Title: Cloud Vision
Date: 2020-02-24 05:00
Category: other
-Tags: cathartic, news
+Tags: cathartic, news, COVID-19
Google reportedly [recently](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373635) [sent](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/f6pyiu/cloud_vision_api_will_not_return_gendered_labels/) out an email to their [Cloud Vision API](https://cloud.google.com/vision) customers, notifying them that the service will stop returning "woman" or "man" labels for people in photos. Being charitable (as one does), I can think of reasons why I might defend or support such a decision. Detecting the sex of humans in images is going to significantly less reliable than just picking out the humans in the photo, and the way the machines do sex-classification is going to depend on their training corpus, which might contain embedded cultural prejudices that [Google might not want to](https://ai.google/principles/) inadvertently use their technological hegemony to reproduce and amplify. Just using a "person" label dodges the whole problem.
I don't think the deep and subtle questions are being asked. The reigning ideology does not _permit itself the expressive power_ to _formulate_ the deep and subtle questions. "Given that a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance," reads the email. _Cannot_ be inferred, says Google! This is either insane, or a blatant lie told to appease the insane. Neither bodes well for the future of my civilization. (Contrast to sane versions of the concern, like, "Cannot be inferred with sufficiently high reliability", or, "Can be inferred in most cases, but we're concerned about the social implications of misclassifying edge cases.") I'm used to this shit from support groups at the queer center in Berkeley or in Portland, but I never really took it seriously—never really believed that it _could_ be taken seriously. But Google! Aren't those guys supposed to know math?
-Just ... this _fucking_ ideology that assumes everyone has this "gender" thing that's _incredibly important for everyone to respect and honor_, but otherwise has _no particular properties whatsoever_. I can sketch out an argument for why, in theory, the ideology is memetically fit: there are [at least two](/tag/two-type-taxonomy/) (and probably three or four) clusters of motivations for why some humans want to change sex; liberal-individualist Society wants to accomodate them and [progressives want to use them as a designated-victim pity-pump](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/#blue-egregore), but the inadequacy of the existing continuum of interventions, and perhaps more so the _continuity_ of the menu of available interventions, is such that [verbal self-identification ends up being the only stable Schelling point](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/).
+Just ... this _fucking_ ideology that assumes everyone has this "gender" thing that's _incredibly important for everyone to respect and honor_, but otherwise has _no particular properties whatsoever_. I can sketch out an argument for why, in theory, the ideology is [memetically fit](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/): there are [at least two](/tag/two-type-taxonomy/) (and probably three or four) clusters of motivations for why some humans want to change sex; liberal-individualist Society wants to accomodate them and [progressives want to use them as a designated-victim pity-pump](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/#blue-egregore), but the inadequacy of the existing continuum of interventions, and perhaps more so the _continuity_ of the menu of available interventions, is such that [verbal self-identification ends up being the only stable Schelling point](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/).
But the theory doesn't help me wrap my head about how _grown-ups actually believe this shit_. Or at least, are too scared to be caught dead admitting out loud that they don't. This is [Cultural Revolution](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2671118186) shit! This is [Lysenko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)-tier mindfuckery up in here!
And I don't know how to convey, to anyone who doesn't already feel it too, that I'm _scared_—and that I have a _reason_ to be scared.
-I believe that knowledge is useful, and that there are [_general_ algorithms](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms)—patterns of thinking and talking—that produce knowledge. You can't just get _one_ thing wrong—every wrong answer comes from a bug in your _process_, and there's an infinite family of other inputs that could trigger the same bug. [The calculator that says `6 + 7 = 14`](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yaCwW8nPQeJknbCgf/free-speech-and-triskaidekaphobic-calculators-a-reply-to) isn't just going to mislead you if you use it to predict what happens when you combine a stack of ●●●●●● pennies and a stack of ●●●●●●● pennies—it's _not a calculator_. The thing-that-it-computes is _not arithmetic_.
