# Profiling: Not 100% avoidable, and also subject to different race/gender standard **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 31, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693 "2016-03-31T04:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/81 "2016-04-07T02:26:11Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > I am familiar with the fact that homicides in New York went down 82% after the NYPD adopted tactics such as profiling. And apparently unfamiliar with the fact that homicides went down across the entire country in the same period, regardless whether or not any given city engaged in racial profiling–_post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy in action. (While the profiling in which the NYPD engaged missed a very large number of white criminals while catching a smaller number of non-white criminals despite focusing almost exclusively on the non-white population.) Your facts are distorted and your conclusions are wrong. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/82 "2016-04-07T19:48:03Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > And apparently unfamiliar with the fact that homicides went down across the entire country in the same period, regardless whether or not any given city engaged in racial profiling–_post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy in action. (While the profiling in which the NYPD engaged missed a very large number of white criminals while catching a smaller number of non-white criminals despite focusing almost exclusively on the non-white population.) > > Your facts are distorted and your conclusions are wrong. Crime went down everywhere but murder rates went down by alot more in New York than the rest of the country. NYC went from having a murder rate 23% higher than the rest of the country to a murder rate 31% lower than the rest of the country.If New York’s homicide rate had only fallen by the same rate as the rest of the country there would be an extra 201 murders per year. Saving over 200 hundred lives a year seems like a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/83 "2016-04-07T20:04:14Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > See my above analogy about a Nobel Prize laureates being Jewish. Jews are a very tiny portion of this country’s citizens too, but that doesn’t mean that if you’re trying to find a Nobel laureate on a plane you should ask every Jewish passenger if they’ve won a Nobel Prize. > > [Research article on why screening passengers for superficial characteristics such as race or religion is useless from a security standpoint:](http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/02/study-racial-profiling-no-more-effective-than-random-screen/) > Which in fact is exactly what happens to Muslim travelers in the US. As [this article](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44334738/ns/us_news-9_11_ten_years_later/t/muslim-travelers-say-theyre-still-saddled-baggage/#.VwVFP4dU8zI) documents, innocent “Muslim-looking” travelers keep getting selected for special screening over and over, while the screening system gets no closer to identifying actual terrorists. So your idea is to target people who are a part of terrorist organizations and let innocent muslims board the planes in peace? I am not sure why no one has ever thought of that before. Maybe it is because terrorist organizations don’t give out lists of members. This forces people to guess based on observable characteristics about who is actually a member. Being a young male muslim is obviously not the only things most terrorists have in common but they are a part of it. In your Nobel Prize analogy, searching for people with Phds in science would miss alot of people who won for literature or peace. But it would be better than searching at random, and given that Jews have won 28% of Nobel prizes awarded, Jewish people with Phds in science would be even more likely to find the prize winner. Given that we do not have the time and manpower to search everyone thoroughly than every filter that makes the searches better should be applied. Age, religion, gender, demeanor, nationality, method of payment, and anything else that helps should be applied. To exclude religion because it is politically incorrect is to value hurt feelings more than lives. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/84 "2016-04-07T20:06:37Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > So your idea is to target people who are a part of terrorist organizations and let innocent muslims board the planes in peace? I am not sure why no one has ever thought of that before. > Maybe it is because terrorist organizations don’t give out lists of members. This forces people to guess based on observable characteristics about who is actually a member. Being a young male muslim is obviously not the only things most terrorists have in common but they are a part of it. Exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/85 "2016-04-07T20:57:53Z")
[QUOTE=puddleglum] Maybe it is because terrorist organizations don’t give out lists of members. [/quote] This may surprise you, but it is not actually necessary to wait for terrorist organizations to supply membership lists in order to find out some information about who belongs to such organizations. > [@puddleglum](#): > > Being a young male muslim is obviously not the only things most terrorists have in common but they are a part of it. It is evidently impossible to get through to you the fundamental importance of the distinction between _the percentage of terrorists who belong to Large General Category X_ and _the percentage of people in Large General Category X who are terrorists_. **If the latter percentage is really low, then using Large General Category X as a screening filter is _inefficient even if the former percentage is really high_**. [QUOTE=puddleglum] Given that we do not have the time and manpower to search everyone thoroughly than every filter that makes the searches better should be applied. [/quote] Except that you’re evidently completely indifferent to **scientific evidence** , as indicated in my previous link, that **“filters” based on vague characteristics such as apparent religion or race _don’t_ actually make the searches better**. [QUOTE=puddleglum] To exclude religion because it is politically incorrect is to value hurt feelings more than lives. [/QUOTE] To exclude religion because it is both **statistically useless** and in some cases **potentially unconstitutional** , on the other hand, is a sensible decision. Sorry to intrude on your delusions of brave anti-PC resistance by insisting on actual fact-based reasoning on the subject, but I’m sure you’ll manage to go on ignoring it. