Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

> The difference is that AI research teams are full of philosophy graduates who think if statements are racist.

I'm not sure I understand. Are they worse or better?

That's an actually good question. AI is supposed to be fed with real-live data, after all it has to be something usable in the real-world.

Now, you feed AI with crime data, looking at statistics such AI will suspect people having black color of the skin to be criminals more often than people with white skin. Is that ok? Is it ok to say that if some person happens to have black skin there is a bigger chance that it is criminal?

In statistical terms the answer is yes, but if we deal with an actual person, we should treat it as a unique person and the matter of the skin color should not matter.

Before II World War there were scientific studies in Germany that showed that in some big cities districts there are more rats. Accidentally or not, it turned out that those are districts with large Jewish population. So Nazis took those statistical results to prove that Jews are dirty, spread diseases, etc. Was that science, even though it was peer reviewed and published? Rather not (in the first place they didn't even bother to check if people living there were rich, poor, etc.).

History knows many "scientific researches" by the ones like Eugen Fisher, dr. Mengele, that were performed in a scientific way, but they were lacking something very important and non-trivial: ethics.

Now the problem is that ethics needs to have some source, it does not grow on a tree. For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe (less in US, that's why you could have slavery in modern times there), currently Christianity is almost gone in Europe, the question is were to seek the source of ethics.

> For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe (less in US, that's why you could have slavery in modern times there)

This is completely incoherent and ahistorical; the US was in many ways more Christian, or at least more intensely Christian and making it a key part of its politics, right from the Pilgrim Fathers to televangelists.

People gave pro-slavery speeches from pulpits in both the US and UK. There were some Christians against it, most notably the Quakers, but slavery and the alleged moral justifications for it were in no way incompatible with Christianity.

Even today, US churches tend to be ("voluntarily") segregated.

> Now the problem is that ethics needs to have some source, it does not grow on a tree. For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe (less in US, that's why you could have slavery in modern times there), currently Christianity is almost gone in Europe, the question is were to seek the source of ethics.

Europe had philosophers long before it had Christianity.

> For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe

Two angels arrive in Sodom, and Lot shows them hospitality. However, the men of the city gathered around Lot's house and demanded that he give them the two guests so that they could rape them. In response to this, Lot offers the mob his two virgin daughters instead.

...

Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt, but Lot and his daughters escape to Zoar, and end up living in a cave in the mountains. In Genesis 19:30–38 Lot's daughters got their father drunk, and over two consecutive nights had sex with him without his knowledge.

Sorry, were you somehow under the impression that the people of Sodom, Lot, and his daughters are being held up as models we should all be emulating?

I always find it a bit strange that people despise simplistic "Sunday-school" answers to life, but then when they read the Bible and find messy situations like the one described above, they say, "What kind messed up story is this?" Real life is sometimes messed up. A book that skipped over the messed up stuff would be pretty useless.

If you read the old testament, it's brutal and often barbaric. It's written in bronze age and relfects life of the time. To argue that it reflects morals or 'messed up' situatuons we'd consider in civilised society is to be delusional.

So first of all, I think you're failing to acknowledge the brutal barbarism of our time. The Killing Fields? The Cultural Revolution? Stalin? The Tuskegee Syphilis Study? They told that story about Lot specifically because it was not the norm, but was the kind of thing that could actually happen.

Secondly, the claim was that Christianity -- that is, the teaching of Jesus -- has affected European ideas about morality. Lot is further away from Jesus than Jesus is from us.

I think the person you responded to has an inaccurate view of the history of slavery in Europe. But only someone who has never experienced a different culture could say that Christianity has had no effect on the moral ideas of the West.

That is my whole argument - the times were barbaric, both the old testament and to some degree the new testament largely capture that, so you should not be going round claiming they brought morality to the world / west. I am nor arguing it had to effect, I am arguing it's not like we'd all be a moral vacuum without it.

I am very surprised you are claiming the old testament is somehow not part of Christianity or should now be considered- am I misunderstanding you? I am not a religious scholar, but that's not a view my local priest would support.

Also I fail to see how bringing up Stalin is relevant, you can't even find a communist these days that thinks he was morally upright.

> In statistical terms the answer is yes,

Not actually. Statistics from a larger population "cannot" be used to predict outcomes from a smaller subset or individual from the population. ("cannot" in the sense that you get nonsensical results if you do). See e.g. the ecological fallacy.

Algorithmic biases and their application to human systems are a very interesting, and important topic. And yes, they can be unfair to already disadvantaged people

But I think the discussion too easily devolves into the craziest humanities self-pleasing circles. Then they are surprised they get push back? Of course Google also share their side of the blame when they think just creating an "ethics commission" with a rubber stamp solves their issue

Reply on news.ycombinator.com