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0 pointsslg7y ago0 comments

>the more likely that someone will crunch it and find some statistical patterns that they will label “racism” or "sexism". Even if you’re innocent

The existence of that pattern by itself might be enough for a company to be guilty of discrimination. If a policy disproportionately harms a specific protected class and they can't show a legitimate business reason for that policy, it is illegal regardless of intent. It is called disparate impact.

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simsla7y ago

No. Any data exhibits random patterns, especially if you try too hard.

If you check for 10 patterns, each at the 95% significance level (p<0.05), there's a 40% chance of getting at least one false positive. Look for 20 patterns and that goes up to 60%.

That's why science requires you to formulate a hypothesis before running the experiment. And why finding a pattern through data analysis does not warrant a witch hunt.

heavenlyblue7y ago

And here you're forgetting about the significance of the patterns themselves.

95% significance of the fact that no women or ex convicts were hired for the job? Seems significant enough that a newspaper would write about it.

95% significance of not hiring a guy who looking too much of a hipster and has too many tattoos? Not sure, to be honest - I can see how society (and newspaper writers) would easily dismiss that as bs.

Don't try to abstract it away as otherwise it just seems you're justifying something absolutely ridiculous.

slgOP7y ago

I don't know what to tell you. It isn't my opinion. It is the law. [1] You can't just saw "No." and be done with it.

It also isn't about setting up a witch hunt. It is about protecting people from discriminatory practices even when the discrimination is neither overt or even intentional.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

adwn7y ago

simsla is giving a reason why that's a bad law – they're not disagreeing that this law exists. A law can have been well-intentioned by legislators yet get abused in practice.

wildmusings7y ago

Good point about the disparate impact doctrine. More reason to say as little as possible about your hiring decisions. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny?

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