komponisto, can I just say that you have very eloquently voiced my very thoughts on this case. In my blog article, “Logic Trumps Innuendo” I wrote the following:
“As I surf the net, reading a variety of comments in regards to this case there is much speculation about evidence in this case. Much of it was not used at trial, but somehow made it into the public consciousness through ongoing press leaks during the investigation, such as:
“Knox was seen with a mop and bucket the morning of the murder.” What does that mean exactly? The innuendo would be that she cleaned the crime scene, but see the logic problems posed by that below.
“Knox purchased bleach the morning of the murder, there are receipts.” No receipts were presented at trial, but even if there were what how is that probative?
“The found the murder weapon in Sollecito’s flat.” They found his knife, in his flat, in his drawer. Logic alone makes it unlikely that this is the murder weapon, and the prosecution’s own analysis reinforces this. See logic question below as to why.
“Meredith’s bra had Sollecito’s DNA on it.” Left on the floor of Knox’s flat for 47 days after the murder, a variety of DNA including Sollecito’s was found on the seperated clasp, not the bra itself.
… and on and on. I offer no explanation in this article for these, but simply pose some logic questions that address conflicting and incompatible ideas with the facts. This approach certainly reveals some troubling problems with the case against Knox and Sollecito. The unspoken question at the end of each of these is simply, “If this is so, how is that possible?”
Logic problem 1: They had the temerity to properly dispose of their bloody clothes and shoes, but then took the murder weapon home, cleaned it thoroughly, and put it back in the drawer?
Logic Problem 2: They cleaned the knife so well that luminal had no reaction, no blood was found on the knife, but the low copy skin DNA of the victim somehow remained on the blade???
Logic Problem 3: With a mop and bucket they somehow managed to selectively clean the murder scene clean of their DNA and fingerprints but leave behind Rudy Guede’s??
Logic Problem 4: The bra clasp collected 47 days after the murder had Sollecito’s DNA on it, but the bra itself did not???
Logic Problem 5: Meredith Kercher’s bedroom door was locked from the inside and had to be broken down to gain entry. How did Knox get in there and remove all of her and Sollecito’s fingerprints and DNA and leave behind Rudy Guede’s?”
I too have felt this case begs for the the application of Occam’s Razor. You simply can’t connect Knox and Sollecito to Guede, much less put them into some three way sexual tryst. My logic circuits implode at the prosecutor’s inane theory, which to prove you would need significantly more evidence than what was presented at trial.
It seems to me that most of those problems can be explained by postulating that (1) the prosecution’s case is overstated; and (2) the prosecution’s scenario of what happened is incorrect.
However, even if (1) and (2) are true, it does not mean that Knox and Sollecito are innocent or uninvolved in the murder.
By analogy, consider the OJ Simpson case. As I recall, there really were some serious questions about the prosecution’s evidence in that case. Even so, it seems pretty clear (to me) that OJ was guilty.
Obviously the OJ Simpson case is very different from the Amanda Knox case. But the point is that police, prosecutors, and others are often tempted to try to turn a good case into a great case.
Of course one big difference with OJ Simpson is that the case fits into a very simple paradigm: the jealous ex-husband. So it’s very easy for the prosecution to present a coherent theory (including a motive).
Perhaps a better analogy is the Annie Le case. It seems pretty clear who killed her, but it’s not entirely clear why. Nevertheless, there will be pressure on the prosecutors to come up with a scenario for what happened and why.
There is a lot of what I call “noise” in this case. Things that MAY apply, but not all of them carry the same weight, thus it becomes necessary to organize my thought processes. I start with the hard evidence FIRST, not the other way around. I do not look at the people and then find evidence to implicate them, I look at the evidence first and then find the people.
By “hard evidence”, I mean that evidence that can be observed directly or by repeatable scientific methods.
I refine my thought process even further by using these principles which state: 1. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually the correct one. 2. the more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, and 3. The further away you move from a causal event the less accurate your observations will be.
With that as a guide, the DNA of Rudy Guede inside Kercher becomes a white hot beam of guilt, and Knox’s cartwheels with the police has almost no luminescence at all.
