Jack comments on The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom - Less Wrong

42 Post author: komponisto 13 December 2009 04:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (632)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jack 14 December 2009 06:16:03AM 0 points [-]

1.Small. Hardly different from the prior, which is dominated by the probability that someone in whatever reference class you would have put Amanda into on January 1, 2007 would commit murder within twelve months. Something on the order of 0.01 or 0.1 at most.

What information do these new priors reflect? Obviously 1-10% of upper-middle class female college students with no history of criminal activity won't commit murder over the next 12 months so I assume that these priors are taking something else into account- like the fact that she lived with a murder victim. But can you say what else you've included? (Or point me if you already have somewhere).

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:01:22AM *  0 points [-]

What's going on here is that I'm still trying to figure out how I want to revise that sentence. I may just go ahead and cross it out, since I think the whole issue of "what the prior should be" is a distraction.

EDIT: Done.