Well ghetto school always have that because they get less funding and their is less teacher and more work for teachers (who are already exhausted)! Plus lead and PTSD!
Then offer them the courses then! The EU and the US already do this! And besides, what is the benefit of keeping out potential businesspeople(Sergi was a immigrant and Andy Grove was a refugee), doctors, programmers, and more while birth rates and education stagnate?
OT: a friend & former coworker and I have a pact that's been running for a long time: whenever you hear the word "synergy" you are required to make a hand gesture sliding your index finger on one hand into a ring formed by the other hand.
It's crass and juvenile and totally inappropriate but after more than ten years it's also second nature and still represents the gist of what the synergizer's plans are likely to accomplish.
Well, there are over 2 milion Ukrainians in Poland most of them working and living legally (with different legal status) so the 'Xenophobic' Poland had quietly accepted twice more refuges (as Ukraine is more or less fallen state like Libya) then Germany which is open to immigration and refugees.
Remember that Poland did largest immigration experiment in Europe's history in late Middle Ages and that was a failure. After 500 hundred years these migrants where still living in ghettos, speaking foreign language and preserving their religion. It is pretty much taken as a fact by Polish people that cultural and religious differences cannot be bridged in 500 years.
How is that a justification for reiterating the falsehood that one nationality is inherently inferior to others? I prefer to not use hateful rhetoric even if the "media" does it.
I suppose it is possible that many people find a system with some inefficiency to be practically nicer, easier, and more functional than one with absolutely perfect utilization, allocation, and efficiency.
efficiency in a systems problem is almost never easy, and it requires everyone who participates to put forth their fullest effort. It is telling to me that when people are unconstrained by space/cost/time, they don't tend to create extremely efficient situations, but in fact prefer those that intentionally less so.
> Society is going to get flipped on its head if we are able to detect total truth, and enforce all laws with 100% effectiveness. Even worse when these tools will be mostly in the hands of the government, and not the people.
Even if these tools worked, they wouldn't be able to detect truth, only belief.
Yes, tools like this can be so focused on accuracy and efficiency they forget to account for the value of paper bag compromises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YgBF58Qks
I am not correcting you, but simply illustrating how 85% accuracy tells us very little...
Let's make the spherical cow approximation that "a lie" is a fully defined concept, then we have 4 conditional (bayesian) probabilities:
P( "sincere" | sincere) The probability a sincere person is reported as "sincere".
P( "lying" | sincere) The probability a sincere person is reported as "lying".
P( "sincere" | lying) The probability a lying person is reported as "sincere".
P( "lying" | lying) The probability a lying person is reported as "lying".
The first 2 probabilities should sum to 1, and the latter 2 possibilities too, so we have 4-2 = 2 degrees of freedom. A reported "accuracy" tells us nothing without knowing the distribution of liars and sincere people in the test group..
There's a lot of skepticism in this thread. I've actually researched this a bit and there is research suggesting AI-based lie detection to be possible. It will need a multimodal approach where it's more than just video images though.
Also, the use case of border control is a great application. There's a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. The AI screening is just a first screening, and if someone fails that, then they go to a human. So moderate false positive rates are acceptable.
The commentators on this thread generally make a few mistakes: assuming lie detectors won't work because polygraphs don't work, assuming the border control use case needs to be perfect or not have false positives (it doesn't), assuming Paul Ekman's microexpressions are all that iBorderCtrl is basing their research on (I agree Ekman's research is questionable, and I don't know what exactly iBorderCtrl is doing, but it seems highly likely they're doing more than just looking for microexpressions), assuming racist intent or that it'll just flag non-Europeans as liars.
Yes, of course there is skepticism in the thread. The claim being made is completely ridiculous.
I would be very surprised if the "research suggesting AI-based lie detection to be possible" that you mention is from anyone who has any sort of reputation to protect. Machine learning scientists, the vast majority of, would not touch such obvious pseudo-scientific claptrap with a ten-foot pole. It's the kind of thing that tarnishes one's reputation and never washes off. And rightly so.
