&gt; If you want to force banks to make suboptimal credit allocation decisions for political reasons, go ahead and openly advocate for it<p>You and I both want to force banks to make suboptimal credit allocations for political reasons (or we both don&#x27;t). Leaving the local optimum can only be done with coordinated action, but that doesn&#x27;t mean that your algorithm (that keeps us there) is any less political. By not calling for social action, you are forcing banks to stay in their Nash equilibrium, which is suboptimal for them.<p>What I want is for us to acknowledge that we have (possibly unintentionally) programmed our algorithms to be conservative, and then make the conscious decision whether we want conservative algorithms or progressive algorithms. Sadly, neutral algorithms are impossible[1] if based on their output we take actions that may affect the distribution of power.<p>I&#x27;m a progressive and I want a progressive agenda. You&#x27;re a conservative and want a conservative agenda. Both are perfectly fine, but you must understand that there&#x27;s nothing neutral in your stance. I believe political action for social change often works and can be very helpful, so I wish to encourage it; you believe the opposite, and therefore wish to discourage it. But neither of us is neutral, and your position is not based on math; your math simply serves your position. Your own equations deliberately omit feedback that we know for a fact (through the study of history) to exist. You make assumptions that reflect your  conservative values just as I make assumptions reflecting my liberal values.<p>&gt; Eliminating bias is a job for statisticians, not politicians.<p>You think that when people talk of social bias they mean statistical bias? This may sometimes happen to be (also) true, but in general, when people talk of social bias they mean any human behavior that creates a dynamics for present and future unfair distributions of power. Sadly, statisticians can&#x27;t eliminate that. Or, rather they can&#x27;t eliminate that <i>alone</i>, because politics is not (just) what politicians do. Politics[2] is what we all do when we make decisions that affect the distribution of power in society.<p>Interpreting statistical snapshots as predictors of future human behavior is not statistics but politics. Statistics tells us what <i>is</i> (or sometimes how things will likely be <i>if we change nothing</i>); certainly not what we <i>should</i> do.<p>------<p>[1]: Well, it&#x27;s possible to pretend some are neutral if we artificially (and incorrectly) reduce the domain of our value functions. In an interconnected system like human society, it is is disingenuous to direct our action based on its outcome for a very limited sector (like a bank), without saying what we want the action to achieve for all other sectors. So, for example, if you ask me if I want bankers to be happy, then the answer is, of course I do. But that doesn&#x27;t mean I&#x27;ll favor any action that makes them happy if it <i>also</i> makes other people less happy. My point is that our value functions must be total; we can&#x27;t be lazy and assign a value to a narrow look at an outcome, but we must assign a value for a complete outcome (i.e. for all of humanity).<p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politics</a> : <i>Politics... is the practice and theory of influencing other people... Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community... as well as the interrelationship(s) between communities.</i>