Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers

Re:Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals rep... by vidarh on Saturday February 06, 2021 @11:13AM (#26047462)

I assign zero value to "common sense". "Common sense" to me would also suggest that people would reveal less of their real biases and more of their concern of what those observing them might think when in an artificial setting where they know their actions will be scrutinised. We can come up with all kinds of "common sense" ideas about what might happen to explain this, and they're all nothing more than wild guesses.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals rep... by CryptoPunk on Saturday February 06, 2021 @08:04PM (#26051699)

Common sense informs what hypothesis to test and what axioms to accept.

Putting common sense aside, a 25X lower likelihood of shooting unarmed black suspects in the experiment suggests massive bias in favor of black suspects.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals rep... by vidarh on Sunday February 07, 2021 @11:38AM (#26056113)

Assuming it suggests bias in favor of black suspects is assuming a hell of a lot about the accuracy of the simulation relative to real life and whether or not it captures bias or peoples beliefs about how they are expected to act or changes to e.g. fear levels, that are not supported (it's also not contradicted - there's as far as I can tell no data either way) by the experiment in question.

All it tells us in isolation is that this is how a set of people in current society acts in a simulation of that kind. It does not tell us why, and trying to draw conclusions about why without further experiments is irresponsible.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals rep... by CryptoPunk on Friday February 19, 2021 @09:45PM (#26201013)

The experiment would have to be flawed to an absurd degree for the findings to not be an indication of bias in favor of black suspects.

Even multiple minor/medium sized flaws in the experimental design that produce black favoritism not reflected in real world behavior wouldn't in the aggregate account for producing a 25 times exaggeration of bias.

The bias is undoubtedly there.

[ Parent | on HN ]