I imagine someone else made up that title and thought 'close enough'. They obviously don't know Hacker News readers...

I changed the title to a phrase from the article which doesn't cover the whole thing but at least covers some of it.

In the article, she never directly states that hackers need to study the humanities. What she was basically saying - in the part about Vacca - is that there needs to be human oversight to algorithms that affect public policies (school districting, police paroles, ...). So the implication, in that example, is that programmers should work with people in the social sciences to deliver solutions that may not be algorithmically optimal, but better meet the needs of the community.

This assumes that humans will be compassionate, be pitiable, and always bend the rules to benefit those in need, whereas algorithms are harsh and cruel.

In reality the algorithms are doing exactly what the humans would do. School districting for example...this has to be the most objective determination in public policy. In 99% of the US the school districts are already set. Where you go to school is determined by your home address or some other rule. None of the humans involved are particularly motivated to find a spot in their hearts to bend these rules out of pity...so why would the algorithms? No one is going to risk their job seating your child in another school district because their nuanced worldview has resolved that you merit being an exception. Bureaucracy is a meat computer.

The reality is that public policy has become algorithmic by public demand. Look at California's "three strikes" law. This is a very simple algorithm that has widespread public support, regardless of actual applicability.

Fairness is also a policy motivation. The public has rejected policies that are unfairly applied. We actually have little desire to grant a policy bureaucrat dictatorial power to apply benefits as they see fit simply by virtue of their having read Descartes.

We've already asked you to please post civilly and substantively, so we've banned the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The problem with the hacker mindset as it applies to algorithms affecting lives is that most folk who studied computer science ( or any of the hard sciences for that matter ) usually went through programs that never approach the human interaction beyond, how to hook the user and keep them involved.

CS majors should be required to take at least 20 hours of philosophy or history. Or, be required to do 20 hours of community service. It's too easy to live in a code bubble and forget the rest of the world lives on $2 a day. That's why we have Uber which solves problems for the first world and the third world remains a disaster.

I think we have Uber because you can make money from people who can afford a taxi ride, but you can't from someone who lives on $2/day. Not that I disagree that learning about people in real hardship is important.

Why shouldn't a philosophy major do community service? How does reading Foucalt or Plato make someone inherently virtuous?

There are plenty of financiers who are draining the wealth of the world into their own pockets who were educated in the humanities.

Sure, some computer people live in bubble. But the idea that humanities professors are going to help change that instead of making them even more deluded I think is wrong. The humanities are currently a toxic breeding ground for pro statist, pro racist and pro sexist ideas. Only since their sexist and racist views express the kind of sexism and racism that government types approve of, it gets promoted as being "humanitarian"

Exactly. If you want to learn about the human condition, you don't enroll in a literature program at Yale, you go work at MacDonald's for year.

> may not be algorithmically optimal, but better meet the needs of the community

Yeah, that sounds a bit like a blank check for someone to corrupt the generated output under the guise of a nebulous "It's better for our community" while scaremongering about the big bad algorithm.

Corruption could happen in any case, but I still agree with having human oversight [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong

She is only asked about it in the last question, and mentions a New York City politician wanting open source algorithms:

> Algorithms make decisions all through his borough, the East Bronx, including where children go to school, where police patrols are assigned, and the schedule for garbage pickup.

Which seems a bit bizarre, open source algorithms would be nice, but the tie in to 'the humanities' seems tenuous at best.

Perhaps it was left out in editing, or is made in Ullman's recently published book Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology.