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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

I'm not talking about the system. I'm saying that your two complaints completely contradict each other.

While I think your response is justified in this specific case given the small sample size, I don't think making two "contradictory" complaints is necessarily wrong in this context. If you make a lot of Type I errors, it might be the cost for reducing Type II errors, and if you make a lot of Type II errors, it might be the cost of reducing Type I errors, but if you make a lot of Type I and Type II errors, then maybe whatever you're doing just sucks.

They don't completely contradict each other. He's pointing out what he considers two examples of an unreasonable search, one is about racial profiling the other is about what he seems to consider common sense.

So called "common sense" encourages [racial] profiling. That's the problem with it, and why the two comments are at odds.

The only way that you remove the profiling, incidentally, is to remove discretion from agents and/or have some level of accountability for each stop. If they had to publish statistics detailing the profiles of everyone who went through additional security searches and why it was done I think you'd see a lot of action

so to him- its common sense to not search a demographic due to it being unreasonable, but also common sense not to search a demographic when it actually is reasonable?

sounds like a contradiction to me.

Wasn't that precisely the first complaint - observing a pair of incidents which make no sense as a consistent policy? (the second complaint being that even a senator had trouble clearing up a mistake). Both the original comment and reply are consistent with that reading.

They are only a contradiction inside of your worldview. What do you think that says about your worldview?

I think it says that you should explain what you mean instead of just making vague hints.

I don't think people really grok random.

Like when they complain that their MP3 player plays two songs from the same album when it's on random.

The "random" algorithm in a media player is not supposed to be "random pick with replacement". It is meant to be shuffle, and that's indeed what it is called instead of "random". A shuffle algorithm that plays the same song twice is indeed a broken shuffle algorithm (except if, of course, the playlist actually contains two instances of the same song).

Yes, but that's not what the GP was talking about. Sometimes shuffle will play two consecutive songs from the same album consecutively, just from randomness, and people will complain.

Incidentally, I prefer random pick with replacement, at least when selecting from a set of tracks greater than one album.

Sometimes shuffle will play two consecutive songs from the same album consecutively

only if it is coded badly

That depends: is it supposed to be a random shuffle or a 'random' shuffle?

Believe it or not, some of us quite like it when we are randomly presented with two tracks in order.

That's why some players (like Foobar2000) have "Shuffle" and "Random" as separate options.

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