USPS Discrimination Against Atheism? | Hacker News Reader

USPS Discrimination Against Atheism?

atheistberlin.com

86 pointsleephillips102 comments

Not enough packages to make a real claim. The variance on package delivery times in the USPS is high. As an example, I recently had two identical packages shipped to me. They both left the same facility at the same time. They were identical weight(heavy) and dimensions. They were wrapped the same. They were shipped from in the same state as me. One arrived in 2 days. One arrived in 10.

Also, they mentioned that one of the packages in Michigan took 37 extra days. With that sample size it explains about 10 percent of the average right there.

I agree that a larger sample would be welcomed. In particular, spreading the experiment out over many days would help eliminate a "oh all these packages are the same, they probably go here" mistake. Whilst sending them all out on the same day eliminates some sources of bias, it may have made the experiment more susceptible to other errors.

Having high variance requires a larger difference to pass a statistical test.

n = 85 and p < 0.01. What's inherently wrong with that? (I have my own personal crusade against the 5% p-value, but this is under 1%.)

I agree that the sample size is far too small to criticize individual states, but 85 seems plenty large for the hypothesis of "Atheist-branded packages sent by the USPS are being delayed more than normal packages."

How did you compute a p value without knowing the variance?

[Edit: my bad, didn't read the fine print which explains statistical methods at very bottom of page.]

In this case, I imagine the method involves reading it from one of the images towards the bottom of the linked page.

In fact n= 178, which is more than enough for a study with only 2 conditions.

I misread your post when I re-skimmed it, and ignored the 2 shoes thing. Whoops. Thanks!

You're welcome to see the data if you like - we ran it by two independent statisticians to make sure our sample size was large enough... n = 178, in a 2 condition study, really isn't too bad. The important point here is that the variance should have been equally spread across both conditions... and it wasn't.

So the real question is, where to go from here with a reasonable amount of certainty?

Does USPS have an office that conducts quality control experiments?

Will you continue collecting data on this front at some lower frequency (with consenting customers)?

My understanding is that you ran this test once. You sent all the packages - labeled and not - on the same day. And you did this one time. This obviously doesn't control for things like "half the packages just fell off the back of the truck" or "the packages at the bottom of the bin got delayed for extra screening".

All of these are international packages going through Jamaica Bay in New York which is notorious for delays. A significant percentage of packages are selected for extra screening here, but no where near 100%. Those go into a set of queues that always mean randomized and often lengthy delays. Most of the packages chosen for the screening are picked by humans that I would almost guarantee are more likely to pick the packages that catch their eye for any reason.

Also, if you send through a package that weighs just north of a kilogram it is almost guaranteed to be subjected to extra screening. This is by no means a secret among international shippers, and would make it pretty easy to stack the deck if you wanted to. I bet a lot of shoes weigh around that much, no?

These guys share an office with me, so I saw the packages. They all contained one tote bag and were nowhere near a kilogram.

Just to confirm, not all of the packages pass through Jamacia Bay and we were careful to ensure the packages were as similarly eye-catching as possible... but those selecting humans would be wiser than to only choose the most eye-catching packages. I'm not gonna put a flag on a package containing drugs, for example. And as the other commenter says, we only sent tote bags, not shoes.

What did the two kinds of packages actually look like?

If the illustration is accurate, the "atheism" tape is white with black text, while the other tape is perhaps standard brown packing tape.

Could it be that the standard packing tape is just better tape?

Could it be that black text on white tape confuses a scanner somewhere?

A better control might be identical tape but with a different word (something neutral like "shoes").

These guys share an office with us, so I saw the packages. The Atheist tape is standard packing tape, there's no difference in quality of the tape.

Great, so can you tell us what the tape looked like? Is the illustration accurate?

the illustration is accurate. you're right about the better control, we may do that if we replicate the study... but really I don't think the absence of writing on the neutral tape can explain the findings.

> ... but really I don't think the absence of writing on the neutral tape can explain the findings.

To me, it seems like a far more likely explanation than a USPS bias against packages affiliated with atheism.

Yes, the illustration is accurate.

For those that say this is just USPS sucking in general.... my wife runs a small business that sends thousands of packages per year both in the US and international. The number of packages that have been truly lost numbers in the single digits. Delays happen, but rarely (most delays are the individual post offices holding on to the package until the recipient comes to the post office to pick it up... we still don't know why they do that).

