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Doctor Hammer's avatar

Regarding machine learning, don’t be so sure that it is merely technical. I used to teach data science ethics, and whooooo boy was that a mess. Effectively the entire field boiled down to “if your algorithm suggests that minority groups have a lower outcome than whites, you are wrong. If a proxy for a minority group has lower outcomes, you are wrong. Etc.” Looking at what the data patterns show wasn’t ok; if your algorithm showed that low income blacks are a higher credit risk than whites, you need to change your algorithm until it stops doing that.

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Eric Rasmusen's avatar

Just recently I substacked about Sociology, "We'll just have to drop the sociology department." I'll have to go back and revise it with this info that Denmark actually did what I suggest-- and then revived the department with real scholars.

https://ericrasmusen.substack.com/p/well-just-have-to-drop-the-sociology

I wouldn't call elimination of an activist department a violation of academic freedom. Rather, the university's academic freedom *requires* it to have the authority to close down a weak department. It sounds like the Danish departments were no longer scholarly, and hence were contrary to the university's mission. This is a point Judge Easterbrook of the 7th Circuit (Chicago) has often made: academic freedom is freedom of the academy as much as freedom of the academic.

It is not uncommon for universities to put departments "into receivership" when they've degenerated, making an outsider chairman and giving him powers to hire, recommend tenure, etc. without departmental input. Disbanding the department is another solution.

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