Comment by luckylion

I get where you're coming from, but I very much doubt it's true RE car makes (and many similar things). There's a reason men and women have very distinct buying habits. E.g. men are ~4x more likely to buy a motorcycle. Individual decisions with that large a discrepancy between groups aren't individual decisions.

Can a young male really change their risk-tolerance or their innate drive to secure their place in the world (which will probably affect both their likelihood to buy sports cars and commit certain crimes)? I don't think we can pretend that everyone from toddler to granny is the same _and_ use any data to solve crimes / detect fraud.

In the end it comes down to where we draw the line between "person can't change this, so it's invalid to consider", "we don't believe it's linked, so it's invalid to consider" and "this is free will, so it's a valid signal", and I haven't seen a line that doesn't feel arbitrary ("I don't like that group, so their thing is free will, but I like this group, so their thing isn't") and is useful.