(1) When did Knox first become concerned about Kercher’s absence?
(2) When did Sollecito and Knox first call the police and why?
These questions are disingenuous and pointless. If you think the answers to them are incriminating to Knox and Sollecito, then you should just state (what you believe to be) the answers and explain why they are incriminating. This is what you would do if you were arguing honestly (instead of trying to “catch” your opponent in a mistake), and it would also save time.
(3) If it turns out that the ransacking of Romanelli’s room was a staged burglary, do you agree that this is decent evidence against Knox?
Preface: I disagree with brazil about basically everything he says regarding Knox and reject most of the reasoning he uses to try to argue his case. But:
These questions are disingenuous and pointless.
Disingenuous does not apply to these questions in this context. There is no feigning of naivety, ignorance or unsophistication. The questions are rhetorical, pretentious, annoying, misguided, of dubious relevance and wrapped up with a tad of snide—but not disingenuous.
I do not consider the distinction you are drawing important enough to restrict my use of the term “disingenuous”. As far as I am concerned the questions themselves imply ignorance of the answers, and this is the basis on which the term was used. You are free to disapprove (and your disapproval is noted), but I shan’t be drawn into a status battle over this issue.
You are free to disapprove (and your disapproval is noted), but I shan’t be drawn into a status battle over this issue.
Excuse me? While there is an unfortunate and unavoidable status implication in the mere willingness to correct someone rather than being too intimidated by the potential threat they may pose I went to a lot of trouble to ameliorate that in the correction in question. I prefaced with an indication of full support for you in your status battle with brazil then offered a whole stream of applicable substitute negative labels for brazil’s rheotorical ploy to show that I am not trying to subvert the core of the message “brazil should have lowered status because of what he said to kompo”—because the latter would, in fact, seem appropriate.
The above being the case it actually kind of hurts to be portrayed as trying to ‘draw you into a status battle’. The opening salvo in any such battle would be the parent and I obviously wouldn’t draw it out beyond this one reply. I could only stand to lose by such an engagement.
Regarding the calling of people disingenuous there probably isn’t a problem here—I expect you consider the back and forth you’ve had with brazil over the subject to have gone on long enough. Obviously in general I am always likely to object if somewhat is falsely accused of being disingenuous. It would be outright bizarre if I didn’t when I have already done so when the unjustly accused is someone I consider a troll-minus-malicious-intent. In the context of lesswrong disingenuousness is perhaps one of the most dire things you can accuse someone of!
The above being the case it actually kind of hurts to be portrayed as trying to ‘draw you into a status battle’.
As it happens I gave serious consideration to rewording or dropping the last line, but didn’t get to it in time. It was more heavy-handed than I intended, sorry. But, in fairness to myself, I would point out that the future tense was used, and that there was no intended implication of inappropriate aggression on your part in the preceding exchange. I was, in other words, retreating from a danger that I foresaw (for whose existence I am as surely to blame as anyone, being as I am a human).
I had intended only to communicate that I wasn’t terribly interested in arguing about the meaning of “disingenuous” in this particular context at this particular moment, nothing more. (I’ll mention that I had also considered the wording: “drawn into a status battle with an ally...)
I do not consider the distinction you are drawing important enough to restrict my use of the term “disingenuous”. As far as I am concerned the questions themselves imply ignorance of the answers, and this is the basis on which the term was used.
The questions may have been posed as Socratic questions rather than disingenuous or rhetorical questions.
However the Socratic method is a pedagogical device. It’s not meant to be a tactic used to get out of stating what your argument or beliefs really are when trying to arrive at the truth and it does seem to me that it would save time if brazil84just stated whatever evidence they have and what conclusions they draw from it.
The questions may have been posed as Socratic questions...However the Socratic method is a pedagogical device.
Indeed; hence using it amounts to an assertion of higher status like that of teacher over pupil. This would be another ground on which to object to brazil’s questions.
I disagree, because I suspect that just like desrtopa, bigjeff5 does not understand the case against Knox. If he is unable to answer these questions, it will confirm my suspicions. At the moment, I am not interested in debating Knox’s guilt with biggjeff5 if he hasn’t bothered to study and understand the evidence against her.
Of course it is
Well do you agree that there is decent (if not compelling) evidence that the burglary was staged? For example (1) Romanelli’s testimony that she found glass on top of her disturbed items; (2) Romanelli’s testimony that nothing was taken from her room; and (3) Sollecito’s apparent statement to the police (before Romanelli returned) that there had been a burglary but nothing was taken?
What would not make sense is 90% for all three and 90% for Guede with or without the others.
