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Comment by zopa | Hacker News Reader

> People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used.

Cute line, but obviously people have always wanted criteria to be objective and fair.

If the rule was "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!" -- that's completely objective, and also bonkers. Nobody ever thought all objective formulas were good, and it's sophistry to suggest otherwise.

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>> objective and fair.

You do understand that the is a logical impossibility, as "fairness" is a subjective standard...

What is "fair" to me, likely will not be what you believe is "fair" thus something can not be objective and "fair"

> "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!"

My Objection to this standard would not be "it is unfair" but rather it makes no logical sense to have employment choices made by that system and would likely cause many objectively valuable employees to be separated from the company.

Objective rules need to make sense in the context for which they are apply, "fairness" would not come into play here

The notion of fairness is contestable, but that does not mean we cannot progress past Perry’s second stage of development [1] (“it’s all subjective”). Fairness can be equated with due process or natural justice, which in a workplace relations context, commonly includes the right to be heard, have your personal circumstances taken into account and be given reasons for decision, and the right of appeal. Automated decision-making threatens these rights.

[1] https://www.jmu.edu/geology/_files/willperry21.pdf

When you introduce the notion of "logical sense", you're already deviating from an objective standard. For example, Amazon's warehouse bathroom policy is logical from a profit-maximizing perspective, but it's illogical from the perspective of the health and wellbeing of its workers.

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