BIAS-FREE
Machines have the same biases humans have.
Humans design the machines. Humans design the programs used on computers that provide automated services.
Just because an operating procedure or method is automated doesn’t mean it’s bias-free. It isn’t. Humans insert their biases into the programs.
Is bias-free the same as a lottery system? You have to do something to get into the lottery system in the first place, something that gets the individual or the group noticed and judged worthy enough to participate in the lottery.
This lottery system in a socio-political-economic sense refers to whatever an individual or group seeks and wants or wants more of.
For instance, if only first language Spanish-speaking people born in countries south of the USA border, or by individual countries south of the USA or island communities, or countries in any other continent are allowed legal entry into the USA, then at some point they had to petition for that lottery.
Nobody is going to be included in a lottery system who doesn’t want to be there. Or if by mistake they are included, then they would be given the opportunity to decline whatever it was being offered.
It is at the point of petition that biases are made, just as it is with machines and those who program them. Biases have been petitioned for insertion if they have made it all the way to the consideration process.
Then with the consideration process, comes more bias.
Even if you have a big jar with names in it, whereby the names pulled are by an automated random procedure, there had to be a process of bias to determine which names made it into the jar.
All names?
As many as were provided.
That’s it right there. ‘As many as were provided’, and of course we couldn’t fit them all, the program was designed for a ‘limited number of applicants’ – that’s another bias right there.
Well, we just got overwhelmed, we didn’t think so many would apply. So yes, we just put in as many as would fit, throwing our hands up into the air. It was chaotic in that lottery room.
Everybody is in the prejudicial box. It’s human nature to judge – everything, everybody, all the time.
When we decide who to discriminate against, by petitioning to insert biases, corruption enters the process of selection.
Then there is that question that nobody answers. Who are WE?
The ones who petition on behalf of the petitioners, the ones receiving the petitions and the ones forwarding the petitions.
You mean their names.
Well, could be anybody. Only insiders know and they are the ones who inform their constituencies. And as before, the constituencies have representatives with names only certain people know.
And, what process do these petitions go through along the way? Selection or rubber stamping.
Which Petitioner Representative gets a face-to-face meeting with members of the these socio-political-economic lotteries. And which don’t?
They’re not randomly selected, that’s for sure.
The conclusion drawn is that the socio-political-economic lottery system is filled with biases at every juncture.
When you insert the human factor into a lottery system, whereby the balls you’re picking are humanoids, it’s not the same as a money lottery.
There are always ways to fix the numbers (cook the books) when dealing with machines, and every state does it – legally of course. The laws that govern fixing odds or the equivalent are mostly out of view of the public.
Actually it’s easier than fixing a horse or dog race or sports game, because it’s always done to increase funds that go to the government. Of course they don’t call it ‘fixing’. They make laws that benefit themselves by claiming the laws reduce fraud from individuals.
It’s similar to Facebook, if you post more than a handful of posts in succession, they’ll tell you to slow down or be blocked for a period of time as punishment.
This happens to me often, since Facebook stopped automatically posting my posts from Word Press to my profile page.
They only post by automation to my Facebook business page. Everything else has to be manually posted. So, I wait a bit and do my manual posting all at once – which is more efficient for me, given I maintain eight websites, plus engage in social media, which invariably leads to warnings, then I stop. But then I also forget to get back to it, because I’m doing a zillion other things.
So my posting behavior is corrupted by Facebook, interrupting my free speech rights that they claim to support, based on their machines selecting me to be discriminated against, based on the biases of their programmers’ judgment on what constitutes a spammer. I’m not a spammer. Never have been, wouldn’t even know how to do it. Have no desire to do it.
Bias sounds like a more neutral word and process than prejudice, but it isn’t.
Machines are the middle man from the past. Everything goes through the middle person. There’s the maker of the product (programmer) the distributer of the product (machine) and the buyer of the product (you).
If you program a bias into a procedure the machine or procedure will produce a biased result.
Most biases in business are based on statistics. In trying to make one size fits all, you end up with a size that doesn’t fit anybody very well. ‘IT’LL DO’ is their statistic mantra. It’ll do us fine. We’ll make money on most people not being satisfied, but it’s not so bad. The outliers on the ends of the continuum, well that’s why we have disclaimer labels and instructions for dos and don’ts.
People want to buy and they want to buy cheap. There are so many odd sized humans all over the globe with odd sized multiple needs, that we have to settle.
Everybody settles to get their product out. Many settle too fast in order to beat the competition, but then they have to regroup and redesign a product that was released before it was fully developed.
Sometimes that works if a segment of buyers are forgiving, but just as many times they’re not forgiving until years later when they try the product again. Imagine the sales lost due to the premature release of a product?
I got side-tracked a little here on bias, since it just occurred to me that it is a gentler, kinder way of addressing what we all were created to do anyway: judge, judge and prejudge.
The word prejudice has become loaded and bogged down with everybody’s agendas, to the extent that it’s difficult to discuss its process or access its value in any given situation or condition.
There are values to some biases. Although there are also values to some prejudices; it has become impossible to discuss them without people going off the rails.
So I’m going to shelve prejudice for a while and focus on bias.
WORD WARRIOR DAVIES-TIGHT™ 