Yes, I think that’s what I meant. I think I can make things simpler by laying out 4 possibilities:
(1) Guede, Knox, and Sollecito were all involved in the murder;
(2) Guede was involved in the murder but not Knox or Sollecito;
(3) Guede was not involved in the murder but Knox and Sollecito were;
(4) None of Guede, Knox, or Sollecito were involved in the murder.
I think that the probability of (1) is roughly 90%; (2) is roughly 9+%; (3) is negligible; and (4) is negligible.
Make sense?
(I also think that the chances that Knox was involved but not Sollecito or vice versa are negligible)
I disagree, because I suspect that just like desrtopa, bigjeff5 does not understand the case against Knox. If he is unable to answer these questions, it will confirm my suspicions.
Exactly. So, far from “disagreeing”, you admit that your questions were disingenuous.
Well do you agree that there is decent (if not compelling) evidence that the burglary was staged?
No.
For example (1) Romanelli’s testimony that she found glass on top of her disturbed items; (2) Romanelli’s testimony that nothing was taken from her room; and (3) Sollecito’s apparent statement to the police (before Romanelli returned) that there had been a burglary but nothing was taken?
You need evidence that is thousands of times more likely in the case of staging than in the case of an authentic burglary. The notion that any of those items comes anywhere close to meeting such a standard is simply ridiculous.
So, far from “disagreeing”, you admit that your questions were disingenuous.
I clearly prefaced my questions with the following:
Anyway, I disagree with you that this is the strongest piece of evidence against Knox and I think I can demonstrate it to you if you will indulge me by answering (or trying to answer) a few questions:
So it was pretty clear to any reasonable person that I was asking the questions not simply to improve my understanding. Agree?
You need evidence that is thousands of times more likely in the case of staging than in the case of an authentic burglary.
First, I would ask you why that is.
Second, let’s break it down a bit: In your view, how much more likely is it that Romanelli would have discovered glass on top of her disturbed items in the case of a staged burglarly than in a legitimate one?
Next, how much more likely is it that nothing would be taken in the case of a staged burglary than a legitimate one?
So it was pretty clear to any reasonable person that I was asking the questions not simply to improve my understanding.
Yes, your disingenuousness was indeed transparent.
If you thought there was some stronger piece of evidence than what your interlocutor mentioned, you should simply have stated it rather than quizzing the other person.
You need evidence that is thousands of times more likely in the case of staging than in the case of an authentic burglary.
Sorry, no. You are the contrarian here; the onus is on you to explain your position. My view is well known by now; I’ve explained it in a number of posts and comments. Just for the record, my current probability of guilt for Knox and Sollecito is between 0.0001 and 0.001, updated from a prior of between 0.00001 and 0.0001; if you want numerical bounds on my likelihood ratios, you can do the arithmetic yourself.
Yes, your disingenuousness was indeed transparent.
Let’s see if I have this straight: According to you, any question which is for rhetorical, testing, or socratic purposes is “disingenuous” even if the nature of the question is made clear from the beginning? Is that what you are saying?
Read the post I linked,
I’m not sure I see your point. It seems that your “thousands of times more likely” comes from the observation that the prior probability of Knox’s guilt is pretty low. But the exact same thing could be said in connection with Knox’s “confession” and in any event, the unlikelihood of the various evidence resulting from a bona fide break-in would appear to counterbalance the low prior probability.
Sorry, no. You are the contrarian here; the onus is on you to explain your position.
I’m not sure it needs to go by the majority. But anyway, if you don’t want to explain your position, that’s fine by me. I was trying to get down to the nub of our disagreement.
I was trying to get down to the nub of our disagreement.
The nub of our disagreement is quite clearly identifiable: you apparently believe that certain testimony about the position of glass fragments (contrary to the photographic evidence, incidentally) is thousands of times less likely to occur in the case of an actual burglary than in the case of fake one. More generally, you are of the opinion that circumstantial and psychological evidence of the sort produced in this case is powerful enough to overcome not only the incredibly low prior probability of guilt for Knox and Sollecito, but also the total lack of any (significant, non-discredited) physical evidence tying them to the crime, the failure of Guede to implicate them until he knew they were suspects, and the fact that Kercher had both a full stomach and an empty duodenum at death, and thus almost certainly died before 9:30 pm, while Sollecito’s computer was in use at his apartment.
Needless to say, I think this is sheer madness. In my view, you are vastly, hugely overconfident in your model of human behavior. However, in the unlikely event that you can actually produce a compelling argument for why I should (for example) regard the presence of glass on top of clothes as 30-decibel evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Knox and Sollecito staged the burglary over the hypothesis that there was an authentic burglary committed by known burglar Rudy Guede, I am all ears.