If she suffered 10% loss of deliveries, she'd go out of business. Luckily, that doesn't happen... though she also doesn't label her boxes with atheist tape.

some of our customers asked us not to use ATHEIST-branded packing tape on their shipments

We sent 178 packages to 89 people

4 participants didn't get back to us with their dates and so were not included in the analysis

So they used easily-spoofable data submitted by people who knew about the study and a priori believed to be discriminated against.

It may easily be just trolling by atheist jihadists from the US.

if only that were the truth. sadly not, no data spoofing involved.

That's very sad, indeed.

Anyway, thank you for your explanation. It really increased my confidence in reliability of your sources.

I bet if you put "Allahu Akbar" tape on a package it'd fair much worse.

I'd legitimately be interested to see that tested.

I'd like to see it AB-tested against some gibberish non-sense written in arabic.

Now you’re just being picky.

I don't know if it is just USPS. Mail between Germany and the U.S. has never been reliable in my opinion. My experience was that one of of two packages I sent to my Mom back in the states would disappear somehow.

I've had TSA people wrinkle my shirts and leave behind an apologetic yellow tag, but only in Germany have I had them carefully take apart everything in my cases, find something they didn't want me to have, remove it, put everything carefully back the way it was, and never say a word.

Out of 89 packages (half of the 179), 9 went missing? That's 10%.

That is insane for the US Postal Service to be allowed that, but it follows my personal experience with them. I don't think I've ever had them lose a letter in my life, but when it comes to packages I don't know how they lose so many. I shudder when I get a USPS tracking email from an online seller because I know there's fair chance I will never see the damn thing.

Where do you live? In MA, CT, and NC I have had a USPS package go missing exactly twice. In the first case I'm pretty sure the mailperson just left it on the wrong porch and the neighbor never admitted it. In the second, they had confirmed delivery, but the package was not there, so Amazon sent another item.

I have mailed 13 packages to myself over the past decade and USPS has lost or destroyed 5 of them. "Media Mail" is not recommended. Someone decides that they think the box contains an item that isn't a book and rip the box apart.

I live in IL, and have had exactly 0 USPS packages go missing. In fact, I take the opposite stance. I prefer USPS, both when receiving and when sending.

Michigan.

A bigger problem with USPS is that it's a lot harder to get your packages if you're not around when they attempt delivery. The local UPS office is open until 8:00 so I can go get missed packages after work, I have a few hours Window on Saturday that I can go get packages at the Post Office. And that's IF they can find the package.

Their online delivery rescheduling/holding is also useless.

Wow, didn't expect this in a developed country :-(

Perhaps its God Himself intervening..

God also apparently intervened against their webserver, perhaps by creating ten thousand bored hackers 15-50 years ago, who hit it from Hacker News today.

This makes the migh moral standards claim of believers staggering.

Well, this is almost certainly illegal. (What is described by the article.) I wonder if any kind of investigation is going to follow. Perhaps not criminal, but journalistic. Freedom of speech is paramount to a broad spectrum of Americans, as far as I can tell, and I expect many would be interested.

The actual statistics are in teeny tiny print near the bottom. They don't give the raw data, unfortunately.

I'd copy-paste the text here, but everything is embedded in images. (Which is absurd.)

Also, one of the four comments I can see is not like the others. (It might be removed before you see it.)

Remember when televangelists raised funds and sold trinkets by telling people that "they" (the non-religious, secular institutions, other religions...) were plotting against them in nefarious ways?

You still can't gaze into the abyss without it gazing into you.

It seems to me that their control packages should have had tape with 'less offensive' text on them. This would ensure that it's not just a matter of the atheist packages being more eye-catching or out of the ordinary.

They should make similar experiments with Saudi-Arabia and maybe a few other countries :-)

Because discrimination is perfectly fine so long as you're not discriminating as much as somebody more extreme?

Of course not.

And don't try to wiggle out of it by saying you were only joking. You are still perpetuating the viewpoint.

Actually, my idea was that Saudi-Arabia would be less discriminating in this matter, hence displaying the idiocy of such delays even more obviously.

What view point is being perpetuated? I read that pretty literally - that they should, indeed, try this with addresses in Saudi Arabia. Because, you know, it would be interesting.

Even if that's not true, I don't think that this is a scientific enough study to suggest that there's serious discrimination problem at the USPS, or where the problem even lies. Does the sender name trigger delays in customs? Does the sender's activity trigger delays in customs and has been flagged for further scrutiny but the name is coincidental?

They sent a mix of parcels, some with "ATHEIST" branding and some without it.

They claim that the parcels with Atheist tape were delayed. If the problem wasn't with the tape we'd expect to see delays spread across all parcels.