I would not welcome, but grudingly accept, your references to the contrary.
Also, if iBorderCtrl are not using Eckman's work, then what kind of theoretical framework are they basing their work on? Why is it "highlly likely they're doing more than just looking for microexpressions"? Where is all the science of detecting lies from looking at peoples' faces?
And if they're not basing their work on someone's research, then what are they basing it on?
Well, it turns out, they are using microexpressions - and nothing else:
The IBORDERCTRL system has been set up so that travellers will use an online application to upload pictures of their passport, visa and proof of funds, then use a webcam to answer questions from a computer-animated border guard, personalised to the traveller’s gender, ethnicity and language. The unique approach to ‘deception detection’ analyses the micro-expressions of travellers to figure out if the interviewee is lying.
From the Commision's website, posted here by another user:
Four lane divided, limited-access highway. Lanes are 12' wide. Visibility is unlimited. Road is straight as an arrow out to the horizon. Terrain is flat. Diffuse daylight. No appreciable traffic.
Without being told the speed limit, how fast do you go?
Now that you're going that fast, you enter a section of highway that has been annexed by a nearby incorporated town, its speed limit in town lowered to 35 mph, and its only cop sitting out on the highway, clocking cars and looking for speeders to cite for "70/35".
Without the threat of cops, most drivers generally drive at the subjective and situationally variable speed described by Adams in HHGttG as "R1", which is the maximum reasonable and prudent speed for the ambient conditions. When lanes narrow, R1 drops. When fog blankets the road, R1 drops. When traffic gets congested, R1 drops. Everyone already has ample incentives to drive at a safe speed to protect their affordable insurance premiums, their expensive vehicles, and their priceless lives.
In general, the locales that recognize this set their posted speed limits to the 85th percentile of driver speeds in normal conditions. They only ticket people that are clearly beyond the community norms for R1. The locales that want ticket revenue set the speed limits to R0.9 or less, so that everyone is occasionally subject to citations if they aren't extremely vigilant about avoiding the enforcement.
The latter is why not. When there is profit in catching law-breakers, the law will be adjusted to criminalize otherwise normal behaviors.
> Without being told the speed limit, how fast do you go?
If none is posted, then whatever the national or state speed limit is.
> The locales that want ticket revenue set the speed limits to R0.9 or less, so that everyone is occasionally subject to citations if they aren't extremely vigilant about avoiding the enforcement.
So the only people who aren't caught are those that are carefully observing the speed limit? Sounds good to me. These supposedly revenue-seeking police departments never bother me.
Same here. I don't want to give them the satisfaction. Nevertheless, it is annoying to drive 35 mph on a limited access highway that clearly supports 60 mph.
There are plenty of people willing to actually drive R1, which would be 60 mph, if there weren't any cars poking along at just under the speed limit, trying to avoid giving the cops their pretext for a highway robbery. Setting the limit too low makes the road less safe, because it increases the range of speeds at which the cars are moving.
It is small consolation to see literally half a dozen other cars pulled over on a 5 mile stretch of road-that-should-be-highway, because the town certainly could save money by firing at least three of their cops, and possibly the whole department. There's no excuse for that kind of official depredation. And yet, I don't live there, so I can't vote for them.
It is no sin to break the law when the law is turned against the people, but I am reluctant to pick fights that other people would have to join in order to win. I'd rather enact a boycott on that particular town's businesses--and any on the other side of them--until they clean up their own mess.
>The fact that Muslims aren't as integrated into European society as they should be is 99% the fault of Europeans.
You're blaming Europeans for not forcing their culture onto immigrants. You're also making the naive assumption that a sizable proportion of immigrants WANTS to assimilate - the truth is that certain groups are simply not interested in assimilating. Why would they be? Foreign customs are hard to learn and - here's the part many proponents of immigration conveniently miss - directly opposed to Western customs.
