[HN Gopher] Deep Chernoff Faces
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Deep Chernoff Faces
Author : pxx
Score : 112 points
Date : 2020-06-29 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ihatethefuture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ihatethefuture.com)
| ianai wrote:
| I've got to pull the alarm on this one. This is a huge liability
| to objectify and promulgate prejudice. It's literally teaching
| people to associate good or bad distinctions with specific faces
| or facial features. How is that not objectifying? I think this
| should be treated highly suspiciously and probably not done at
| all.
|
| Edit-I see people may take this as a joke. Sorry, not funny.
| Especially not right now.
| identity0 wrote:
| You have to be joking. This is obviously one programmer's
| experiment on some esoteric data visualization mode that nobody
| ever used. The author even says in a footnote that:
|
| > "One of my favorite1 concepts for multi-dimensional data
| visualization is the Chernoff Face"
|
| > 1: "Favorite" might be code for "useless," going with the
| theme of this blog"
|
| Don't act like this project will have actual real world uses
| and ramifications. No, it won't literally teach people to
| associate good or bad qualities with facial features, because
| nobody will ever use it for practical purposes. No, there's no
| liability to promote prejudice, this is just some programmers
| ML side-project.
|
| > How is that not objectifying?
|
| It literally is. The generated faces are mathematical objects.
| They're not real people.
| ianai wrote:
| In the faces I saw there was a clear connection between race
| and facial expression of happiness or sadness.
| identity0 wrote:
| So? That just means that two variables are closely related.
| You have to be very blind and ignorant to take the
| implication that white people are less happy, or something.
| Is it racist to take a photo of a sad white person?
| nxpnsv wrote:
| It is using that we are used to look at faces as a way to
| display multi variate categorical variables. Not all of such
| dimensions are bad/good dichotomies. Deeming a visualization
| technique as evil because it can be used to poor taste may seem
| clever, but ultimately will leave us with no visualization
| techniques left.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > Especially not right now.
|
| Right now what? Sounds like you're jumping at shadows. In
| general false positives are good for finding errors in systems.
| However, they can go too far and lead to pathological patterns
| like human immune system self-alergies.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Your comment is pretty alarmist, but I don't find the
| probability of this article (or Chernoff faces in general)
| having a negative impact on racial relations very high. Maybe
| you can convince me otherwise, but I think it's just an
| interesting, if not very useful, way to display data. I'll
| leave it up to you to come up with a compelling (plausible)
| scenario in which this negatively impacts anyone.
| brokensegue wrote:
| it's definitely a joke. nobody uses chernoff faces
| gotostatement wrote:
| this is a very interesting idea, but I think using gender and
| skin tone to represent data differences is potentially
| problematic, particularly if the data has any sort of normative
| meaning. the other variables are interesting though
| batsigner wrote:
| how about this:
|
| stop calling experiments, which the author calls "dumb and
| useless," "problematic."
|
| your slacktivist faux-concern does more harm than good.
| [deleted]
| ebg13 wrote:
| I think this post is meant to be a joke.
| ianai wrote:
| It's not funny.
| [deleted]
| ebg13 wrote:
| It's not a joke about data or race or sex, and it doesn't
| make any claims about data or race or sex, and it doesn't
| signal anything about data or race or sex either
| intentionally or accidentally, and it doesn't do those
| things because it's demonstrably satire about how chernoff
| faces are a terrible idea. See the first footnote on the
| word "favorite" and the second footnote on the word
| "Clearly".
|
| I think your contempt is a serious misfire.
| w1 wrote:
| Super cool! Also, a character visualizes data this way in Watts'
| "Blindsight" novel.
| outworlder wrote:
| Yeap, that was my introduction to the concept.
|
| Blindsight is wonderful. A bit difficult to follow at a time
| due to the 'unique' writing style. In the same novel it tackles
| uploading consciousness, vampires, artificial intelligence,
| aliens, psychology (heavily) and a few more things.
|
| I've yet to find a better description of what would be an
| actual alien lifeform. Even if it is biased a bit on marine
| biology given the author's qualifications, the oceans are host
| to the most 'alien' environments we are aware of that still
| contain life.
|
| I still can't wrap my head on the concept of the Icarus Array
| though.
|
| Anyway, for the uninitiated:
| https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
| fab1an wrote:
| Came here to say this! That creepy cool chernoff face utilizing
| vampire captain. So cool.
| outworlder wrote:
| Given that humans were prey for vampires, the variables
| selected by the captain showed faces in different states of
| anguish, which the predator was well-equipped to detect. So
| it is even creepier.
| asavinov wrote:
| There is an implementation of Chernoff faces where a fish is used
| instead of a human face, so it is called Chernoff fish:
|
| http://tmm-archive.github.io/chernoff-fish/
|
| It is implemented in D3 and React and the source code is here:
|
| https://github.com/tmm-archive/chernoff-fish
|
| I implemented my own version long ago (for MS-DOS) and I am quite
| surprised that there is still some interest in the topic.
