A lot to unpack here, let me try. Are machine learning algorythms capable of stereotyping people? How accurate does a stereotype have to be before it's a useful predictor?
If these models lead to good data, then what's wrong with them? If people who follow the NBA do in fact default on their loans more, shouldn't they pay higher interest?
I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance?
It seems you primarily see things along racial divides, grouping people into black, white, and asian. There are, more nuanced ways to group people, which is exactly what these agorythms are doing.
Also, what's wrong with wealth inequality? I'd be much more concerned about absolute quality of life, which has increased dramatically for everyone in the last half century.
- May be based on bad, inaccurate, or nonrepresentative data.
- May be based on factors intrinsic to individuals which they cannot change.
- May mask underlying bias factors (as in the NBA example above.)
- May reflect existing biases in behaviours. E.g., arrest, promotion, recruitment, or admissions data used to encode an AI selector, which merely codify biases reflected in the underlying historical data.
- May reverse causality, implying A causes B, when in fact B results in A.
- Amplify existing inequalities. Starting points in life matter, and an algorithm which simply amplifies the existing inequities of wealth, race, place of birth, religion, health, etc., compound rather than address these issues.
- Fail to consider fairness or equity in decisionmaking. This is the underlying fundamental problem in credit-based resource allocation. People need access to resources regardless of their creditworthiness, though there might well be cases in which allocations are modified or managed given behavioural issues. Reinforcing standing biases does not address the underlying inequities.
I would say that accuracy is a greater concern than "fairness" or "equity" since it's quite hard to agree on the meanings of the latter terms (and as pointed out above, these are political, not statistical concerns, and the distinction is meaningful). I would expect that inaccuracy in such models would be iteratively improved. If the models are already more accurate than existing methods, doesn't that make them better?
Doesn't a more accurate model in fact ensure that fewer people are lumped into groups they don't belong to, and that more deserving people (ie. people who are likley to repay loans) have access to credit?
All these criteria are value judgements and exquisitely political.
I give you Karl Marx:
As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
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Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
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The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.
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The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.
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Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
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Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.
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POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.
The first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people.
Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart.
You cite all of this as though it has been haded down by a supreme authority and I implicitly have to agree with what is written. I do not and Adam Smith had many contemporaries who did not as well.
Liberty itself is in opposition to flourishing and collective good. Is it right to murder a man to save 1000 innocent children? What about 5? What about one? If it is right, please do explain why.
All of this treats "the people" as entities without agency, some formless mass that the enlightened politicians have a duty to care for, whether they like it or not. In absence of divine authority, there is simply no basis for this sort sense of superiority. You decide what's right for you, and leave others to do the same. Then we can all get along.
Point being that the mainstream and foundation of economic thought are quite strongly at odds with your minority, fringe, and amoral views. By your own admission.
There are numerous holes in your view. You seem strongly motivated to avoid seeing or admitting any of them.
I'm afriad you've not pointed out any holes. Where does "the mainstream" get its moral authority from? Just from being mainstream? Don't you see how that's massively problematic?
You've not described how my views are amoral either. What's wrong with consent exactly?
Smith makes his case. He is the father of modern economics whether or not you subscribe to his beliefs or not. The question of equity specifically is addressed in the passage:
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
That makes measurement unambiguous and shows the failure of your multiple assertions otherwise.
The values you propose of "accuracy", "efficiency", "dignity", and political vs. economic concerns (Smith clearly combines the terms) are equally if not far more arbitrary and poorly supported by empirical evidence.
I'm not going to spoon-feed him to you, though the curation of passages posted above would be an excellent starting point for one actually capable of benefiting from exposure.
But this already presumes that the universal goal is to be flourishing and happy, rather than to be free. These goals are often opposed. What I'm honestly asking is from where authority is derived for the "flourishing" camp to force their opinions onto the "freedom" camp?
The main value I'm proposing is "consent". It's rather less arbitrary than "flourishing" or "happy" or "fair". The basic premise is that all human interactions, relationships and associations ought to be as consensual as we have realized romantic ones ought to be. You're no more entitled to a surgery or a loan than a partner. If you disagree, then all I'm asking is from where do you derive the entitlement?
> I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance?
Because it makes health insurance impossible to get when you need it most. It makes health insurance a scam because any serious illness and your company will fire you and you won't be able to get any other insurance. Insurance becomes cheap because it's useless.
Wealth inequality is a problem because money = power. Extreme wealth concentration is not compatible with democracy because eventually these people and corporations are so wealthy they can just buy votes. Spiraling wealth inequality gets you a Russia situation, an Oligarchy in everything but name.
