Stuart_Armstrong comments on Debunking komponisto on Amanda Knox (long) - Less Wrong

-5 Post author: rolf_nelson 02 February 2010 04:40AM

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

Comments (116)

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

Comment author: Wei_Dai 03 February 2010 01:25:15PM 7 points [-]

You stepped into a giant past discussion and didn't refer to it. If, for each point, you had either pointed to and refuted previous comments about those points, or else said, "And I read through the comments and found no reference to this point", you would have been picking up the conversation where it left off.

It seems to me that komponisto's The Amanda Knox Test similarly made a case for "not guilty" without reference to the all of the arguments for "guilty", and had other substantial flaws. But it's at 29, compared to Rolf's -10.

As someone who has no interest in the case (I haven't made any comment related to the case, nor read any of the discussions), judging from just the posts, I think Rolf's main mistake is that he forgot that one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 05:21:45PM -1 points [-]

As someone who has no interest in the case (I haven't made any comment related to the case, nor read any of the discussions), judging from just the posts, I think Rolf's main mistake is that he forgot that one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief.

Wei, I hope you will excuse me for being a little blunt here, but it's pretty clear that both you and Anna Salamon have assigned far too much weight to the fact that Rolf Nelson is a big-shot SIAI donor who says the right words and hangs out with the right people, while (to you) I'm just some guy on LW with an obscure pseudonym. I mean, seriously, if two major posts on LW by a 1000+ karma user that attracted ~700 comments did less to get you interested in the topic than Rolf's negative-scoring rant...well, that's something you might want to think about.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 03 February 2010 05:26:09PM 2 points [-]

You have no evidence of Wei's thoughts on the matter.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 05:31:37PM 1 point [-]

Downvoted. The comment I replied to contains Wei's thoughts on the matter.