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Frankly, I'm more inclined to agree with brandon's take on it, that its "a social rather than individual process," an aspect the writer of the Against article didn't consider. This is linked at the bottom of the "Against" article.
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-devils-advocacy.html
Brandon puts forth, "Yudkowsky is right that people who play games by thinking up arguments, however absurd, for a position, are simply being irrational; but this is to no point whatsoever: everyone knows that the devil's advocate is supposed to come up not with any old argument but with good or at least reasonably plausible arguments, arguments with at least some genuine strengths. People play devil's advocate for a reason, not simply in order to start making things up without any rational restraint. There are less elaborate and roundabout ways to play-pretend."
I would point out that online discussion forum are entirely social enterprises, so Brandon's approach at Devil's Advocacy would seem to apply.
Pat
Thanks for the link. While I can't claim to completely understand it on first (and second) read, a few thoughts do come to mind.
I followed a link on that page to the "What evidence filtered evidence" file, and a comment there struck me as being more descriptive of my approach: "If there are two clever arguers in the box dilemma, it is not quite as good as one curious inquirer, but it is almost as good. "
Within most of the forums, they are heavily weighed one way or the other; even neutral forums have the problem that the individuals there are weighed one way or the other. They have arrived at a conclusion, and will argue the rest of the evidence to fit the conclusion. So, I would posit that in many cases you will find that you will have one clever arguer. Is it such a stretch to play the other clever arguer by taking the opposing viewpoint? The Evidence article concludes, "if you are hearing an argument for the first time, and you are only hearing one side of the argument, then indeed you should beware".
Getting back to the Bottom Line theory, my inclination is also to think that Komponisto post actually fits more the 'bottom line' theory then my own responses. In discarding other DNA that would have the 'winds of evidence' blowing towards other individuals, Komponisto references the FOA interpretation of that evidence, which is coming from about as much of a Bottom Line position as you can get. After that assessment, it is only then that we're taken down the rational approach of evaluating the remaining evidence, instead of including the DNA evidence in our evaluation.
Further, Komponisto also states early on that one of the places where you would have the highest signal-to-noise ratio is indeed within the minds of those present; I quote, "the most important evidence in a murder investigation will therefore be the evidence that is the closest to the crime itself -- evidence on and around the victim, as well as details stored in the brains of people who were present during the act"
It was this 'mind' evidence that the police were first presented with, -not- the physical evidence. It was Knox's own statement that placed her at the scene- first as an eyewitness that implicated the bar owner. It was only -after- the physical evidence came back that they found it pointed to Guede instead of Patrick. Under Komponisto's framework, we have to evaluate that evidence almost as equally as we do the physical.
After that, Komponisto's argument that the investigators needed to have an 'inferential path' from Guede to Knox is not as strong (and Komponisto argues that it was the investigators who were at error with this point, not the jury). Knox had placed herself at the scene, and the later stories from Knox & Sollecito were too contradictory and too late; too many questions were raised.
Looking at the two lesswrong articles reference, my inclination is that the 'bottom line' theory applies to people who are unaware that they are taking such a stand. Does it apply when someone deliberately is aware they are taking an opposing standpoint with the belief that that is a path towards a better understanding of the evidence which would ultimately lead one to a "right" conclusion?
I am quite well aware that I take an opposing viewpoint, and in my recent experience it leads to a better discussion around the evidence then agreeing with someone on the conclusion they've arrived to on the evidence. Once people are challenged on their conclusions on their evidence, then the rich arguments come out.
I've gone into other forums and argued extensively that the break-in was -not- staged, and it helped me understand all the reasons people came to the conclusion it was. Applying the american legal definition of 'beyond a reasonable doubt', I have yet to see someone prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that the break-in was staged. However, if I were to simply agree with those who believe that, then I would never encounter their rationale on why they came to that conclusion.
In doing so, my own flaws in understanding the evidence are also revealed.
