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Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

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I get it and it does make sense. Humans always consider the unfamiliar dangerous by default, but I believe it's deeper and simpler than the arguments you present.

This is not a strictly human trait. Anthropologists are pretty sure we received this trait from our primate ancestors. It evolved out of family groups/tribalism.

Also, a large part of our brains are safety mechanisms. Many features are directed at keeping us alive which is why so many of our what if scenarios are about the worst happening.

In very tribal environments anyone not in your in-group is considered unsafe even if they look exactly like you (i.e. a tribe from 10 km away).

But the thing that has made humans the most successful species on Earth is our ability to override this behavior to cooperate at larger and larger scales.

To turn it around, you should assume anyone in the dark alley is potentially dangerous, and not allow biases or racism to cause you to lower your guard to someone who may end up stabbing you.

I think you’re conflating intuitional alarms Gavin de Becker style with treating people as individuals which is two very different things. Racism is about our society treating people of color fairly whereas the other is about maintaining healthy boundaries and respecting your intuition.

I think this is a nuclear bad not only because I think it excuses bad behavior but also because I think it’s just intellectually lazy.

If I’m misinterpreting you please let me know because I hope I’m mistaken.

I agree with your general premise, in that there are bad actors, and appearance is a powerful classifier, so identifying potential bad actors by appearance is genuinely useful. I think there are many caveats in practice, such as:

  How do I demonstrate that I arrived at a conclusion reasonably, with data?
  How do I calibrate my probabilities, instead of a binary "safe or unsafe"?
  How do I keep from overanalyzing appearance and making incorrect perceptions?
  I think the primary sign of danger in your example is being in a dark alley.

Moreover, learning danger where there is danger is valuable, but so is unlearning danger where there isn't danger. And then there are the errors of learning danger where there isn't danger, and unlearning danger where there is danger. So, I take your point broadly, but there are many demons this way.

Jesus H. Christ. Are we now trying to make our racism sound acceptable by sprinkling it with scientific concepts like Bayesian thinking?

If Iryna Zarutska were more Bayesian, the correct prejudice and acceptable amount of racism would have saved her life. Unfortunately for her, her priors were from .ua, not .us.

This is probably the stupidest thread I've ever had the displeasure of reading. In the U.S., most homicide perpetrators are white. And it is extremely rare for a Black person to intentionally kill a white person.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Your own stats actually seems to suggest otherwise, doesn’t it? About 1 in 5 murders of white people are committed by blacks, while about 1 in 10 murders of black people are committed by whites. And in absolute numbers there are slightly more black murderers.

Arguably race is the wrong metric anyway, isn’t it fairly well established that socioeconomic factors play the larger role by far?

The victim was white. Thus the relevant statistic is whether you'd be more likely to be murdered by a white person than a black one. (It's also quite probable that white perpetrators are undercounted, as these are based on conviction rates.)

You can't necessarily see whether someone is wealthy (although poor people tend not to wear expensive clothing or carry expensive items on them). I'm also not aware of a reliable source of statistical information about homicide perpetrators based on the perpetrator's wealth.

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