**SUBMITTRED 13.2.22** Base Theorem

[Candlewhisper Archive]

So this is a nice simple two-option issue, and I'm working on the assumption that most players won't know what the title is referring to, and thus won't understand why position 1 is objectively incorrect. I'm not trying to educate issue answerers, but I am curious as to how responses to this will pan out if it gets published.

DRAFT 2:

Base Theorem

VALIDITY:
At least fairly restrictive drug laws

DESCRIPTION:
The media has recently been drawing attention to the "scourge of freebasing" among the nation's youth, where apparently teenagers as young as thirteen have been smoking cocaine, leading to a small number of high profile cases of overdose. In response to this a prominent school in @@CAPITAL@@ has taken to weekly mandatory urine tests for students, with those who fail facing disciplinary action and -- for repeat offenders -- expulsion.

OPTION 1
"Cocaine is out of control, this is no misplaced moral panic," explains headmaster Don Juan de Rifa, who is sweating excessively and wide-eyed with excitement. "This test is 97% accurate at detecting cocaine use, and 95% accurate at proving absence of cocaine use. That's good enough for me to justify handing out detention, and if you get several positive tests a few months apart, that's reasonable enough grounds for expulsion. If you like, I'll show you the systems we've put in place, and help you roll them out to schools across the nation. Hell, some employers might want to use our system too, maybe starting with public sector workplaces. Zero tolerance! That's the way."
OUTCOME:
A-grade students are often expelled

OPTION 2
"There's a chance that the innocent will be punished here, and this whole approach smacks of police state thinking," complains a surprisingly confident fifteen year old former student, who doesn't seem to have noticed the gentle trickle of blood from her left nostril. "No-one should ever be forced to take a drug test, and no punishment should ever be levied against someone who fails a drug test in the absence of other evidence. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the restroom."
OUTCOME:
prosecuting intoxicated drivers relies almost entirely on confessions

OPTION 3
"Oh come on now, everybody did drugs at school, I know I did," laughs your Secretary of State, unaware @@HE@@ is committing political suicide as nearby journalists take down @@HIS@@ quote, verbatim. "I say just be realistic, and let drugs be in the open, and expressly permitted. Let young tykes experiment and explore new realities, it's part of the joy of being young and growing up. I mean, my dealer is only fifteen, and he's a perfectly lovely chap."
OUTCOME:
schoolkids learn that "A is for Amphetamines, B is for Brown Sugar, C is for Cookies"

DRAFT 1:

Base Theorem

VALIDITY:
At least fairly restrictive drug laws

DESCRIPTION:
The media has recently been drawing attention to the "scourge of freebasing" among the nation's youth, where apparently teenagers as young as thirteen have been smoking cocaine, leading to a small number of high profile cases of overdose. In response to this a prominent school in @@CAPITAL@@ has taken to weekly mandatory urine tests for students, with those who fail facing disciplinary action and -- for repeat offenders -- expulsion.

OPTION 1
"Cocaine is out of control, this is no misplaced moral panic," explains headmaster Don Juan de Rifa, who is sweating excessively and wide-eyed with excitement. "This test is 97% accurate at detecting cocaine use, and 90% accurate at proving absence of cocaine use. That's good enough for me to justify handing out detention, and if you get several positive tests a few months apart, that's reasonable enough grounds for expulsion. If you like, I'll show you the systems we've put in place, and help you roll them out to schools across the nation. Hell, some employers might want to use our system too, maybe starting with public sector workplaces. Zero tolerance! That's the way."
OUTCOME:
A-grade students are often expelled

OPTION 2
"There's a chance that the innocent will be punished here, and this whole approach smacks of police state thinking," complains a surprisingly confident fifteen year old former student, who doesn't seem to have noticed the gentle trickle of blood from her left nostril. "No-one should ever be forced to take a drug test, and no punishment should ever be levied against someone who fails a drug test in the absence of other evidence. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the restroom."
OUTCOME:
prosecuting intoxicated drivers relies almost entirely on confession

[Verdant Haven]

Yikes, 90% specificity? And WEEKLY? Like... you wouldn't have a student body by the end of an average school year. Statistically that would be 1% of the students being expelled as a repeat offender by the second week, even if not a single one had ever used drugs. Even without expulsions, something like 93% of the student body would falsely fail a drug test within the first school year. This is horrifying.

I love it.

The only change I can suggest is that the outcome for Option 1 is a bit more in your face with the consequences. Grade A students can do drugs, so I don't think it carries the "Hey wait a second, something is wrong here" vibe that maybe it should? Perhaps something like "school administrators are baffled that their entire student body fits in a single classroom" might get to it?

