zlacker

A lot of comments here are missing the point of boycotting, it's an expression of power with the concrete goal, it's not individual decisions of whether the mathematicians feel the work is "ethical".

Yes, having more liberals working in policing is probably more inline with the goals of those liberals than not, but that's not the point of a boycott.

If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians because of a large enough boycott then it gets them to the table and forces them to reform.

I'm not arguing whether or not this will work, or making a value judgement, I just see a lot of comments which don't seem to understand this point.

>>tj-tee+(OP)
If they can't get help from mathematicians, they'll try to do their own analysis with Excel spreadsheets or just use their gut instincts.

>>Uhhrrr+u3
Good, and their word can be treated exactly like we treat the word of any other agency full of non-experts that roll their own analyses with excel. No need to lend them the legitimacy of established mathematicians and other academics.

>>Uhhrrr+u3
And if they can get by with Excel just as good, then they didn't need mathematicians in the first place.

If not, this will make someone unhappy. And this is the whole point of boycott.

The police is making mathematicians unhappy. Bad cop, no donut in any dimension.

>>tj-tee+(OP)
>If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians because of a large enough boycott then it gets them to the table and forces them to reform.

They will just hire someone else. Google was making AIs for the chinese government that almost certainly have deep ethical issues and it was barely a thing. Now helping the police is a boycott issue?

The question is not "do the police want a seat at the table", its if you want the people working with police to be only people who disagree with you and reject your position?

>>romwel+A8
It probably won't be as good, and the people they make unhappy will be the general populace, who will experience more crime and worse policing.