Really, however, I’m long past the point where I’m ready to write you off as an incorrigible clacker.
you apparently believe that certain testimony about the position of glass fragments (contrary to the photographic evidence, incidentally) is thousands of times less likely to occur in the case of an actual burglary than in the case of fake one.
Actually I don’t believe that. My estimate is somewhere between 10 and 100. It seems you refuse to tell me yours.
the fact that Kercher had both a full stomach and an empty duodenum at death, and thus almost certainly died before 9:30 pm, while Sollecito’s computer was in use at his apartment.
Where are you getting this from?
According to my research
(1) Sollecito’s computer stopped being used at 9:10pm
(2) Sollecito’s own expert witness—Professor Introna—testified that based on the stomach and duodenum contents, the time of death was between 9:30 pm and 10:30pm.
(3) Professor Bacci, the prosecution’s expert, testified (based on the same digestive issues) that the time of death was between 9:00 to 9:30 pm and 11:00pm to midnight.
Do you disagree with any of this? Because it looks to me like you are suffering from a massive case of confirmation bias. To be sure, I got items (2) and (3) from the sentencing report. But I have a really hard time believing that the report would flat out lie about peoples’ testimony.
And by the way, I would still like an answer to my earlier question:
According to you, any question which is for rhetorical, testing, or socratic purposes is “disingenuous” even if the nature of the question is made clear from the beginning? Is that what you are saying?
Next, how much more likely is it that nothing would be taken in the case of a staged burglary than a legitimate one?
Strictly speaking, this is not evidence we possess. The evidence we possess is that it is reported that nothing was taken. An explanation that involves things being taken but a false report otherwise still fits our observations. Whether this moves the probabilities much, I have too little knowledge of the other facts of the case to say. (Strictly speaking, the facts could even contradict my objection—if, for instance, there was an audit of the apartment conducted by a reliable third party immediately prior to the burglary. I think that unlikely enough to discount, though...)
Strictly speaking, this is not evidence we possess.
I agree. (One could also say that strictly speaking we don’t know that Knox was in Italy at the time of the murder; we don’t even know if there really is a girl named Amanda Knox.)
ETA: One should of course consider the possibility that much of the evidence against Knox is simply fraudulent.
That’s speaking a little more strictly than relevant, I think. My point was that, in the general case, there can be reasons that nothing was reported stolen other than that nothing was reported stolen. “He took my 10 lbs of cocaine” is something someone would be reluctant to tell the police, though I might expect it to nonetheless come out in a murder trial. Alternatively, something might have been taken that the person had forgotten they were in possession of. Adjudge for yourself how likely either of these explanations is, but they should be considered—along with any others that run along similar lines. Asking strictly about the probability of a real vs. staged break-in based on the fact that nothing is taken might be misleading.
That’s speaking a little more strictly than relevant, I think. My point was that, in the general case, there can be reasons that nothing was reported stolen other than that nothing was reported stolen
I agree, and one should of course take Romanelli’s testimony with a grain of salt. She might be forgetful; she might have been coached to give testimony damaging to Knox; and so forth.
However, keep in mind that the question on the table is whether the strongest (piece of?) evidence against Knox is her statement to the police that she was at the apartment at the time of the murder. For these purposes, I think it’s reasonable to accept Romanelli’s testimony at face value.
These questions are disingenuous and pointless. If you think the answers to them are incriminating to Knox and Sollecito, then you should just state (what you believe to be) the answers and explain why they are incriminating. This is what you would do if you were arguing honestly (instead of trying to “catch” your opponent in a mistake), and it would also save time.
Of course it is, which is why the staging charge carries a burden of proof equal to that of the murder charge.
That would make perfectly good sense. What would not make sense is 90% for all three and 90% for Guede with or without the others.
Preface: I disagree with brazil about basically everything he says regarding Knox and reject most of the reasoning he uses to try to argue his case. But:
Disingenuous does not apply to these questions in this context. There is no feigning of naivety, ignorance or unsophistication. The questions are rhetorical, pretentious, annoying, misguided, of dubious relevance and wrapped up with a tad of snide—but not disingenuous.
There is feigning of ignorance of the answers (even if the feigning is transparent); and they aren’t rhetorical. On the other qualities we agree.
No, there isn’t. Nothing in that passage in any way implies that brazil is ignorant of the answer to those questions.
I do not consider the distinction you are drawing important enough to restrict my use of the term “disingenuous”. As far as I am concerned the questions themselves imply ignorance of the answers, and this is the basis on which the term was used. You are free to disapprove (and your disapproval is noted), but I shan’t be drawn into a status battle over this issue.
