Re:In Amazon Go, no one thinks I'm stealing
by barrkel on Sunday October 28, 2018 @05:21AM
(#18319822)
What usually happens with profiling is that catch rate is out of proportion with the base rate.
For example, if blue people are twice as likely to do bad things as red people, you end up catching more than twice as many blue people when you profile based on blueness. And that's unfair discrimination. It's unfair on all the honest blue people made to feel like criminals.
And of course it's self-perpetuating. The lopsided catch rates justify profiling in the minds of people doing the catching.
In the real world, I dont know the underlying actual differences in offending rates, but I do know that correlation with life circumstances would probably be much higher than skin colour.
For example, if blue people are twice as likely to do bad things as red people, you end up catching more than twice as many blue people when you profile based on blueness. And that's unfair discrimination. It's unfair on all the honest blue people made to feel like criminals.
And of course it's self-perpetuating. The lopsided catch rates justify profiling in the minds of people doing the catching.
In the real world, I dont know the underlying actual differences in offending rates, but I do know that correlation with life circumstances would probably be much higher than skin colour.