and I certainly hope it isn't true.

People who have a very large forehead tend to not be very bright...

Tell me you're joking please.

From day one they weren't really designed to eat steakburgers...and therefore tend to be on the left politically


Easy peasy!

I'm overwhelming suspicious that machine learning is just picking up on the social cues that we ourselves are giving. Picking up a subjects sexuality from their dating site picture? It wouldn't be surprising to me if there are differences in how people present themselves in such contexts. Do the same trick with neutral context pictures and maybe I'll start to believe it.

I know that i can tell sometimes that the newsmakers in DC are cranky old man conservatives, but that's only because they're in politics, they're younger than me, and look like cranky old men.

But, i see some guy at the grocery store and even if he looks like a cranky old man, i don't know who he likely voted for. The town i'm in went 51:49 HRC. So, it's a coin flip. I could guess, but i'd only have a 50% chance of getting it right, and i actually know these townspeople.

There will be those who base decisions on this sort of divination: "Gee Harold, we think you'd make a swell addition to our firm, but according to this Kosinski Report, you're just too darned liberal! Sorry." Of course, it won't be anywhere near that blatant and obvious, but that will be the upshot of it all.

You can't tell from someone's face whether they have a high IQ, what their political beliefs are, or whether they are predisposed to criminality. That is reminiscent of the long-discredited 19th century 'science' of phrenology.

who claimed to be able to predict criminal behaviour based on facial measurements and postulated the idea of the 'born criminal'.

It also has a whiff of the early 20th Century eugenics movement.

Very unpleasant, and as you say a load of old claptrap anyway.