Given how much evidence is in the room where Kercher was killed leads you directly to Rudy Guede. The bedroom is the key to this case as that is where the murder took place. As you move further away from the bedroom, you are less likely to find direct connection to the killer or killers, so as I move out of the bedroom other things like mixed DNA in a bathroom of people who co-habituate get less consideration.
Given the preponderance of evidence that there is of Guede, logically then, this must also be true for Knox and Sollecito if the prosecution’s theory of the crime is to hold true. However, no such preponderance of evidence exists for them. Knox’s presence is non existent according the the physical evidence, and Sollecito’s hinges on a bra clasp found 47 days after the crime. The more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, ergo which version of the crime does the evidence and logic support:
That a known burglar, involved in three separate break-in incidents in the weeks prior to the murder broke in and robbed, assaulted and murdered Kercher.
Or
That new lovers Knox and Sollecito with no criminal history whatsoever, conspired with relative unknown Guede to involve Kercher in some sex game and inadvertently killed her?
This leaves Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba footnotes in this story. Stories about bleach purchases, hip wiggling, knives in a residence not connected to the scene, Myspace pages, emials and raunchy tabloid stories about an attractive American female and her Italian boyfriend are relatively benign compared to fingerprints in blood, feces in the toilet and DNA inside the victim.
Using THIS method, which is the traditional method of deduction leads you to the guilty party. Using disassociated bits of information that you then try to connect to hard evidence found latter only leads to confusion. Bragging about it only leads to a need for obfuscation when the hard evidence contradicts your theory.
“That a known burglar, involved in three separate break-in incidents in the weeks prior to the murder broke in and robbed, assaulted and murdered Kercher.
Or
That new lovers Knox and Sollecito with no criminal history whatsoever, conspired with relative unknown Guede to involve Kercher in some sex game and inadvertently killed her?”
Are those the only two possibilities? As an attorney, I can tell you I have seen many many cases where neither side’s theory about events is very credible.
It seems pretty clear to me that the answer to my question is “no,” but I would like to hear your take.
I remember when I started practicing law on my own I would be outraged when I caught the other side in numerous lies and yet the judge would still go against my client. At the time, it seemed to me that the judge was heavily biased against my client.
It took me a while to learn what I have tried to share in my last couple posts. In hindsight, I realize that most of those clients really did do pretty much what they had been accused of doing. And that in any event, the judge was (generally speaking) making a reasonable assesment as to my client’s guilt or innocense.
The fact that the prosecution’s case has holes in it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Defendants were innocent or uninvolved in the murder.
But feel free to explain why you think my question is tangential or irrelevant and I will be happy to consider it.
Also, you might ask yourself if you are angry at me over our previous exchange and whether this anger is coloring your judgment.
Suit yourself. In essence, I am pointing out that there are other possibilities besides the 2 scenarios described by captcorajus.
If you feel that my observation is so obviously tangential or irrelevant that no explanation is required beyond simply stating that it is tangential or irrelevant, then so be it. People can draw whatever inference they wish. My inference is that you have no good explanation for your claim, but of course I am starting from the belief that my observation was relevant. (Otherwise I would not have made it.) If someone else sees things differently, perhaps they can shed some light on the issue.
So, you’re suggesting that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, but for reasons other than the prosecution’s argument. The other commenters here have been discussing the issue, so maybe if you have other arguments, or can point us to another source, that would be relevant.
If you’re just saying, “But captcorajus might be wrong,” that doesn’t strike me as being terribly useful, without any further insight to explain why.
I realize that most of those clients really did do pretty much what they had been accused of doing.
Or, are you saying the fact that Knox and Sollecito were in a courtroom as defendants is enough to conclude that they’re guilty?
“So, you’re suggesting that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, but for reasons other than the prosecution’s argument.”
Not exactly. I’m saying that there is good reason to be skeptical of the prosecution’s scenario. Nevertheless, the evidence is sufficient to be reasonably confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder.
“If you’re just saying, ‘But captcorajus might be wrong,’ that doesn’t strike me as being terribly useful, without any further insight to explain why.”
I’m saying, in essence, that captocorajus’ argument rests on a false dilemma. Implicitly he is asking us to choose between 2 possibilities when in reality there are other possibilities.
“Or, are you saying the fact that Knox and Sollecito were in a courtroom as defendants is enough to conclude that they’re guilty?”
