Our brains run simulations, the better to survive and reproduce. Simulations don't have to be rational; they just need to be possible. Or possibly possible…Beliefs aren't either/or propositions; they are points along a continuum of felt credibility.
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“It is an increasingly familiar experience. A request for help to a large language model such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT is promptly met by a response that is confident, coherent and just plain wrong. In an AI model, such tendencies are usually described as hallucinations. A more informal word exists, however: these are the qualities of a great bullshitter… The fundamental problem is that language models are probabilistic, while truth is not.” - AI models make stuff up. How can hallucinations be controlled? The Economist February 28, 2024
Mastery is that feeling of riding the wave, of knowing what adjustments to make as it tries to throw you off. You may still lose your balance. The wave may win. But you're not overwhelmed; you’re focused and you keep trying.
“Abstraction is the enemy of personal empathy, but it’s essential for equitable elections. Villages are communal, but they aren’t truly democratic. A level of abstraction is necessary to imagine other citizens as equal agents with rights, not clan histories.” - Adam Gopnik, To Fix Democracy, First Figure Out What’s Broken
Note how the violent crime rate tripled between 1965 and 1980, and although the violent crime rate has been falling since the mid-1990s, it is still close to double the 1965 rate.
First, the numbers for homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft…Next, a comparison of Oakland and U.S. crime rates… Verdict: …
Of course, causes rarely work like that in the real world, which is why scientists speak such in such convoluted terms. To say “x partly accounts for a portion of y given certain assumptions and conditions and only at high levels of x” lacks the emotional bunch of “x causes y” but that’s often how the world works.
So when people say x is the cause, or the ultimate cause, or the root cause, of some phenomenon: doubt and try to disconfirm the proposition - with a Wason test.
What would Make Redlining a Root Cause of the Black-White Homeownership Gap (If It is One), Part III
The gap in Black-white homeownership rates recently reached 30.1% in the U,S. Per Jung Hyun Choi of The Urban Institute, three factors explain around 80% of this gap: difference in Black-white income (31%), marital status (27%), and credit scores (22%).
Andre Perry and David Harshbarger of the Brookings Institute have already crunched those numbers. To quote:
…approximately 11 million Americans (10,852,727) live in once-redlined areas, according to the latest population data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2017). This population is majority-minority but not majority-Black, and, contrary to conventional perceptions, Black residents also do not form a plurality in these areas overall. The Black population share is approximately 28%, ranking third among the racial groups who live in formerly redlined areas, behind white and Latino or Hispanic residents…While still a tremendously large population, the approximately 3 million Black residents in redlined areas account for just 8% of all non-Latino or Hispanic Black Americans.
Proximate cause (direct cause): Occurs immediately prior to the [outcome of interest]; directly results in its occurrence and, if eliminated or modified, would have prevented the undesired outcome
Root Cause: One of multiple factors (events, conditions or organizational factors) that created the proximate cause and subsequent undesired outcome. Typically multiple root causes contribute to an undesired outcome [my italics].
Root Cause Analysis: A method primarily used to identify the underlying cause of an incident or issue, and more effectively mitigate or prevent future similar incidents.
— So the question for this post is: how would we know whether the historical practice of redlining created a causal pathway that led directly to the current Black-White homeownership gap in the US? In other words, was redlining one of multiple factors responsible for the proximate causes of the Black-White homeownership gap?
The inspiration for this post was reading No, seriously. Root Cause is a Fallacy, by Will Gallego, especially:
Let’s start with some understanding behind the appeal of root cause. The thinking is that you want to get to the underlying problem, starting at where it begins, rather than treating the downstream effects. I can appreciate resolving deeper underlying issues rather than “treating the symptoms” when problems large or small crop up. Our systems are complex. It’s very tempting to look at a singular part in an effort to simplify our understanding and achieve resolution..
My take on why the 26 phrases are considered dog whistles (main objection only):
Racist or Xenophobic: Community Violence, Urban Violence, Urban Crime, Black-on-White Crime, Tough on Crime, Law & Order, Food Stamps, Anti-China, Islamic Terrorism, Illegal Immigrants Promotes interests of corporations and the rich: Job Creators, Tax Cuts, Big Government (as a criticism), Increase Military Spending….
1. A coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others. Merriam-Webster.com … 10. An ”intriguing tool of hermeneutics in which you can accuse anyone of saying anything even if they didn't say it because you can always hear the dogwhistle if you yourself are a canine with hypersonic hearing.” Steven Pinker, quoted in “Steven Pinker Beats Cancel Culture Attack”
Which got me thinking…How do we know what someone means when they say something? How do we know what they’re thinking of when they say things? Or, even harder, what unconscious cognitions are behind their words?… Can words be true, valid, useful, insightful, demeaning and hurtful all at the same time? If so, how do we deal with it? What counts as evidence that certain expressions are dog whistles? What counts as definitive evidence?
Confident and optimistic? The machinery will tilt towards images of success and triumph, but not dwell on them because no preparation is required for what may come. We already know we can handle whatever is thrown our way, and it will be good.
Grievance involves feelings of deprivation, shame, humiliation, impotent anger, and being the victim of injustice. Grievance demands payback. Deep grievance demands big payback and may not be satisfied until the payback is proportionate to the harm done. Which may take forever.
So if I were to walk a random 10-acre area in Houston and San Francisco, which city would city would be more dangerous for me personally, considering only violent crime rate and crime density?
Note the governments of Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden had previously supported gender-affirming care for children. But they reconsidered in light of new evidence that such care could sometimes be harmful. American activists know about this evidence as well but many have chosen to dig in, not yielding an inch. However, this post is not about the merits of gender-affirming care for children. It’s about why people and policymakers persist in old ways of thinking and doing despite evidence that the old ways are suboptimal or worse.
Something to ponder: is achieving some of the Moral Good now better than achieving more of the Moral Good later? Given that increasingly later is increasingly uncertain, at what point of later/uncertainty should one just say “screw it” and commit to action? (The answer, as always: it depends).
In other words, if carrots and sticks change the behavior, then the person has at least some control over the behavior, which is another way of saying: if one is able to engage in goal-directed behavior (e.g. approach carrot, avoid stick), one is responsible to some degree for one’s actions and the outcomes of those actions…That’s where “stigma” comes in. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “stigma in the context of health is the negative association between a person or group of people who share certain characteristics and a specific disease, including mental illness”. And per the voluminous literature on stigma, a common stigmatizing stereotype associated with mental health disorders such as drug addiction is that people are responsible for their condition.