+I believe that knowledge is useful, and that there are [_general_ algorithms](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcCpvYLoSFP4iAqSz/rationality-appreciating-cognitive-algorithms)—patterns of thinking and talking—that produce knowledge. You can't just get _one_ thing wrong—every wrong answer comes from a bug in your _process_, and there's an infinite family of other inputs that could trigger the same bug. [The calculator that says `6 + 7 = 14`](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yaCwW8nPQeJknbCgf/free-speech-and-triskaidekaphobic-calculators-a-reply-to) isn't just going to mislead you if you use it to predict what happens when you combine a stack of ●●●●●● pennies and a stack of ●●●●●●● pennies—it's _not a calculator_. The function-that-it-computes is _not arithmetic_.
I am not particularly intelligent man. If I ever seem to be saying true and important things that almost no one else is saying, it's not because I'm unusually insightful, but because I'm unusually bad at keeping secrets. There are ... _operators_ among us, [savvy](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/) Straussian motherfuckers who know and see everything I can, and more—but who think [it doesn't matter](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NG4XQEL5PTyguDMff/but-it-doesn-t-matter) that [not everybody knows](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/).
And I guess ... I think it matters? [One of the evilest reactionary bloggers mentioned the difference](https://blog.jim.com/economics/draining-the-swamp-2/) between a state religion that requires you to believe in the unseen, and one that requires you to disbelieve in what is seen. My thesis is that a state religion that requires you to fluidly doublethink around the implications of "Some women have penises", will also falter over something even the Straussians have [to protect](/2019/Jul/the-source-of-our-power/). But I can't prove it.
-The [COVID-19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019) news is playing hell with my neuroticism. [They say](https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/) you should stock up on needed prescription drugs, in case of supply-chain disruptions. I guess I'm glad that, unlike some of my friends who I am otherwise jealous of, I'm not dependent on drugs for the hormones that my body needs in order for my bones to not rot. I wish I had _known_ tweleve years ago, that accepting that dependency in exchange for its scintillating benefits was an _option_ for cases like mine. There's at least a consistency in this: it's not safe to depend on the supply lines of a system that didn't [just tell me](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/).
+The [COVID-19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019) news is playing hell with my neuroticism. [They say](https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/) you should stock up on needed prescription drugs, in case of supply-chain disruptions. I guess I'm glad that, unlike some of my friends who I am otherwise jealous of, I'm not dependent on drugs for the hormones that my body needs in order for my bones to not rot. I wish I had _known_ tweleve years ago, that accepting that dependency in exchange for its scintillating benefits was an _option_ for cases like mine. There's at least a consistency in this: it's _not safe_ to depend on the supply lines of a system that didn't have the all-around competency to [just tell me](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/).
Anyway, _besides_ the [Total Culture War over the future of my neurotype](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/) tearing apart ten-year friendships and having me plotting to flee my hometown, my life is going pretty okay. I'm getting paid lots of money to sell insurance in Canada, and I have lots of things to look forward to, like the conclusion to the _Tangled_ sequel series, or the conclusion to the _Obnoxious Bad Decision Child_ sequel miniseries, or finishing my forthcoming review of the new Charles Murray book. (It's going to be great—a strategic bid to broaden the topic scope of the blog to "things that only right-wing Bad Guys want to talk about, but without myself being a right-wing Bad Guy" in _full generality_, not just for autogynephila and the [correspondence of language to reality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names).)
[TODO: tie into farmer/forager theory: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/10/divide-forager-v-farmer.html ]
-Women are better at verbal ability and social cognition, whereas men are better at visuospatial skills. The sexes achieve similar levels of overall performance via somewhat different mental "toolkits." Murray devotes a section to a 2007 result of Johnson and Bouchard, who report that general intelligence ["masks the dimensions on which [sex differences in mental abilities] lie"](/papers/johnson-bouchard-sex_differences_in_mental_abilities_g_masks_the_dimensions.pdf): overall levels of mental well-functioning lead to underestimates of the effect sizes of specific mental abilities, which you want to statistically correct for. This result in particular is _super gratifying_ to me personally, because [I independently had a very similar idea a few months back](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/)—it's _super validating_ as an amateur to find that the pros have been thinking along the same track!
