That said, I agree that komponisto tipped his hand in telling us what he thought the relevant facts were; it was easy to predict that he believed Knox to be innocent.
Of the people who answered komponisto’s very interesting 4th question: “How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine,” I think virtually all said 90% and a lot more than 10% of them thought Knox guilty, and thus thought komponisto thought Knox guilty. So it wasn’t that easy.
Maybe I’m applying some hindsight bias, but I still agree with rolf that the evidence (for komponisto’s position) was there in his selection of “the relevant facts”. Keep in mind that many people did not spend any time at all reading the pro-guilt website and would not even be aware that he’d excluded “evidence” from there in his summary.
I believe that many of the posters (especially the wrong ones) didn’t spend any additional time gathering information beyond that which was presented in the post+discussion; I certainly didn’t. I like to believe that, because it implies that they could have gotten it right if they really cared to, which is a nicer thing to believe than that you absolutely can’t trust most people’s best efforts at thinking and making fair judgments.
Jonathan, ‘most people’ (even on this site) did not reply to komponisto’s post. To be fair to the site, I would not yet conclude for certain that a majority of the people on this site came to the wrong conclusion, given we don’t actually know what a majority of the people on this site concluded.
Also, I specifically cherry-picked this as the sole issue (out of hundreds) that the LW community seems the most wrong about, so that skews things as well. I don’t think the komponisto fiasco should reflect too poorly on LW as a whole.
I was talking about people who posted an opinion as to the probable guilt of the accused. While I think the first few such posts clearly had done the work of traversing the pro- anti- and wikipedia sites suggested, many later comments were based primarily on the evidence selected by previous players.
I could be completely wrong about that, but that’s how I felt: not motivated to filter through “the internet” for evidence, but interested in the discussion, and allowing myself to update based on facts brought to my attention by others.
I do believe that “most people” (hopefully not here) really can’t be trusted to have actually thought things through, though.
Of the people who answered komponisto’s very interesting 4th question: “How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine,” I think virtually all said 90% and a lot more than 10% of them thought Knox guilty, and thus thought komponisto thought Knox guilty. So it wasn’t that easy.
Maybe I’m applying some hindsight bias, but I still agree with rolf that the evidence (for komponisto’s position) was there in his selection of “the relevant facts”. Keep in mind that many people did not spend any time at all reading the pro-guilt website and would not even be aware that he’d excluded “evidence” from there in his summary.
I believe that many of the posters (especially the wrong ones) didn’t spend any additional time gathering information beyond that which was presented in the post+discussion; I certainly didn’t. I like to believe that, because it implies that they could have gotten it right if they really cared to, which is a nicer thing to believe than that you absolutely can’t trust most people’s best efforts at thinking and making fair judgments.
Jonathan, I think you’re confusing my first post with my second.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, your initial post was quite well disguised! My mistake.
The facts rolf complains that you select are part of the second post where you clearly state your position.
Jonathan, ‘most people’ (even on this site) did not reply to komponisto’s post. To be fair to the site, I would not yet conclude for certain that a majority of the people on this site came to the wrong conclusion, given we don’t actually know what a majority of the people on this site concluded.
Also, I specifically cherry-picked this as the sole issue (out of hundreds) that the LW community seems the most wrong about, so that skews things as well. I don’t think the komponisto fiasco should reflect too poorly on LW as a whole.
I was talking about people who posted an opinion as to the probable guilt of the accused. While I think the first few such posts clearly had done the work of traversing the pro- anti- and wikipedia sites suggested, many later comments were based primarily on the evidence selected by previous players.
I could be completely wrong about that, but that’s how I felt: not motivated to filter through “the internet” for evidence, but interested in the discussion, and allowing myself to update based on facts brought to my attention by others.
I do believe that “most people” (hopefully not here) really can’t be trusted to have actually thought things through, though.