No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that holes in the prosecution’s case do not necessarily imply innocence on the part of the defendants. (As a practical matter, without knowing more, the fact that somebody is a defendant is indeed good evidence they are guilty. But here we do know more so I have not been relying on the mere fact of prosecution.)
Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn’t mention it.
Rudy Guede’s involvement is about as certain as one can get without direct observation. His bloody handprind, his feces in the toilet and his DNA inside the victim All tangible, all verifiable by second parties.
No such tangible evidence exists for Sollecito or Knox. If they were there something of their presence MUST be there.
Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder. Rudy Guede can’t even be connected to Sollecito and Knox. No emails, no phone calls.… nothing. Rudy Guede is connected to the flat though through downstairs male roommates who testified at his trial that during one visit he fell asleep on their toilet.
This case, and the fever that surrounded in regards to Knox borders on misogyny. For Knox, the only bright side is they no longer burn witches in Italy.
“Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn’t mention it.”
There are many other possibilities (besides your two scenarios) which are consistent with the evidence and consistent with Knox and Sollecito having been involved in the murder.
“Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder.”
Are you saying there is no circumstantial evidence which suggests involvement of Knox and Sollecito?
Are you saying there is no circumstantial evidence which suggests involvement of Knox and Sollecito?
No. The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a factor of millions, and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time. See the “Epistemic Ruthlessness” section of the post, and the wiki entry “Amount of Evidence”.
The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a factor of millions, and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time.
No, the evidence is weaker than it would need to be to overcome the prior improbability of “a rape known to have been committed by a random burglar in a flat was a product of conspiracy with a woman who lived there”, plus the absence of Knox DNA is very strong evidence against her presence. The degree of the evidence against Guede has nothing to do with the bar—the bar is set by the prior improbability, not by the strength of evidence that Guede happened to leave behind himself.
The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a >factor of millions and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time.
It seems to me that (1) Guede murdered Kircher; and (2) Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, are not mutually exclusive hypotheses.
So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.
So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.
Indeed not; if we had 30 bits of anti-Knox evidence, the case against Knox would be strong too.
The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.
The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.
That’s why I keep on saying not to compare the amount of evidence against Guede to the case against Knox. It’s not a comparison operation. It doesn’t set a bar. It doesn’t set a standard. Now, the fact that Guede left a lot of DNA means it’s implausible that Knox cleaned up only her DNA and not Guede’s, but that’s a whole separate issue. And the fact that we know Guede did it means that there’s no unexplained murder around for Knox to be convicted of. But under other circumstances, it would be very easy to have a murder that was in fact committed by two people, one of whom left very strong evidence against herself, and one of whom left less strong but still conviction-worthy evidence against herself. It’s just not a relative operation.
Okay, I agree that ideal rational agents with unlimited computing resources shouldn’t “care” about the relative strength of evidence; all they have to do is perform the appropriate computation, and the result will come out to whatever it should be. But I’ve already conceded that “follow the strong signal” is a heuristic for human use, in order to get results that, in reality, better approximate what an ideal rational agent would come up with than the methods that are already programmed into us.
The situation we’re in is the following: we’re investigators on a budget, trying to figure out how to allocate our limited resources among various paths through hypothesis space. Let’s say there are two particular paths we’re considering, and at the entrance to each of them is a loudspeaker with a voice saying “FOLLOW THIS TRAIL”. Except that one of the voices is twice as loud as the other. Now, am I completely crazy, or is it not an epistemically reasonable thing to do to do something like allocate twice the investigative resources to following the signal that is twice as strong? How else should we divide it up?
I don’t think I need to remind you that reality is consistent: if Knox was really involved in a conspiracy with Guede, then the Knox trail will meet up with the Guede trail, in which case we’re not losing anything by devoting the lion’s share of our resources to starting along the Guede trail rather than the Knox trail.
The problem is that finding Guede’s semen inside Meredith is not evidence against the hypothesis “Guede and Knox murdered Meredith”. Guede’s already been caught, too. So now the question is whether to devote any of our remaining attention to trying to catch Knox, and the insufficient/disconfirmatory evidence for this fails to surpass the prior implausibility of the conspiracy hypothesis—it has nothing to do with how hard Guede was caught.
I’ve read elsewhere this was a manual rape—still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.
