> Why are so many people upset by this?
> It’s like they have some kind visceral reaction to seeing someone who isn’t being thrifty and researching every little thing out with spreadsheets.
It doesn’t affect you. They’re not telling you to do it.
Would you pay $100 for a 100MB usb drive? Would you not react and try to dissuade a friend from making a purchase you recognize to be ill-considered?
It’s your money, do what you want, but people are upset because there are (probably, since we dont know yet) better options that don’t have an Apple pricetag. The purchase would be based on complacency with a brand, and not conformity to rational principles and knowledge.
Few have already posted that they would buy this because it’s Apple, in order to avoid 1-2 hours of research. I really hope these aren’t the same people complaining about how terrible capitalism is.
I mean that's basically Yubikey. There are cheaper alternatives for the actual product and a browser-based password manager and a sw authenticator on your phone gives you all the same phishing and security benefits for $0.
I'm not about to be upset that someone still wants a Yubikey though.
The point is to not let the algorithm make decisions. The human bureaucracy is suppose to be there to determine the quality of the flags and analyze whether there is any discrimination at play. A company that lacks this human element is negligent and should be held responsible. Unless algorithms can be trialed and held accountable, they shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions.
Also guns don’t kill people, people do. Otherwise explain to me why it would be okay for certain institutions to be armed but not individuals. If guns are the problem, then no one should have them (including the military/police).
Just because you disagree with me, it doesn’t mean that I misunderstood the viewpoint I’m responding to.
> The point is to not let the algorithm make decisions.
And my response is—that’s not enough. It sounds like the algorithm, because it is biased, has the effect of increasing the bias in the whole system. If your response is that humans should work harder to counteract biases in machine systems, well, I think that’s just a way to CYA and assign blame but not a way to solve the problem—humans will remain biased, and they will trust automated systems even when that trust is misplaced.
As an analogy, it’s like a driver in a partially autonomous car. As soon as the automation takes over, the driver stops paying attention to the road. We can make a big fuss and production and talk about how it’s the driver’s fault, and the driver should pay attention, but we’ve placed them in a system where they are discouraged from paying attention, and the system is more dangerous as a consequence.
> Also guns don’t kill people, people do. Otherwise explain to me why it would be okay for certain institutions to be armed but not individuals. If guns are the problem, then no one should have them (including the military/police).
This is a false dilemma / false dichotomy. This argument assumes that EITHER access to guns is to blame OR people are to blame, but not both, but there are obviously other ways to think about the problem.
Any rational way to look at problems will look at multiple contributing factors.
Parent: The software itself shouldn't have any control over the student's grades. A person should have to review the flags and actually find some wrongdoing. Not just push 'yes' and walk away.
You: Let’s say you’re only using the software to flag suspicious behavior, and bringing in humans to make the final decision. What happens when (inevitably) the software disproportionally flags people with dark skin because it is not trained to recognize dark-skinned faces? Or when the software disproportionally flags poor people, or people with families?
Answer: A person should have to review the flags and actually find some wrongdoing.
You: It means that those groups of people will be targeted by the (human) bureaucracy and tasked with defending themselves, when they’ve done nothing wrong
Me: The human bureaucracy is suppose to be there to determine the quality of the flags and analyze whether there is any discrimination at play. A company that lacks this human element is negligent and should be held responsible.
> And my response is—that’s not enough. It sounds like the algorithm, because it is biased, has the effect of increasing the bias in the whole system.
Hence why the humans should be held responsible for not addressing bias in their system. And why the actions of an algorithm should be the responsibility of its creators.
> If your response is that humans should work harder to counteract biases in machine systems, well, I think that’s just a way to CYA and assign blame but not a way to solve the problem—humans will remain biased, and they will trust automated systems even when that trust is misplaced.
So...? What’s your solution? All you’re saying is that humans will remain bias, yeah they will. That’s why we have laws that punish discrimination and bias. If your company creates products (algorithms) that discriminate, you should be held responsible. The human element is not there to “work harder” but to assure that what you’re releasing works properly. If you don’t think increased accountability fixes the problem, please tell us what would be “enough”.