[Trotterdam]

Yikes, 90% specificity? And WEEKLY? Like... you wouldn't have a student body by the end of an average school year. Statistically that would be 1% of the students being expelled as a repeat offender by the second week, even if not a single one had ever used drugs. Even without expulsions, something like 93% of the student body would falsely fail a drug test within the first school year. This is horrifying.

Assuming that false positives are completely random (you have the same chance of getting a false positive every time you get tested), as opposed to depending on factors that theoretically could be tracked but the test isn't sophisticated enough to take into account, which would tend to stay the same for any given person even if you have no actual way of measuring them.

Though really, I think weekly urine tests is going to make even students that have no trouble passing the test walk away from your school.

Do serious delinquents even consider being expelled from school to be a punishment?

[Verdant Haven]

Though really, I think weekly urine tests is going to make even students that have no trouble passing the test walk away from your school.

Depends on if they have that option. In most jurisdictions with which I am familiar, a student cannot simply decide to change schools on a whim (though I think you're right that they would want to).

Do serious delinquents even consider being expelled from school to be a punishment?

Probably not, but the far greater number of innocents being affected likely would.

Perhaps both of these questions could be addressed by making the headmaster who is speaking belong to a highly desirable elite or fee-charging school with the trappings of social status that might matter a bit more? Something akin to a "Public School" in the UK or a "Private School" in the US... perhaps "Boarding School" would maintain that idea regardless of the reader's nationality? That way even a self-serving delinquent might care about the loss of status from expulsion.

[USS Monitor]

Perhaps both of these questions could be addressed by making the headmaster who is speaking belong to a highly desirable elite or fee-charging school with the trappings of social status that might matter a bit more? Something akin to a "Public School" in the UK or a "Private School" in the US... perhaps "Boarding School" would maintain that idea regardless of the reader's nationality? That way even a self-serving delinquent might care about the loss of status from expulsion.

It's already a "prominent" school, though it might not be prominent in a good way.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Yikes, 90% specificity? And WEEKLY? Like... you wouldn't have a student body by the end of an average school year. Statistically that would be 1% of the students being expelled as a repeat offender by the second week, even if not a single one had ever used drugs.

To be fair, he doesn't say 90% specificity, he says 90% accurate at proving absence of cocaine use, which is negative predictive value. I should probably make it "over 99%" though, to obscure the stats a bit more, and to make it more reflective of RL drug testing... These tests tend to have excellent negative predictive value, but very poor positive predictive value, and that's primarily because of prior probabilities.

[SherpDaWerp]

I get that "freebasing" has to be in the issue for the title joke to work but given "crack" is in much more common usage these days, only mentioning freebasing makes it less easily-obvious why this is a specific issue over just saying "cocaine is an issue in schools". It also seems incongruous that Option 2's speaker is then implied to have taken powdered cocaine given all the freebasing this and smoking that, but I guess it's a lot easier to imply powdered cocaine usage.

To remedy this, maybe the clearly-opposed-to-drugs headmaster should make a disparaging comment about crack? That could pretty easily be a bit on-the-nose, but there has to be some way to word it so it's not too negative.

Also, with regard to the actual probabilities: dependent on what you're imagining the prevalence to be, I thought the low negative-predictive-value was part of what made option 1 "objectively wrong"? For example, (according to some hopefully-correct math) if you assume there's a 1% prevalence of cocaine use, then the current 90% NPV gives you approximately 9 false positives to every genuine drug user, but by increasing it to 99% NPV that goes to 1:1, and 99.9% reverses it completely to 1:9. 99% NPV on it's own is pretty terrible, but considering that positive tests would still be somewhat rare, 1:1 isn't objectively as terrible as 9:1.

I think if you really want the "objectively incorrect" bit, 90% should stay. If you don't, then I'd question whether this issue really adds much over preexisting "drugs are a problem" issues, namely #284 and #565.

[USS Monitor]

Agree with Sherp that the numbers are about where you want them, high enough to sound good if you don't think too hard, but low enough that it would be a real problem.

[Verdant Haven]

Likewise agreed - having the numbers as "bad" as they are is a huge part of what makes it effective. I think it's brilliant with the numbers it began with.

[Australian rePublic]

Option 2- um, so what about jobs that already require regular drug and alcohol tests? There should be a third option to legalise all of these drugs

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Option 2- um, so what about jobs that already require regular drug and alcohol tests? There should be a third option to legalise all of these drugs

Re: the first question, I guess you could argue that nobody is FORCED to follow a particular occupation, so there's no civil rights infringement of calling those tests a condition of employment. Regardless, I don't think it affects the options.

Re: legalising all drugs, that could work, though maybe I ought to keep it on topic by making that about drugs being legal in schools.