Manual rape? I’m not familiar with that term and a meaning fitting those criteria (DNA but not semen) isn’t obvious. I can only assume that ‘manual’ refers to, well, the last part of it. I wouldn’t have expected that kind of rape if murder was going to be on the cards and I would also expect semen around somewhere, showing up with luminol. So perhaps something else is meant.
Mainly because (1) there is evidence of alteration/staging; and (2) Knox and Sollecito are still unable to give accounts of the evening (and next morning) which are reasonably coherent and consistent.
I just want to say thanks for your posts, I have found them very interesting.
If the trial has been corrupted then one has to ask why the judge(s) involved would collude in such high profile corruption—that in itself seems unlikely unless there is an unsopken intention to reverse the verdict at appeal, having given the US ‘a dose of it’s own’. But that seems far fetched. Corruption happens for a reason and those reasons are also traceable.
Your argument that conviction was secured on the basis of a fanciful explanation but not without reason is persuasive. I too am of the opinion that things went on but I’m not sure that makes A and R as evil as they are portrayed or even guitly of murder.
But mainly, your posts are valuable because, without being able to argue the case mathematically, something clearly is wrong with this Bayesian worldview because it is not explaining life, and if Bayesian rationality is the key to ‘knowing’, as we are led to believe, then I would not be left feeling that many posts that adhere strictly to Bayesian reasoning are somehow missing the point. And I don’t think that is because I am an evolutionary throw-back, I think it is because I have a good sense of things not sounding right—I have that feeling with the Knox trial and with this blog. Ciao
or it could be that Knox and Sollicitos’ behaviours were so irrational that it is harder to fathom what the evidence means:
they both retracted statements
Italy’s legal system has been praised as well as criticised
the footprint on the bath mat paradox
the picture on S’s blog
K’s rape story
the verdict is for ‘involvement’ not physical action
capacity to be irrational induced by drugs, hormones, a generational obssession with the supernatural, and the perennial boredom of the over-educated bourgeoisie
I reckon that whatever happened that night, K/S got so close to the boundary between fanatsy and reality that they couldn’t risk admitting whatever folly they had been up to.
I think what is on trial is culture. I count at least 8.
I don’t see anything in RNO’s response which would offer an explanation for your claim. On the contrary, it appears that RNO simply misunderstood my point and I explained myself a bit further.
You say that a weak prosecution does not equal an innocent defendant. I think we can all agree on that.
You say that there are other explanations for the evidence. Sounds reasonable enough; after all, even if we’re sure of something, we’re not absolutely sure, not 100% sure.
Back in the first “you be the jury” thread, there was a general agreement that Guede was guilty and Knox was innocent. For Knox, as i recall, there were various estimates from 10% to 30% chance of guilt, thus a judgment of “probably innocent / not likely enough to convict”. So, i think it’s not that nobody is considering any other explanation, rather, they’re convinced that this one explanation is correct.
Saying, “there might be another explanation” is a good idea as a general point, but that doesn’t mean that another explanation is particularly likely. You keep saying “there are other possibilities” but the problem is: what other scenario are you suggesting, and why should we believe it?
You keep saying “there are other possibilities” but the problem is: what other >scenario are you suggesting, and why should we believe it?
I’m not suggesting any particular scenario. There simply isn’t enough evidence to make a good guess at what happened in the hour or two leading up to Kircher’s death.
It’s a bit like the Annie Le case in New Haven. It’s reasonably clear who the killer was, but it’s not clear why he did it.
In any murder case, there is a lot of pressure on the prosecutor to put together a scenario as to how and why the killing happened. And usually it’s not too hard to do. i.e. to paint the defendant as a jealous ex-husband; a robber; a competing drug dealer; etc.
But I’m not the prosecutor so there’s no need for me to put together any scenario. I’m reasonably confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, but I do not know what their role was or why they did it.
komponisto, can I just say that you have very eloquently voiced my very thoughts on this case. In my blog article, “Logic Trumps Innuendo” I wrote the following:
“As I surf the net, reading a variety of comments in regards to this case there is much speculation about evidence in this case. Much of it was not used at trial, but somehow made it into the public consciousness through ongoing press leaks during the investigation, such as:
“Knox was seen with a mop and bucket the morning of the murder.” What does that mean exactly? The innuendo would be that she cleaned the crime scene, but see the logic problems posed by that below.
