Have you watched Minority Report before? What if you lived in a society where it is possible to be deemed by some sort of computer algorithm that you are more prone to committing a certain type of crime? Life’s definitely not a beach then, as having a potentially heinous intent is very different from carrying out the crime itself. Well, Wired has brought us word that there are select individuals in the world who were discovered to have approximately double the likelihood of being rearrested within four years after being released to society.
This study involved the use of mobile MRI scanners, where brain scans were performed on inmates to test for impulsivity; pressing a button whenever they saw the letter X appear on a screen, and to simply drop everything and do nothing when they saw K. The letter K appeared 16% of the time, so that there is that element of surprise. Just how conclusive is such a study? Surely it should not be taken seriously in its context, as predicting human behavior is not an exact science, even until now.
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