> I don't think that this is a scientific enough study

I agree. It'd be interesting to see a bigger study with better numbers.

140 parcels is a tiny number compared to what USPS handles per day.

"140 parcels is a tiny number compared to what USPS handles per day."

Why does the size of the sample in relation to the size of the population mean that the numbers need to be better?

Because 140 parcels, not randomly selected, is nowhere near enough to meet the various statistical tests needed to draw meaningful conclusions.

Does not answer my question. The commenter I was responding to mentioned the size of the population; you refer only to the size of the sample.

If the population size is 140 then a "sample" of 140 gives you a complete description. If the population size is 1.4e10 then a non-random sample of 140 is going to give very low confidence.

For the topics in between you're going to have to look up Wikipedia pages on statistics to see how sample size and population size relate, how that changes with the methodology used to select your sample, etc.

If you know statistics already and you have a point to make then just make it. "20 Questions" might work on Jabber or IRC but it doesn't on a forum like this.

"If the population size is 140 then a 'sample' of 140 gives you a complete description."

That would not be what we think of as a sample, but rather a census.

"If the population size is 1.4e10 then a non-random sample of 140 is going to give very low confidence."

If the sample is non-random then the conclusions are unreliable, regardless of the population size.

I don't understand most of the rest of your comment, except as angry sputtering designed to avoid having to correct yourself. As to my playing 20 questions, since I can not imagine in general how the population size could be relevant to statistical conclusions drawn from a random sample, I was wondering if those who imply the opposite could explain it to me. Because it seems obvious that if you want to measure the salinity of the ocean, you can scoop up a cup of water from it and analyse that. You don't have to use a different size cup for different size oceans, or even know how big your ocean is. But if I'm missing something, I'd love to learn what it is.

> If the sample is non-random then the conclusions are unreliable, regardless of the population size

That's not true. You may still get meaningful data, but it's less meaningful (i.e. the required interval to achieve a given level of confidence becomes wider, perhaps significantly so).

But either way, I mentioned "non-random" to pile onto the ridiculously low sample size. Even a random sample of such a small size would have given a low-confidence result.

> Because it seems obvious that if you want to measure the salinity of the ocean, you can scoop up a cup of water from it and analyse that. You don't have to use a different size cup for different size oceans, or even know how big your ocean is.

You're expressing a "population" parameter that doesn't actually exist. There's no such thing as "salinity of the ocean"; it changes depending on where (and what depth!) you are at. Sampling the salinity of the water in the cup tells you, at best, about the water where you're at.

Now you could probably talk about things like "mean salinity of the oceans", but to determine good bounds for that you would have to sample. And to figure out how much you must sample, you do indeed have to have an idea of the total population size, even if it's just to determine that the population size is so much larger than the sample size that you can ignore the population size and simply use the standard error formula.

If the population size is not much greater than the sample size then there is an adjustment you should make (the finite population correction).

Here's a more important question.

What's the p-value for their proposition, based on the data that's provided?

Thanks - I was misremembering or had misunderstood how they had identified themselves (I was thinking they changed the name in the from address, not a much more visible piece of tape.)

They did some statistical tests on the data (look at the bottom of the article) which, AFAIK show that the number of boxes sent is big enough to show a significant difference between packages with atheist branding and those without them.

What is the methodological objection to the article claims?

Oh, yes, sorry. Thanks for pointing that out.

I think that a sample size of 85 (89 marked parcels; 89 unmarked parcels; with 4 removed because of late response) is too small to really know much.

And I think I'm a bit worried about the conclusions being drawn in this thread.

But the t-test says otherwise. Why is it that you find the t-test is wrong?

I think it is funny people make such points about Saudi Arabia, as they are what we should compare to. However, I live in a Gulf country neighboring to KSA and trust me mail censorship is bizarrely complicated and we all laugh about it.

It’s just the first country that comes to mind that fits the bill of being openly religious/islamic (as opposed to Turkey), having a somewhat working government (as opposed to Egypt, Libya or so) and not being too hostile to ‘the West’ (as opposed to Iran) to make such an experiment at least thinkable.

Why are you so apologetic about religious discrimination in the US? "But these other people are so much worse than I am" has never been a valid argument.

His intent is to see what happens. I did not see anybody being apologetic.

My intent was more ‘You would likely get better results from a country usually assumed to be worse’. Really, I am absolutely not defending the USPS here in any way whatsoever, nor do I claim that the US doesn’t suffer from religious discrimination.