“Knox purchased bleach the morning of the murder, there are receipts.” No receipts were presented at trial, but even if there were what how is that probative?
“The found the murder weapon in Sollecito’s flat.” They found his knife, in his flat, in his drawer. Logic alone makes it unlikely that this is the murder weapon, and the prosecution’s own analysis reinforces this. See logic question below as to why.
“Meredith’s bra had Sollecito’s DNA on it.” Left on the floor of Knox’s flat for 47 days after the murder, a variety of DNA including Sollecito’s was found on the seperated clasp, not the bra itself.
… and on and on. I offer no explanation in this article for these, but simply pose some logic questions that address conflicting and incompatible ideas with the facts. This approach certainly reveals some troubling problems with the case against Knox and Sollecito. The unspoken question at the end of each of these is simply, “If this is so, how is that possible?”
Logic problem 1: They had the temerity to properly dispose of their bloody clothes and shoes, but then took the murder weapon home, cleaned it thoroughly, and put it back in the drawer?
Logic Problem 2: They cleaned the knife so well that luminal had no reaction, no blood was found on the knife, but the low copy skin DNA of the victim somehow remained on the blade???
Logic Problem 3: With a mop and bucket they somehow managed to selectively clean the murder scene clean of their DNA and fingerprints but leave behind Rudy Guede’s??
Logic Problem 4: The bra clasp collected 47 days after the murder had Sollecito’s DNA on it, but the bra itself did not???
Logic Problem 5: Meredith Kercher’s bedroom door was locked from the inside and had to be broken down to gain entry. How did Knox get in there and remove all of her and Sollecito’s fingerprints and DNA and leave behind Rudy Guede’s?”
I too have felt this case begs for the the application of Occam’s Razor. You simply can’t connect Knox and Sollecito to Guede, much less put them into some three way sexual tryst. My logic circuits implode at the prosecutor’s inane theory, which to prove you would need significantly more evidence than what was presented at trial.
It seems to me that most of those problems can be explained by postulating that (1) the prosecution’s case is overstated; and (2) the prosecution’s scenario of what happened is incorrect.
However, even if (1) and (2) are true, it does not mean that Knox and Sollecito are innocent or uninvolved in the murder.
By analogy, consider the OJ Simpson case. As I recall, there really were some serious questions about the prosecution’s evidence in that case. Even so, it seems pretty clear (to me) that OJ was guilty.
Obviously the OJ Simpson case is very different from the Amanda Knox case. But the point is that police, prosecutors, and others are often tempted to try to turn a good case into a great case.
Of course one big difference with OJ Simpson is that the case fits into a very simple paradigm: the jealous ex-husband. So it’s very easy for the prosecution to present a coherent theory (including a motive).
Perhaps a better analogy is the Annie Le case. It seems pretty clear who killed her, but it’s not entirely clear why. Nevertheless, there will be pressure on the prosecutors to come up with a scenario for what happened and why.
There is a lot of what I call “noise” in this case. Things that MAY apply, but not all of them carry the same weight, thus it becomes necessary to organize my thought processes. I start with the hard evidence FIRST, not the other way around. I do not look at the people and then find evidence to implicate them, I look at the evidence first and then find the people.
By “hard evidence”, I mean that evidence that can be observed directly or by repeatable scientific methods.
I refine my thought process even further by using these principles which state: 1. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually the correct one. 2. the more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, and 3. The further away you move from a causal event the less accurate your observations will be.
With that as a guide, the DNA of Rudy Guede inside Kercher becomes a white hot beam of guilt, and Knox’s cartwheels with the police has almost no luminescence at all.
Given how much evidence is in the room where Kercher was killed leads you directly to Rudy Guede. The bedroom is the key to this case as that is where the murder took place. As you move further away from the bedroom, you are less likely to find direct connection to the killer or killers, so as I move out of the bedroom other things like mixed DNA in a bathroom of people who co-habituate get less consideration.
