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So the nation "Germany" is paying what the winners of the war decided.
Apart from that, who is "the nation" who is supposed to apologize, and in what way? Are Germans who hid Jews in their attics also to apologize? What about the queer Germans who were imprisoned in the concentration camps, and then returned to a free life in post war Germany? You don't really know anything about the individual Germans, so who are you to dish out universal blame? What about Nazis who emigrated to the US - does that mean the US should also apologize for the genocide of millions of Jews?
Yes sometimes crimes of nations can also be disentangled, and things stolen can be returned. But it is also not a card blanche for arbitrary demands, forever. There was in fact also a history before WWII, it was not just a bunch of people turning evil out of the blue. When do you stop - with Adam and Eve?
I feel a responsibility to all people, and Germans maybe are raised more sensitive to some issues than others. But that's about it. Maybe if I was sitting on a huge pile of nazi gold, I'd think different. But I am not. So maybe address your blame to the people who actually got rich.
"I believe those people are owed reparations"
But how much? Are you planning to leave the US, to give them back their land? Somehow I don't think so? How much would be enough, to acquit you of your guilt?
I don't think the brief colonial episode simply explains the wealth of my country (or many others) - especially as in between it had been completely destroyed.
But that's also, again, besides the point. History was complex. All sorts of people made war with each other, murdered and enslaved. Including people in the African continent. That's what humans were and are. Maybe those warmongering people simply earned their exploits, "fair and square" so to speak - we may not like it, but who is going to take it away from them, and on what grounds?
But the theory that wealth is only a result of exploitation is completely wrong. Our wealth in the modern world is mostly the result of technological progress, not of exploitation.
But it doesn't really matter, as I said. Nobody who was around back then is still alive today.
But also, I don't feel guilty for the deeds of my nation, as they happened before my birth. I feel we have a duty to learn from history to prevent bad things from happening. That's it.
If you really want to go down that route - you are aware that the USA was taken away from native Americans, who died by the millions?
It's fine to strive for preventing it. Google surely learned from the Gorilla mistake and improved their algorithm. But it is too much to blame them of racism for that error, and demand all such errors are prevented. That is simply impossible.
You now think of the simple example of "white vs black", but there are many, many more facets to it. There may be races that are not even discovered yet. You may now have accounted black people in your algorithm. Have you included Tibetan monks, Inuit, native Americans? People with facial deformities? Bad lighting? It is simply impossible to take into account all possibilities, because you can not predict them all. You can only try to improve your algorithm as much as possible. You can't demand perfect algorithms.
People have "gamed" image recognition algorithms, adding some noise to make them yield completely silly results. The algorithms are simply not perfect yet.
"Not having many different racial groups living together does not mean that a nation has not significantly benefitted from or perpetuated massively destructive, often times genocidal projects on racialized grounds"
Ugh, spare me. If you want to go down that route, consider that many people in Africa also benefited from slavery (black tribes selling their enemies as slaves). And my country (Germany) was not even involved in the slave trade, or much of colonization. Yes, if you look down far enough in history, you will find violence and all sorts of ugly things. The PoC you are trying to protect might only be alive because his ancestors killed off their neighboring tribe, women, children and all. I don't think it even makes sense to somehow try to disentangle that. Just treat the people living today in a fair way.
It seems to me many US citizens think the whole world is like the US. It isn't. There are many countries where there are not as many "races" living together as in the US.
I think it's an important point. For example, if I were a writer and I would write a novel, I would perhaps only feature white people in it. But not because I have anything against black people, but simply because I don't really know any black people and would therefore be hard pressed to write about them. Doing that wouldn't make me racist - I would simply write a novel from "my" world. It would in fact probably be impossible to write a novel that accounts for all possible human experiences.
Edit: would it even have been possible to calibrate chemical film to work equally well for black and white skin? What if it would have been necessary to have different film rolls for white and black skin, for optimal result. Would those have been racist film rolls? Or what about makeup for different skin tones? Is that racist?
No, I am not "saying".
My comment was in response to praise of AOCs alleged technical understanding, not of her ability to judge the gorilla algorithm.
And you don't seem to understand what algorithms do. A simple algorithm could count pixels in an image. If most pixels are white, it could say "human", if most pixels are "black", it could say "gorilla". It would be a verify bad classifier, that would only work in a number of cases. For that algorithm, you could say a black person would be more similar to a gorilla. But nobody would "be saying" black people are similar to gorillas, just that the algorithm would be more likely to classify them as such.
Are you saying people would use the "authority" of such an algorithm to claim black people are gorillas?
"If you're trotting out that grand old "black people all look the same" thing"
I didn't - stop imagining so many things. I am not a photographer. I think there were issues with the lighting and contrast. Physical issues. Other commentator claims it is just because film equipment was calibrated that way.
Even then I would dispute the "racist" label. There are many different looking people on the planet. Just because you can not account for all of them, it is not racist.
I am inclined to call your attitude racist, because you assume everybody is surrounded by the same mix of people (like in the US), and maliciously chooses to ignore certain types. That overlooks the reality of people who are not surrounded by an even mix of people of all types.
Also, I have to say I considered it hyperbole to be outraged about the Gorilla. It seems pretty obvious that it was just a mistake with the data, not intentional. It is a good warning for things to watch out for, but there wasn't really anything racist about it.
Iirc there are even physical reasons why it is more difficult to identify black faces than white faces. Is that then racist, if an algorithm struggles more with identifying black faces?
And the article is a mess, confusing and mixing up several things.