Your argument is not a far stretch from "why don't we just let poor and sick people die". It's pretty much equivalent to "why don't we allow anyone to discriminate however they want", which got us great things like slavery
My argument is that all human interactions should be consensual. Slavery is clearly and obviously out of the questions. Discrimination is the act of making choices, you do it every time you order something to eat. I do belive people should be able to make whatever choices in personal and professional association they please, without anyone trying to peek into their heads and guess at their intentions.
I strongly beleive in caring for the poor and the sick. That is one of the oldest definitions of the virtue of charity. I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so?
> I am wholly against imposing my own personal virtues on other people though. Why are you so comfortable doing so?
I'm only explaining the world as I see it, just as you did in the comments above. You shouldn't be so dismissive of dissenting opinions.
In my opinion, your viewpoint that you should be able to choose everything you want to pay for will never work. A sizable portion of the population will decide to pay nothing while still receiving benefits, leading the rest to stop paying.
It's not like you can deposit a nickel for every street light you pass, or every crime prevented by the police. Some services must be paid by everyone if they are to exist at all because their value is not directly tangible.
Education is a good example. You may not go to a school and say "well, I don't go so I shouldn't have to pay for it". Yet you still reap most of the benefits of the rest of the population being able to read and write. If most of the population couldn't read or write the affect on GDP and job availability would be terrible and definitely effect you directly. The value is provided to some extent to everyone in society. The only way to avoid any personal benefit is to live isolated from the rest of society in the middle of nowhere.
Another clear example is government provided healthcare for infectious diseases. The government does a lot of vaccinations and it's impossible to avoid benefitting from that without cutting off all interaction with other humans. You directly benefit from others being vaccinated by having a lower personal risk of getting infected.
I think your view is too narrow and focuses on transactional exchanges, like buying gas or paying a toll. But it doesn't capture the larger benefit to everyone including yourself for things like having less criminals, illiterate people, and junkies running around. Which is the societal benefit to a lot of government programs and why everyone is expected to pay for them.
Your idea of not paying for services you don't use falls apart when considering that many of these services directly benefit you even if you don't directly consume them. And the only way to avoid the benefits is to avoid society completely.
Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning?
Basically, loans should only be given to those who are 99% likely to pay them back. Anyone who is at risk of default, say because they lost their job should be denied, making a permanent descent into poverty and misery even more likely.
Health insurance should only be given to those who are already healthy. Anyone who is sick enough to significantly benefit from insurance should be rejected. Even if they have an easily treatable condition that costs $50 in medicine a month, they should be rejected, guaranteeing their health gets worse.
In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother?
In your world, the slightest shock in someone's life would mean all safety nets get pulled, guaranteeing they will never recover. Then that data gets fed back to an ML model, confirming that yes indeed, people who need money or healthcare never do well anyways, so why bother with a lost cause?
Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization.
The purpose of risk assessment isn't to only give loans/insurance to 0 risk people. It's to quantify the level of risk.
Once you know the level of risk you can then give loans, adjusting the interest rate to make up for the risk. By hiding information from lenders, you actually make them less likely to give a loan, rather than more likely. An unknown level of risk is 100x worse than a known high level of risk.
> Have you considered the logical endpoint of your line of reasoning?
In fact I have. In my estimation, if we adopted a model of interaction that emphasizes consent, the incapable and unfortunate among us would rely on charity to have their needs met, as they have for most of history. This seems much more ethical than to rely on force through taxation. It can't be compassionate to impose your idea of compassion onto other unwilling people.
It is also worth noting that as long as we consume goods made by people in conditions we don't tolerate domestically, we're being wildly hypocritical. All we've done is offshore the suffering, and in the process massively harm the environment shipping things to and from more lenient jurisdictions.
> In a world that worked so hard over centuries to create modern healthcare, we should only use it for people who barely need it. We may have literally figured out how to transplant organs and save lives, but nah its too expensive so why bother?
It should be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it. If you want a modern operating theatre, filled with expensive equipent and highly educated people, someone has to pay for it regardless of whether it's for yourself or for your horse. I'm only saying that the person who pays should do so consensually.
Likewise, if all you can afford is a street dentist with rusty tools, then I don't see from where one derives entitlement to anything else. As mentioned earlier, we already buy things made by people who live in such conditions, so the point is moot.
> Anyways, your worldview is fucked. Hope you think much more deeply about it. Or just grow old in the world you wish for, maybe one day you will need surgery, insurance will reject you, banks will not loan you the $200k it costs, and you will die for the sake of the algorithms and profit maximization.
