“But come on,” says a voice in your head. “Does this really sound like the behavior of an innocent person?”
Absolutely. I saw the amount of emphasis prosecutors (and ‘guilty’ advocates) were placing on this sort of crap and immediately updated in favour of innocent. Presenting lots of ridiculous nonsense is evidence that you haven’t not anything better.
What I found most interesting about this exercise is the number of people who made this deduction. It is an error. They are appealing to the public and the jury, whose rationality you impugn. The prosecutors and especially advocacy websites will present (a lot of) this crap regardless of whether they have better evidence. This is normal behavior for prosecutors, just as changing stories, implicating random people, and signing confessions is normal behavior for innocent people. Similarly, differences in tone and organization of the two advocacy sites is pretty much useless.
Douglas, you mention that crap evidence is “normal” even if they have better evidence, but is it normal to not also present the claimed better evidence?
What I found most interesting about this exercise is the number of people who made this deduction. It is an error. They are appealing to the public and the jury, whose rationality you impugn. The prosecutors and especially advocacy websites will present (a lot of) this crap regardless of whether they have better evidence. This is normal behavior for prosecutors, just as changing stories, implicating random people, and signing confessions is normal behavior for innocent people. Similarly, differences in tone and organization of the two advocacy sites is pretty much useless.
Douglas, you mention that crap evidence is “normal” even if they have better evidence, but is it normal to not also present the claimed better evidence?
I am not convinced. The ratio of speaking nonsense to providing relevant evidence is a valid signal even with our less than entirely rational species.