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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your math, but I disagree with your conclusions. The difference may look small but it compounds very quickly. If you make 1000 controls of individuals from population B, the likelihood that you never make a bust is 61%. If you make 1000 controls of population A, the likelihood you never make a bust is only 5%. If you are a policeman, clearly you are going to opt for population A if you want to make a bust.

In this case he was sentenced to a suspended fine of €1,000 and to damages of €9,000 to various pressure groups.

I agree with your position on the moral implications of racial profiling and I am not advocating it. But whether one supports racial profiling or not, merely discussing the merits should not constitute an offense, I think this is clearly violating free speech. And if we cannot disagree publicly with existing laws, why do we even bother having a parliament to change those laws?

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[...]If you are a policeman, clearly you are going to opt for population A if you want to make a bust.[...]

Whether I have to make 1000 controls for a 39 percent chance to catch one dealer, or 1000 controls for a 95 percent chance to catch one dealer – both are incredibly ineffective. This is exactly the problem.

If I am only capable of random controls with low chances, I have to control very, very many people to make a hit (and each control of an innocent person is something, that should be avoided if possible, because it is a form of harassment). Now by going from one low probability to a somewhat less lower probability by ignoring the group of the lower probability and putting all the burden of unjustified control to the other group you create a huge sense of frustration, stress, injustice and anger. For good reason! You make a 60:40 relation to a 100:0 relation with this approach. The problem is not with the dealers, but with the false positives. 600 innocent people of group A have to be harassed for one true positive, but 0 innocent people of group B get harassed and 0 people of group B get busted, because they are not even controlled anymore (as hits are less likely). And now, by making hits only in group A, the ratio of convicted drug dealers gets pushed even more into the direction of group A, allegedly confirming the efficiency of racial profiling. It is utterly wrong. Morally and mathematically. It is a pseudologic abuse of science to discriminate a group of people. And the desire for discrimination arises from hate. That is, why racial profiling is forbidden in modern democracies and it is not a matter of free speech, in my eyes.

If you wish for a more efficient handling of your police with drug dealers, you really do not want them to perform random controls (whether racially biased or not)!

Correct, but in reality, the police doesn't go do some random control in the streets of some randomly selected rural area. They will target locations where they are likely to find drug dealers, target behaviors that are likely to be drug dealers, etc. So the numbers aren't those from your theoretical example.

Though in reality, I mostly hear about racial profiling in France in the context of looking for illegal immigrants where the odds are even more skewed against a population than your example.

The moral argument is orthogonal from the efficiency argument, and I totally agree with the frustration generated by misguided checks (and am reminded of those every time I take a plane).

[...]But whether one supports racial profiling or not, merely discussing the merits should not constitute an offense,[...]

This is such a double-edged sword. In the first impulse, I would say, of course you can discuss the merits of racial profiling (as we did in this thread) and it should not constitute an offense. But you can wrap anything in a "discussion". We could also "discuss" the merits of eliminating religious minorities in concentration camps and I think this should constitute an offense. Free speech, all to often, is taken as an excuse.

I have no idea how such a differentiation can be put into law in a fair way for everyone.

For me personally, I have very clear criteria. Most importantly, I distinguish between discussion and discourse, in the sense, that discussion is just talking and discourse is a rational, sane exchange of arguments, following common sense and logic. I enjoyed very much the discourse with you about the merits of racial profiling, because it was not driven by prejudice, whinery or political agenda, we sticked to the facts, came to (not so much) contrary conclusions and this is absolutely fine.

In the case of Eric Zemmour I do not like the semantic aggregation in the community:

- he demanded something unconstitutional (racial profiling).

- in his attempt to justify the demanded unconstitutional measurement, he quoted a fact, but failed to prove the causality between the fact and the demand (he did not even try. He mistook the fact as the causality - a common mistake).

- he gets sentenced for demanding something unconstitutional.

- His followers publish their aggregation in the form: although the fact was true, he was sentenced, therefore it is not possible to say the truth in France.

This is not what happened.

His case is not about "telling the truth gets you punished". His case is: "should our society accept, for the ideal of free speech, that someone demands unconstitutional measurements, like racial profiling or putting minorities in concentration camps". I absolutey agree, that this last question is debatable!! I have no final answer for myself! But this is not, how the causa Zemmour was laid on the table in this thread.

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