An apology, I accused bruce of deleting one of my posts, it apparently never actually got posted due to the 25-second limit.

So, nobody wants enhanced screening? Nobody is afraid of bombings? How do you know this? (Maybe there is a different thread to discuss this.)

Well, I'm sure there are people who are afraid of bombings and think that enhanced screening decreases the chance of a bombing.

But they are wrong to be afraid (you're much more likely to die in the car on the way to and from the airport) and they are also wrong that enhanced screening works.

Spend some time in airports. Watch. Listen. All you hear are comments along the lines of "****ing bull****". All you see are people shaking their heads when they're taking off their shoes. You never, ever see anybody thanking TSA agents for screening. People tend to bend over backwards to thank uniforms who've done something they think is helpful, and they'll spontaneously thank military who are just walking around. People thank pilots for a smooth landing, yet they sneer at TSA agents for (supposedly) not letting them get blown the **** up along the way. The bulk attitudes can be safely inferred.

I'm sure some people are afraid and stay off airplanes. They're at least consistent.

What if indeed those idiots in my opinion that complain knew that if there were no shoe tests, there is a process with which you can have 4 people carry non metallic items in their shoes that they can disassemble in the bathrooms and then join and create a device that can in fact take down a plane, and this TSA process is the only thing stopping them from doing it this way, so that they have to engineer another approach that is far more complex, hence unlikely. Would then these idiots feel happy that such tests are taking place moreover the nuisance? Is it any different than game theory when some fraction of the time you call all ins with bluff catchers in some spot to keep them honest? Why isnt checking in airports the real life equivalent of bluff catcher call?

Conclusion; people should be ok with some screening. Additionally if you can only screen 20 out of 200 people who would you want them to be chosen from at random of those 200 to improve chances ? From little kids with tiny shoes, women with sexy shoes or men with big bulky shoes? Is that now racist profiling against men that wear bulky shoes?

Only true idiots in this world take offense at profiling when the resources are not available to do a proper thorough, check all the same, approach. And only mega morons then call racists those who suggest that such profiling or selective sampling when constrained by limitations to do a exhaustive search, is necessary.

Of course another class of mega morons altogether will see as racist, posts that try to actually explain in vivid terms how light forms of racism or profiling or prejudice can be created/built in the population by the way groups of people tend to behave, interfering with each others' choices of quality time for example, that is correlated well with their ethnic origin and therefore race at times. Probability theory is used for better judgements in a world of constraints. The real racism starts when in fact the constraints (or information limits) are no longer there but the prior biased approaches built still persist and people who engage in them refuse to accept that they need to modify behavior because they enforce unnecessary suffering to completely innocent people.

You are going to far the other way. Even if there are not resources to check everyone, if an ethnic group is only slightly more likely to be dangerous the harm that is caused, especially to the children who see it, is not worth the slight reduction in risk.

My non-exhaustive research found that 40-45% of cop killers are black.

And this is why at some point personal responsibility and family has to rise up and cover all the problems this example i used creates. (although in my example the risk is not slightly higher if added over all flights all the year, checking those that have bulky shoes and are not part of say a big family of different ages is still going to protect a lot from that risk, not just a bit, without of course being a substitute for full 100% sampling). And by the way why cant the people doing the sampling not offer an apology to the people checked with some explanation of the reasons.

I hold responsible and shame on them all the parents that will not use this profiling example in some airport as an opportunity to talk to their kids and explain to them that they need to respect and treat with love all the people they meet (ok lets assume we have had the be careful of strangers talk etc when very young) until they prove otherwise unworthy of such kind treatment, and even then continue to fight to make it possible they are treated friendly again.

If people wear hats (some religious too) in which they can hide things that detectors cant see its not my problem to search them, its their problem and they should know better if that irritates them now (it shouldnt), and i have nothing against their religious choices. A parent must step in and explain to the kids these people searched are not bad people, they are likely as good or bad as a random person but it is their clothes/habits etc that present a statistical risk. My parents didnt raise me up to dislike African or Asian people or Muslims. My schools didnt teach me that its ok to be a racist. They taught me to think and respect all other people and judge them from their actions and even then have compassion, understanding and forgiveness and open minded attitude that something deeper is going on that needs to be studied to justify what is observed or to revolt against it.

This is why it all goes back to education and this is why scientific society will not have such problems.

"We should treat everyone as a good person by default but we gotta profile the brownies, that's just common sense, I mean they are brown after all"


What the **** dude?

Exactly where the f the brownies came into this? Why call them brownies by the way, isnt that racist in itself? If a blonde sexy woman came and had long boots search her as well. If an Orthodox Christian cleric with a big long hat came search him the same as you would a Shiekh, if all the others are not wearing things you can hide stuff in and you have only time to check the most obvious risks ( in that plastic explosives cover-up sense). Where was skin color used in any of my examples? Better yet build technology that can test people without anyone knowing it lol and check everyone and without any harm to them. Until then do whatever minimally invasive you have to do and all must accept it without being insulted because if they are insulted they are uncooperative morons that want to have it both ways, be the risk and still force the others to bend over for them lol.