This all may be, but I will be dying with my dignity intact, not greedily reaching into the pocket of a stranger, deluded into thinking I'm entitled to what's inside.
You seem to think prices and wages are set in stone by the gods or ideal free markets. They're not. Healthcare is an inelastic good, people have to pay whatever it costs.
Lots of research into the cost vs. outcomes of healthcare in the US vs. other countries shows that its very wasteful. Heck there was an interview with an ex health insurance exec who admitted they created the narrative of healthcare being shitty in Canada to sway public support for privatized healthcare. I personally buy drugs that cost $1-2 in other countries, but $100+ without insurance in US. In most cases, state owned healthcare ends up being much cheaper - so perhaps a surgery that costs $200K to one person, would cost only $100K when funded by the state because they have MUCH more negotiating power. So in a sense, public healthcare makes the entire system more efficient.
If we took on your Darwinian model, then its a very simple negotiation - life-saving medicines or surgeries are worth infinity, because otherwise you die. So if you ever need either of those, the doctors will simply ask for every single dollar and asset you have in perpetuity, easy.
> You seem to think prices and wages are set in stone by the gods or ideal free markets.
I don't. I think prices and wages ought to be privately negotiated between consumers and producers, and employees and employers respectively. I also think that people are no more entitled to goods, employment or services from other people than they are to romantic relationships, which clearly need to be consensual.
Healthcare in the US is extremely heavily regulated, that's why it's so expensive. The minimum quality of care is absurdly high. There's no budget option. If you want any medical care, you have to see a physician with an ridiculously expensive education, the supply of which has been artificially limited by regulatory capture.
This is all highly unethical. If you need a simple procedure, why can't someone with the equivalent of technician training do it for much cheaper? Again, this would be a consensual interaction between two parties, which is nobody's buiness but their own.
> If we took on your Darwinian model, then its a very simple negotiation - life-saving medicines or surgeries are worth infinity, because otherwise you die. So if you ever need either of those, the doctors will simply ask for every single dollar and asset you have in perpetuity, easy.
This just totally ignores the idea of competition. If some doctors are charging infinity, then others would realize they could capture market share by charging less than that. The veterenary comparison is very apt, why should human healthcare work any differently?
Guess we found something we agree on :D I totally agree with healthcare being over-regulated to death. Its ridiculous we have a constant (and ever-growing) shortage of doctors, but you still can't pick up basic medicines without a prescription, order your own tests etc. Its incredibly frustrating because you can't take control of your own destiny even if you want to because of all these stupid paternal laws. "There's no budget option" about sums it up. I do see some signs of it changing with wearables, continuous glucose monitors, DNA testing kits etc. people are taking control of their own health. But the medical institution will take a long, long time to kill.
Indeed =) Then you should also agree with me that adding more regulation to the system is counterproductive. We should be looking to deregulate as much as possible, allowing people to take control of their own destiny, as you aptly put it. This is exactly what a consent-focused interaction model looks like: enforce nonviolent interaction and contract law, but otherwise just leave people alone as much as possible.
Healthcare for humans is just another service, it doesn't need to be a special category. There doesn't need to be an association whose membership is granted a monopoly on this service. In absence of regulation, private industry would self-organize into tiers based on demand. From the very lowest tier of service, to the highest. This what we see in countries without so much regulatory burden, and more market freedom, such as India or China.
More fundementally, there is no moral justification for any of it. Just because one person or group of people belive in empathy, or a particular modal of social order, doesn't give them the right to impose that on others who disagree.
Yes, I'm in favor of doing away with a lot of the existing regulation and privatized health insurance altogether.
But that's not the question we started with. To get back to the original question -
I still believe using better modeling to make health insurance or loans available only to those who barely need it is highly unethical. If we are staying stuck in the current model of insanely high sticker prices that are only affordable with insurance then i don't believe it's ethical to deprive people who need insurance - because in this current model, there is no easy free market alternative, only illness and death.
The langugae you use suggests you beleive that people are entitled to health care as a service. Where do you derive this entitlement from? Honestly, what's wrong with illness and death? It's not something any of us can avoid indefinetly.
In general, the defining goal of modern capitalism is to create surpluses and progress along various axes such that we can afford to be "entitled" to more.
I (and most other people) believe people should be "entitled" to not be slaves to tyrants, to freedom of speech, to food/warmth/shelter, to basic utilities like running water and electricity. If we have a surplus of resources such that we COULD either give everyone healthcare or give a few people more money, why should society as a whole pick the latter?