In a final note, in my experiences with my early posts in this forum it seemed I ran into as much people here with the Bottom Line as I have elsewhere . Posts were being voted down as trolls, even simple explanatory posts that provided a technical reference on weighing the evidence. I fail to understand how voting down posts with technical information (that coincidentally provided a contradictory view of the evidence) is "discourse...aimed at discovering the truth".
But I do sincerely appreciate the reference to the other articles; it has given me something to chew on.
Pat
I'm sorry, I didn't realize belittling was in the toolbox of the Rationalist. I'm so glad I found this website so I can update my methods!
Luminol does react with other substances like bleach, but it does so with a different intensity curve; you are talking about chemistry here. According to what I've read, experienced technicians can distinguish the quicker/brighter reaction with bleach from the the slower/longer reaction with blood. I don't know if the technician was asked their professional opinion during the trial as to what they concluded from the reaction.
An understanding of how the evidence was obtained is necessary to judge what the appropriate "weight" is to apply to the physical evidence. You can't discard the DNA on the knife on the basis of procedure and at the same time avoid learning about the procedures used to obtain the other evidence. That would be a contradiction in your rational approach to evaluating the physical evidence. You would be pre-judging the evidence instead of 'letting the winds of the evidence point you to one or several suspects,' which is what Komponisto asks us to do.
I've also made the point in other postings that comparing the results of this rationalist approach to the guilty verdict of the trial is comparing two different things.
I propose that if the original survey were redone but this time ask the probability that the defendants were complicit, you would get a result more similar to the jury's then the results from this blog post.
Disclaimer- I have not yet come to a final judgment on Sollecito & Knox. I play the devil's advocate on all three sides of the case, largely dependent upon what the prevalent view is in the particular forum. (the prosecution, guede's, and knox/sollecito's).
In response to your first point, reportedly 19 judges found time and again in the year of hearings leading up to the trial there was sufficient cause that Knox and Sollecito were involved. While I myself have argued elsewhere about how complex the explanation is that is required from the prosecution's theory of the three of them in the room in some sex orgy gone wrong, neither do I think that a full examination of all of the physical evidence of the crime scene supports a theory of Guede acting alone.
Your assessment that the Knox/Sollecito theory is a physically complex one is based on the evidence in the room and our conventional understanding of DNA. I'll agree that based on that there's a much higher factor of probability of the Guede "Lone Wolf" then there is of Knox/Sollecito.
I'll also agree that there is strong evidence found that Guede was in the room at or near the time of death, compared to almost none found for Knox/Sollecito.
As far as cognitive biases, I've tried to examine each part of physical evidence and testimony on its merits, not on what conclusions other people have made. In doing so, I've learned about Luminol and its interactions with bleach and LCN DNA testing which both assist in assessing the weight of the evidence presented. In the case of the other physical evidence of the house, i.e. the potentially staged break-in I've looked at it in terms of plausibility. I have argued elsewhere that it was entirely plausible the break-in was real; that plausibility took a hit when I saw the physical evidence of how the glass was broken in the window.
I'll also agree that Occam's razor make the Prosecution's theory highly implausible.
But there are other hypothesis suggested by the physical evidence. I find that after arriving at your conclusion that Guede is the one that the "winds of evidence" blow to, you then use that to dismiss evidence that would point to the involvement of others as "noise." This is despite your earlier statement that one should " be blown by the winds of evidence toward one or more possible suspects."
A bloody half-footprint on the bathmat in the bathroom is such evidence. It is in the victim's blood. No prints leading up to it were found-no other bare footprints in visible blood were found at all. On that basis, the police conducted a physical test and found two-three other prints revealed by luminol near the scene, two of them of a quite different foot size. That is physical evidence that doesn't point to Guede.
With physical evidence that points to someone other then Guede, I therefore disagree with your conclusion that the jury's decision was a "gigantic, disastrous rationality failure on the part of our species."