Lol. Pvn just pulled a Putin. The Geneva Convention clearly states that politics forum people are not allowed to invade SMP no matter how stupid the conversation gets here.

Masque apparently thinks that normal people dress like Sprockets.

In my earlier posts on this subject, I went further and suggested actual gifts.

But your suggestion that explanations whether by the parents or profilers fixes things is wrong as far as children would be concerned. They are going to still feel bad.

Pvn? There were at least 7 here last time I counted. They are multiplying like cockroaches.

When I made my fruit loops comment, I hadn't actually checked to see if they were from Politics. My neural network inferred that from the content.

Game theory also suggests that if you never check sexy shoes, terrorists will uses sexy shoes to blow up a plane.

At least we're getting somewhere...you acknowledge that profiling and targeting cause unnecessary suffering. Progress?

Care to elaborate how sexy shoes that by definition show 97% skin can blow up planes?

Of course the future of terrorism will exploit naive profiling but at least it will make sense not as in the shoes example. Not a lot of volume to hide things now is it? Come on now.

The assumption here is that stop and frisk actually works to prevent violent crime. There is no evidence that it does:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...25.2012.752026

Maybe it feels to you like stop and frisk should work, but we shouldn't base public policy on that hunch.

Seems like you are creating a straw man--I don't think anyone is claiming Wilson was some KKK killer, rather that his actions were reckless, in part because of his likely attitudes towards African Americans.

It seems you are ignorant to the fact that institutional racism is an "actual endemic problem":

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1985377

It's a safe assumption that the racial prejudice exhibited by HR and DAs extends to police on the street.

Whoa, careful. Straw men can be flammable.

Ok now do the volume integral and by all means propose what is to be disassembled here and how. Plus this is not 97% skin. And if it starts looking too big lets test that too why not.

Wait, do you calculate how much skin is exposed before you become aroused by a shoe?

Edit: And thinking about this scientifically, I don't think a shoe that showed 97% skin would have enough structural integrity to permit walking. Of course, if clear materials are used, all bets are off.

Yes my brain does it real fast. I ask questions later. I like to also profile women according to their IQ, sexual chemistry, sensitivity to social issues and ability to remain objective and not carry a flag with their eyes closed. I do the same with foods, cars, spaceship propulsion methods (i like best so far a SABRE proposed low orbit entry engine and ion propulsion via fusion reactors for deep space), physics (eg i dislike solid state physics, necessary evil ) and math (i have more affinity towards math that i can see it applied somewhere).

I profile everything and adjust in real time the profiles of everyone. Its the only way. Through consistent permanent experimentation we learn about the world. The baby that enters the world initially profiles the environment as hostile and scary. It then starts recognizing its mother and starts profiling people images as mom or others. The game gets more and more complex over time exactly because profiling is dynamical. Profiling as in pattern recognition is all we have in our march towards higher intelligence and self awareness...

My current profiling results indicate that i have an affection for higher complexity as the endgame of intelligent life. I also have an affection for free speech, love for humanity and its culture. I guess you can call me racist towards intelligent life. I prefer it to stones. However some stones that were carefully processed by ancient Greeks come very close to life and beauty. So i profile art too. Some of it is better than other. All is needed to get better. But some of it tells a deeper story than other forms...

What can i say, its profiles 24/7. Yours is improving with time. Keep it up.

Haha, nice one Masque. I have you profiled as unable to wrap it up, but this one was worth it.

picked two points from your post somewhat out of context but if we are to seriously consider racial profiling we need to assume there is some benefit to combating crime and that it is being carried out in an otherwise non-racist environment.

One problem is that people dislike being profiled so it causes alienation between the police and the profiled community but even if people were perfectly happy to be profiled there is a problem as the more you target the more you find, including incidental stuff. It then gets very complicated because so much will depend on the rest of the criminal justice system but if a minor offense makes being a regular member of society tougher this could become a disaster for targeted group. This disaster could happen even if initially the group was as law-abiding as everybody else.

Some might counter and say with a great criminal justice system the targeted group would fare better as the wrong'uns would be caught earlier and rehabilitated better resulting in a reduction in criminality all round.

So where racial profiling works then in a non-racist environment where people are happy to be profiled and the criminal justice system rehabilitates well enough maybe racial profiling is a good thing. Or is there another problem with it?

^^^^ very good point! A system that works better overall can understand the necessity of certain practices forced by constraints and one that doesnt gets worse. As always education and fair economy and opportunities is what eliminates most problems and brings people to understand both personal responsibility better and the necessities of constraints where some sacrifice is important to help all of society and then a good society will reciprocate for that and eventually eliminate all profiling and apply proper information and resources instead.

My profiling of Masque just increased in a positive direction.