komponisto comments on The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom - Less Wrong
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This has been mentioned before; I'll reiterate my reaction in more detail here.
First of all, there is very little "Truth Wizard" analysis of Amanda Knox on that blog (whatever one thinks about the strength of such evidence in the first place). There are several posts about the case, but in only one of them does the author actually attempt to apply her own "lie-detecting" skills to Knox. (In particular, the most recent post on the case just consists of the author's commentary on someone else's argument that Knox is a sociopath; contrary to orthonormal, there is no claim by the author that she herself has detected sociopathy.)
The one post where the author does analyze Knox concerns her statement at Guede's trial, of which only audio (not video) is available. (Of Knox's videotaped testimony at her own trial, the author says: "...without hearing the questions asked of Knox, it is impossible to identify if she is lying." -- emphasis added.) Thus, there is no data about facial expression, which is apparently an important component of the author's technique. Hence confidence in this analysis must be presumably be lowered from what it would be if the author were working from a video recording.
But in any case, the reasoning in that post is awful. To the extent the author is skilled in detecting lies, she is obviously not particularly skilled in explaining how she arrives at her conclusions. Here is an example:
The author seems to be expecting Amanda's memory of an incident to improve over time. Now, I'm not an expert on memory, but this is directly contrary to my understanding of how it works. In fact, (to invoke my own memory here) I distinctly recall Eliezer mentioning once that memories are re-created each time we remember something. If this is true, it implies that memories -- even if they become more vivid! -- would become less entangled with reality over time, not more; which is anyway what you would expect from....physics.
Here is another, well, "red flag", concerning Knox's account of being hit on the back of the head by a police officer:
The author completely misses the obvious interpretation (in the absence of prejudice), which is that the phrase "make me" reflected Amanda's emotional interpretation of the situation, but that she corrected it to "help me" in order to more accurately recount what the officer(s) actually said!
This kind of shoddy reasoning is, I regret to say, characteristic of the author's (rather limited) discussion of the case. Whatever truth-detecting skills she may possess, I don't think her posts have provided us with very much useful information at all.
Finally, I will point out that the author (who by the way links to True Justice but not to any pro-Knox site) claims not to have made an incorrect judgement in 5 years...and yet now lists this case among her "successes"! Obviously, that's more than a bit problematic. (It should be noted that not only is the appeals process ongoing, but the conviction only intensified the controversy, if anything.)