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Comment by gbrown | Hacker News Reader

You are correct about the distribution of certain crimes, but you've entirely missed the point.*

Problems like violence have multiple causes, but are widely understood to be linked to problems of poverty, inequality, and marginalization. Violence is also self-perpetuating through social networks. When an incautious user of statistical tools fails to investigate the causal story behind such findings, they're going to get the wrong answer. When a policymaker acts on incomplete or misleading findings, they're going to make the problem worse.

*Unless you're arguing that it's the fact of being non-white which makes people more violent, in which case I have nothing to say to you.

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> Unless you're arguing that it's the fact of being non-white which makes people more violent

This is not how I interpreted OPs comment at all. I just read it as a note that data shows correlation between minority communities and crime. Minority is a flexible, relative term, to my understanding - which, notably in recent years is frequently attributed to "non-white", but over time has been attributed to many different groups of people (caucasian as well).

Interpreting it as meaning "non-white" in this context is yet another good example of our predisposed biases and relativistic understandings at play, I suppose.

Not to harp on you - just noting the differences in our perceptions.

I totally understand, and maybe I shouldn't have included that, but I do see phrases like "It's unpopular to talk about" get used as dog whistles all the time in other forums (and in real life). There's a whole subculture dedicated to dressing up racism in pseudo-scientific language (race realism etc.)

At the end of the day, there's enough real, vile bigotry out there in our society, I think it's important to be extra clear when discussing topics like this.

I'm glad you did. It's a great example of the problem we are discussing.

I agree, there is are many negative biases in the real world. More so, I'd argue, on the internet, where people feel safer at a distance to state disagreeable opinions.

It's worth noting, especially when we are discussing the nature of how an AI learns.

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