But again, thinking about doing something and actually doing it makes all the difference. You do not have 100% control over what your think. Sometimes you think about something and then decide whether to do it it not by predicting the possible outcomes. I swear i have thought about murdering several people, but of course i will never follow through. And I'm sure everybody does that. It's part of our critical thinking. We think of something and then weigh the pros and cons in our mind and then decide what to do.
See footnote [2], and the problem is that (as with driving styles) there may turn out to be a correlation between how often you think about murder and how often you do it, which can be used to calibrate insurance-risk premiums.
Sure, not every thought about murder leads to murder, and not every red light you run leads to an accident. But people that run more red lights have more accidents, and people who think about bad things more (let's posit) will do more bad things.
"Oh, you only think about murder 3 times a week? Discount!"
Still ready to let your thoughts about Suzy get archived on some hard drive?
All of that does not matter one bit to an insurer. If what you think (or what someone manages to measure of it) can be used to predict damages better than without the data, that allows the insurer to offer those with predicted lower risk a lower premium and thus gain them as customers. It doesn't matter that you possibly know that you would never follow through--if people who think about murdering other people on average are more likely to actually do so and they cannot distinguish between those who do follow through and you, it is rational for them to put you in the same category.