Excuse me? While there is an unfortunate and unavoidable status implication in the mere willingness to correct someone rather than being too intimidated by the potential threat they may pose I went to a lot of trouble to ameliorate that in the correction in question. I prefaced with an indication of full support for you in your status battle with brazil then offered a whole stream of applicable substitute negative labels for brazil’s rheotorical ploy to show that I am not trying to subvert the core of the message “brazil should have lowered status because of what he said to kompo”—because the latter would, in fact, seem appropriate.
The above being the case it actually kind of hurts to be portrayed as trying to ‘draw you into a status battle’. The opening salvo in any such battle would be the parent and I obviously wouldn’t draw it out beyond this one reply. I could only stand to lose by such an engagement.
Regarding the calling of people disingenuous there probably isn’t a problem here—I expect you consider the back and forth you’ve had with brazil over the subject to have gone on long enough. Obviously in general I am always likely to object if somewhat is falsely accused of being disingenuous. It would be outright bizarre if I didn’t when I have already done so when the unjustly accused is someone I consider a troll-minus-malicious-intent. In the context of lesswrong disingenuousness is perhaps one of the most dire things you can accuse someone of!
As it happens I gave serious consideration to rewording or dropping the last line, but didn’t get to it in time. It was more heavy-handed than I intended, sorry. But, in fairness to myself, I would point out that the future tense was used, and that there was no intended implication of inappropriate aggression on your part in the preceding exchange. I was, in other words, retreating from a danger that I foresaw (for whose existence I am as surely to blame as anyone, being as I am a human).
I had intended only to communicate that I wasn’t terribly interested in arguing about the meaning of “disingenuous” in this particular context at this particular moment, nothing more. (I’ll mention that I had also considered the wording: “drawn into a status battle with an ally...)
It’s amazing how much difference those few words make. ;)
The questions may have been posed as Socratic questions rather than disingenuous or rhetorical questions.
However the Socratic method is a pedagogical device. It’s not meant to be a tactic used to get out of stating what your argument or beliefs really are when trying to arrive at the truth and it does seem to me that it would save time if brazil84just stated whatever evidence they have and what conclusions they draw from it.
Indeed; hence using it amounts to an assertion of higher status like that of teacher over pupil. This would be another ground on which to object to brazil’s questions.
I disagree, because I suspect that just like desrtopa, bigjeff5 does not understand the case against Knox. If he is unable to answer these questions, it will confirm my suspicions. At the moment, I am not interested in debating Knox’s guilt with biggjeff5 if he hasn’t bothered to study and understand the evidence against her.
Well do you agree that there is decent (if not compelling) evidence that the burglary was staged? For example (1) Romanelli’s testimony that she found glass on top of her disturbed items; (2) Romanelli’s testimony that nothing was taken from her room; and (3) Sollecito’s apparent statement to the police (before Romanelli returned) that there had been a burglary but nothing was taken?
Yes, I think that’s what I meant. I think I can make things simpler by laying out 4 possibilities:
(1) Guede, Knox, and Sollecito were all involved in the murder;
(2) Guede was involved in the murder but not Knox or Sollecito;
(3) Guede was not involved in the murder but Knox and Sollecito were;
(4) None of Guede, Knox, or Sollecito were involved in the murder.
I think that the probability of (1) is roughly 90%; (2) is roughly 9+%; (3) is negligible; and (4) is negligible.
Make sense?
(I also think that the chances that Knox was involved but not Sollecito or vice versa are negligible)
Exactly. So, far from “disagreeing”, you admit that your questions were disingenuous.
No.
You need evidence that is thousands of times more likely in the case of staging than in the case of an authentic burglary. The notion that any of those items comes anywhere close to meeting such a standard is simply ridiculous.
I clearly prefaced my questions with the following:
So it was pretty clear to any reasonable person that I was asking the questions not simply to improve my understanding. Agree?
First, I would ask you why that is.
Second, let’s break it down a bit: In your view, how much more likely is it that Romanelli would have discovered glass on top of her disturbed items in the case of a staged burglarly than in a legitimate one?
Next, how much more likely is it that nothing would be taken in the case of a staged burglary than a legitimate one?
Same question for Sollecito’s phone call.
Yes, your disingenuousness was indeed transparent.
If you thought there was some stronger piece of evidence than what your interlocutor mentioned, you should simply have stated it rather than quizzing the other person.
Read the post I linked, and review Bayes’ theorem if necessary.