When you are raised to believe that women are property, for example, and that your customs and culture are biblically justified, and some white idiot welcomes you into his country, provides you with free (to you) government assistance, while you live comfortably in your homogeneous ghetto, don't be surprised if you get laughed it at best, taken advantage of at worst.
And when one side not only denies that any of this is happening, but worse, slanders their countrymen as "xenophobes" for not wanting to accommodate the culture of their home and Homeland for that of ungrateful immigrants, populism suddenly has a very strong appeal.
In the U.S., for example, immigrants vote Democrat. You have millions of people who have called the U.S. their home for generations, and now you have a large group of people flowing into your communities and imposing their cultural values onto you via government. This is not xenophobia - people have a right to preserve their peaceful ways of life - otherwise you are arguing that one culture is superior to another.
> You have millions of people who have called the U.S. their home for generations, and now you have a large group of people flowing into your communities and imposing their cultural values onto you via government.
I assume you must be talking about native americans and the large influx of white people who won't assimilate to their local Ute or Navajo or whatever culture. Because literally any other interpretation I have of this comment is less charitable because it would imply you have a staggering level of hypocrisy.
What happened to the Native Americans happened more than a century ago. And, case in point, how well did it work out for them?
We live here now. Our families, our friends, our communities. We have every right to self preservation that they did-there is nothing hypocritical here.
The comparison is disingeneous. Ignoring the fact that most natives were wiped out by disease, European arrival in the U.S. was a clash of totally independent groups. There was no forced integration and little intermingling of communities-this was warfare, not simple immigration.
It wasn't right (through the lens of our Western culture) to uproot natives who had built their lives here, but that doesn't justify doing the same to generations who've similarly replaced them. In any case, land is finite, all current peoples have displaced others at some point. That doesn't mean their communities and countries suddenly have no right to cultural self preservation.
Except right wing populists aren't satisfied with bashing against those not willing to immigrate. The Bavarian government makes cultural assimilation as hard as possible (well, "made", at least actually. That topic died down in the media recently). Like forcing them into central camps instead of spreading them out over the country. Or deporting even those with a job and lots of backing in their newfound community. Since being hard on immigrants the kind of pandering their voters want. They willingly accept worse outcomes for all of us.
What is the justification for forcing these people to accept foreigners into their communities?
And I have no reason to believe that your Bavarian example is representative of other populist agendas. Limited immigration does not mean no immigration.
Reality check: tell that to the German border police who are standing on the A93 motorway at Kiefersfelden eyeballing every single driver entering Germany from Austria.
There's more than a whiff of Checkpoint Charlie about the place (portakabins installed directly on what was the motorway surface, concrete traffic calming measures, 5 km/h speed limit, armed police, more police sitting in chase car should anyone decide not to stop, floodlit at night)
I'm sure it's worth it, what with Austria and Germany sharing a fairly long land border which is more or less completely unsecured. Side roads - of which there are plenty - don't get checked much either. <rolls eyes>
Repeated lie detector tests do work for most people. It's silly to think that your average joe is trained to control his/her biological responses to that extent. 1 lie detector test never works, a lot of them do.
It seems to me that the concept is basically analogous to the idea people have that we should eliminate the human element from contract enforcement. Or suppose we tried to eliminate all tolerances and slippage in engineering. It's utopian/dystopian and even seriously attempting it would be disastrous, in my opinion. I don't see why people need to touch the hot stove to understand that.
so... add a clause for officer discretion, like is already implied to exist? having it as an invisible clause doesn't make it any more or less game-able.
>I also think no one would object to Saudi sheikhs if they were to immigrate.
Plenty of people would complain more loudly about Saudi sheikhs than anyone else. There are a lot of people who want to live their lives without having their lives disrupted by large influxes of people with a completely different culture, and it has nothing to do with wealth. The populist backlash you have seen across the globe recently is largely a result of these people having nowhere else to go politically, because the neoliberal ruling class of the last 30 years refuses to acknowledge their legitimate concerns. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, and we in the western world will be able to have an open and legitimate debate about immigration and the right of a nation to decide who (and how many) people from starkly different cultures should be imported. Or the self-righteous can just keep calling them racists and bigots for voicing their legitimate concerns and stand by as the next wave of Trumps and Brexits roll across the western world.