> This argument assumes that EITHER access to guns is to blame OR people are to blame, but not both
No assumption. If you think a cop can have a gun but a criminal can’t then the gun isn’t the problem. If you believe cops can have guns but civilians can’t then the main factor is the person with the gun and not the gun itself. This isn’t an argument against increased restrictions and if you believe no one should have guns (including the government) im all for it. But if you believe someone has the right to have guns while others don’t, im hard pressed to see any other determining factor except who has the gun.
Please make an effort to engage with the comments I make, rather than making guesses about my mental state.
> Me: The human bureaucracy is suppose to be there to determine the quality of the flags and analyze whether there is any discrimination at play. A company that lacks this human element is negligent and should be held responsible.
The human bureaucracy doesn’t do that very well. The human bureaucracy is deeply flawed and has limited skills. We can assign blame to the human bureaucracy for its failings all we want, but if we want to effect change then it’s necessary to include a broader range of factors in out fault analysis.
In other words, “assigning blame” is a low-stakes political game, and “root-cause analysis” is what really matters.
This is like the 737 MAX failures. You can say that it’s the pilot’s responsibility to fly the plane correctly—but the fact is, pilots have a limited amount of skill and focus, and can’t overcome any arbitrary failing of technology. So we rightly attribute the problem to the design of the system, of which the human is only one component.
This grading software is like the 737 MAX—it’s software that, as part of a complete system including non-software components like humans, does a bad job and needs repair. The 737 MAX reports listed something like NINE different root causes.
I don’t understand this absolutist viewpoint that the human bureaucracy is the ONLY thing that you need to protect you from bad software. There are multiple root causes, and the bad software is one of them.
> Hence why the humans should be held responsible for not addressing bias in their system. And why the actions of an algorithm should be the responsibility of its creators.
So you’re saying that there’s a problem with the software, and that we shouldn’t place all the blame on the college administrators? Isn’t that what I’m saying?
> But if you believe someone has the right to have guns while others don’t, im hard pressed to see any other determining factor except who has the gun.
I do believe that not everyone should have the right to own guns, but if you’re interested in arguing with me about it, I won’t engage. If the comparison doesn’t work for you, think of something less emotionally charged like the 737 MAX or the Tesla Autopilot—both are scenarios where we rightly cite the software / automation as a root cause in accidents.
> I don’t understand this absolutist viewpoint that the human bureaucracy is the ONLY thing that you need to protect you from bad software. There are multiple root causes, and the bad software is one of them.
There are multiple intermediate causes, and all of them are the responsibility of the human bureaucracy—including, to the extent it contributes, the selection, use, and failure to correct bad software—and all of them stem from one root cause, to wit, that the bureaucracy faces insufficient consequences for it's failures and thus lacks motivation to do it's job well.
Now, were the analysis being performed on behalf of the bureaucracy because they had decided to do their job, rather than being part of a discussion outside of them, the causes which are intermediate from a global perspective would be root causes, sure. Context matters.
It sounds stupid because that analogy doesn’t work. A surgeon can’t properly do most kinds of surgery on themselves, some are down right impossible. There’s nothing a mechanic can’t do to their car that they can’t do for their costumers.
Blacks and latinos can live in Montana as well... Also the electoral college predates emancipation, so I dont think the black vote was a factor for its creation.
California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? Cali and NY make up almost a third of the electoral votes.
Is it really fair for these two places to control and dictate the policies of a country spread as far and wide as the US? Hasnt the blue/red divide, not only in the country but within states themselves show that the desires and attitudes of people are heavily influenced by their geographic location? Isn’t a good thing there’s a political system (the electorates) that accounts for this?
> California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence?
No, California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter. In fact, even Democrats in CA and Republicans in MT have zero voice - because these states' outcome is predetermined, no presidential candidate has any incentive to promise anything for them.
Except 1988, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972 and so on. Aka in my lifetime (yes, I am old).
Georgia always votes Republican, except in this election (probably) or when Carter is running.
An acquaintance who hails from Indiana recently told me Indiana always votes for the Republican candidate, and was surprised to find out Obama took Indiana in 2008.
