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Brillyant comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Interesting rhetorical sparring point taking place in the U.S. election that relates to rationality here at LW.
In the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton referenced bias when discussing the recent spate of police shootings of African Americans. Clinton said “implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police,” and went on to say “I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other," and “I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, ‘why am I feeling this way?’”
In the VP debate last night, again in the context of recent police shootings, Dem candidate Tim Kaine said, "People shouldn't be afraid to bring up issues of bias in law enforcement. And if you're afraid to have the discussion, you'll never solve it."
Clinton/Kaine have predictably drawn criticism from the Red Team for the comments (who try to paint the Blue Team as anti-police), but it seems to me the Dems have been more defensive than they need to be, given it seems obvious to me (from my time at LW) that humans are biased, and this bias would obviously be likely to play a role in high stress situations (like when guns are involved).
It will be interesting to me to see how this is adjudicated according to public opinion. Do people generally accept everyone has biases and of course this would affect police officers in high stress situations? Or do they view bias as a rare condition that only affects people without the proper virtue? Is this argument actually over different definitions of the word "bias"? Is it just a Red v. Blue argument that has little to do with facts?
I, for one, think Kaine and Clinton's comments were correct and made a very salient point. (But I'm biased against Trump.)
The problem is that the statistics don't show the claimed bias. Normalized on a per-police-encounter basis, white cops (or cops-in-general) don't appear to shoot black suspects more often than they shoot white suspects. However, police interact with black people more frequently, so the absolute proportion of black shooting victims is elevated.
The fact that the incidence of police encounters with blacks is elevated would be the actual social problem worth addressing, but the reasons for the elevated incidence of police-black encounters do not make a nice soundbite.
None of this is important of course because, as is usual for politics, the whole mess degenerates into cheerleading for your team and condemning the other team, and sensitive analysis of the actual evidence would be giving aid and comfort to the hated enemy.
Can you provide any sources for this?
Is the incidence of police encounters with blacks elevated?
What are the reasons?
For example, there were 4,636 murders committed by white people and 5,620 murders committed by black people in 2015 (source). On the per-capita basis this makes the by-white murder rate to be about 2.2 per 100,000 and the by-black murder rate to be about 16.2 per 100,000.
Why is this?
You asked why is "the incidence of police encounters with blacks elevated". This is a direct answer.
If you want to know the reasons for different crime rates, this is going to get long and complicated.
Can/will you TL;DR your view?
As with any complex phenomenon in a complex system, there is going to be a laundry list of contributing factors, none of which is the cause (in the sense that fixing just that cause will fix the entire problem). We can start with
The opinions about the relative weights of these factors are going to differ and in the current political climate I don't think a reasonable open discussion is possible.
What is the best source for this in your view?
Is it your view that past slavery in America still has a large impact on African Americans in the present day U.S.?
It seems obvious to me that it does, and that the effects are wide and deep, as slavery (and Jim Crow) is relatively recent history—We're only a handful of generations from a time where a race of people was enslaved and systemically kept from accumulating wealth and education.
Meh. Maybe. I'd like to believe I'm a reasonable guy. My views on these issues are largely ignorant and I'm open to learning.
The raw data is plentiful -- look at any standardized test scores (e.g. SAT) by race. For a full-blown argument in favor see e.g. this (I can't check the link at the moment, it might be that you need to go to the Wayback Machine to access it). For a more, um, mainstream discussion see Charles Murray's The Bell Curve. Wikipedia has more links you could pursue.
My view is that history is important and that outcomes are path-dependent. Slavery and segregation are crucial parts of the history of American blacks.
Your social circles might have a strong reaction to you coming to anything other than the approved conclusions...
So have you actually learned anything from these discussions, in particular, are you willing to admit that the Hillary/Kane analysis of the "implicit biases" of police officers you cited in the OC is wrong?
What do you mean with that question? How do you compare the present state of the US with a counterfactual US where African Americans weren't in slavery?
I would also be interested in your view.
Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399
What are the reasons? Well, beginning with the discovery of the North American continent 1492 ...
Boo politics discussion during the pre-election madness.
I would guess that the concept of bias as used in cognitive psychology is not well known in the broad public. It's generally mixed up with the concept of having a conflict of interest.
Most people also don't think in terms of probability which you need to think about implicit biases the way it's conceptualized in cognitive science. Even someone like Obama had episodes like his "it's 50/50" comment in the hunt for Bin Ladin.
Can you explain the difference a "bias" in cognitive psychology and how you think Cinton/Kaine used the term?
My sense is that they are related...closely.
I'm not speaking about the difference in how they used the term but in the way it's understood in the public. Clinton likely has a decent idea of what the academic concept of implicit bias happens to be.
