98% of Arabs are Muslim and (WAG) 50% of Muslims are Arab.
Adding the extra factor *looks *like it’s improving specificity. It may well be “improving” the mistaken impression of specificity a lot while improving actual mathematical specificity almost zero.
What about for crimes where quite a large amount of the ethnic group in question commits the crime?
As an example, at post #42 here, Blake makes the argument that the majority of children in certain Aboriginal communities in northern Australia were victims of abuse by their family, and therefore “simply being Aboriginal was deemed to be sufficient grounds for declaring a child at risk.” If he’s right about the numbers (and I have no reason to doubt him) then that seems like an example of a situation where ethnic profiling would be legitimate.
Exactly. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between “the majority of rapists are men” and “the majority of men are rapists”. When they see evidence to support one of those statements, they treat it as if it proves both statements.
Don’t forget that for most crimes we only know the demographics of the perpetrators as a result of where we deploy law enforcement resources.
IOW, if you profile black drug dealers, you catch more black drug dealers, justifying black profiling. If we put the full weight of the FBI on catching white nationalist terrorists (who are roughly as common as Muslim terrorists in the US), we would see a lot more foiled plots from them.
Conversely, of course, the profiling might suppress the true rate.
No matter how remote a risk, if the risk is large enough, it is not irrational to be risk averse.
For example, I have a chance to invest 1% of my money in an investment that has a 10% chance of returning 20 times my money and a 90% chance of becoming worthless. It might make sense for me to take that risk because I can absorb the loss.
I also have the opportunity to invest all (and no less than all) of my money in an investment that has a 90% chance of tripling my money but a 10% chance of becoming worthless. Even though the second investment has a higher expected return, a rational person could make the first investment while rejecting the second one.
How well are you able to absorb the risk of being raped?
I take precautions against strange men for two reasons:
One, they are bigger and stronger than me, on average. Two, they are more likely to show physical aggression.
These two things are generalizations, of course. There are men who are smaller and weaker than me, and there are men who are more timid and passive than I am. But on the whole, I’m going to be at a big disadvantage when it comes to going toe-to-toe against a man who is up to no good.
So of course, I’m going to be more afraid if I’m walking down a dark alley and a dude steps into my path versus a dudette. Maybe I’m dead either way in this day and age of guns, but at least with the average dudette, I’ve got a fighting chance.
A few years ago there was a thread about whether it’s wrong for women to prefer sitting next to women passengers when riding the bus. I don’t think it is. Chances are if I sit next to a random guy, nothing is going to happen. But the cost of discriminatory seat selection is considerably less than being plopping down next to any Tom, Dick, and Harry and regretting it later. To be conscientious in this context is simply to appreciate the importance of sexuality in human behavior. Sitting next to a man (when you are a woman) may be perceived–rightly or wrongly–as being friendly towards certain advances. If you aren’t interested in receiving advances, avoiding male-adjacent seats is totally acceptable behavior that doesn’t harm anyone. If men don’t like this practice, then they should stop hitting on women in public. Scolding women for being discriminatory ignores the fact that they are simply responding to men’s discriminatory behavior.
You raise a valid point. The severity of the outcome properly factors into the decision on how risk-averse to be.
But choosing to be very risk averse over something that is not in fact indicative of risk, but just incorrectly *looks *like it’s indicative of risk, merely magnifies the severity of your error.
If you believe that a shadow touching you would be fatal, are you really better off running screaming from the room when you see one versus just having a cold sweat? You’re right that running screaming from the room is an appropriate level of response to a life-threatening situation. But you’ve goofed by mistakenly believing that seeing a shadow is life-threatening.
Most profiling behavior by people and by bureaucracies falls into the [being afraid of shadows] realm.
I think you may have missed my distinction between “profiling” in social interactions of one’s private personal life, especially in response to a comparatively large risk probability, and “profiling” in the ordinary exercise of one’s “expected freedoms and actions as co-workers, passengers, parents, customers, etc.”, especially in response to a comparatively small risk probability.
So yes, it is indeed unfair to “profile” non-white men minding their own business in public places by avoiding them as probable criminals.
But that’s not analogous to a woman ignoring a man’s unsolicited social advances because she’s “gender-profiling” him as a possible rapist.
To apply this to your Obama example: Yes, it was racist and offensive for white women to react fearfully to Obama minding his own business on a public street or in a public elevator, and I disapprove of such behavior.
If, on the other hand, Obama approached a strange woman in a public bar and said “Excuse me ma’am, may I buy you a drink?” and she shut him down out of fear of a potential risk to her safety, her behavior would not be offensive and I don’t see any reason to disapprove of it.
Bad math on your part. When you look at more realistic numbers and add in common sense like how many Saudi are baseball game wearing a heavy coat and carrying a back pack then you narrow you hay stack down to a bucket full of hay, and the needle actually pricks you in the hand as you look for it. If you use that same common sense, at all large events, malls, theme parks, you will stop and they have stopped a lot of attacks you and I will never know about. Facts are profiling works, and the proof is in Israel, where the have more attacks than any place on the planet and stop a great number by profiling.
I bet the woman doesn’t like being afraid. I’d rather her feel safe than worry about offending my delicate sensibilities by being careful. I have a daughter and I don’t care about her offending people if she acts in her self interest.
Are ghetto and drag now trigger words?
The point is, which you are trying to obfuscate, if you don’t profile in some cases it can be fatal.
Well the numbers of people raped, robbed, or murdered by shadows is probably less than the number of toes I have. People on the other hand have and do act monstrously. Your house have locks? How about your car?
And as I have said all along, it’s perfectly reasonable, rational, and logically correct to make preparations and be wary, cautious, fearful, or whatever word you prefer.
In proportion to the actual incidence and severity of threat.
What I have been arguing all along is that most people have a vastly overblown and fact-free opinion about the incidence and severity of the threat. As such their responses are vastly overblown also.
e.g. Yes, I have door locks. And I use them when I’m asleep or away. Some neighbors in my condo building have double doors with 2 separate locks each, sleep with a gun under their pillow and tell me they wake in fear every night in reaction to violent noises they hear. I hear no such noises although I do often wake to the sound of thunder.
One of us is vastly misinformed about the actual incidence and severity of crime in our neighborhood and in our building.
That individual is certainly free to react to their delusions. But I certainly don’t want to be policed by a police force operating under similarly deluded fantasies. Nor governed by a legislature in thrall to those fantasies.
Get actual numbers. Make an actual risk calculation. And be guided accordingly. That is my whole and entire point.