Sorry, no. You are the contrarian here; the onus is on you to explain your position. My view is well known by now; I’ve explained it in a number of posts and comments. Just for the record, my current probability of guilt for Knox and Sollecito is between 0.0001 and 0.001, updated from a prior of between 0.00001 and 0.0001; if you want numerical bounds on my likelihood ratios, you can do the arithmetic yourself.
Let’s see if I have this straight: According to you, any question which is for rhetorical, testing, or socratic purposes is “disingenuous” even if the nature of the question is made clear from the beginning? Is that what you are saying?
I’m not sure I see your point. It seems that your “thousands of times more likely” comes from the observation that the prior probability of Knox’s guilt is pretty low. But the exact same thing could be said in connection with Knox’s “confession” and in any event, the unlikelihood of the various evidence resulting from a bona fide break-in would appear to counterbalance the low prior probability.
I’m not sure it needs to go by the majority. But anyway, if you don’t want to explain your position, that’s fine by me. I was trying to get down to the nub of our disagreement.
The nub of our disagreement is quite clearly identifiable: you apparently believe that certain testimony about the position of glass fragments (contrary to the photographic evidence, incidentally) is thousands of times less likely to occur in the case of an actual burglary than in the case of fake one. More generally, you are of the opinion that circumstantial and psychological evidence of the sort produced in this case is powerful enough to overcome not only the incredibly low prior probability of guilt for Knox and Sollecito, but also the total lack of any (significant, non-discredited) physical evidence tying them to the crime, the failure of Guede to implicate them until he knew they were suspects, and the fact that Kercher had both a full stomach and an empty duodenum at death, and thus almost certainly died before 9:30 pm, while Sollecito’s computer was in use at his apartment.
Needless to say, I think this is sheer madness. In my view, you are vastly, hugely overconfident in your model of human behavior. However, in the unlikely event that you can actually produce a compelling argument for why I should (for example) regard the presence of glass on top of clothes as 30-decibel evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Knox and Sollecito staged the burglary over the hypothesis that there was an authentic burglary committed by known burglar Rudy Guede, I am all ears.
Really, however, I’m long past the point where I’m ready to write you off as an incorrigible clacker.
Actually I don’t believe that. My estimate is somewhere between 10 and 100. It seems you refuse to tell me yours.
Where are you getting this from?
According to my research
(1) Sollecito’s computer stopped being used at 9:10pm
(2) Sollecito’s own expert witness—Professor Introna—testified that based on the stomach and duodenum contents, the time of death was between 9:30 pm and 10:30pm.
(3) Professor Bacci, the prosecution’s expert, testified (based on the same digestive issues) that the time of death was between 9:00 to 9:30 pm and 11:00pm to midnight.
Do you disagree with any of this? Because it looks to me like you are suffering from a massive case of confirmation bias. To be sure, I got items (2) and (3) from the sentencing report. But I have a really hard time believing that the report would flat out lie about peoples’ testimony.
And by the way, I would still like an answer to my earlier question:
According to you, any question which is for rhetorical, testing, or socratic purposes is “disingenuous” even if the nature of the question is made clear from the beginning? Is that what you are saying?
Strictly speaking, this is not evidence we possess. The evidence we possess is that it is reported that nothing was taken. An explanation that involves things being taken but a false report otherwise still fits our observations. Whether this moves the probabilities much, I have too little knowledge of the other facts of the case to say. (Strictly speaking, the facts could even contradict my objection—if, for instance, there was an audit of the apartment conducted by a reliable third party immediately prior to the burglary. I think that unlikely enough to discount, though...)
I agree. (One could also say that strictly speaking we don’t know that Knox was in Italy at the time of the murder; we don’t even know if there really is a girl named Amanda Knox.)
ETA: One should of course consider the possibility that much of the evidence against Knox is simply fraudulent.
That’s speaking a little more strictly than relevant, I think. My point was that, in the general case, there can be reasons that nothing was reported stolen other than that nothing was reported stolen. “He took my 10 lbs of cocaine” is something someone would be reluctant to tell the police, though I might expect it to nonetheless come out in a murder trial. Alternatively, something might have been taken that the person had forgotten they were in possession of. Adjudge for yourself how likely either of these explanations is, but they should be considered—along with any others that run along similar lines. Asking strictly about the probability of a real vs. staged break-in based on the fact that nothing is taken might be misleading.
I agree, and one should of course take Romanelli’s testimony with a grain of salt. She might be forgetful; she might have been coached to give testimony damaging to Knox; and so forth.
However, keep in mind that the question on the table is whether the strongest (piece of?) evidence against Knox is her statement to the police that she was at the apartment at the time of the murder. For these purposes, I think it’s reasonable to accept Romanelli’s testimony at face value.