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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
Got it. Thank you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I haven't followed the case; I have no real familiarity with the so-called Bayesian terminology, notation, and thinking that seem to be the focus of this site. In the post above are a few things that bother me:
Maybe it's "unlikely" that Amanda would have behaved this way if she were innocent. But is the degree of improbability here anything like the improbability of her having participated in a sex-orgy-killing without leaving a single piece of physical evidence behind? While someone else left all kinds of traces? When you had no reason to suspect her at all without looking a good distance outside Meredith's room, far away from the important evidence?
Why do you put the word "unlikely" in scare quotes? At a website whose subject is probability, it's a word that would be respected, I'd think. Personally, I don't know the degree of likelihood of Knox's leaving no single piece of physical evidence when someone else left all kinds of traces. I do know the odds that I personally would change my story if police were investigating me for a murder in which I had no part: zero. I'm not saying Knox left no physical evidence, and I'm not saying she changed her story. I haven't followed the case, as I say. I'm merely offering my reaction to the above paragraph.
Think about what you're doing here: you are invoking the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is guilty of murder in order to explain the fact that she hung up the phone after three seconds.
That's glib, which is to say false. As the author himself indicates, just a few paragraphs before that, there are other things, apparently, that have to be explained. These include, I gather, changed stories from Knox.
(Remember, the evidence against Guédé is such that the hypothesis of her guilt is superfluous -- not needed -- in explaining the death of Meredith Kercher!)
Not if there's evidence that more than one person participated in the murder.
Thank you for those links, Mr. Kasper. In taking a quick first look at the two pieces, I've noticed passages with which I'm familiar, so I must have encountered those posts as I made my initial reconnaissance, so to speak, of this very-interesting website. Now that you've directed my attention to those posts in particular, I'll be able to read them with real attention.
Thank you, Mr. Kasper, for your thorough reply. Because all of this is new to me, I feel rather as I did the time I spent an hour on a tennis court with a friend who had won a tennis scholarship to college. Having no real tennis ability myself, I felt I was wasting his time; I appreciated that he’d agreed to play with me for that hour.
As I began to grasp the reasoning, I decided that each time you state the chance that the coin is heads, you are stating a fact. I asked myself what that means. I imagined the following:
I encounter you after you’ve spent two months traveling the world. You address me as follows:
“During my first month, I happened upon one hundred men who told me—each of them—that he had just flipped a coin twice. In each case, I asked, ‘Was at least one of the results heads?’ Each man said yes, and I knew that, in each case, the probability was 1/3 that both flips had been heads.
“In my second month, I again happened upon one hundred men who told me—each of them—that he had just flipped a coin twice. Each added, ‘One of the results was heads; I don’t remember what the other was.’ I knew that, in each case, the probability was 1/2 that both flips had been heads.
“Just as I was about to return home, I was approached by a man who had video recordings of the coin flips that those two hundred men had mentioned. In watching the recordings, I learned that both flips had been heads in fifty of the first one hundred cases and that, likewise, both flips had been heads in fifty of the second one hundred cases.”
In considering that, Mr. Kasper, I imagined the following exchange, which you may imagine as taking place between you and me. I speak first.
“My dog is in that box.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes.”
“In saying it’s a fact, you mean what?”
“I mean I regard it as true.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means I can imagine events that culminate in my saying, ‘I seem to have been mistaken; my dog wasn’t in that box.’”
“For example.”
“You walk over to the box and remove its lid, and I see my dog is not in it.”
“Maybe the dog disappeared—vanished into thin air—while I was walking over to the box.”
“That’s a possibility I wouldn’t be able to rule out; but because it would seem to me unlikely, I would say, ‘I seem to have been mistaken; my dog wasn’t in the box.’”
“How much is 189 plus 76?”
“To tell you that, I would have to get a pencil and paper and add them.”
“Please get a pencil and paper and add them; then tell me the result.”
“I’ve just done as you requested. Using a pencil and paper, I’ve added those two numbers. The result is 265.”
“189 + 76 = 265.”
“Correct.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes.”
“Please add them again.”
“I’ve just done as you requested. Using my pencil and paper, I’ve added those numbers a second time. I seem to have been mistaken. The result is 255.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well—”
“Please add them again.”
