JohnBonaccorsi

Karma: −60

JohnBonaccorsi 5 Feb 2014 6:30 UTC
6 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Thank you, komponisto. Congratulations to you on this fine essay. I think I must have first encountered it in December 2012, when I first learned of Less Wrong and came to see what the site was. Though I didn’t do much to absorb the essay at that time, it stayed in my mind; the news the other day about Knox’s re-conviction moved me to read it again. My mental process in response to that rereading has, in a sense, been recorded here, in my last few days’ worth of exchanges with Less Wrong posters. When I posted my first comment in response to the essay, I wasn’t sure it would be noticed, because the essay was more than four years old. Fortunately for me, Less Wrong’s participants were paying attention.

JohnBonaccorsi 5 Feb 2014 4:01 UTC
19 points
in reply to: JohnBonaccorsi’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Reply to myself:

I hereby withdraw every negative thing I have said about Amanda Knox at this website. In the period since I posted the comment immediately above, I could not drive from my mind a remark my fellow-poster Desrtopa made in a post at 03 February 2014 07:39:06AM. In effect, Desrtopa asked whether I would fault a person for giving changed-stories because of torture; if I wouldn’t, why would I fault the person for giving changed-stories under interrogation so harsh that its effect on the person being questioned would be tantamount to that of torture? At the time, I avoided answering Desrtopa’s question.

Just a few minutes ago, I read commentary by a “veteran FBI agent” named Steve Moore. The commentary was posted at http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI7.html , which is a page of a website called Injustice in Perugia. Having known really nothing about interrogation before I read Moore’s remarks—and having had no sense how a law-enforcement professional would evaluate various types of interrogation—I had no right to remark on Amanda Knox’s performance under interrogation in this case. Moore’s remarks have persuaded me of what Desrtopa was, in effect, asking me to consider, namely, that the interrogation of Knox was a disgrace. Moore’s closing paragraph was as follows:

“This is an innocent college girl subjected to the most aggressive and heinous interrogation techniques the police could utilize (yet not leave marks.) She became confused, she empathized with her captors, she doubted herself in some ways, but in the end her strength of character and her unshakable knowledge of her innocence carried her through. It’s time that the real criminals were prosecuted.”

In saying “the real criminals,” Moore seems to have been speaking of the interrogators themselves. If that is, indeed, what he meant, I would say he used the right term.

Should the conviction of Amanda Knox be upheld, and should Italy request Knox’s extradition from the United States, the U.S. government, I hope, will decline to extradite her. The U.S., in my estimation, should do much more that that to right the wrongs that have been done in this matter.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 9:23 UTC
3 points
on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Dear fellow-poster Desrtopa --

Something called a “karma problem” has prevented me from replying directly to your comment at 03 February 2014 08:52:06AM. In the hope you will spot it, my reply will be posted here. I’m afraid it’s the last comment I’ll have time for; your reply to it, should you choose to post one, will be the last word in our exchange.

Suppose that you were living in a rather more paranoid country, where the government suspected you of subversive activities. So, they took a current captive suspect, tortured them, and told them they’d stop if the suspect accused you. If the suspect caved, would you blame them for accusing you, or the government for making them do it?

I would hope my friends would know I would applaud their doing anything—even torturing me—to avoid being tortured themselves. That goes double for strangers.

PS At 02 February 2014 11:49:15PM, I wrote, with respect to Knox’s accusation of Lumumba: “The utterance of such a false thing, outside, maybe, a literal torture chamber, is depraved.” I withdraw the word “maybe.”

PPS Let’s consider your own personal experience, the stressful interrogation you underwent about the money you were suspected of taking. Were you tortured? Was Knox tortured? If Knox was of the view that she was tortured, she had a duty—not merely to herself but to everyone—to take the stand in her trial and say her story-changing and her accusation of Lumumba were products of torture.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 8:38 UTC
−6 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Thank you for the additional information, about the way the investigation proceeded. As for the rest of your comment, well, you and I don’t see things quite the same way. I’ll add only that, in the minutes of video footage I’ve seen of her, Knox has never exhibited even a moment’s dignity.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 8:23 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
I appreciate your alerting me to Komponisto’s translations. If the information I’ve encountered at pro-guilty and anti-guilty websites had not given me identical impressions of the murder-room evidence, I might well be inclined to read those translations. As things are, my caveat that my sources are second hand is a minor one. From what I know, your assessment of the prosecution doesn’t sound off-base.

