komponisto comments on You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event - Less Wrong

31 Post author: komponisto 09 December 2009 04:25AM

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Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 06:20:41AM *  0 points [-]

First, I'm not very sure exactly if your questions should be translated as “probability estimate that X killed Kercher” or not. I actually have a slight suspicion that your post might be a trick question around that

No, "X killed Kercher" is right. (Or perhaps better would be, "X participated in killing of Kercher".)

Comment author: bogdanb 13 December 2009 10:00:04PM -1 points [-]

It's an academical point right now, given your later post, but even “X participated in killing of Kercher” is not entirely clear. Any action A, from cutting her throat, to holding her, to opening the door, to simply being in the room, can be considered as “participating” in the murder, in the sense that suitably complicated scenarios can be constructed where X not doing the action A would have avoided the murder, with X knowing it and deliberately choosing to do A in order to cause Kercher not to live anymore.

I imagine what you actually wanted to ask was something like the probability that “X is guilty of whatever X was convicted”, though that only moves the uncertainty about what you ask to uncertainty about what Italian law says.