• Civility@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    The Minority Report is a classic.

    It’s almost entirely a cautionary tale about the dangers of law enforcement agencies acting against citizens on the basis of “precrimes” crimes that have not yet occurred or even begun to be planned but that they predict will be committed.

    It’s came up a lot in recent years when news articles talk about new Machine Learning applications the police have commissioned. They do tend to have serious problems, although not quite in the way Phillip K. Dick predicted.

    • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeOP
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t even realize that the Minority Report was originally a book. I loved the movie, I can only imagine it is even more horrifying than the movie was.

      • richieadler
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        1 year ago

        Well, some thinks were based in the fear of the time, and other are completely different. For instance, the precogs were deformed mutants with latent abilities; Anderton was the Police Chief and was close to retirement, and Witver was his young second-in-command; Anderton’s victim is a completely different person; the precogs know the other’s predictions and knowing them affect their own predictions and the future; Anderton’s crime is justified, and when he’s encarcerated, Witver takes his position and wonders if he will be forced to make a similar decision in the future.