Given the preponderance of evidence that there is of Guede, logically then, this must also be true for Knox and Sollecito if the prosecution’s theory of the crime is to hold true. However, no such preponderance of evidence exists for them. Knox’s presence is non existent according the the physical evidence, and Sollecito’s hinges on a bra clasp found 47 days after the crime. The more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, ergo which version of the crime does the evidence and logic support:
That a known burglar, involved in three separate break-in incidents in the weeks prior to the murder broke in and robbed, assaulted and murdered Kercher.
Or
That new lovers Knox and Sollecito with no criminal history whatsoever, conspired with relative unknown Guede to involve Kercher in some sex game and inadvertently killed her?
This leaves Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba footnotes in this story. Stories about bleach purchases, hip wiggling, knives in a residence not connected to the scene, Myspace pages, emials and raunchy tabloid stories about an attractive American female and her Italian boyfriend are relatively benign compared to fingerprints in blood, feces in the toilet and DNA inside the victim.
Using THIS method, which is the traditional method of deduction leads you to the guilty party. Using disassociated bits of information that you then try to connect to hard evidence found latter only leads to confusion. Bragging about it only leads to a need for obfuscation when the hard evidence contradicts your theory.
“That a known burglar, involved in three separate break-in incidents in the weeks prior to the murder broke in and robbed, assaulted and murdered Kercher.
Or
That new lovers Knox and Sollecito with no criminal history whatsoever, conspired with relative unknown Guede to involve Kercher in some sex game and inadvertently killed her?”
Are those the only two possibilities? As an attorney, I can tell you I have seen many many cases where neither side’s theory about events is very credible.
It seems pretty clear to me that the answer to my question is “no,” but I would like to hear your take.
As an attorney you are asking a tangential question with the implication that it has more relevance than it does.
I remember when I started practicing law on my own I would be outraged when I caught the other side in numerous lies and yet the judge would still go against my client. At the time, it seemed to me that the judge was heavily biased against my client.
It took me a while to learn what I have tried to share in my last couple posts. In hindsight, I realize that most of those clients really did do pretty much what they had been accused of doing. And that in any event, the judge was (generally speaking) making a reasonable assesment as to my client’s guilt or innocense.
The fact that the prosecution’s case has holes in it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Defendants were innocent or uninvolved in the murder.
But feel free to explain why you think my question is tangential or irrelevant and I will be happy to consider it.
Also, you might ask yourself if you are angry at me over our previous exchange and whether this anger is coloring your judgment.
I will wait and see if anyone else finds my objection to your rhetoric hard to understand.
Suit yourself. In essence, I am pointing out that there are other possibilities besides the 2 scenarios described by captcorajus.
If you feel that my observation is so obviously tangential or irrelevant that no explanation is required beyond simply stating that it is tangential or irrelevant, then so be it. People can draw whatever inference they wish. My inference is that you have no good explanation for your claim, but of course I am starting from the belief that my observation was relevant. (Otherwise I would not have made it.) If someone else sees things differently, perhaps they can shed some light on the issue.
So, you’re suggesting that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, but for reasons other than the prosecution’s argument. The other commenters here have been discussing the issue, so maybe if you have other arguments, or can point us to another source, that would be relevant.
If you’re just saying, “But captcorajus might be wrong,” that doesn’t strike me as being terribly useful, without any further insight to explain why.
Or, are you saying the fact that Knox and Sollecito were in a courtroom as defendants is enough to conclude that they’re guilty?
“So, you’re suggesting that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, but for reasons other than the prosecution’s argument.”
Not exactly. I’m saying that there is good reason to be skeptical of the prosecution’s scenario. Nevertheless, the evidence is sufficient to be reasonably confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder.
“If you’re just saying, ‘But captcorajus might be wrong,’ that doesn’t strike me as being terribly useful, without any further insight to explain why.”
I’m saying, in essence, that captocorajus’ argument rests on a false dilemma. Implicitly he is asking us to choose between 2 possibilities when in reality there are other possibilities.
“Or, are you saying the fact that Knox and Sollecito were in a courtroom as defendants is enough to conclude that they’re guilty?”
No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that holes in the prosecution’s case do not necessarily imply innocence on the part of the defendants. (As a practical matter, without knowing more, the fact that somebody is a defendant is indeed good evidence they are guilty. But here we do know more so I have not been relying on the mere fact of prosecution.)
Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn’t mention it.