Human rationality has failed repeatedly in the past when encountering evidence from the physical world. We rationalized the earth being the center of the universe, until "ci sono tres!" We rationalized newtonian physics until general relativity. We rationalized deterministic physics until quantum. Its only by expanding our understanding the other evidence that we've corrected wrong or incomplete theories and hypotheses.
As I've argued in another comment that apparently one (or more) readers rationalized wasn't worthy of the discussion, there is other, physical, evidence outside your hypothesis of Knox's innocence that isn't accounted for in your approach. Your hypothesis was flawed from the onset, as it didn't incorporate what is typically considered part of a "crime scene". Without expanding your hypothesis such that it can explain the other physical evidence, your conclustion will be either incomplete, or worse, completely wrong.
Case in point- A bloody bare half footprint was found in the bathroom. There was no such footprint revealed in the bedroom, nor were there any steps between the bedroom and the bathroom. At some point, you have to posit that that bare foot stepped in blood, but there is no such physical evidence of that to be found in the bedroom. Its a thorn in the side of the Guede acted as a "Lone Wolf" hypothesis. You could chose to let it remain just a thorn, as the church tried to do with "Ci sono tres"; but thankfully under our legal systems a much more thorough look is usually followed.
I quite expect this challenge of your assumption of Knox's innocence to be voted down, like all of the others I've posted. But I challenge those who would do so- is the hypothesis put forth by the author of the article strong enough to stand on its own against such challenges, or does it require looking away from what we disagree with?
I find a number of logical errors in what you've presented.
The first is a difference in the the interpretation of the term 'guilty'. For the mass of the internet, guilty is understood to mean definitively "So-and-so did the action." However, a verdict of guilty is quite a different thing; being related to a human enterprise, a verdict of guilty is necessarily bounded by time, technology, and common agreement, to list a few. For example, we frequently argue the technology part- the LCN DNA test on the knife. The ability to prove "guilty" as "did the action" is limited to our advancement and acceptance of LCN DNA testing. Regarding common agreement, I read somewhere (been trying to find the reference) that under Italian law, someone who assists with a crime is as "guilty" as the person who "did the action". Thus, the commonly agreed upon legal determination of "guilt" is different from an individual weighing whether or not someone did a crime. Within the US, the determination of 'guilt' is "proven beyond a reasonable doubt". Again, not "proven that so-and-so did it", otherwise almost nobody would be convicted of crimes that don't have a video of them doing it.
One of the problems I see is that you've limited your definition of the crime 'scene' as being the immediate area that the events took place. Guede's footprints in blood were found in the kitchen heading towards the front door. Wouldn't then that be part of the crime scene evidence? In fact, wouldn't wherever the victim's blood was found be part of the crime scene evidence? Under our common agreement (legal code), the answer to that is "yes". Therefore, the other things that appear or do not appear should contribute to our rational determination of guilt.
This includes half of a bare footprint found in blood on a bathroom mat. There was no bare footprints found in the room, and none leading between the room and the bathroom. A rational assessment similar to "Knox isn't involved because there is no evidence in the bedroom" would then state that nobody was in bare feet because there are no bare footprints in the bedroom. Ah, but its there on the bathmat in the victim's blood.
So, with the Guede "Lone Wolf" theory, we're now left with a little explaining to do to make our hypothesis fit. What actions would have Guede in the bathroom with his shoes off leaving half a print in blood, but then also have a trail of Guede's shoeprints in blood in the kitchen by the front door? What actions would explain both of that -and- not have any other bare footprints visible anywhere? Occom's razor starts asking you to be put back on the sink and come back again when you have a better theory.
There are two explanations that fit. The first is the bare footprints that might have been in the room are no longer detectable because they were in a liquid subtance that deliberately or accidentally got smeared. Ah, but then there's a second potential person in the room. And the other explanation, is that bleach was used to wipe away the bare footprints in the hallway and bathroom. Ah, but then why would guede do that and not clean his other shoe prints?