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/86 "2016-04-07T22:32:53Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Crime went down everywhere but murder rates went down by alot more in New York than the rest of the country. NYC went from having a murder rate 23% higher than the rest of the country to a murder rate 31% lower than the rest of the country.If New York’s homicide rate had only fallen by the same rate as the rest of the country there would be an extra 201 murders per year. Saving over 200 hundred lives a year seems like a good idea. It would be interesting to see the sources from which you draw your statistics to support your _post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy_. (It would be more interesting to see evidence that, even if your numbers were true, there was an actual causation, or even correlation.) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/87 "2016-04-07T22:50:25Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > So your idea is to target people who are a part of terrorist organizations and let innocent muslims board the planes in peace? I am not sure why no one has ever thought of that before. > Maybe it is because terrorist organizations don’t give out lists of members. This forces people to guess based on observable characteristics about who is actually a member. Being a young male muslim is obviously not the only things most terrorists have in common but they are a part of it. Of course, the same is true of Muslims, in general. You might manage to “interview” (harass) every guy named Mohammed, but you are hardly going to catch Michael C. Finton, Colleen LaRose, or Jamie Paulin-Ramirez in that manner, although you will probably aggravate Christians such as Suleiman Franjieh, Salim Bey Karam, and others whom the typical TSA agent would not recognize as Christian. Behavior is still a better way to stop people than imaginary claims to “know” who is or is not Muslim without resorting to a world-wide registry of Muslims that will never occur. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/88 "2016-04-08T19:47:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > **If the latter percentage is really low, then using Large General Category X as a screening filter is _inefficient even if the former percentage is really high_**. Inefficient compared to what? Is it inefficient compared to treating everyone the same? Obviously not. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/89 "2016-04-08T20:05:15Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Inefficient compared to what? Is it inefficient compared to treating everyone the same? Obviously not. [Here’s the scholarly study](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/02/0813202106.abstract) that **Kimstu** mentioned. The math is all way over my head, but he makes the case that the sort of profiling you’re advocating for is no better than random chance. [Here’s an article](http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/racial-profiling2011/the-reality-of-racial.html) that discusses multiple studies that found profiling to be ineffective. Ball’s in your court. I know it seems like it should work, but gut feelings are often disastrously wrong. That’s why we have science. Oh, and…“treating everyone the same”…could there be anything less American? One shudders at the thought. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/90 "2016-04-08T20:11:29Z")
Back on topic: Men are considered to be more of a threat than women, based of higher per capita crime rates. But what are the odds of a random selected man being a robber/murderer etc.? So…is it wrong to profile men? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/91 "2016-04-08T20:13:16Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Back on topic: Men are considered to be more of a threat than women, based of higher per capita crime rates. But what are the odds of a random selected man being a robber/murderer etc.? > > So…is it wrong to profile men? Yes, it is. For the government, anyway; individuals are free to act however they’d like to. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/92 "2016-04-08T20:22:25Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Yes, it is. For the government, anyway; individuals are free to act however they’d like to. “Free to,” certainly, but is it right? People can act negatively towards folks wearing turbans, having brown skin, etc., too. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/93 "2016-04-08T20:29:39Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > “Free to,” certainly, but is it right? > People can act negatively towards folks wearing turbans, having brown skin, etc., too. Depends on what you mean; if a person chooses not to, say, walk home on a route that’d take them through a place where young men congregate, I wouldn’t call that a moral wrong, because no one was harmed. If, on the other hand, a person refused to hire young men, or followed young men around their store, etc, that would be wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693.md?page=4)