The Rust belt is deeply blue, except in 2016 when it was more purple with a tint of red.
Kennedy defeated Nixon in Georgia and New York and Nevada, but not in California. (And New York had more electoral votes than California until 1972).
The South used to be Democrat. The West used to be Republican. Except again when Johnson, Nixon, Reagan took essentially the entire nation.
Another example: Support for gay marriage between 1996 and now went from 68% opposition to 67% support. Proposition 8 in 2008 banning gay marriage in California was accepted by Californian voters just 12 years ago with 52% voting against gay marriage, and only 5 years later in 2013 that opposition had dwindled to 34%.
Even parties change: Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump with many stops in between. Demoncrats went from the party in favor of slavery and segregation to the party that claims to be all about racial/gender/sexuality justice.
Demographic and ideological shifts do occur regularly, often at a sluggish speed but sometimes quite quickly.
My point: don't say always.
(That isn't too say that I am in support of the electoral collage or the first-past-the-post voting system resulting in a defacto two party oligarchy; both are bad in my humble opinion).
> California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter.
This is only true if you hyper focus on the President (and ignore Bush/Reagan/Ford/Nixon in CA, Clinton in MT, etc.) - those voices are heard in the House and Senate, which have key impacts on what a President can actually do.
It’s also omitting the question of why those states vote the way they do. California now votes for Democrats not because the Republican Party forgot to campaign but because they pushed Proposition 187 through and convinced multiple generations of Latino voters that the GOP hated them. It is very easy to imagine, say, a world where George W. Bush put the state back in play after being successful in the effort to get the party shift away from the anti-Latino positions - call it the Trump opposite-world. That’s a big incentive but not enough due to where those states have considerable voice: the primaries. California might not be in question for the general but it definitely delivers a lot of votes for the primary winner, which affects their positions.
Yes, my point was that it wasn’t true that voices in certain states are ignored even if they don’t directly produce EC votes. A Republican Presidential candidate isn’t going to ignore California and New York voters who still elect members of Congress they’ll need to work with, donate the increasingly large amounts of money needed to run, and whose presence in the primaries affects who’s going to make it far enough to care about the EC.
Your argument doesn’t follow. It sounds like you have a problem with the winner takes all system in us elections and not the electorate. Conservative voices in Cali and Liberal voices in Texas would be more relevant in a proportional system and not a winner takes all. These would be particularly relevant for states with split populations.
> No places should control an election. People should.
You say this but you dont mean it. In practice, removing the electoral college today would guarantee that certain places (coastal/densely urbanized states) control the election.
Should a Taiwan be able to dictate the laws and policies of a Tibet just because they have a larger population? The reason there are borders (in theory at least) is for different communities with different interest to have certain autonomy to choose their own destinies. It was part of the “deal” when the union was made because of this. If you want to remove the electoral college, then there should be a painless and democratic way for states to secede.
There are very few countries as large as the US, this circumstance is not shared by many countries. We should have a proportional system and then there wouldn’t be much of a need for an electorate AFAIK.
> removing the electoral college today would guarantee that certain places (coastal/densely urbanized states) control the election.
You're still arguing in terms of places. Coastal urbanized states will "control the election" only in the sense that they have the majority of population and their average preference will have greater influence than the rest, when you average the whole area. In other words, they will control the election in the same way "people living to the south of Minneapolis" or "people who ordered Chinese food in the past year" will control the election.
A 'place' is not a meaningful unit of civic participation.
From one direction, California and New York are populous. California has 4 individual cities that each have a higher population than Wyoming. Is it unfair that California's influence is larger than Wyoming?
From another direction, is California a single place? The Electoral College lumps together San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento into a single unit. Those are miles apart from each other culturally, economically, and demographically (and for that matter, they're hundreds of miles from each other geographically). The Central Valley's relative lack of influence at the national level is because they're tacked on to the same 'place' as Los Angeles and San Francisco, which is an arbitrary division.
The House of Representative does a much better (but not perfect) job of geographic representation, because the geographic units are more proportional, and are continuously re-drawn with community cohesiveness as an influencing factor. Much of the skew of the Electoral College comes from the +2 votes per state, when state lines are fixed for centuries.
