I agree with what I think is the spirit of what you say, but it's unhelpfully reductive.
Many, many people who meet your criteria in fact are severely lacking in executive function.
Neurological conditions aside, surely you understand that an adult who's developing years formed a healthy "reward system" for accomplishing tasks will have a much easier time getting things done.
While, yes, most of us have the ability to correct past habits and develop discipline ... It's no different than an athlete who began training at an early age versus someone who took up a sport later in life. The difference in skill and ability is predictably and consistently stark.
Some proxies for race:
- Where somebody lives
- Their name
- What sports teams somebody supports
- Their finances
- consumer preferences
- education level
- what medical conditions somebody has
- political leanings
I'm not saying these factors can't legitimately be used in a risk assessment, but they could be used to make a good bet on race.
Finances? While it is true that blacks and native americans have the highest poverty rates, if you take a random poor person they are about 50% more likely to be white than black. Same with the many of your other "proxies". Therefore they would be a poor bet for race.
If you were using these proxies to identify the race of a person jailed for a crime, they might be good predictors, but only marginally more useful than just blindly guessing black, since they constitute the majority of incarcerated people.
I think, by attempting to remove the smoke screens a "real racist" would use, you give them a new one - "look, our opponents want to ignore actual data".
I don't see how those factors are relevant at all, regardless of the race of the criminal. The problem to address is the lack of transparency. Trying to guess what inputs are being factored in is pointless.
Even if you are careful to remove all features you think could tell the race (let's say geographic location etc), it could still be giving harsher sentences to minorities if those are treated differently upfront. For instance, it would make sense for the model to learn that the more charges count the harsher the sentence. This sounds right: a bank robbery should be less punished than a bank robbery + a carjacking, at least in the US judicial system.
But now let's say minorities gets a "resiting arrest" charge on top of their original charge more often, because of many factors such as the police bias, the bias of the minorities towards police, etc. (By bias here I mean all spectrum : racism, but also fear of the police etc).
As long as minorities are treated differently upfront, then the model would treat them differently.
But if all of that is true, the model doesn't change the equation. The problems you outline need to be addressed upstream. Trying to account for and correct them at the point of sentencing is very problematic.
You are mostly speaking of the potential external impact of personal decisions. This is almost completely antithetical to politics. If I'm not proselytizing about Star Trek or even Christianity, there is nothing political about it.
Even if one buys into your premise, your examples are quite notably biased and there is an obvious left wing analogue to each of your right wing boogeymen.
The most charitable response I can think of is that "popping out a kid" (or adopting) immediately shifts you out of the center of your own universe. It's a profound change of perspective for most people.
I will second the idea that avoiding processed foods has been a big part of your success. I started doing so just to keep my sodium intake down and lost a surprising amount of weight.
And thank you for providing a nice definition of it, "... if I can't make it at home". I've tried to explain to loved ones the idea of 'whole' foods vs. processed and found it harder than it should be.
Hard to pick the best nugget to use as I email this to friends, but I like this: "The Strokes recorded Is This It on an old Apple Mac in Gordon Raphael’s basement studio. But it was mastered by Greg Calbi, who also did Born To Run and Graceland."
Great essay. Really sums up modern commercially recorded music.
Many, many people who meet your criteria in fact are severely lacking in executive function.
Neurological conditions aside, surely you understand that an adult who's developing years formed a healthy "reward system" for accomplishing tasks will have a much easier time getting things done.
While, yes, most of us have the ability to correct past habits and develop discipline ... It's no different than an athlete who began training at an early age versus someone who took up a sport later in life. The difference in skill and ability is predictably and consistently stark.