Maybe they discriminate against public display of private belief in general.

simply a no advertising policy. easy, simple, effective.

I'm pretty sure most people would not be OK with any kind of editorial discrimination by the handlers of mail.

They sent packages from Berlin to the US and found a bunch of variance in delivery times and their first thought was "its the tape"?

They have more faith than I do.

If they were relying on "faith" they wouldn't have bothered to test their guess, would they have? Isn't that the very opposite of "faith"?

A/B testing may be safe in the hands of Athiests, but would you want it in the hands of terrorists?

I read this and was left wanting control tests using other couriers such as UPS and Fedex.

I'm just wondering...will France ban pupils from wearing these shoes in schools? ;)

This is unbelievable, somebody gotto do something about it.

Like what? What would you suggest somebody "gotto" do?

We must fight the twin evils of godless communism abroad and liberal humanism at home.

I've bought two artofmanliness.com shirts online that were to be delivered by USPS, they never arrived... all I know this service is shit.

I would like to see a similar experiment where boxes, some randomly labled with "Christian" tape, are handled by atheists.

We all know the results would be the same.

How do you come to the conclusion that the "Atheist" parcels must have been handled by Christians? Why are you apologizing unprofessional conduct of USPS employees?

No we don't. I'd like to see a split test between Christian, Muslim, Athiest, Jewish, etc.

I believe with all my heart that evangelist goblins with fear of god are interfering with the sorting process to delay those evil packages. Sure, it is possible that a foreign vendor might forget to put the full zip code on the address label; but where is the morality in that explanation.

Honestly, this concept of building a product around such a sensitive issue like religion/spirituality is kind of "dumb".

Wasn't it clear to them that such problems will arise, sooner or later? People get offended if you brand your product with something "christian" or "islamic", so why should people not be offended by atheism? I dont get this whining.

Keep religion to yourself, in all endeavors.

Yes! Religion, as sexuality, should only be visible at home, and expecting a fair treatment of atheism in public is as silly as expecting to be allowed to hold your boyfriend’s hand in public or expecting to be allowed to discuss last Sunday’s sermon on the street.

I do expect people to be allowed to hold hands in public. I also expect people to be able to discuss last Sunday's sermon on the street. I would not live in a place were any of those things is prohibited. Luckily, I live in a civilized place where both activities are permitted (Argentina :D).

Well, having those activities permitted doesn't make Argentina civilized :P (tongue-in-cheek, I'm Uruguayan).

I live in a proper Secular/nonreligious country :) (1) and we tolerate both as well.

(1) we have separation of church and state, and only 4% of regular Christians, though 60% do believe in some sort of god

http://countrystudies.us/uruguay/43.htm

Argentina does not have separation of Church and State (though they don't enforce it much, they even had a Muslim-raised president), and the United States has a state-mandated belief in God.

I really envy Uruguay regarding Church-state separation. I also really admire your president for not going to the Pope assumption.

Are you seriously saying a private business has no right to conduct uhh private business with their customers because it might offend someone?

Essentially you're just playing the classic victim blaming card.

Someone was mean to you because of your religion/sexual preference/etc? You should have hidden it better, quit this whining! It is your fault for being different!

Atheism also isn't a religion.

Not believing in god is not a religion.

Atheism itself though has grown into a full blown region. There is a point where your "not-golfing" becomes hobby, and it seems that atheism, at least for some, crossed that line long ago.

I grew up in a very religious environment, but I have been an atheist for 10 years (I'm 30 now). I don't see much of a difference between "loud atheists" and "loud Christians." The intolerance is the same, the language is the same, and even the "I'm a better X than you" and "You're not a real X" are the same.

[Ed: I see you edited your original comment to be less general. To address that, I'd say you're seeing similarities that aren't characteristic of religions, but of humans rooting for their team. Your last sentence applies just as well to "loud fans".]

This is as wrong as calling the technological singularity idea a "rapture of the nerds."[1] It's important to separate religious-minded-thinking, which is more generally irrational (or if you prefer a less general statement for the sake of argument, non-scientific) thinking, from an actual religion. Do atheists suffer from the same cognitive biases religious people do? Of course. Do some of them (I'd guess a minority) make errors in probabilistic reasoning by assigning p(a god exists|observations) = 0, actual 0, rather than the technical 0+epsilon that permits Bayesian updating in case a god ever decides to show itself? Sure. None of this makes atheism a religion. Where's the promise of salvation, but only for atheists? Where's the Holy Book? Where's the rituals and traditions? Are you called an "inactive atheist" if you don't go to chu^H^H^H weekly meetups and thus get shunned by your fellow atheists? Where's the singular code of morality? Where are the articles of faith? If you spend five minutes thinking about it, can you think of other ways atheism differs, categorically, from a religion like Mormonism?