“I’ve just done as you requested. With my pencil and paper, I’ve added the numbers a third time.”
“And?”
“I was right the first time. The sum is 265.”
“Is that a fact?”
“That the sum is 265?”
“Yes.”
“I would say yes. It’s a fact.”
“How much is two plus two?”
“Four.”
“Did you use your pencil and paper to determine that?”
“No.”
“You used your pencil and paper to add 189 and 76 but not to add two and two.”
“That’s right.”
“Is there any sequence of events that could culminate in your saying, ‘I seem to have been mistaken; two plus two is not four.’”
“No.”
“Is it a fact?”
“That two plus two is four?”
“Yes.”
"Yes. It's a fact."
“In saying that, you mean what?”
“—I don’t know.”
Thank you again.
Thank you for the reply, Mr. Kasper.
Let me try this. You come upon a man who, as you watch, flips a 50-50 coin. He catches and covers it; that is, the result of the flip is not known. I, who have been standing there, present you the following question:
"What is the chance the coin is heads?"
That's Question A. What is your answer?
The next day, you come upon a different man, who, as you watch, flips a 50-50 coin. Again, he catches it; again, the result is not revealed. I, who have been standing there, address you as follows:
"Just before you arrived, that man flipped that same coin; it came up heads. What is the chance it is now heads?"
That's Question B. What is your answer?
If you and I were having this discussion in person, I would pause here, to allow you to answer Questions A and B. Because this is the internet, where I don't know how many opportunities you'll have to reply to me, I'll continue.
You come upon a man who is holding a 50-50 coin. I am with him. There is the following exchange:
I (to you, re the man with the coin): This man has just flipped this coin two times.
You: What were the results?
I: One of the results was heads. I don’t remember what the other was.
Question C: What is the chance the other was heads?
Let’s step over Question C (though I'll appreciate your answering it). After I tell you that one of the results was heads but that I don't remember what the other was, you say:
"Which do you remember, the first or the second?"
I reply, "I don’t remember that either."
Question D: What is the chance the other was heads?
Thank you for the reply, RobbBB. As I mentioned in my reply to shinoteki (at 03 December 2012 01:48:47AM ), I followed my original post (to which you have just responded) with a post in which there is no reference to birth order. As I also said to shinoteki, that does not mean I see that birth order bears on this. It means simply that I was anticipating the response you, RobbBB, have just posted.
At 06 December 2012 10:18:40AM, as you may see, William Kasper posted a reply to my said second post (the one without reference to birth order). After I post the present comment, I will reply to Mr. Kasper. Thank you again.
Although I don't see what you're getting at, shinoteki, I appreciate your replying. Maybe you didn't notice; but about half an hour after I posted my comment to which you replied, I posted a comment with a different scenario, which involves no reference to birth order. (That is not to say I see that birth order bears on this.) I will certainly appreciate a reply, from you or from anyone else, to the said latter comment, whose time-stamp is 02 December 2012 06:51:25PM.
Let me try another scenario. A woman says, "I have two children." You respond, "What are their sexes?" She says, "At least one of them is a boy. The other was kidnapped before I was informed of its sex." You're saying that the chance that the kidnapped child is a boy is one out of three, not out of two? To repeat: That's what I gather from the present post, near the beginning of which is the following:
In the correct version of this story, the mathematician says "I have two children", and you ask, "Is at least one a boy?", and she answers "Yes". Then the probability is 1/3 that they are both boys.
Having no training in probability, and having come upon the present website less than a day ago, I'm hoping someone here will be able to explain to me something basic. Let's assume, as is apparently assumed in this post, a 50-50 boy-girl chance. In other words, the chance is one out of two that a child will be a boy -- or that it will be a girl. A woman says, "I have two children." You respond, "Boys or girls?" She says, "Well, at least one of them is a boy. I haven't yet been informed of the sex of the other, to whom I've just given birth." You're saying that the chance that the newborn is a boy is one out of three, not one out of two? That's what I gather from the present post, near the beginning of which is the following:
In the correct version of this story, the mathematician says "I have two children", and you ask, "Is at least one a boy?", and she answers "Yes". Then the probability is 1/3 that they are both boys.