precrime

[still]

I see pre-cogs floating in a little tank with gadgets coming out of their heads attaching them to computers...and tom cruise

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/co...56145.html

[Eagle1]

What if the prediction is wrong? Ah, that's the beauty, you'll never have to worry about that because the person will already be jailed or hung!

[ThePaladin]

Considering the future is fluid and always changing, the best they could do is predict probabilities based on past trends. It might be fairly accurate up to a point because humans tend to be creatures of routine and habit. However, that's not a hard and fast rule.

Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series was based on the idea of being able to mathematically predict the future. Yeah, it worked, until the character The Mule came along. The model hadn't predicted a wild card-type character and that totally changed the path of the future.