Knox and Sollecito freed

Yeah, that was kinda what I meant. Also, I wouldn't assume they're thinking particularly rationally!

There is a difference in actual opinion. It is not excessively important right now given how little power we have over this scenario. It would become important if we were, for example, choosing where the law should place the boundary of 'libel' and related laws.

I don't understand how the second two sentences support the first.

That's a big 'it'. I understand why humans do an awful lot of the things they do and quite often empathize with them. It's understandable for people to want other people's stuff, have sex and to eliminate rivals, for example. That doesn't make the behaviours involved less disgraceful or necessary to prevent.

What's "disgraceful" mean to you? To JoshuaZ it meant unusually idiotic and irrational. He argued that this isn't the case; it's very usual ("understandable").

I assume you mean something else by "disgraceful" (very destructive and necessary to prevent or whatever), thus as often is the case the disagreement boils down to miscommunication by both parties.

They are trying to do harm. They are trying to destroy the lives of some scapegoats.

No, they're trying to destroy the lives of who they think murdered their daughter. That's certainly not a case of trying to harm who they think an innocent person (which is the ordinary interpretation of "evil" and how JoshuaZ seems to have interpreted it).

Notice how the perspective changes in your sentence:

They are trying to destroy the lives

This is from their perspective. It's a statement about their state of mind: they want to destroy these people's lives.

some scapegoats

But now it's from your point of view. It's a statement about your state of mind: they're innocent people being targeted for emotional reasons (or more precisely, people with no or not enough evidence against them to be criminalized).

A statement that stays on their perspective (as opposed to quietly switching to yours at the end) would read like this: "They are trying to destroy the lives of the people who they think brutally murdered their daughter." And with that it loses the "evil" flavor and picks up one much more mundane (though perhaps equally as destructive): "irrational".

Or at least that's how I use the word "evil". You're free to use it differently such that it would apply, but then your disagreement with me and JoshuaZ would evaporate into a fog of semantics (as many or most do).

It's understandable for people to want other people's stuff, have sex and to eliminate rivals, for example. That doesn't make the behaviours involved less disgraceful or necessary to prevent.

Guessing I'm misunderstanding-- but do you mean to say that having sex is disgraceful and needs to be prevented?

They are trying to do harm. They are trying to destroy the lives of some scapegoats.

What specific behavior are you referring to?

If we are going to have any success at things like raising the sanity waterline, we need to understand how and when human reasoning fails. And we need to appreciate how much that depends on circumstances. In the same way that almost any of us if we were born in the US in 1810 would have been in favor of slavery, and almost any of us born in 1930 would have been against interracial marriage, it is important to understand that we don't have some magic gift of rationality. If one of us were in the same situation as the Kerchers, we'd likely react the same way, and I'd go so far as to say that even someone as highly rational as most LWians with all the experience and awareness of cognitive biases would still likely react the same way.

To destroy bias we must understand it.

There really was a time when I considered self deception a worthwhile excuse for subsequent bad behavior rather than just what it often takes for us to get away with what we are motivated to do anyway.

I don't see a motivation that the Kerchers would be motivated to harm Amanda Knox other than their belief that she killed their daughter. In this context, what do you think is the underlying motive that they are engaging in self-deception to accomplish?

There really was a time when I considered self deception a worthwhile excuse for subsequent bad behavior rather than just what it often takes for us to get away with what we are motivated to do anyway.

So...in your opinion, the Kerchers are so motivated to cause harm to an innocent young woman that they have deceived themselves into believing she is guilty of the murder of their daughter, so that they can get away with it? Why? What exactly is the point of that? I suppose if you really think their daughter's death has made them want to kill random innocent people, the whole "evil" angle is more understandable, but that hypothesis really does not make sense to me.

Anybody care to explain the 2 down-votes? I was trying to figure out how to show that I read it but wasn't planning on responding further, and I figured that signalling my appreciation for his response would be an adequate way in this circumstance. Perhaps not though.

It tends to frustrate me when I'm waiting for a response and can't figure out whether (1) they aren't planning on one, or (2) they're just taking a while. This is one of my first attempts to get some practice saving people from that annoyance, but apparently it didn't go very well.

Explanations on why this was down-voted, or suggestions on a better way to go about this next time, would be appreciated.

Ok, fixed.

In this context, the new ruling was not just that there was insufficient evidence but (as I understand it) that she likely had not done it.

This is being widely reported, but my own understanding is that this cannot actually be determined until the motivation document is published.

(Regarding the Kerchers, you will want to see this comment.)

I find it odd that the prosecution would ever have claimed that one person couldn't possibly have done that. I mean, it's their job to find reasons to believe in the guilt of the defendants, but a simple review of murder cases committed with knives should be able to dispense with that. I've only read several, but one of the things that surprised me was the sheer number of times which the perpetrators frequently stabbed the victim. In one case that I read, the murderer stabbed the victim over 90 times.

I suspect that murderers often continue in a panic or frenzy when they discover how hard it is to get their victim to die. An inexperienced knife wielder against a struggling victim can easily stab the victim dozens of times without inflicting a single individually fatal wound.

I don't see where you retracted your comment...? Or are you making a distinction between people being disgraceful and behavior being disgraceful?