After seeing your links to them, I took quick looks at “Privileging the Hypothesis” and “0 and 1 are Not Probabilities.” I’m not sure I understand why you’ve suggested I read them, but I’ll address what I’ll guess you have in mind:

Suppose we say that the investigators of the Kercher murder privileged the hypothesis that Knox and Sollecito participated in it. Once convinced of it, those investigators went looking for every little thing that seemed to support it, even while the murder premises were all but shrieking: “Guede did it; case closed.” That has nothing to do with Knox’s story-changing. Whether the interrogation of Knox would have proceeded differently if the investigators had not been privileging the hypothesis, Knox gave different stories, one of which included a false accusation. Once she did that, the story-changing itself became a legitimate focus of concern. To put that another way: One can say, “If the investigators hadn’t privileged the hypothesis that Knox participated in the murders, the story-changing wouldn’t have occurred.” Maybe so—but they did privilege it, and the story-changing did occur. That is as much a part of reality as the DNA in that room.

As for probability 1.00--well, I’ve already linked to that clip from The Godfather. When William the Conqueror was having trouble getting his Saxon subjects to accept the presence in their country of their new overlords, his Norman kin, he passed a law that said, I think, that, if a Norman were to be found dead in a Saxon town, the town was guilty of killing him. The thinking, I imagine, was rather like that of Don Corleone: “[even] if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning.” That’s what I mean when I say the probability of the guilt of a person who has engaged in story-changing like Knox’s is 1.00. Whether that’s quite in the spirit of this website, I’m not equipped to say.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 7:05 UTC
−5 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Allow me to say first that I appreciate your extended comment even if I can’t say I embrace all you’ve said in it. I can believe the personal experience you’ve described was, as you say, surprisingly stressful; but let’s note that you came through it without, as I gather, either falsely confessing or changing your story. Every one of us lives with crime; every one of us lives with the possibility that, at any moment, he or she will be arrested for, or questioned about, a crime with which he or she has had nothing to do. Every one of us lives, as well, with the knowledge that some humans are liars; every one of us knows that that knowledge complicates interrogation. If any one of us is subjected to interrogation, he or she is obliged to perform seriously through it. That fact is no more subject to change than is, say, the law of conservation of energy. Either you accept it, meet your duties, and hold others to theirs—or you are antisocial.

As you know by now, I mentioned, below, that I’d got the impression that the multiple-attacker theory was insubstantial, but I do appreciate the time you’ve taken to detail problems with it. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say the police walked into the case with a vested interest in tying Knox and Sollecito to it; but I can believe the police early on developed a theory of a many-party-attack and a false break-in to cover it, a theory they never managed to abandon.

As for false confessions, I’ll point out that I didn’t bring up false confessions and really haven’t said anything about them with respect to this case, in particular. In fact, I clarified, in a comment at 02 February 2014 10:51:01PM, somewhere in these exchanges, that “Knox’s statements are not confessions or alibis …. They are story-changing ….” Even in my statement that you quote, above, I mention false confessions only as something that has been brought up by our fellow-poster Ander; I ask him to comment on Knox’s “changed stories,” not any confession. Yes, false confession is something I’ve discussed in these exchanges; and what I just said, two paragraphs above, about the duty of a person being interrogated applies to false confessing and to story-changing—both. Even so, they are distinct things.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 1:32 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
I responded to what I regarded as a ridiculous question. I’ve said enough to indicate my view of the seriousness of false confession. Do you really find it difficult to believe I could come up with countless examples of behavior that, say, you and I would agree is mildly antisocial—my neighbor’s failure to trim weeds that were partly obstructing our block’s common driveway, for one? You’re being pointless.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 1:03 UTC
−7 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

Can you give me an example of what you consider to be a mildly antisocial act?

Of course. I can probably give you thousands of them.

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 0:51 UTC
−10 points
in reply to: V_V’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Knox’s behavior was worse than mere calumny, whether Italian law recognizes that. The exchanges here and at websites devoted to discussion of the case are just a small consequence of her actions; she completely and permanently disrupted investigation of the brutal destruction of a young woman.

But convicting somebody of murder just because they made an incorrect or even deliberately false claim, would not serve the interests of justice.

I guess that depends on your definition of justice. I use the Sicilian model:

“—but I’m a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning, then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room.”