This doesn't mean cognitive bias in a LW sense, it means everyone is racist, specifically against black people. I also don't think its true - if everyone is a little bit racist, why would people get into interracial relationships? Its possible that the majority of people prefer their own race but don't admit it, indeed the fact that racial groups cluster in cities could be argued to show this is the case via revealed preferences, but it seems obvious that some people have no racial bias.
This, like all politics, is far from rational. It starts by painting the issue in terms of 'people who disagree with me are cowards' and proceeds to assume that this discussion must conclude that the bias exists.
There are many attributes of possible partners that make me less likely to data them but that at the same time aren't deal breakers. The fact that I have a theistic girlfriend doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer a girlfriend who isn't theistic all things equal.
It depends whether we are using 'racist' to mean 'believes that some races are superior to others in certain respects' or 'has less empathy for other races'. In the first case, sure, maybe you would date someone of another race, because group differences aren't so important when dealing with individuals. But in the latter case... if you are less able to empathise with people of other races it would seem really weird to date them.
We are using it here to mean "implicit racism". That's a term that used in the literature. There are studies that measure it. Implicit racism also isn't something that's only found in white people (in Clinton's words it's a problem for everyone). Black people also have implicit racism that makes them treat white people better in many instances.
I don't think it means that. I don't think she meant that. (Though I guess it depends on your definition of "racist".)
My understanding is that humans have a tribal in/out group mentality that may use race as way to classify other humans as "others". They can also use religion, class, culture, etc.
My understanding of Clinton's (and then Kaine's) remarks was that everyone has biases of which they are unconscious...and that these biases affect their thoughts...and therefore sometimes their actions.
I'm pretty sure that is what she means. There is a big controversy in the US over whether the police are racist, not over whether the police have cognitive biases. I would be overjoyed if presidential candidates really were discussing cognitive biases.
No disagreement here.
Hm. I don't think it's this clear a distinction. Clinton seems to be suggesting there is perhaps more nuance to the issue than just arguing about whether or not lots of cops are racist.
Interesting. I was very happy to hear Clinton speak of implicit bias because it seemed to be a way to advance the discussion to something more rational.
Why do you think that? The Gender studies folks that speak most about implicit bias aren't the demographic that tries to create evidence-based policing policy. It also doesn't seem to be a group of people who are on good terms when it comes to speaking with police departments about how to design their policy.
Because people have implicit cognitive biases. It's useful to discuss them.
Peoples' cognitive maps aren't the territory. And people aren't always conscious of the mistakes. Further, many people I've heard discuss politics in this election cycle seem unaware that there even could be errors in their map.
Instead of arguing over our competing maps, one good first step is to acknowledge our maps have errors, which is what I think Clinton's line about "implicit bias" did.
The fact that a claim is true doesn't automatically mean that it's useful to discuss it.
No, it's not an admission of Clinton that her maps have errors. In general people ability to interactually recite "all maps have errors" doesn't mean that they use that belief for interacting with their own maps differently.
When it comes to having a rational discussion this is even bad, because it allows people to easily play motte-and-bailey.
It doesn't? In what way would it not be useful?
I think it's extremely useful to discuss how the brain you are using to solve problems has flaws that may be inhibiting you from solving those problems, or even recognizing the problems accurately. (It's why I was on LW originally...)
(Maybe you're using "automatically" here as a qualifier to make your statement technically correct—Is that what you mean? Like, people could discuss cognitive biases in a really stupid and irrational way that would make it unproductive? If that's what you mean, then, yeah. Of course.)
It's not? I thought she said we all (i.e. humans) have implicit biases? Wouldn't that include Clinton?
Whether a discussion is useful depends on the results of the discussion. There are a lot of true things you can say that don't advance a discussion into a direction that leads to a positive outcome.
It wasn't a discussion of how implicit bias works but an uncited assertion that it has effects in certain conditions.
That might be true but it's not what the LW mission of rationality that's about systematic winning is about. I understand the mission to be about finding thinking strategies that lead to making winning decisions.
You can make an argument that logically it includes Clinton. You can also look at the decision making literature and see what saying "everyone has biases" does to a person self awareness of their own biases. It generally does little.
It's interesting that nobody asks why White people get shoot so much more than Asian people when the ratio of them getting shoot is equivalent to the ratio of White people vs. Black people. Per million, 5.03 Blacks, 5.02 Whites and only 0.72 Asians get shoot in this year by the police.
The focus on implicit bias is interesting. It's like blaming the weather. We can agree that the weather is bad but that doesn't change anything. The DNC emails suggest that it was DNC policy to not want to commit to any real demands of Black Lives Matter but simply focus on telling their narrative.
If they wanted real change they could proclaim that there a need for a new federal department that focuses on police accountability and in the future that department will persecute misdeeds by officers so that officers don't get persecuted by their buddies anymore.