Well, fellow LWers, I must admit I’m somewhat taken aback here.
I came on the site today intending to reply to Rolf Nelson’s comments, which I expected would lead to a detailed discussion of the evidence that maybe a handful of people here would be interested in following, safely confined to an existing post on the topic. Then, I saw...this.
I’m not yet quite sure how to react.
Despite Nelson’s protestations that he doesn’t care about karma (and, by implication, social status in this community), I see no rationale for this post other than a desire to raise the profile and prestige of his (IMHO deservedly) marginalized viewpoint.
When I wrote my original survey post, I did so hesitantly, with conscious awareness that I was doing something experimental. I was well aware of the dangers of posting about controversial current events (though something like this is noticeably distinct from politics), and I certainly didn’t expect most other LW readers to have anything like my level of interest in this particular case. But I did think there might be a few who would find the rationality issues interesting enough to participate in the survey—enough to justify a low-profile, non-promoted top-level post. I was expecting maybe a couple dozen comments (a few of which I expected would complain about the post’s relevance); in the event that it received such a level of interest, I said I would do a followup about my own thoughts.
The LW community could thus have vetoed the whole thing right then and there; instead what happened was that the post was promoted, received 200-odd comments (among which were the thoughts of the some of the biggest guns here such as Eliezer and Yvain), and was voted up into the 20s. Clearly, then, the community had agreed with me that there were important rationality issues at stake in this case, and had decided that, at that moment, it was a perfectly good thing to be talking about on LW. And so they did talk about it, extensively. And, in so doing, they came to a fairly decisive opinion. The question was then: did their opinion agree with mine?
That was the context of the post I called “The Amanda Knox Test”—which I thought of as a reaction to the commentary on “You Be the Jury”, and which I thought of as arguing that the LW community was even more right than it realized. This second post (which was even more well received than the first) also sparked extensive discussion—the result of which appeared to be an even stronger consensus in favor of Knox’s and Sollecito’s innocence than before.
My point here is that the idea that the LW readership was somehow bamboozled by misinformation from me is not only completely and obviously mistaken but downright insulting—logically and otherwise. Whatever further top-level posts on the Kercher case may be warranted (and I don’t think any more are, at least not without some major development happening), a post arguing or implying that is clearly not warranted. So I think that this post’s current score (-7 at last check) is pretty much on target, and I don’t intend to comment any further on it lest intelligent conversation in comments lead to upvotes on the post.
I’m going to wait a bit before saying any more about this (for one thing, I currently have some intervention from Real Life to deal with). In the future, I remain willing to discuss the case with Rolf Nelson or anyone else who sincerely believes that Amanda Knox killed her roommate—in exactly one place: the comments section of my post on that topic.
Well, fellow LWers, I must admit I’m somewhat taken aback here.
I came on the site today intending to reply to Rolf Nelson’s comments, which I expected would lead to a detailed discussion of the evidence that maybe a handful of people here would be interested in following, safely confined to an existing post on the topic. Then, I saw...this.
I’m not yet quite sure how to react.
Despite Nelson’s protestations that he doesn’t care about karma (and, by implication, social status in this community), I see no rationale for this post other than a desire to raise the profile and prestige of his (IMHO deservedly) marginalized viewpoint.
When I wrote my original survey post, I did so hesitantly, with conscious awareness that I was doing something experimental. I was well aware of the dangers of posting about controversial current events (though something like this is noticeably distinct from politics), and I certainly didn’t expect most other LW readers to have anything like my level of interest in this particular case. But I did think there might be a few who would find the rationality issues interesting enough to participate in the survey—enough to justify a low-profile, non-promoted top-level post. I was expecting maybe a couple dozen comments (a few of which I expected would complain about the post’s relevance); in the event that it received such a level of interest, I said I would do a followup about my own thoughts.
The LW community could thus have vetoed the whole thing right then and there; instead what happened was that the post was promoted, received 200-odd comments (among which were the thoughts of the some of the biggest guns here such as Eliezer and Yvain), and was voted up into the 20s. Clearly, then, the community had agreed with me that there were important rationality issues at stake in this case, and had decided that, at that moment, it was a perfectly good thing to be talking about on LW. And so they did talk about it, extensively. And, in so doing, they came to a fairly decisive opinion. The question was then: did their opinion agree with mine?
That was the context of the post I called “The Amanda Knox Test”—which I thought of as a reaction to the commentary on “You Be the Jury”, and which I thought of as arguing that the LW community was even more right than it realized. This second post (which was even more well received than the first) also sparked extensive discussion—the result of which appeared to be an even stronger consensus in favor of Knox’s and Sollecito’s innocence than before.
My point here is that the idea that the LW readership was somehow bamboozled by misinformation from me is not only completely and obviously mistaken but downright insulting—logically and otherwise. Whatever further top-level posts on the Kercher case may be warranted (and I don’t think any more are, at least not without some major development happening), a post arguing or implying that is clearly not warranted. So I think that this post’s current score (-7 at last check) is pretty much on target, and I don’t intend to comment any further on it lest intelligent conversation in comments lead to upvotes on the post.
I’m going to wait a bit before saying any more about this (for one thing, I currently have some intervention from Real Life to deal with). In the future, I remain willing to discuss the case with Rolf Nelson or anyone else who sincerely believes that Amanda Knox killed her roommate—in exactly one place: the comments section of my post on that topic.
If you believe my claim C1 is false, I look forward to hearing your arguments about it. I still have not heard any rebuttal of my claim C1!
If you feel you have been logically insulted, explaining to me why you believe C1 is false would be a good option.
I agree with you only that your POV is popular on this topic on this site and mine is not; I knew that going in.