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“We’ve seen time and again that mathematical models can sift through data to locate people who are likely to face great challenges, whether from crime, poverty, or educations. It’s up to society whether to use that intelligence to reject and punish them—or to reach out to them with the resources they need. We can use the scale and efficiency that make WMDs so pernicious in order to help people. It all depends on the objective we choose.”
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
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“My point is that police make choices about where they direct their attention. Today they focus almost exclusively on the poor. That’s their heritage, and their mission, as they understand it.”
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
“[A] crucial part of justice is equality, and that means, among other things, experiencing criminal justice equally. People who favor policies like Stop and Frisk should experience it themselves. Justice cannot just be something that one part of society inflicts upon the other.”
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
“The math-powered applications powering the data economy were based on choices made by fallible human beings. Some of these choices were no doubt made with the best intentions. Nevertheless, many of these models encoded human prejudice, misunderstanding, and bias into the software systems that increasingly managed our lives. Like gods, these mathematical models were opaque, their workings invisible to all but the highest priests in their domain: mathematicians and computer scientists. Their verdicts, even when wrong or harmful, were beyond dispute or appeal. And they tended to punish the poor and the oppressed in our society, while making the rich richer.”
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
― Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Brandon’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Brandon’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
43 books
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21 friends
839 books
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151 friends
86 books
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9 friends
119 books
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178 friends
257 books
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11 friends
186 books
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69 friends
203 books
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42 friends
116 books
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90 friends
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