| ibrarmalik wrote:
| The idea behind Chernoff faces (or using faces for data
| visualization) seems good: we humans are very good at
| distinguishing faces, so we can quickly find groups and outliers
| if the data is encoded with a face.
|
| But we have to be careful with this. Changing facial expressions
| is not the same as increasing the height of a barplot, we're
| relating features with expressions and the visualization might
| express things that you don't want.
|
| There is a very famous example for this in "Life in Los Angeles"
| (1977) by Eugene Turner [1]. Maybe you can infer the data well
| but in the end this just ends up being a map of angry black
| people. The choice of features and how to visualize them is
| clearly racist.
|
| [1] https://mapdesign.icaci.org/2014/12/mapcarte-353365-life-
| in-...
| [deleted]
| outworlder wrote:
| > Turner does a good job of building a facial profile out of
| social conditions and ethnicity. It's a simple map but one that
| characterises the spatial structure of socio-economic life in
| Los Angeles. It's also a provocative and arresting image and
| one which is difficult to hide from.
|
| That's a very successful application if you ask me. It shows
| unhappy black people. They are displayed as unhappy because
| they are unhappy. The focus should be on how to make them
| happy, not 'racism'. It is displaying the effects of racism for
| all to see.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _The idea behind Chernoff faces (or using faces for data
| visualization) seems good: we humans are very good at
| distinguishing faces_
|
| Except that:
|
| 1. We humans are actually _ABYSMAL_ at distinguishing faces
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect)
|
| 2. The ability to differentiate between two things and the
| ability to translate attributes into metrics are fundamentally
| so different from each other that any possible truth to the
| idea instantly becomes wildly irrelevant.
| https://eagereyes.org/criticism/chernoff-faces
| sukilot wrote:
| One case of being imperfect isn't "abysmal". Cross facial
| discrimination is far more accurate than cross-species body
| discrimination, or wood grain discrimination, or many other
| things. There are brain regions detected to be dedicated to
| facial recognition.
| [deleted]
| sukilot wrote:
| Huh?
|
| That map colored black people dark like their skin, and encoded
| misery as unhappy faces.
|
| The result accurately showed happy white people and unhappy
| black people. How is it racist to acknowledge the racially
| biased distribution of suffering?
| gnramires wrote:
| See the legend. Things are ranked from "Good to bad", (Urban
| stress, unemployment) and proportion white population is
| right there in parallel, screaming "White"=="Good".
|
| There are a number of other lesser reasons, including
| conflating regions of high urban stress as "Evil" or "Angry"
| instead of just unhappy[0]. The face visualization just
| implies too much of a value judgement on the data -- too
| correlated with the issue (yet misrepresentative) to be a
| good idea imo.
|
| [0]: Even happy/unhappy may not reflect well at all this
| variable (again because that's a complicated human emotion,
| not a simple function of "Health crime and transportation
| factors").
|
| Edit: I think it's also not necessary to call the map creator
| (or maybe the map itself) racist, this implies some kind of
| intentional discrimination (and is quite strong imo), but it
| does have to me grave mentioned problems.
| [deleted]
| sameers wrote:
| Yeah, I am also having a really hard time reading this
| visualization as perpetuating any stereotypes - assuming
| ofc that the data itself is correct. It would indeed by
| perpetuating them if it were not the case that urban stress
| is disproportionately felt in the Black population - but
| even proponents of racial justice are quite clear that this
| is the case in many American cities.
|
| The legend uses the words "Low/High" and not "Bad/Good."
| It's a quantitative measure, not a moral/aesthetic
| judgment.
|
| The conclusion of this graphic would be - There is more
| stress in South Central LA, which has a higher proportion
| of Black Americans. Or possibly, the least stress is
| towards the West, where there are relatively fewer Blacks.
|
| I guess if you are concerned it will read as, "In South
| Central LA, there are angry black people, don't go there!"
| - that leap of faith will be made regardless of how you
| visualize the data. "Poor people are naturally
| lazy/violent/immoral," is a stereotype that has existed for
| far longer than any widely accepted attempt at data
| visualization.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| So you would be ok if row order of columns were randomized?
| gnramires wrote:
| I would find it better if the proportion white population
| were placed horizontally or elsewhere entirely.
|
| The other comment noted those metrics are "objective" and
| only "High"/"Low", but in all cases the least desirable
| situation (i.e. "bad") is the lowest. I read charts and
| benchmarks all the time and a usual cognitive shortcut
| you look for is good/bad (e.g. you see a decreasing graph
| -- if it's latency that is "low"=="good"; if it were
| profits it's "low"=="bad"), I'd be surprised if people
| didn't make similar quick assessments. Note that high
| white rate is also up, which is usually good too
| (profits, growth, etc.).
|
| I guess no representation is perfect, but I think at
| least ethnicity could/should be separated here.
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(page generated 2020-06-29 23:00 UTC)