There is actually a story that fits most of what you posit and most of the scene, and that's Guedes. His story was that it was Sollecito and Knox, and he wrestled with sollecito when sollecito was coming out of the room. Both Guede and Knox's early stories have knox either in the kitchen or out side. Guede claims he went into the bedroom and tried to stop the bleeding with towels. You can look up the rest of his story. I posit elsewhere that Sollecito and Guede may not have recognized each other.
A hypothesis that acutally requires less explanation then the Guede lone wolf theory is that Knox and Sollecito went to play a prank on the victim-an fake rape attempt. Reportedly Knox wrote a story similar to this ( I don't quite know the details). They were fully clothed (it was november) potentially with a mask of some sort. While executing this act, it got out of hand and the victim got fatally injured. Guede's story has him coming out of the bathroom at the scream, wrestling with Sollectio, then going in to put towels on the victim. After the victim dies, Guede leaves and is seen at a dance club a short time later. Knox and Sollecito, having seen no police come to the apartment, come back and attempt to remove any incriminating evidence. To not leave other shoe prints, they go in bare feet; they reason both their dusted bare prints can be explained since Knox lives there, and anyways with no bare prints in the bedroom they don't fit the scene. They step cautiously around Guede's prints in the hall. They take Knox's lamp into the bedroom to see the room better. After smearing the blood in the bedroom, they accidently track some into the hallway and on the bath mat. Knox didn't recognize Guede; she had run out at the first sign the scene turned south. She only knew it was a black man, so she thought it might be her boss when she gave her story to the station. In addition, Sollecito carried knifes in his back pocket; I think he had two pocket knifes that I know of. Its not a far stretch to think he had a third that he discarded.
When guede gets arrested, he thinks that Knox and Sollecito will pin it on him, so he goes fast-track on the trial. Ultimately he's innocent, but he gets convicted under the laws of the land. Knox and Sollecito, the ones that really did it, get convicted as well, since there is enough in the jury's eyes for them to be complicit. They pin their hopes on the appeal on the few remaining pieces of evidence that they weren't able to completely eradicate in the 12+ hours they had to work things out.
Pat
Here's the counter-argument; Knox was voluntarily in the station when Sollecito was being questioned. They hadn't risen to the official level of 'suspect' yet. They started questioning Knox when Sollecito said Knox wasn't as his place for some of the evening. She started providing a statement against the bar owner; they still had her as a 'witness' instead of a 'suspect.' Even the written statement that was inadmissible against Knox was still initially a statement against the bar owner.
All very rational. :)
"If Luminol is used it can destroy important properties of the blood. While it can detect even small amounts of blood, the disadvantage is often that the small amount identified is diluted further by the Luminol solution. For these reasons, Luminol is encouraged to be used as a last resort in crime scene investigations to protect the physical evidence."
Read more at Suite101: Luminol - Chemiluminescent Blood Detector: Forensic Investigators' Essential Tool for Crime Scene Investigation | Suite101.com http://crime-scene-processing.suite101.com/article.cfm/chemiluminescent_luminol#ixzz0Ztn6XLRc
the LCN dna test was only done on the knife; the bra clasp was a regular DNA test, i believe.
The problem for the trial was the Defense's argument against the DNA on the knife was undermined by Sollecito admitting there may be the victim's blood/dna on the knife because of a dinner at his house that never happened. Although it tested negative for blood, at that point, the critique against the LCN DNA on the knife is almost superfluous. Sollecito made up a reason to excuse evidence that the defense was challenging the proof of.
Regarding luminol footprints, I've seen statements that essentially if the blood is so week that its only revealed by luminol, the its highly feasible that there won't be enough material to test for blood. Yes, the luminol can't prove the prints are blood. But they're there, only a few of them, in the immediate vicinity of the crime. As I posted in another post, what prompted police to look for them was the half-print in blood on the bath mat. Were were the rest of the bare foot-prints leading up to that bath mat? There weren't any visible in the bedroom, but smears could have wiped them away.