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v75CFbaajKg )

JohnBonaccorsi 3 Feb 2014 0:02 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

You couldn’t imagine innocent people changing their stories—but it happens. So what does that say about the validity of your inference from your own imagination to the expected behaviour of other people?

I didn’t see the above when I first read your comment; maybe I was busy forming, mentally, my reply, below, to the rest of what you said. I direct you to the comment I just posted, at 02 February 2014 11:49:15PM, in response to Wes_W.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 23:49 UTC
−7 points
in reply to: Wes_W’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Your example is a good one—of memory change across a period of two years. From work I’ve done on a family history based on my own recollections, recollections from other persons, and the occasional bit of documentary evidence, I know I don’t have “flawless recall,” but that strikes me as a bit of a straw man. In fact, I will mention, in passing, that I have been favorably impressed, in the course of the project, by the number of decades-old recollections that comport—or very-nearly comport—with surviving documentation. On one or two occasions, an erroneous memory has been interestingly explained. A family member recalls, for instance, that a photograph was taken on a date that a relative moved out of a residence, but the photograph itself is seen to be dated three years before the relative’s departure from that place. At some point, somebody else’s recollection reveals that the photograph was taken on the day a visitor to the residence left it, to go home. The false memory, in other words, included an association with the word “departure.”

It’s a matter of the details of the story-changing. I haven’t read all of Knox’s statements to the investigators and don’t know the dates on which each of them was made. They appear to have been made within a few days of the murder; and at least one of them seems to have included the following false statement, about the man named Lumumba: “I confusedly remember that he killed her [Kercher].”

The utterance of such a false thing, outside, maybe, a literal torture chamber, is depraved.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 23:15 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

I also doubt that criminalisation would change much.

It wouldn’t hurt.

I’m also not sure what’s supposed to be so extremely antisocial about it. It’s not like the police will surely catch the responsible party if only you don’t make that false confession to get a more lenient sentence.

Presumably, a false confession increases the likelihood that a case will be erroneously closed. That, in my estimation, makes it extremely antisocial, not least because it increases the likelihood that a criminal is not only at large but is unrecognized as such. Every person is obliged to avoid giving his or her fellow human beings false information about crime.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 22:51 UTC
−11 points
in reply to: V_V’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Although I’m among those persons who find it very difficult to believe that a person would make a false confession, I have read that such a confession is not unheard of and, in fact, might be made fairly frequently. Such a thing is extremely anti-social and is, I hope, criminalized itself.

I would point out that, in this particular case, we’re not really quite talking about any of the things you mention. Knox’s statements are not confessions or alibis; they’re not even really incoherent claims or repudiations of previous claims—not, at least, from what I can tell from the internet pages where I’ve seen them discussed. They are story-changing, an inconsistent story, one version of which includes a false accusation (i.e., of another person). I’ll mention, too, that it’s not out of the question that Knox has falsely stated that she was slapped, by a police officer (or maybe officers, plural), when she was being questioned about the crime.

Let me add that I agree with Komponisto’s suggestion, in this essay, that .99 is probably a weak lower bound for the probability of the guilt of Guede. In fact, I would say anything below 1.00 is an insult to the spacetime continuum. Even if we add to that the fact, discussed below, in this thread, that the absence of physical evidence of Knox or Sollecito in the murder room is just about equally certain, I will say that, had I been on any of these juries, I would probably have voted Knox guilty. Komponisto’s essay and the reading that I’ve now done, because of it, have made me realize I have a simple rule in these things:

If you change your story, the probability of your guilt is 1.00. If one version of your story includes a false accusation (i.e., of another person), that goes up to 2.00

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 22:25 UTC
1 point
in reply to: V_V’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Got it. Thank you.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 22:14 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: V_V’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

Detective fiction isn’t exactly known for its realism.

Whether that’s true, I didn’t use the phrase detective fiction. If you’re suggesting that the significance of story-changing in a fictional narrative would be lost on you, I would say you’re probably mistaken.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 22:00 UTC
−6 points
in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Maybe the typical-mind-fallacy is typical, but I don’t think I’ve demonstrated it here. Rhetorically, yes, I spoke of what “I personally” would do, and I emphasized the point with a sort of quasi-mathematical use of the word “zero.” After that, I remarked as follows: “Story-changing by someone caught in a trap is a significant element of the human condition ….”