Plenty of people would complain more loudly about Saudi sheikhs than anyone else.
That's not what happens at all. You've never been to Marbella, have you? I watched a TV show some months ago about how nicely they behave there. Huge tips, very discreet people, lavish mansions with many jobs for the service... Now in Spain there's a heated discussion about selling weapons to Arabia (about murder of Khasoggi) since our shipyards are a vital source of jobs near my hometown.
No, I haven't been to Marbella, but I've been all around the world, and the Saudis are among the most despised people globally (along with the Israelis).
I can see the point of trials: as the article says, people told to lie will act very differently from people who want to lie, and a bunch of real-world data versus some lab data is surely going to improve it. I am not convinced that there is nothing about a person that gives away, at least in a good number of cases, whether someone is lying.
I'm just wondering if it's too much to hope that they'll base the decision whether to implement it beyond the trial on data and not on marketing.
And there is of course the argument that it should be possible, albeit with a lot of effort and/or a reasonable punishment, to break the law. (If this was impossible, we'd never get out of regimes we don't agree with, and with the advance of technology I'm afraid we're heading somewhere where a small group is actually able to oppress a huge number of people.)
Saudi Sheiks? Not true, at least I’m France. Plenty of people get pissed when one of the princes closes down a beach each year for his holiday and essentially takes over a small village with the apparent support of police. Also, if you have ever interacted with many “sheiks” and their entourages, you’d quickly learn just how undesirable they often are. Russian oligarchs aren’t typically welcomes with open arms either.
Without naming countries, you are handled like a criminal very often.
Your definition of 'not adversarial' is intriguing.
> as far as problems with law enforcement go border agent's demeanor should be really far down the priority list
Oh really? When border agents can seriously screw up one's life (for instance, by placing a decade ban, or detaining them, and worse) with no oversight, I'd say it's a pretty big problem.
EDIT: > They're just routine transactions.
People have been killed in 'routine enforcement stops'. Agent demeanor is a big deal.
74 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadIt's crass and juvenile and totally inappropriate but after more than ten years it's also second nature and still represents the gist of what the synergizer's plans are likely to accomplish.
Remember that Poland did largest immigration experiment in Europe's history in late Middle Ages and that was a failure. After 500 hundred years these migrants where still living in ghettos, speaking foreign language and preserving their religion. It is pretty much taken as a fact by Polish people that cultural and religious differences cannot be bridged in 500 years.
...why not?
Calling human individuals with similar heritages by monikers of worst and best is a gross overgeneralization.
The obvious solution is, there isn't one.
Yeah I know that's why I put it in quotes. But that's how they're commonly perceived in media and academic institutions.
efficiency in a systems problem is almost never easy, and it requires everyone who participates to put forth their fullest effort. It is telling to me that when people are unconstrained by space/cost/time, they don't tend to create extremely efficient situations, but in fact prefer those that intentionally less so.
Even if these tools worked, they wouldn't be able to detect truth, only belief.
Let's make the spherical cow approximation that "a lie" is a fully defined concept, then we have 4 conditional (bayesian) probabilities:
P( "sincere" | sincere) The probability a sincere person is reported as "sincere".
P( "lying" | sincere) The probability a sincere person is reported as "lying".
P( "sincere" | lying) The probability a lying person is reported as "sincere".
P( "lying" | lying) The probability a lying person is reported as "lying".
The first 2 probabilities should sum to 1, and the latter 2 possibilities too, so we have 4-2 = 2 degrees of freedom. A reported "accuracy" tells us nothing without knowing the distribution of liars and sincere people in the test group..
Also, the use case of border control is a great application. There's a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. The AI screening is just a first screening, and if someone fails that, then they go to a human. So moderate false positive rates are acceptable.
