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Alicorn comments on The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom - Less Wrong
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I had heard about the case casually on the news a few months ago. It was obvious to me that Amanda Knox was innocent. My probability estimate of guilt was around 1%. This makes me one of the few people in reasonably good agreement with Eli's conclusion.
I know almost nothing of the facts of the case.
I only saw a photo of Amanda Knox's face. Girls with cute smiles like that don't brutally murder people. I was horrified to see that among 300 posts on Less Wrong, only two mentioned this, and it was to urge people to ignore the photos. Are they all too PC or something? Have they never read Eckman, or at least Gladwell? Perhaps Less Wrong commenters are distrustful of their instincts to the point of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
http://www.amandadefensefund.org/Family_Photos.html
Perhaps it is confusing to people that the actual killer is probably a scary looking black guy with a sunken brow. Obviously most scary looking black guys with sunken brows never kill anyone. So that guy's appearance is only very weak evidence of his guilt. But wholesome-looking apple-cheeked college girls don't brutally murder people ever, pretty much. So that is strong evidence of her innocence.
Via what mechanism does wholesome appearance and apple-cheekedness correlate with a disinclination to commit murder? For example, does a murderous disposition drain the blood from one's face? Or does having a cute smile prevent people from treating the person in such a way as to engender a murderous disposition from without? I wouldn't be exactly astonished to find a real, strong correlation between looking creepy and being dangerous. But I'd like to know how it works.
Think about it in evolutionary terms. Roughly speaking, taking the action of attempting to kill someone is risky. An attractive female body is pretty much a guaranteed win for the genes concerned, so it's pointless taking risks. [Note: I just made this up, it might be wrong, but definitely look for an evo-psych explanation]
This explanation also accounts for the lower violent crime rate amongst women, since women are, from a gene's point of view, a low risk strategy, whereas violence is a risky business: you might win, but then again, you might die.
It would also predict, other things equal, lower crime rates amongst physically attractive men.