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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something? It's pretty common for a lawsuit to bring every claim a lawyer can come up with on the hopes that enough will stick to get the outcome they want.

I would especially consider that in the United States we do not have a broad legal right to privacy but there are potentially much stronger tools available if that software skews negative outcomes towards protected categories like sex, disability, or race. From the perspective of a student, job applicant, etc. being asked to use this, if the legal risks cause an organization to stop using it they'll enjoy that as a win even if the outcome isn't a blanket ban.

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>Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something?

Not at the expense of grounded reasoning. When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down. The argument presented about lawsuits is actually a great example of why I think that's a broken system. They resolve that issue of lost credibility by considering each issue with total, clear, and mandated separation. Outside of that legal world with very well-defined rules, using such tactics reduces credibility.

I should note, that in this particular case, the claim of racial biases is at least substantiated by a believable anecdote.

EDIT: To clarify why I think the legal methodology is broken, its only because the same principles apply to criminal trials. IMO, prosecutors should NOT be throwing poorly substantiated charges at a defendant just to increase their winning probability and make the required defense more expensive.

> When I see poorly substantiated claims, it shouldn't, but it really drags the whole rest of the argument down.

It should. If someone is willing to make wild, unsubstantiated, claims, it should detract from their credibility.

You're talking about a letter from a U.S. Senator citing published reports in e.g. MIT Technology Review and concerns raised by professional organizations. I think dismissing that as “wild, unsubstantiated” would require at least some discussion of the linked claims.

Why should I reference the particulars of the link when refuting a generalization?

If the parent comment had said something to the effect of "I should give the benefit of the doubt to a sitting US senator" then you'd have a point, but that context wasn't part of their statement.

Edit: Also, frankly, I wouldn't give the benefit of the doubt to a US senator. If anything, it makes the identity politics feel even more irrelevant.

Okay, trying engaging intellectually with the reports rather than just reacting to someone’s one sentence summary of thousands of words. It’s kind of hard to see any definition of “identity politics” which includes the reports but not your emotional reaction to accurate words.

> Okay, trying engaging intellectually with the reports rather than just reacting to someone’s one sentence summary of thousands of words

I wasn't reacting to a summary, I was reacting to an independent premise. The sentence I reacted to, at least the way I read it, was broad to the point of being more of an axiom with which the commenter interpreted the post. As I see it, disagreeing with an axiom is an intellectual engagement. Feel free to counter my disagreement.

> It’s kind of hard to see any definition of “identity politics” which includes the reports but not your emotional reaction to accurate words.

Not entirely sure what you're saying here, but none of what I said was emotional. Simply pointing out that pattern matching is a viable way of filtering other people's thoughts and ideas. If someone makes wild claim, it should change the way you view other claims which may have seemed more rational in their absence. Not really an emotional statement in my mind, but again, feel free to point out which part of this you disagree with and I'd be happy to engage.

As it stands now you aren't really responding to anything I've said, but rather disagreeing that what I'm responding to warrants responding, which is rather tangential.

If you think the accusations are poorly substantiated, then make that case, rather than just complaining that too many accusations were included in the same paragraph.

I don’t have to. Using a Gish gallop of bad arguments doesn’t impose some moral imperative on me to prove every single one wrong.

No, but I think that raises the question of why you think the quoted bit above is a bad argument. It tracks with various reports I've seen linked in HN on this topic over the past couple years.

I know that 95% of the time I see a Gish gallop of identity politics, it's not an argument to engage in at all because even when you do, you're called racist yourself unless you subserviently agree with every aspect of the argument. The identity politics argument is often a tempting one because it allows people to act righteously indignant and feel powerful.

Case in point, here's someone saying, 'How can you even handwave away systemic racism?' in reply to a comment agreeing that bias exists but is not deliberate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164295

Also, the identity politics argument seems to hinder a simple, moral argument against surveillance software as a violation of privacy. The logical implication of the IP argument is that this surveillance software would be okay to use if we manage to work out all the kinks.

I have found that two to three strong points far out weight a list of 5-10 weaker points. This extends to the case when the original two points are included in a longer list.

The difference is that lawyers act in a structured environment with specific rules on how things should be considered - you bring up all the possible claims because if any of them get thrown out, it doesn't impact the others.

It's not the same with general discourse - when you raise a bunch of issues that aren't especially relevant and seem designed to be inflammatory, you damage the credibility of your other arguments. Arguing that test proctoring software is transphobic is such a stretch that it makes you question whether they author has such strong biases against the software that their evaluation of it is just generally too biased to be trustworthy.

> Arguing that test proctoring software is transphobic is such a stretch that it makes you question whether they author has such strong biases against the software that their evaluation of it is just generally too biased to be trustworthy.

It seems like the software is matching people against existing images, based on the issue with the black student, and trans people are I would assume more likely to change their appearance, including as a result of taking hormones and having facial feminization/masculinization surgeries.

The rationally strongest case would be the privacy thing, not the neoliberal-outrage-inducing factors.

> Don't you normally expect people to make the strongest case for preventing something?

Yes, but with some evidence. Otherwise, as a society, this is a bad direction to head in.

https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.12.3%20... references two articles:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/07/1006132/software...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/style/testing-schools-pro...

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