Base-rate rarity makes risk-factor profiling for terrorism mostly false positives.
Evidence
The likelihood that a particular person will become a terrorist is exceedingly rare. This is why personal and environmental risk factors that are considered in isolation yield high rates of false-positive predictions. These predictions are based largely on categorical indices such as ethnicity, race, religion, and nationality rather than on personal attributes. Such indices treat individuals within these groups as though they all think and behave alike. Thus characterized, many harmless people are stereotyped as dangerous suspects. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2124
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: Strong angle for an essay on why actuarial profiling of any rare behavior (terrorism, crime, school shootings) is doomed to false-positive overreach — connects predictive analytics to categorical stereotyping.
- XREF: Directly echoes the base-rate fallacy and false-positive critique I know from diagnostic testing literature; also parallels the COMPAS/profiling notes in my kept history.