In Minority Report, how did Lamar Burgess perpetuate the red ball that resulted in Anderton becoming a fugitive?
This is my understanding of the manipulation of the pre-crime system by Burgess:
Burgess is a character who, much like Dr. Iris Hineman, was involved in the Precog program from the ground floor, and as such is aware of its vulnerabilities. It is with this knowledge that he hires a drug user/drifter to kill Agatha's mother (Ann Lively), which (being from that point pre-meditated by the killer) immediately produces a report from the pre-cogs. He views the report, and the hired goon is immediately arrested. Burgess then engineers circumstances that are visually identical to the manner in which his employee would have killed Lively, and replicates them, so they are considered to be an 'Echo' and dismissed.
The film then seems to tie in the logic from this into Anderton's situation, as though he were being manipulated, but it doesn't seem to function logically.
Burgess is revealed to have payed Leo Crow to "pretend to have murdered [his] kid", angering Anderton to the point of willful homicide and as such incarceration. But what was Leo Crow supposed to do, exactly? just sit in a hotel room and wait for Anderton to show up?
It's only because of the report that Anderton even goes looking for Crow.
The crime requires the Pre-cog report as instigation of the crime, without the report they would have been no crime, as Anderton would not have 'known his future'?
I understand there is a lot of mythology surrounding self-fulfilling prophecies, but I'm not entirely sure the film adheres to its own logic. It seems to me that, unlike the careful choreography of the first Murder (which makes total sense, and is a pretty awesome parable about techno-dependence stimulating corruption), the second one just seems...impossible?
How would the Pre-Cogs predict the murder, if it is the prediction itself that is catalyst for murder?
This has been called a 'causal loop' elsewhere, but I wonder if anyone can make sense of if this is possible, and if there is something we're all missing?