Rudy Guede’s involvement is about as certain as one can get without direct observation. His bloody handprind, his feces in the toilet and his DNA inside the victim All tangible, all verifiable by second parties.
No such tangible evidence exists for Sollecito or Knox. If they were there something of their presence MUST be there.
Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder. Rudy Guede can’t even be connected to Sollecito and Knox. No emails, no phone calls.… nothing. Rudy Guede is connected to the flat though through downstairs male roommates who testified at his trial that during one visit he fell asleep on their toilet.
This case, and the fever that surrounded in regards to Knox borders on misogyny. For Knox, the only bright side is they no longer burn witches in Italy.
“Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn’t mention it.”
There are many other possibilities (besides your two scenarios) which are consistent with the evidence and consistent with Knox and Sollecito having been involved in the murder.
“Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder.”
Are you saying there is no circumstantial evidence which suggests involvement of Knox and Sollecito?
No. The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a factor of millions, and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time. See the “Epistemic Ruthlessness” section of the post, and the wiki entry “Amount of Evidence”.
No, the evidence is weaker than it would need to be to overcome the prior improbability of “a rape known to have been committed by a random burglar in a flat was a product of conspiracy with a woman who lived there”, plus the absence of Knox DNA is very strong evidence against her presence. The degree of the evidence against Guede has nothing to do with the bar—the bar is set by the prior improbability, not by the strength of evidence that Guede happened to leave behind himself.
It seems to me that (1) Guede murdered Kircher; and (2) Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, are not mutually exclusive hypotheses.
So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.
Indeed not; if we had 30 bits of anti-Knox evidence, the case against Knox would be strong too.
The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.
That’s why I keep on saying not to compare the amount of evidence against Guede to the case against Knox. It’s not a comparison operation. It doesn’t set a bar. It doesn’t set a standard. Now, the fact that Guede left a lot of DNA means it’s implausible that Knox cleaned up only her DNA and not Guede’s, but that’s a whole separate issue. And the fact that we know Guede did it means that there’s no unexplained murder around for Knox to be convicted of. But under other circumstances, it would be very easy to have a murder that was in fact committed by two people, one of whom left very strong evidence against herself, and one of whom left less strong but still conviction-worthy evidence against herself. It’s just not a relative operation.
Okay, I agree that ideal rational agents with unlimited computing resources shouldn’t “care” about the relative strength of evidence; all they have to do is perform the appropriate computation, and the result will come out to whatever it should be. But I’ve already conceded that “follow the strong signal” is a heuristic for human use, in order to get results that, in reality, better approximate what an ideal rational agent would come up with than the methods that are already programmed into us.
The situation we’re in is the following: we’re investigators on a budget, trying to figure out how to allocate our limited resources among various paths through hypothesis space. Let’s say there are two particular paths we’re considering, and at the entrance to each of them is a loudspeaker with a voice saying “FOLLOW THIS TRAIL”. Except that one of the voices is twice as loud as the other. Now, am I completely crazy, or is it not an epistemically reasonable thing to do to do something like allocate twice the investigative resources to following the signal that is twice as strong? How else should we divide it up?
I don’t think I need to remind you that reality is consistent: if Knox was really involved in a conspiracy with Guede, then the Knox trail will meet up with the Guede trail, in which case we’re not losing anything by devoting the lion’s share of our resources to starting along the Guede trail rather than the Knox trail.
What, if anything, am I missing here?
The problem is that finding Guede’s semen inside Meredith is not evidence against the hypothesis “Guede and Knox murdered Meredith”. Guede’s already been caught, too. So now the question is whether to devote any of our remaining attention to trying to catch Knox, and the insufficient/disconfirmatory evidence for this fails to surpass the prior implausibility of the conspiracy hypothesis—it has nothing to do with how hard Guede was caught.
Are you sure semen was found? I’ve read elsewhere this was a manual rape—still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.
Nope, not sure offhand.
Manual rape? I’m not familiar with that term and a meaning fitting those criteria (DNA but not semen) isn’t obvious. I can only assume that ‘manual’ refers to, well, the last part of it. I wouldn’t have expected that kind of rape if murder was going to be on the cards and I would also expect semen around somewhere, showing up with luminol. So perhaps something else is meant.
One meaning of ‘manual’ is ‘of or relating to the hands’. I’m guessing that’s what’s meant here.
