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Comment by _cbsz | Hacker News Reader

> If a decision heuristic often leads to the correct conclusion, then it's a good heuristic (if you are under time constraints, which we are).

So, is it a good heuristic to conclude that since crime is related to poverty and minorities tend to be poor, minorities qua minorities ought to be shunned?

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No. The base rate of having a crime committed against you is extremely low, and the posterior probability of having a crime committed against you by a poor minority- even if higher- is still extremely low. My point refers to the absolute value of the posterior probability of one's heuristic being correct, not the probability gain resulting from some piece of evidence (like being a poor minority).

That actually is a good (in the sense of 'effective') heuristic. It's just not socially palatable in modern, Western civilization.

Seconding the point. If you want to accept "ad hominem" or stereotypes as a useful heuristic, you'll quickly hit things that will get you labeled as ${thing}ist. This is an utterly hypocritical part of our culture.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and am coming to the conclusion that it's similar to dead-weight loss in a taxation scenario. As a society we've accepted the "lower efficiency" and deadweight loss of rejecting {thing}ism because we don't want any one {thing} to get wrongly persecuted only on the basis of it being such a {thing}.

If you think of it that way, it's a rephrasing of the old and quite universally accepted "I would rather 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison."

"I would rather 100 deadbeat {class} get hired than one deserving {class} not be hired due to being a {class}."

Actually, it isn't.

Let's suppose we want to solutionize our criminal problem. There are 1000 people in the population; 90% white, of which 5% are criminals and 10% black, of which 10% are criminals. (I rather doubt the difference in criminality is 2x, but....)

So, there are 900 white people and 100 black people; if we finalize the black people, we'll have put a big dent in the criminal issue, right?

Well, we reduce our criminals from 55 to 45 while injuring an innocent 9% of the population.

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