The commentators on this thread generally make a few mistakes: assuming lie detectors won't work because polygraphs don't work, assuming the border control use case needs to be perfect or not have false positives (it doesn't), assuming Paul Ekman's microexpressions are all that iBorderCtrl is basing their research on (I agree Ekman's research is questionable, and I don't know what exactly iBorderCtrl is doing, but it seems highly likely they're doing more than just looking for microexpressions), assuming racist intent or that it'll just flag non-Europeans as liars.
[citation needed]
I would be very surprised if the "research suggesting AI-based lie detection to be possible" that you mention is from anyone who has any sort of reputation to protect. Machine learning scientists, the vast majority of, would not touch such obvious pseudo-scientific claptrap with a ten-foot pole. It's the kind of thing that tarnishes one's reputation and never washes off. And rightly so.
I would not welcome, but grudingly accept, your references to the contrary.
Also, if iBorderCtrl are not using Eckman's work, then what kind of theoretical framework are they basing their work on? Why is it "highlly likely they're doing more than just looking for microexpressions"? Where is all the science of detecting lies from looking at peoples' faces?
And if they're not basing their work on someone's research, then what are they basing it on?
The IBORDERCTRL system has been set up so that travellers will use an online application to upload pictures of their passport, visa and proof of funds, then use a webcam to answer questions from a computer-animated border guard, personalised to the traveller’s gender, ethnicity and language. The unique approach to ‘deception detection’ analyses the micro-expressions of travellers to figure out if the interviewee is lying.
From the Commision's website, posted here by another user:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?artid...
Without being told the speed limit, how fast do you go?
Now that you're going that fast, you enter a section of highway that has been annexed by a nearby incorporated town, its speed limit in town lowered to 35 mph, and its only cop sitting out on the highway, clocking cars and looking for speeders to cite for "70/35".
Without the threat of cops, most drivers generally drive at the subjective and situationally variable speed described by Adams in HHGttG as "R1", which is the maximum reasonable and prudent speed for the ambient conditions. When lanes narrow, R1 drops. When fog blankets the road, R1 drops. When traffic gets congested, R1 drops. Everyone already has ample incentives to drive at a safe speed to protect their affordable insurance premiums, their expensive vehicles, and their priceless lives.
In general, the locales that recognize this set their posted speed limits to the 85th percentile of driver speeds in normal conditions. They only ticket people that are clearly beyond the community norms for R1. The locales that want ticket revenue set the speed limits to R0.9 or less, so that everyone is occasionally subject to citations if they aren't extremely vigilant about avoiding the enforcement.
The latter is why not. When there is profit in catching law-breakers, the law will be adjusted to criminalize otherwise normal behaviors.
If none is posted, then whatever the national or state speed limit is.
> The locales that want ticket revenue set the speed limits to R0.9 or less, so that everyone is occasionally subject to citations if they aren't extremely vigilant about avoiding the enforcement.
So the only people who aren't caught are those that are carefully observing the speed limit? Sounds good to me. These supposedly revenue-seeking police departments never bother me.
There are plenty of people willing to actually drive R1, which would be 60 mph, if there weren't any cars poking along at just under the speed limit, trying to avoid giving the cops their pretext for a highway robbery. Setting the limit too low makes the road less safe, because it increases the range of speeds at which the cars are moving.
It is small consolation to see literally half a dozen other cars pulled over on a 5 mile stretch of road-that-should-be-highway, because the town certainly could save money by firing at least three of their cops, and possibly the whole department. There's no excuse for that kind of official depredation. And yet, I don't live there, so I can't vote for them.
It is no sin to break the law when the law is turned against the people, but I am reluctant to pick fights that other people would have to join in order to win. I'd rather enact a boycott on that particular town's businesses--and any on the other side of them--until they clean up their own mess.
You're blaming Europeans for not forcing their culture onto immigrants. You're also making the naive assumption that a sizable proportion of immigrants WANTS to assimilate - the truth is that certain groups are simply not interested in assimilating. Why would they be? Foreign customs are hard to learn and - here's the part many proponents of immigration conveniently miss - directly opposed to Western customs.