Applying rationality- If the footprints in the hall are Knox's from the shower that morning, then there must have been enough blood for knox to make 2 full left foot prints, yet so little blood that it wasn't visible to knox taking her shower, nor was there any sufficient amount to test for blood. Does that seem a rational argument?
If its some other substance, then the situation is that there just happens to be three bare foot prints limited to the area outside the door that are revealed in luminol, that are compatible with both Knox and Sollecito, but none other. That doesn't seem a rational argument either.
And regarding the floating DNA; there's sufficient Sollecito DNA floating around the house to be transferred to the bra clasp to be found "in abundant" measures, yet none really revealed elsewhere; yet the limited amounts congealed like a star being born to be found on the clasp. There's sufficient DNA of Knox to be found in multiple blood drops, including the bedroom with the breakin, yet we accept at face value the "no DNA in the bedroom" argument heard round the world.
As for the footprint comparison between Sollecito, Guede, and the Luminol print found at the friends of amanda knox website, I knew upon looking at it immediately that they were a little 'free' with resizing the prints of the defendants to fit the print on the mat. Knox and Sollecito have different sized feet, but they present them as the same.
Guede took off after the murder; his shoeprints in blood are found just outside the door, and in the kitchen leading to the entry door. He was seen a short time later in a club. The judge's rationale in writing in Guede's case was that Guede had no reason to come back and 'clean' anything or to stage a break-in.
There is half a bloody footprint found on the bathmat in the bathroom in the victim's blood, and no similar prints leading up to it, nor is there a similar print in the bedroom, though the blood was pretty smeared. This is what caused the police to do a luminol test.
The people who claim 100% guede did it, stop looking, can't really provide a clear sequence of events that cover the other evidence. Even this blogger looks only at the murder scene, and claims that since there isn't anything else in the room, stop looking.
If the footprint in on the bathroom mat is Guede's, why would he have taken his shoes off? Why would he have cleaned the other footprints? Why would he clean his footprints, but not the shoeprints leading out the door?
Luminol also revealed other prints (and according to my amateur look, lots of smearing) outside of knox's and the victim's door.
The dna of the victim & knox was found in the bedroom that had the purported break-in. The argument is this puts knox in this bedroom after the murder, but that's not a part of any of her stories. And its hard to accept the argument that knox's DNA is in such abundance such that it would be found mixed with the victims in the other bedroom, and at the same time put forth the contradictory argument that the lack of knox's DNA in the victim's room proves her innocent.
Others have made the argument that the height of the bedroom window, combine with the glass only partially broken, would have made it a highly improbable and dangerous option for someone to reach in and open the window that way. It was a single pane of glass apparently that only the bottom 1/3 was out; someone reaching in, it is argued, risked the rest of the glass crashing down on them guillotine style.
I see the primary argument put forth by the blogger here similar to the "No DNA" cry from the FOA; break it down into bits then attack a single part. Looking at anything like that, you can rationally justify just about anything.
Don't get me wrong- I recognize there are valid issues with the DNA found on the knife. The UK has established some procedures for acceptable LCN DNA testing; from all public reports the italian lab didn't follow these. A geneticist legal adviser in Australia wrote essentially an intro to LCN DNA testing sheet, which supports the questioning of the LCN DNA test; essentially if procedures similar to what the UK has outlined aren't followed, then how appropriate is it to rely on the LCN DNA test?
I also think that a dichotomy pervades these arguments; complete innocence, or every single one of them is so guilty they all had their hand on the knife the whole time. There are a number of scenarios of complicity that put Sollecito or Knox at the scene. The ruling of the jury in Italy essentially states that they believe that Knox and Sollecito are complicit in the crime.
Pat