The article asks &quot;Should Los Angeles County Predict Which Children Will Become Criminals?&quot;<p>That is a bunch of hooey. We can&#x27;t predict individuals&#x27; behaviours. We can&#x27;t even predict the behaviours of whole populations with anything approaching reasonable accuracy. And even if we could somehow predict future personality development we would still not be able to predict whether the person would survive long enough to become the criminal they&#x27;re predicted to become. Noone in their sane mind claims to be able to predict things like accidents, diseases, etc. a few years down the line.<p>Let&#x27;s be absolutely honest here. This &quot;predictive analytics&quot; is no more accurate than reading tea leaves. The people selling this technology are charlatans, fair and square. They are obviously well aware that their tech&#x27;s ability to &quot;predict&quot; anything is no better than chance, but they are also aware that they are selling it to people who can&#x27;t tell the difference.<p>&gt;&gt; “They looked at these public-health models and said, ‘This isn’t rocket science.<p>Well then it must be Common Sense.