Re:Show HN: Basilica – word2vec for anything
by pasabagi on Wednesday October 31, 2018 @04:33PM
(#18349067)
I think there's a further problem that there's never been a shortage of evidence, about things like this. The point is, prejudice and discrimination are not evidence-based in the first place. People who support existing unjust structures are generally strongly motivated to turn a blind eye. Even people who don't support them are - it's simply far easier and more socially advantageous to stop worrying and love the bomb.
If it did, what conclusion would you be able to draw?
As far as I know, there's no theoretical justification for thinking that word vectors are guaranteed to capture meaningful semantic content. Empirically, sometimes they do; other times, the relationships are noise or garbage.
I am wholeheartedly in favor of trying to examine one's own biases, but you shouldn't trust an ad-hoc algorithm to be the arbiter of what those biases are.