Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.19h agoPluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages (06 Apr 2026)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.Oct 23Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs (23 Oct 2025)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/
Content warning: Long thread/3
But while cutting staff and leaving hospitals to crumble are inarguable malpractice, the palliative care scam is harder to pin down. By using "AI" to decide when patients are beyond help, HCA can employ #EmpiricismWashing, declaring the matter to be the factual - and unquestionable - conclusion of a mathematical process, not mere profit-seeking:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in
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It'll tell you do throw even *more* Black kids up against a wall and search their pockets. The more you do this, the more knives you'll find, and the more you'll go back and do it again.
This is what #PatrickBall from the #HumanRightsDataAnalysisGroup calls "#EmpiricismWashing": take a biased procedure and feed it to an algorithm, and then you get to go and do more biased procedures.
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Princess (xe/xem)
Cory Doctorow
Andii אַנדִֽי