I agree with this, except of course that I am reasonably confident Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder.
And that would be because...?
(The fundamental question of rationality: why do you believe what you believe?)
Mainly because (1) there is evidence of alteration/staging; and (2) Knox and Sollecito are still unable to give accounts of the evening (and next morning) which are reasonably coherent and consistent.
How many total bits of evidence against Knox and Sollecito do you think these things are worth?
I’m not sure . . . I’m ignorant of the evaluation of evidence in terms of “bits.” Is there some link you can give me?
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Bayes_theorem
http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/odds-and-intuitive-bayes/
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/share-likelihood-ratios-not-posterior-beliefs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_factor
Yes.
If my math is correct, I would say somewhere between 3 and 4 bits.
I just want to say thanks for your posts, I have found them very interesting.
If the trial has been corrupted then one has to ask why the judge(s) involved would collude in such high profile corruption—that in itself seems unlikely unless there is an unsopken intention to reverse the verdict at appeal, having given the US ‘a dose of it’s own’. But that seems far fetched. Corruption happens for a reason and those reasons are also traceable.
Your argument that conviction was secured on the basis of a fanciful explanation but not without reason is persuasive. I too am of the opinion that things went on but I’m not sure that makes A and R as evil as they are portrayed or even guitly of murder.
But mainly, your posts are valuable because, without being able to argue the case mathematically, something clearly is wrong with this Bayesian worldview because it is not explaining life, and if Bayesian rationality is the key to ‘knowing’, as we are led to believe, then I would not be left feeling that many posts that adhere strictly to Bayesian reasoning are somehow missing the point. And I don’t think that is because I am an evolutionary throw-back, I think it is because I have a good sense of things not sounding right—I have that feeling with the Knox trial and with this blog. Ciao
or it could be that Knox and Sollicitos’ behaviours were so irrational that it is harder to fathom what the evidence means:
they both retracted statements
Italy’s legal system has been praised as well as criticised
the footprint on the bath mat paradox
the picture on S’s blog
K’s rape story
the verdict is for ‘involvement’ not physical action
capacity to be irrational induced by drugs, hormones, a generational obssession with the supernatural, and the perennial boredom of the over-educated bourgeoisie
I reckon that whatever happened that night, K/S got so close to the boundary between fanatsy and reality that they couldn’t risk admitting whatever folly they had been up to.
I think what is on trial is culture. I count at least 8.
Use “>” at the start of a line to quote.
Thanks for the tip.
Please see the response from RNO (for a start).
One inference that people may draw is that I am familiar with this kind of game and choose not to play.
“Please see the response from RNO (for a start).”
I don’t see anything in RNO’s response which would offer an explanation for your claim. On the contrary, it appears that RNO simply misunderstood my point and I explained myself a bit further.
Ah, i think i see the problem here.
You say that a weak prosecution does not equal an innocent defendant. I think we can all agree on that.
You say that there are other explanations for the evidence. Sounds reasonable enough; after all, even if we’re sure of something, we’re not absolutely sure, not 100% sure.
Back in the first “you be the jury” thread, there was a general agreement that Guede was guilty and Knox was innocent. For Knox, as i recall, there were various estimates from 10% to 30% chance of guilt, thus a judgment of “probably innocent / not likely enough to convict”. So, i think it’s not that nobody is considering any other explanation, rather, they’re convinced that this one explanation is correct.
Saying, “there might be another explanation” is a good idea as a general point, but that doesn’t mean that another explanation is particularly likely. You keep saying “there are other possibilities” but the problem is: what other scenario are you suggesting, and why should we believe it?
I’m not suggesting any particular scenario. There simply isn’t enough evidence to make a good guess at what happened in the hour or two leading up to Kircher’s death.
It’s a bit like the Annie Le case in New Haven. It’s reasonably clear who the killer was, but it’s not clear why he did it.
In any murder case, there is a lot of pressure on the prosecutor to put together a scenario as to how and why the killing happened. And usually it’s not too hard to do. i.e. to paint the defendant as a jealous ex-husband; a robber; a competing drug dealer; etc.
But I’m not the prosecutor so there’s no need for me to put together any scenario. I’m reasonably confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, but I do not know what their role was or why they did it.