+Women are better at verbal ability and social cognition, whereas [men are better at visuospatial skills](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/12/alpha-gamma-phi/). The sexes achieve similar levels of overall performance via somewhat different mental "toolkits." Murray devotes a section to a 2007 result of Johnson and Bouchard, who report that general intelligence ["masks the dimensions on which [sex differences in mental abilities] lie"](/papers/johnson-bouchard-sex_differences_in_mental_abilities_g_masks_the_dimensions.pdf): overall levels of mental well-functioning lead to underestimates of the effect sizes of specific mental abilities, which you want to statistically correct for. This result in particular is _super gratifying_ to me personally, because [I independently had a very similar idea a few months back](/2019/Sep/does-general-intelligence-deflate-standardized-effect-sizes-of-cognitive-sex-differences/)—it's _super validating_ as an amateur to find that the pros have been thinking along the same track!
The second part of the book is about some ways in which people with different ancestries are different from each other! Obviously, there are no "distinct" "races" (that would be dumb), but it turns out (as found by endeavors such as [Li _et al._ 2008](/papers/li_et_al-worldwide_human_relationships_inferred.pdf)) that when you throw clustering and [dimensionality-reduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionality_reduction) algorithms at SNP data (<em>s</em>ingle <em>n</em>ucleotide <em>p</em>olymorphisms, places in the genome where more than one allele has non-negligible frequency), you get groupings that are a pretty good match to classical or self-identified "races".
So Murray and Herrnstein talk about this "intelligence" thingy, and how it's heritable, and how it predicts income, school success, not being a criminal, _&c._, and how this has all sorts of implications for Society and inequality and class structure and stuff.
-This _should_ just be more social-science nerd stuff, the sort of thing that would only draw your attention if, like me, you feel bad about not being smart enough to do algebraic topology and want to console yourself by at least knowing about the Science of not being smart enough to do algebraic topology. The reason everyone _and her dog_ is still mad at Charles Murray a quarter century later is Chapter 13, "Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability", and Chapter 14, "Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ". So, _apparently_, different ethnic/"racial" groups have different average scores on IQ tests. [Ashkenazi Jews do the best](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/). (I sometimes privately joke that the fact that I'm [only 85% Ashkenazi (according to 23andMe)](/images/ancestry_report.png) explains my low IQ.) East Asians do a little better than Europeans/"whites". And—this is the part no one is happy about—the difference between U.S. whites and U.S. blacks is about Cohen's _d_ ≈ 1. (If two groups differ by _d_ = 1 on some measurement that's normally distributed within each group, that means that the mean of the group with the lower average measurement is at the 16th percentile of the group with the higher average measurement, or that a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the higher average measurement has a probability of 0.76 have having a higher measurement than a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the lower average measurement.)
+This _should_ just be more social-science nerd stuff, the sort of thing that would only draw your attention if, like me, you feel bad about not being smart enough to do algebraic topology and want to console yourself by at least knowing about the Science of not being smart enough to do algebraic topology. The reason everyone _and her dog_ is still mad at Charles Murray a quarter century later is Chapter 13, "Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability", and Chapter 14, "Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ". So, _apparently_, different ethnic/"racial" groups have different average scores on IQ tests. [Ashkenazi Jews do the best](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/). (I sometimes privately joke that the fact that I'm [only 85% Ashkenazi (according to 23andMe)](/images/ancestry_report.png) explains my low IQ.) East Asians do a little better than Europeans/"whites". And—this is the part no one is happy about—the difference between U.S. whites and U.S. blacks is about Cohen's _d_ ≈ 1. (If two groups differ by _d_ = 1 on some measurement that's normally distributed within each group, that means that the mean of the group with the lower average measurement is at the 16th percentile of the group with the higher average measurement, or that a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the higher average measurement has a probability of about 0.76 have having a higher measurement than a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the lower average measurement.)
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff