Brain scans predict which criminals are more likely to reoffend | Hacker News Reader

Brain scans predict which criminals are more likely to reoffend

nature.com

11 pointsananyob24 comments

Quoting:

Wager adds that the part of the ACC examined in this study “is one of the most frequently activated areas in the human brain across all kinds of tasks and psychological states”. Low ACC activity could have a variety of causes — impulsivity, caffeine use, vascular health, low motivation or better neural efficiency — and not all of these are necessarily related to criminal behaviour.

Something tells me this will be completely ignored in any future reports.

The word 'likely' renders this technique useless.

It is not in your best interest to be a criminal.

So why are people criminals?

We have to give up this silly notion of free will. The more we learn about the brain the more it turns out to be a fantasy.

> We have to give up this silly notion of free will. The more we learn about the brain the more it turns out to be a fantasy.

If you're right, there's no possible way for us to "give up" this notion... it's predestined to end up whichever way it ends up and we're just cogs in the machine.

It's not that free will does not exist; rather, it is a faulty model. It is causality without a cause. Saying "I decided to take action X due to biological force Y and social pressure Z" does not mean a decision did not take place.

We must believe in our own agency in order to function, but understanding its mechanisms and limits increases that agency, rather than removing it.

Free will and self-awareness are different, but we seem to confuse them a lot. We are a cognitive agent and can know many different kinds of facts. Our lack of free will is just another fact that we might become aware of.

> Our lack of free will is just another fact that we might become aware of.

Sure, but even if it's a fact there's no use arguing about giving up the notion of free will because it's not under "our" control whether we will or won't, no matter how self-aware we might be.

Self awareness is the easy part. I can run lm_sensors on my box at home to let the computer know about its own motherboard temperature and many other things, but it's still not a cognitive machine.

Right, I agree. It is not our decision when we collectively stop thinking we have free will. It might not happen at all. When I say "We ought to" I really only mean that facts point in one direction, and our beliefs point in another, and whenever they become aligned we'll be better off.

Counterpoint: It is not in your best interest to be an unsuccessful criminal. Many successful criminals are quite rational, whether they are drug lords or banking executives.

I'm on board with the idea of a post-free-will justice system; I believe a health-centric approach would have much greater efficacy. However, I also don't think punitive pressures should be removed entirely; there are a lot more high-functioning sociopaths weaved into the human fabric than anyone wants to admit.

It is not in your best interest to be a criminal.

My grandfather worked at the state prison in New Hampshire. One of the inmates would break into a house and wait for the cops to show up so they'd take him back to prison. One time, a judge decreased his sentence for good behavior. He was pretty shaken up about it.

We have to give up this silly notion of free will. The more we learn about the brain the more it turns out to be a fantasy.

It might be difficult or impossible to change your behavior on a moment's notice, but with practice, you can change it. http://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_ha...

Changing your behavior is just your brain ( a program ) learning to reprogram itself. It's still a program.

A brain reprogramming itself is free will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming

This reminds me a little of the old man in The Shawshank Redemption who was unable to live outside of the prison he'd spent his whole life in. :( Do you know why the guy in your grandfather's story wanted to go back in?

Well I never met him, but they said he was just there for the bed and food. He wasn't dumb or anything... in fact he cracked the security on the new electronic cell-door system with a ballpoint pen he lifted from a guard. He walked right down to the warden's office to tell him about it. (That's when the judge commuted his sentence, thinking he was doing the guy a favor.)

That's pretty impressive. Makes him sound a bit like Richard Feynman, actually.

If you don't have free will, you can't decide to give up its notion.

The notion of free will isn't silly - 'giving up' on it is an absurd suggestion. It appears to serve a very useful purpose towards enabling us to not all be sociopaths, and is possibly fundamental to our view of self as rational agents in society. Without it, we immediately start 'misbehaving'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22tier.html?pagewa...

You don't have to believe in free will to behave well towards others. You could simply have a rational belief that this mode of behavior leads to greater shared happiness, and that's enough of a justification for it.

That becomes less and less likely the more we think we can get away with, or if we can rationalize that nobody really gets hurt (cheating on an exam, for example). 'Free Will', and the belief that, ultimately, decisions made by you are yours and you are responsible for them seems like something we evolved for a reason. Even if it is an illusion (likely but not proven), it's a damn useful one.

I agree with many of the quotes below in that this his findings only state they are more "likely" to commit another crime.

I wonder if the lower activity in the ACC isn't a factor in them committing another crime but in them being caught? To put it bluntly they don't have a lot going on upstairs so they will do something very dumb, where as a criminal with more cognitive capacity would likely take longer to slip up.

"In a twist that evokes the dystopian science fiction of writer Philip K. Dick, neuroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner."

This reminds me of phrenology.

With enough investigation, I'm sure it'll be just as useful.

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