&gt; That is not a successful betting strategy even if it&#x27;s true.<p>If we can determine the outcome, why is it not a successful betting strategy?<p>&gt; It&#x27;s just charity.<p>For something to be charity, you need to determine that the receiver does not rightfully deserve it, and the giver does. That distinction relies on values, and every person may come up with a different labeling of something as charity or not. I studied history and my views are largely shaped by that. I believe that the current distribution of power and resources in society is largely a result of what you may call &quot;charity&quot; to the people who are now rich (and that&#x27;s putting it very kindly).<p>&gt; Which is what we need to know unless we&#x27;re specifically trying to change something.<p>As what we do or don&#x27;t do determine the outcome, any decision is a political choice. Saying that we&#x27;re specifically trying to change something is no different from saying that we&#x27;re specifically trying to keep something the same. Today&#x27;s bet is tomorrows outcome, and you must place a bet.<p>&gt; Just looking at e.g. the racial composition of the output doesn&#x27;t actually tell you if anything is wrong.<p>We liberals have an assumption. It is no more arbitrary than conservative assumptions. The assumption is that -- unless proven otherwise -- no group of people wishes to yield power over themselves to others, and that different groups have similar capacity for &quot;power-gaining&quot; achievement. Therefore, if we look at the racial or sexual makeup of a certain source of social power and we find a gross disparity, we want to balance it.<p>&gt; It could be (and often will be) that the algorithm is measuring other things that are correlated with race.<p>Absolutely. The problem is not what the algorithm tells you, but what you do with the information. Because what determines the future outcome is not the output of the algorithm, but your decision on how to act.