prob of agreement: 0.8
I was unfamiliar with the case before hearing about the verdicts on the news. I spent about 10 minutes on the Wikipedia article, then20 minutes on each of the sites you linked, and made these judgments before reading others' comments.
Guede's guilt seems almost beyond doubt, given the DNA evidence, his implausible story, and his flight without calling police. Regarding Knox & Sollecito, I'm convinced of the prosecution's version of events mainly by the cell-phone record evidence and the many conflicting statements given by Knox and Sollecito over time, with variation that goes beyond my (only moderately informed) expectations for bad memory or coercive interrogation.
Meta-evidence judgments: in the pro-guilt site you linked, it took a while to find concrete info, but when I found the Prosecution's case->Facts Presented section, I found a lot of very specific detail regarding the exact times cell phones were turned on and off and the times and durations of calls made, as well as detail regarding the forensic evidence and the credentials of the experts who testified about it. The pro-innocent site lacked such specifics and didn't seem to account for all the damning details. Both sites seemed very distorted by affection for Kercher (pro-guilt) and Knox (pro-innocence) and their nationalities.
I read the pro-guilt site before the pro-innocent site, and I noticed this causing bias: as I read the pro-innocence site, I felt myself internally "rooting" against them, expecting that they couldn't answer all the evidence and (maybe not surprising) finding that this was so. I tried to adjust for this in my judgments.
I have a low prior for this mix of murderers committing the crime together, and a high prior for a guilty verdict given by a jury, and feel like these two facts approximately cancel out.
After reading others' comments, I was surprised that most others leaned toward Knox's and Sollecito's innocence. I would update my judgments only marginally because of this, because I read the linked sites more closely than others' claimed to. I do however revise my estimate of agreement with komponisto down a bit to 0.6.
p.s. This is a very interesting exercise, which led me to register and comment for the first time after lurking for several months. I am very curious about your (komponisto's) judgment and reasoning.
After reading more comments, I've updated my probabilities significantly. Here's what influences me:
Different commenters focus on different subsets of evidence. This makes me suspect that my own focal subset was incidental and probably depended on what order I encountered various claims.
Many items of evidence presented as fact (and which I relied on), such as cleaning supply shopping and the contents of the washing machine, are said by others to be rumors and were never presented at trial. This undermined a lot of what I based my judgment on.
The j
As many of you probably know, in an Italian court early last weekend, two young students, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of killing another young student, Meredith Kercher, in a horrific way in November of 2007. (A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted earlier.)
If you aren't familiar with the case, don't go reading about it just yet. Hang on for just a moment.
If you are familiar, that's fine too. This post is addressed to readers of all levels of acquaintance with the story.
What everyone should know right away is that the verdict has been extremely controversial. Strong feelings have emerged, even involving national tensions (Knox is American, Sollecito Italian, and Kercher British, and the crime and trial took place in Italy). The circumstances of the crime involve sex. In short, the potential for serious rationality failures in coming to an opinion on a case like this is enormous.
Now, as it happens, I myself have an opinion. A rather strong one, in fact. Strong enough that I caught myself thinking that this case -- given all the controversy surrounding it -- might serve as a decent litmus test in judging the rationality skills of other people. Like religion, or evolution -- except less clichéd (and cached) and more down-and-dirty.
Of course, thoughts like that can be dangerous, as I quickly recognized. The danger of in-group affective spirals looms large. So before writing up that Less Wrong post adding my-opinion-on-the-guilt-or-innocence-of-Amanda-Knox-and-Raffaele-Sollecito to the List of Things Every Rational Person Must Believe, I decided it might be useful to find out what conclusion(s) other aspiring rationalists would (or have) come to (without knowing my opinion).
So that's what this post is: a survey/experiment, with fairly specific yet flexible instructions (which differ slightly depending on how much you know about the case already).
For those whose familiarity with the case is low:
I'm going to give you two websites advocating a position, one strongly in favor of the verdict, the other strongly opposed. Your job will be to browse around these sites to learn info about the case, as much as you need to in order to arrive at a judgment. The order, manner, and quantity of browsing will be left up to you -- though I would of course like to know how much you read in your response.
1. Site arguing defendants are guilty.
2. Site arguing defendants are innocent.
I've chosen these particular sites because they seemed to contain the best combination of fierceness of advocacy and quantity of information on their respective sides that I could find.
If you find better summaries, or think that these choices reflect a bias or betray my own opinion, by all means let me know. I'm specifically avoiding referring you to media reports, however, for a couple of reasons. First, I've noticed that reports often contain factual inaccuracies (necessarily, because they contradict each other). Secondly, journalists don't usually have much of a stake, and I'd like to see how folks respond to passionate advocacy by people who care about the outcome, as in an actual trial, rather than attempts at neutral summarizing. Of course, it's fine if you want to read media reports linked to by the above sites.
(One potential problem is that the first site is organized like a blog or forum, and thus it is hard to find a quick summary of the case there. [EDIT: Be sure to look at the category links on the right side of the page to find the arguments.] If you think it necessary, refer to the ever-changing Wikipedia article, which at the moment of writing seems a bit more favorable to the prosecution. [EDIT: I'm no longer sure that's true.] [EDIT: Now I think it's true again, the article having apparently changed some more. So there's really no telling. Be warned.])
After you do this reading, I'd like to know:
1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.
Feel free to elaborate on your reasoning to whatever degree you like.
One request: don't look at others' comments until you've done the experiment yourself!
For those whose familiarity with the case is moderate or high:
I'd like to know, as of right now:
1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.
5. From what sources you've gotten the info you've used to arrive at these estimates.
Then, if possible, do the experiment described above for those with little familiarity, and report any shifts in your estimates.
Again, everyone should avoid looking at others' responses before giving their own feedback. Also, don't forget to identify your prior level of familiarity!
If the level of participation warrants it, I'll post my own thoughts (and reaction to the feedback here) in a later post. (Edit: That post can be found here.)