[1]http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=21

And to add pretty much every believer is an atheist regarding the gazzilion of gods he does not believe, but others do.

  > I don't see much of a difference between "loud atheists"

Then look closer. There is a difference between fighting human rights and trying to defend intolerance, homophobia, misigony in the name of some imaginary being.

As for intolerance: the stuff above does not deserve any tolerance. To quote Popper:

  > "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend
  > unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to
  > defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the
  > tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation,
  > I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of
  > intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and
  > keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we
  > should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily
  > turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument,
  > but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to
  > rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the
  > use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance,
  > the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching
  > intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to
  > intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement
  > to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

> Atheism also isn't a religion.

Are you speaking in terms of philosophical semantics or in terms of legal equivalence?

Both are true. They aren't legally or philosophically a religion.

Unitarian Universalism is however a religion and one an Atheist could become a part of... As is Jedi.

As to philosophy, I hear you. But as to legality, I think a bit of googling would suffice to persuade you that, at least for the last twenty years, legal opinion is not in your favor.

No. Perhaps it's a smart professional and business decision to keep certain opinions to myself, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to.

And it sure as hell doesn't mean that packages that say "ATHEIST" on them should be "lost" or "delayed" by the USPS.

These guys manufacture fashion items that makes a statement. Clothing was recognized as a valid forum for freedom of expression by the US Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines, all the way back in 1969.

Or do you think that everyone who makes religious jewelry or political t-shirts should also just close up shop?

People brand products around all sorts of things.

And if there's a market for it, it's not "dumb" at all -- it's capitalism, and satisfying the market.

And no, it should not be clear at all that the USPS would delay or lose packages like that. This is absolutely shocking (as long as it's true), and has no place in a global, modern economic infrastructure.

I know its not justifying the delay or loss of packages, but this is "the real life". My parents had to flee their country because of their belief. Don't tell me you are that idealistic and naive to belief that prejudices (of any kind) are something of the past.

All i am saying is, if you want to make business, dont mix it with such a "theme". I have yet to see companies like Apple or Google or whoever release products like "iMuslim" or "Google Jew", its dumb and unprofessional.

And if you happen to be that militant and want to release to biased product by all means, at least be that intelligent to not make it visible on the package. What would happen if you produce fucking dildos and you are so proud of it that you print out a hi-res picture of the product and put it on every package you send away. I wonder how many of these packages will arrive to their destination...

> What would happen if you produce fucking dildos and you are so proud of it that you print out a hi-res picture of the product and put it on every package you send away.

I should hope no such packages would be intentionally lost. If employees at USPS start having opinions about what packages should be delivered based on their looks then there is a serious problem. It is very unprofessional and a federal crime.

The main reason for not having anything such packages is that I do not think many customers would wish to be seen carrying it.

> Don't tell me you are that idealistic and naive to belief that prejudices (of any kind) are something of the past.

The idea is that such prejudices indeed should be a thing of the past and that this especially applies to the public postal service of a civilised country in the 21st century.

USPS and its employees ought to act professionally, no matter whether the parcel is from someone who keeps religion to herself, or whether it's from some crazy religious Westboro-Baptist-style nutjob. If others commit crimes, then why should you limit your speech? This kind of attitude that you present is especially troublesome for a country that values freedom of speech so high.

While they must have expected some people to be offended I do not think they expected the postal service to intentionally lose packages.

Intentionally losing packages is a crime and against the very idea of having a state run postal service. USPS employees should deliver packages belonging to any weird religious group or sect.

"this concept of building a product around such a sensitive issue like religion/spirituality is kind of "dumb"."

Do you not consider religion in-general to be a type of business? I certainly do. Why not associate yourself with what many believe to be the fastest-growing religious status in some parts of the world?

> Keep religion to yourself, in all endeavors.

Including posting stories to HN!

This is a bullshit premise. A policy of "non-branding" packages, is not discriminatory. In particular, one that is actually enforced on politically sensitive/provocative topics. If the "brand" were white supremacy (a-chromatic or KKK...) or perhaps anti-semetic (NAZI brand !) packing tape, I don't think the PO should feel bad about not putting these types of "billboards" // "targets" on people's door steps. The USPS, is strictly not in the business of delivering Hate Mail.

But...Nice try!

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