That statement seems valid. Although no examples come to my mind, the storylines of many pieces of fiction, I think, turn on such story-changing, whose significance the author feels no need to explain. Its significance lies in empathy, precisely the sort of empathy that the author of the present essay presumes to lecture about, so to speak, when he asks whether we’ve thought what a ride like the one Knox took to jail after her initial conviction is like. Because the typical person imagines such a ride well enough to want to avoid it, he or she reacts to story-changing. He or she knows that story-changing on his or her own part would be born only of incompetence in avoiding admitting guilt. He or she knows that he or she would carefully avoid story-changing, to avoid inviting such a ride.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 21:29 UTC
−1 points
on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Within the last twenty-four hours, I think, I posted here a comment that has been removed—unless my browser is not displaying the page properly. The comment was a reply—an addendum—to my own comment of 31 January 2014 09:33:17PM. Going by memory, I’ll say it read as follows:

Having pursued, over the past twenty-four hours or so, some information about the case, I would say that, whether she was involved in the murder, Knox is a catastrophic failure of personality formation, one who, at the least, increased the agony of Kercher’s family by making an understanding of the murder forever impossible. Sympathy for her is as much of a menace as she is.

If the comment has, in fact, been removed, the party who removed it will kindly tell me why. If it was objected to on the ground that it did not address the probability of guilt of Knox, Sollecito, or Guede, I’m not sure the removal was fair. Komponisto’s essay to which the comments here are a response is itself not quite limited to that probability question. It expresses and, in a sense, advocates sympathy for Knox and thus opens the door, as a lawyer might say, for a comment such as the one I posted.

JohnBonaccorsi 2 Feb 2014 21:15 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Protagoras’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
From what I’ve read on the internet since I posted the statement to which you’ve replied, I tend to share your view that there’s no physical evidence, for lack of a better term, of more than one attacker. Similarly, I’ve encountered nothing that suggests the shattered window is evidence of anything other than a genuine break-in. Maybe that’s been discussed extensively in the threads, too.

I’ll qualify that, in two ways. First, the things I’ve read have been second-hand reports, at websites where the case has been discussed. I would prefer to have read primary sources, i.e., trial testimony, official evidentiary reports, and the like; but to be honest, I’m not caught up in the case enough to track such things down.

Second, my sense—identical to yours—that a cleanup that removed all the evidence except that from Guede would have to be amazingly selective is pretty much the sort of hunter-gatherer thinking that the author of the present post disparages; I don’t think I could say I’m being scientific.

JohnBonaccorsi 1 Feb 2014 20:28 UTC
−9 points
in reply to: JohnBonaccorsi’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Having pursued, over the past twenty-four hours or so, some information about the case, I would say that, whether she was involved in the murder, Knox is a catastrophic failure of personality formation, one who, at the least, increased the agony of Kercher’s family by making an understanding of the murder forever impossible. Sympathy for her is as much of a menace as she is.

JohnBonaccorsi 31 Jan 2014 21:33 UTC
−9 points
in reply to: Ander’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
You’ve merely restated, at length, the paragraph to which I’ve objected. Have police ever questioned me about a murder in which I knew I did not take part? Not that I recall. Can I be sure I wouldn’t change my story if I were questioned about such a thing? Yes, if the word “sure” is used in an ordinary sense. If you’re inclined to get into, let’s say, a metaphysical debate about that, I’ll have nothing to contribute.

You state that “some people” are innocent and yet change their story. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it does not change the fact that story-changing is, in my view, at least, strong evidence of guilt. You state that it “can probably [be taken] as weak evidence of guilt,” and the author of the present post seems to grant even less than that. Story-changing by someone caught in a trap is a significant element of the human condition, an element you seek to dismiss with the phrase “speculative psychological evidence.”

I also don’t know whether it’s true that “lots of confessions” are coerced and false; but unless you have something specific to point out with respect to such supposed coercion and the changed stories of Knox, you’re just throwing up dust.

As for the DNA: again, you have merely restated the author’s remark. I personally don’t know how much significance may be attributed to the alleged absence of Knox’s DNA at the crime scene, and you’re not clarifying that by putting the word “strong” in ALL CAPS.

You say it’s a given that the murder can be “fully explained” by Guede’s guilt. From the little I’ve heard about the case, my impression is that that’s not true. It’s not a given; there’s some evidence, apparently, that more than one person was involved. If that’s incorrect, please let me know.