But the country is not a union of people of different ages and professions, but of different states, technically.
The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones. Without the electoral college, the colonies would not have agreed to unite under a shared federal government.
>The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones.
This is commonly repeated, but it's BS. What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana? Presidential candidates don't pay any attention to any of those "less densely populated agrarian states". In addition, dense states like NJ, NY, CT, and Mass don't get attention from candidates. California doesn't get any attention either, so what gives?
The states that get the attention are the swing states with the highest number of electoral votes, simply because the electoral college incentivizes trying to swing a small number of voters in such states.
> What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana?
Their collective voice along with the rest of the “heartland” is the backbone of the GOP. Trump and Bush both won without the popular vote because the electoral college amplified their collective voice.
The electorate doesn’t make them win, it gives them better odds. The campaign focus on swing states should explain itself...
Why should their voices be amplified while mine (in a rural part of NJ) is muffled? Why should the same persons vote be five times more powerful in Wyoming compared to if they lived in California? Why should we disenfranchise the millions of Trump voters in New York and millions of Biden voters in Texas? What about all the cities in red states and the rural areas in dense ones?
I don't see a single good reason for the electoral college. And you haven't explained what they're being protected from and why they need such protection.
I think this is a better argument for proportional allocation of electoral votes per state instead of winner-take-all (a la Nebraska), rather than arguing against the electoral college itself. If you feel Trump voters' voices are muffled in NY or Biden voters' voices are muffled in Texas, I agree wholeheartedly and would be strongly in favor of proportional allotment of electors at the state level.
The electoral college, however, serves the explicit purpose of making Wyoming votes count more exactly because they are extremely disadvantaged when attempting to impact federal policy. The same argument against the electoral college could be made against the Senate (why should every state get the same number of Senators?), but I don't hear too many disagreements (yet, at least) that the Senate as an institution has value.
The top four states have roughly a third of the national population; if federal policy were enacted purely by population, why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely? The Senate and the electoral college give enough of an advantage to small states that, even though no one or two small states are liable to flip an election by themselves, they are still able to have a voice in federal policy by coalition-building.
> The top four states have roughly a third of the national population; if federal policy were enacted purely by population, why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely? The Senate and the electoral college give enough of an advantage to small states that, even though no one or two small states are liable to flip an election by themselves, they are still able to have a voice in federal policy by coalition-building.
Proportional allocation of the electoral college is just a slightly less accurate popular vote. If we're gonna do that, might as well just do pop vote.
You don't hear the same argument against the senate as often because it's practically impossible to get rid of it. But many people are still against it (myself included).
>why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely?
That's a funny argument, because red states currently receive a lot more federal funding than what they pay in taxes, and blue states pay more taxes than what they get back in return. Plus, blue states actually want to give red states even more money, when you consider that blue states support more federal funding for healthcare and other programs.
Everyone is always concerned with protecting the smaller, less dense states, but really it's those states that have disproportionately more power. California contributes so much to red states, and what do they get in return? A bunch of senators and presidents who do nothing about climate change, thereby letting California burn even more. California is the one that needs more protection here, not the states whose farmers are getting six figure checks as bail-outs because the president they elected doesn't understand how trade wars work.
> California contributes so much to red states, and what do they get in return? A bunch of senators and presidents who do nothing about climate change, thereby letting California burn even more.
It's easy to imagine a political party that runs on a "cheap power for the cities" policy which involves mining and burning coal a long way away from any city.
How about renegotiating the number of electors to be equal per state. If we are a republic of states each state should get equal say. By going to popular vote a third of the country loses a voice.
Would you pay $100 for a 100MB usb drive? Would you not react and try to dissuade a friend from making a purchase you recognize to be ill-considered?
It’s your money, do what you want, but people are upset because there are (probably, since we dont know yet) better options that don’t have an Apple pricetag. The purchase would be based on complacency with a brand, and not conformity to rational principles and knowledge.
Few have already posted that they would buy this because it’s Apple, in order to avoid 1-2 hours of research. I really hope these aren’t the same people complaining about how terrible capitalism is.