Except I don't call that entitlement, its called progress. By your logic, we should not take for granted anything that wasn't' present at the birth of civilization such as not being mauled by a bear or freezing to death. Why should our standard for humanity as a whole be stagnation instead of progress? Does that benefit anyone? If your country was taken over by a dictator and you were forced at gunpoint to become a slave, would you prefer other countries to try to restore democracy, or would you prefer that they say "why should you be entitled to freedom?" and do nothing?
I think you are basically taking libertarianism and "not reaching into the pocket of strangers" to a crazy extreme. Yes, it is a virtue to be self sufficient. Charity and empathy are also virtues.
> By your logic, we should not take for granted anything that wasn't' present at the birth of civilization such as not being mauled by a bear or freezing to death.
Yes I agree wholeheartedly. We should not take anything for granted, and perceive any improvements to our quality of life as things to be grateful for, not entitled to. We are all born naked and hungry. Everything we receive afterwards we get from other people, people who are not obligated to give us anything.
All of your examples of being forced into chains at gunpoint oppose the fundamental principle I'm advocating for: consent. Just because someone has something (say indoor heating), it doesn't entitle you to have the same thing. Just because others live comfortably, it doesn't mean you should as well. Just because you define "progress" a certain way, it doesn't give you the right to impose that definition on me, does it?
> Yes, it is a virtue to be self sufficient. Charity and empathy are also virtues.
Yes! Where we disagree is whether these virtues should be voluntary or compulsive. For all of history until recently, they were voluntary. We have NGOs and other organizations which operate on this model of voluntary charity. This is the only model that's ethical. What gives you the right to impose your virtues on others?
Again, this is all maybe sorta possible in a completely theoretical new world, but in this world the debate is different - either we continue to let health insurance companies deny coverage to most and make it so healthcare goes only to those we barely need it, or we socialize it so that its accessible for all. Even if I agreed on the ideal end state, that doesn't change the fact that there are only 2 realistic next steps, and one is better IMO even if its further away from the "ideal".
I understand you are libertarian and believe only in consent, i don't need that explained to me again. I'm talking about actual concrete next steps on a concrete situation (healthcare), not "imagine you could rebuild the entire world in an ideal fashion". Thats the question I really want you to answer.
More along the lines of the philosophical (but less important, pointless) debate - Consent is not so clear as you think it is. Why should I consent to your single-minded focus on consent as the only valid principle of organizing society overriding all other concerns of practicality? What if I view that as an imposition of your virtues on mine?
I would say any next step should be focused on moving towards the ideal, not away from it. As we've identifed earlier, deregulating the actual practice of medicine, and adopting a model that more closely resembles veteranry care, would take us quite far in the right direction. Basically instead of socializing the ridiculous costs of the current system, we should focus on creating an wider spectrum of options for people. There should be a budget option.
I strongly disagree that it's pointless to have an underlying philosophy that decisions are based on, quite the opposite in fact. I would say that having a consistent philosophy or set of principles is the most important thing when making any sort of decisions, especially in the administration of complex systems such as society.
To answer your second (very valid) question, the underlying assumption is that we are all more or less equal, and therefore neither of us has a right to impose anything on the other. The question I've asked that you've not answered is what is the source of your authority to decide what virtues I should live by? I'm not saying you have to live by mine, just that you lack the moral authority to make me live by yours.
The fact that I'm asking for a source of authority is just a fancy way of saying "why do you think you can impose on me and not expect me to resist with violence and subversion?"
The approach that rejects the rusty-tools dentist is also more likely to reject the offshored oppressive offshored (or quite frequently, domestic) labour, rather than binning all empathy looking at either, other similar situations, or worse, and shrugging it off with a "meh, not my problem".
The worldview you're expressing has absolutely no dignity.
Well this all implies that we agree that empathy should be a driving force in decision making, overriding all others, to the point that it's ethical to impose onto wider society. Where do you derive the authority to extract compliance, by force, with your virtues and worldview at the expense of others?
Also I don't think we agree on the definition of dignity. In my eyes it's perfectly possible to die of disease or starvation with dignity. Otherwise you're implying that nature itself is bereft of it.
If these models lead to good data, then what's wrong with them? If people who follow the NBA do in fact default on their loans more, shouldn't they pay higher interest?
I agree that the healthy should not be compelled to subsidize the costs of healthcare for the unhealthy. Can you tell me why it's ethical to force my compliance?
It seems you primarily see things along racial divides, grouping people into black, white, and asian. There are, more nuanced ways to group people, which is exactly what these agorythms are doing.
Also, what's wrong with wealth inequality? I'd be much more concerned about absolute quality of life, which has increased dramatically for everyone in the last half century.