Comment by zahlman
1 day ago
> This is such a bizarre sentence. The way its tossed in, not explained in any way,
It reads naturally in context and is explained by the foregoing text. For example, the phrase "these theoretical & empirical considerations" refers to theoretical and empirical considerations described above. The basic idea is that, because everything correlates with everything else, you can't just look at correlations and infer that they're more than incidental. The political implications are not at all "weird", and follow naturally. The author observes that social scientists build complex models and observe huge amounts of variables, which allows them to find correlations that support their hypothesis; but these correlations, exactly because they can be found everywhere, are not anywhere near as solid evidence as they are presented as being.
> Like I guess the implication being made is something like "because there is a hidden latent variable that determines criminality and we can never escape from correlations with it, its ok to use "is_black" in our black box model which decides if someone is going to get parole?
No, not at all. The implication is that we cannot conclude that the black box model actually has an "is_black" variable, even if it is observed to have disparate impact on black people.
Sorry, but I don't think that is a reasonable read. The phrase "not drawing on them may not be desirable, possible, or even meaningful" is a political statement except perhaps for "possible," which is just a flat statement that its hard to separate causal variables from non-causal ones.
Nothing in the statistical observation that variables tend to be correlated suggests we should somehow reject the moral perspective that that its desirable for a model to be based on causal rather than merely correlated variables, even if finding such variables is difficult or even, impossible to do perfectly. And its certainly also _meaningful_ to do so, even if there are statistical challenges. A model based on "socioeconomic status" has a totally different social meaning than one based on race, even if we cannot fully disentangle the two statistically. He is mixing up statistical and social, moral and even philosophical questions in a way which is, in my opinion, misleading.
Or maybe your own announced bias against “rationalists” is affecting your reading of this. I agree with GPs interpretation.
>its desirable for a model to be based on causal rather than merely correlated variables
Ironically, your "likes_hiphop" example would appear to be an unusually clean case of a variable that is likely to exert causal influence.
What do you think the causal effect of listening to lyrics like "Prolly leave my fuckin' show in a cop car" might be, on an impressionable teenage boy say?
From one of the most-streamed hip-hop songs of all time:
https://genius.com/Post-malone-rockstar-lyrics
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-05-20/best-hip-hop-songs-1...
>A model based on "socioeconomic status" has a totally different social meaning than one based on race, even if we cannot fully disentangle the two statistically.
I see no evidence Gwern disagrees with this claim. He just seems to be arguing the "cannot fully disentangle the two statistically" part.
> Nothing in the statistical observation that variables tend to be correlated suggests we should somehow reject the moral perspective that that its desirable for a model to be based on causal rather than merely correlated variables, even if finding such variables is difficult or even, impossible to do perfectly.
Perfect is the enemy of good. That it would be desirable to construct a model based on causal variables is self-evident, but we don't have those, and if a correlative model can demonstrably improve people's material conditions, even if conditioned on variables you find "distasteful", what is your argument that such a model shouldn't be used?
It really depends on a lot of things, frankly. For one thing, we, as a society, aren't optimizing for short term material conditions exclusively. The abstract dignity of not letting arbitrary variables determine important aspects of our lives might outweigh certain material benefits.