When you are raised to believe that women are property, for example, and that your customs and culture are biblically justified, and some white idiot welcomes you into his country, provides you with free (to you) government assistance, while you live comfortably in your homogeneous ghetto, don't be surprised if you get laughed it at best, taken advantage of at worst.
And when one side not only denies that any of this is happening, but worse, slanders their countrymen as "xenophobes" for not wanting to accommodate the culture of their home and Homeland for that of ungrateful immigrants, populism suddenly has a very strong appeal.
In the U.S., for example, immigrants vote Democrat. You have millions of people who have called the U.S. their home for generations, and now you have a large group of people flowing into your communities and imposing their cultural values onto you via government. This is not xenophobia - people have a right to preserve their peaceful ways of life - otherwise you are arguing that one culture is superior to another.
I assume you must be talking about native americans and the large influx of white people who won't assimilate to their local Ute or Navajo or whatever culture. Because literally any other interpretation I have of this comment is less charitable because it would imply you have a staggering level of hypocrisy.
We live here now. Our families, our friends, our communities. We have every right to self preservation that they did-there is nothing hypocritical here.
The comparison is disingeneous. Ignoring the fact that most natives were wiped out by disease, European arrival in the U.S. was a clash of totally independent groups. There was no forced integration and little intermingling of communities-this was warfare, not simple immigration.
It wasn't right (through the lens of our Western culture) to uproot natives who had built their lives here, but that doesn't justify doing the same to generations who've similarly replaced them. In any case, land is finite, all current peoples have displaced others at some point. That doesn't mean their communities and countries suddenly have no right to cultural self preservation.
And I have no reason to believe that your Bavarian example is representative of other populist agendas. Limited immigration does not mean no immigration.
There's more than a whiff of Checkpoint Charlie about the place (portakabins installed directly on what was the motorway surface, concrete traffic calming measures, 5 km/h speed limit, armed police, more police sitting in chase car should anyone decide not to stop, floodlit at night)
I'm sure it's worth it, what with Austria and Germany sharing a fairly long land border which is more or less completely unsecured. Side roads - of which there are plenty - don't get checked much either. <rolls eyes>
Plenty of people would complain more loudly about Saudi sheikhs than anyone else. There are a lot of people who want to live their lives without having their lives disrupted by large influxes of people with a completely different culture, and it has nothing to do with wealth. The populist backlash you have seen across the globe recently is largely a result of these people having nowhere else to go politically, because the neoliberal ruling class of the last 30 years refuses to acknowledge their legitimate concerns. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, and we in the western world will be able to have an open and legitimate debate about immigration and the right of a nation to decide who (and how many) people from starkly different cultures should be imported. Or the self-righteous can just keep calling them racists and bigots for voicing their legitimate concerns and stand by as the next wave of Trumps and Brexits roll across the western world.
That's not what happens at all. You've never been to Marbella, have you? I watched a TV show some months ago about how nicely they behave there. Huge tips, very discreet people, lavish mansions with many jobs for the service... Now in Spain there's a heated discussion about selling weapons to Arabia (about murder of Khasoggi) since our shipyards are a vital source of jobs near my hometown.
I'm just wondering if it's too much to hope that they'll base the decision whether to implement it beyond the trial on data and not on marketing.
And there is of course the argument that it should be possible, albeit with a lot of effort and/or a reasonable punishment, to break the law. (If this was impossible, we'd never get out of regimes we don't agree with, and with the advance of technology I'm afraid we're heading somewhere where a small group is actually able to oppress a huge number of people.)
Without naming countries, you are handled like a criminal very often.
Your definition of 'not adversarial' is intriguing.
> as far as problems with law enforcement go border agent's demeanor should be really far down the priority list
Oh really? When border agents can seriously screw up one's life (for instance, by placing a decade ban, or detaining them, and worse) with no oversight, I'd say it's a pretty big problem.
EDIT: > They're just routine transactions.
People have been killed in 'routine enforcement stops'. Agent demeanor is a big deal.