If you read the thread, he was specifically told the Apple Card uses Transunion, which is why they checked with Transunion, and found her score was higher on that report: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1192945415538106369?s=21
I worked for a Fortune 500 company at one time. Lots of entry level employees were not exactly reliable sources of info about how decisions got made there.
You may or may not be talking with an entry level employee in their call center, but you probably aren't talking to a departmental head or member of the C suite.
Let's assume I am very well versed in other pertinent domains of knowledge, like social psychology and the tendency for people to get mad as hell about social justice issues and leap to ugly conclusions that fit their SJW narrative about evil in the world that can be conveniently lumped under a one word heading, like sexism.
Let's further assume that this is actually actively counterproductive, so it's reasonable to point out that correlation is not causation and it's unhelpful to insist on a particular conclusion you cannot prove.
I already noted he's right to be outraged at the situation and critical of the black box nature of the decision. I'm just not comfortable with him ranting that it's clearly and obviously due to sexism.
So you sayyyy that he flew off the handle because he's an SJW or whatever, but because his initial assumption continues to be proven correct as more data is accumulated... it seems like you are wrong that it was an overreaction.
That's basically a dismissive personal attack.
One of the most frustrating and crazy-making aspects of participating on HN as openly female is the frequency with which one must politely endure phenomenal open disrespect from people trying to position themselves as pro women's lib while violating the guidelines here concerning how to engage respectfully with other members. The only thing more crazy making is that there tends to be hell to pay should a woman dare to point it out or otherwise try to defend herself.
For me, it is made more bearable by the quiet support of the many people who upvote my comments and posts, flag the worst replies and comment thoughtfully on pieces I submit.
Yes, sexism is very much alive and well. I get to experience it on a daily basis.
It still does little to no good for powerful men to engage in public white knighting and level accusations they cannot backup.
I will note we are reading his tweets on HN, not his wife's. We are discussing the opinions of a powerful man, not a woman. We are reading them largely because he is a powerful man, not because he can back up his assertions.
Discussions of this sort are sometimes a case of "two steps forward, one step back." But as a woman participating in them, they all too often feel like a dystopian bit of theater in which men get to claim virtues they don't have and treat a woman badly while loudly proclaiming themselves against this evil thing called sexism.
I’m sorry you found my comment dismissive and a personal attack. I found your use of the term “sjw” dismissive of the issue, since it’s such a loaded term. So my tone was a bit... glib... in reaction to that.
I also definitely didn’t read your username, so don’t take anything i said to be a reaction your female handle. I definitely assumed a male writer (which is it’s own problem).
It is, in fact, a much larger problem.
To my mind, white knighting is about men playing hero in order to enhance their ego and public reputation as the primary or sole goal such that actually addressing sexism is not only incidental, it's actually counter to their goal.
Being chewed out by you and lectured about how I'm wrong to find any of this offensive amounts to mansplaining.
At every turn, no matter how much men theoretically decry the existence of sexism in the world and pretend to fight against it, when push comes to shove, they expect to be treated with respect by women while not themselves being respectful to women. That expectation amounts to demanding deference from women.
Start by working on treating actual women you are actually interacting with in the here and now with actual respect instead.
That includes not assuming everyone you speak with on HN is male. If you don't know, don't assume. That assumption based on the odds is a fundamental part of sexism, racism, etc. It's a really huge issue.
If you really want to see change in the world, get with the man in the mirror and work on his bad habits. He's the person you have the most control over.
If every man who ever beat his chest about how sexism is a bad thing spent more time working on his bad habits, things would change.
Instead, what happens is every time I comment, multiple people treat me like shit and then come up with justifications for their behavior and reasons why the problem is me and then fail to see the irony in decrying sexism while basically telling me "Shut up, woman." in the same breath.
You can say that again. This place and others would be unrecognizable.
In other words, I think he's right to say that Apple should be accountable for the issue he has pointed out, regardless of how it happened, which you rightly point out that he can't possibly know for sure.
It helps make the problem insanely intractable.
I recently wrote something along these lines: https://acjay.com/2019/10/07/ableism-the-sneakiest-ism/
My ex was career military and we arrived at a new duty station and he became fast friends with a coworker. He talked all the time time about his coworker "John" this and "John" that (John is not his real name). He rather got on my nerves with how much he blathered on about John.
In all those months, he never once mentioned that John was black. It wasn't anything that made his radar at all as worthy of noting.
When I met John and his family, I was very surprised that he (and his family) was black. I had assumed he was white. With seeing him, I realized in an instant that I had made this assumption because I grew up in the Deep South and if you didn't mention skin color, the signal there was that they had to be white. If they weren't white, you should give other white people the head's up.
I realized in that instant that this was a racist assumption and I wasn't as immune to the racism around me as I had thought I had been. I still had been inculcated with practices I was oblivious to as being a problem in that regard.
The surprise showed on my face and I was not able to figure out how to explain that I didn't care that he was black, I was just shocked and appalled to realize that I had made this assumption and was having a come-to-jesus moment with myself. It made for a very awkward meeting.
After that, I tried to just let my kids model race stuff from their father and did my best to butt out. It's an uncomfortable incident that I thought of quite often for some years afterwards.
In part because of that incident, I can be pretty thick skinned about a lot of low level, run of the mill sexism because I'm aware that a lot of people are doing pretty much that same thing without realizing it. In most cases, it is easier to combat if I don't try to point fingers, make them feel guilty, publicly embarras them, etc.
I do sometimes make pointed remarks to try to educate people, but I spend a lot of time trying to simply be the change I would like to see and letting other people react to that as they see fit.
Thank you for engaging me. I did read your piece (and the piece it links to at the start as background).
Given my experience with ML algorithms having bias against minorities, I think it's fair to assume the worst when it's a black box algorithm. You feed it bad data, and you get bad results out.