In the name of efficiency

Police around the world live in a paradox that is seemingly impossible to break - How does one stop crimes before they happen? Think about it, a crime is not a crime until it is committed, and a criminal isn't a criminal until he is proven guilty of the crime. Without the technology used by Tom Cruise in Minority Report, how does one prevent a crime from happening?

Police in the US and in many parts of the world use a technique called 'Profiling'. This technique requires a policeman to look out for criminals by matching visual profiles of a person with known offenders. Considering that the country's most underprivileged classes of people are either Black or Hispanic, this is usually what the police are looking for. But the problem with this system is obvious - the innocent Black and Hispanic American get caught in the middle and suffer quite a bit of inconvenience, leave alone the humiliation of belonging to a community that is largely responsible for committing the crimes. But why should the larger group have to suffer for the sake of the few (yes, by definition, criminals are the minority in any group).

The answer can probably be found in the way the Human Brain functions. Due to it's own inabilities, it organizes large bodies of information by grouping individual components together. Then, all it has to do is remember that Group A has certain characteristics and Group B has a certain different set of characteristics. If there are exceptions, they are automatically classified into a third group. By this method, the brain simply has to remember three different sets of characteristics rather than say, a hundred and fifty individual characteristics. This was the method that led primitive cavemen to remember that green fruits were not ripe and should not be eaten as they are usually bitter, whereas colored fruits were usually ripe and sweet.

You can observe kids doing this all the time. For them, everything around is new and needs to be explored. But there is a process to this exploration. They relate everything to what they already know, unless it is so out of the realm of their understanding, in which case they usually seek help from an adult who will break it down for them. I wouldn't be surprised if kids made sense of the two parents as equivalents with small differences. For instance, 'Dad' is simply 'Mom' without the high pitched voice. Or, an orange is an apple of a different color and different taste. And so on.

But what's funny is that we as adults do this all the time as well. We don't ever grow out of this habit. The rationale that's behind this is probably "It's been successful so far, why not now?" Whenever we run into something new, we usually try to relate it to something we have a good understanding of. I remember, when the Digital Diary revolution came around most people didn't know how to understand this new gadget. But advertising helped relate the new to the familiar. They posted advertisements everywhere saying things like "No more maintaining new calendars every year.", or "Recall a friends number more efficiently than your regular diary!" - at every step trying to associate the new gadget's capabilities with the old method of doing things. "It's the same, but much better!"

Most of us understand the people around us in the same way. We build groups of people and try to fit every new person we are introduced to, into one of these groups. At first the groups are broad such as "White", "Black", "Indian", "Tambi" or "Filipino". Then the groups become more and more refined such as "Student", "Geek" or "Chess Player". The better we get to know the person, the better refined his or her group is. This goes on until we hit a point where this person is the only one within that group called "Adrian" or "Aditya".

If we analyze all of the people we know, we will see that everyone is but a unique combination of a limitless set of characteristics. Genetics and the environment have shaped each one of them into a unique personality. So if this is the case, how right are we usually to start off with the broad classifications? By doing so, we are encouraging ourselves to proceed in the wrong direction in thinking about a person. As a survival mechanism, it's not very effective. Its fine if we do it for objects or concepts, but when it comes to people, we can go wrong. Very wrong. Police could end up terrorizing certain groups of people for just being Black or Hispanic. People could be denied jobs that they are perfectly qualified for because they are not good looking. Innocent people could be sentenced to death because, on the surface, they match the broad characteristics of murderers.

So why do we continue to use an inefficient method to live our lives? One answer provided by an anthropologist by the name of Robin Dunbar is that the human cortex has a limitation in its ability to maintain more than 147.8 (~150) individual profiles in the brain. This might seem like a small number but this actually translates to the brain understanding the relationships between you and each of the 150 people and their relationships between each other, which is in fact a very large number. This study is based on Dunbar's study of various indigenous cultures from the Walbiri of Australia to the Hutterite colonies (Similar to the Amish ;) ) who have each maintained the magical number of 150 as maximum population strengths because, past this they have experienced rifts within the colonies. This 150 is also the reason Graham Bell chose to use the 7 digit telephone number system. Its also the same reason for a combat group within the army to be limited to a max of 200 people even though we have better communication equipment now than ever before.

Though this offers an explanation of why it is so, I would like to argue that we as humans have evolved well past this point. We have new tools and technologies at our disposal. Why do we still behave the same way as the Hutterites? Why do we still use archaic and inaccurate methods of survival? We need a new strategy. We have to force ourselves not to classify people into groups but rather to strive to know each of them as individuals. We have to force our brains to organize differently. Though this seems far fetched, this is not the case because the brain very often reallocates other parts of the brain to take on the functions of any other part. We are very malleable. We have to take advantage of this aspect.

Any thoughts?