I'd say there's all sorts of non-physical evidence that would be sufficient to push our posterior probability of their guilt higher than that (insofar as any evidence in a materialistic universe can be said to be non-physical.) Email records between Knox, Sollecito and Guede discussing their plans to kill Kercher, for instance. Or if Knox or Sollecito had made statements about the circumstances of Kercher's death which forensics corroborated which they could not plausibly have made without knowledge that would require them to have been there. Even just evidence of private meetings between Knox, Sollecito and Guede, combined with enough of the warning signs for a person likely to commit murder ought to boost the likelihood that they were complicit well over 1%.
It's not that there aren't possible forms of non physical evidence that would be adequate to establish a high likelihood for their guilt, it's that such evidence is conspicuous in its absence.
...I'd say there's all sorts of non-physical evidence that would be sufficient to push our posterior probability of their guilt higher than that (insofar as any evidence in a materialistic universe can be said to be non-physical.) Email records between Knox, Sollecito and Guede discussing their plans to kill Kercher, for instance. Or if Knox or Sollecito had made statements about the circumstances of Kercher's death which forensics corroborated which they could not plausibly have made without knowledge that would require them to have been there. Even just ev
Continuing my interest in tracking real-world predictions, I notice that the recent acquittal of Knox & Sollecito offers an interesting opportunity - specifically, many LessWrongers gave probabilities for guilt back in 2009 in komponisto’s 2 articles:
Both were interesting exercises, and it’s time to do a followup. Specifically, there are at least 3 new pieces of evidence to consider:
Point 2 particularly struck me (the press attributes much of the acquittal to the expert report, an acquittal I had not expected to succeed), but other people may find the other 2 points or unmentioned news more weighty.
2 Probabilities
I was curious how the consensus has changed, and so, in some spare time, I summoned all the Conscientiousness I could and compiled the following list of 54 entries based on those 2 articles’ comments (sometimes inferring specific probabilities and possibly missing probabilities given in hidden subthreads), where people listed probabilities for Knox’s guilt, Sollecito’s guilt, and Guede’s guilt:
It’s interesting how many people assign a high-probability to Knox being guilty; I had remembered LW as being a hive of Amanda fans, but either I’m succumbing to hindsight bias or people updated significantly after those articles. (For example, Eliezer says .15 is too high, but doesn’t seem otherwise especially convinced; and later one reads in Methods of Rationality that "[Hagrid] is the most blatantly innocent bystander to be convicted by the magical British legal system since Grindelwald's Confunding of Neville Chamberlain was pinned on Amanda Knox.")
EDIT: Jack graphed the probability against karma:
2.1 Outliers
If we look just at >41% (chosen to keep contacts manageable), we find 12 entries out of 54:
I have messaged each of them, asking them to comment here, describing if and how they have since updated, and any other thoughts they might have. (I have also messaged the first 12 commenters or so, chronologically, with <41% confidence in Knox’s guilt, with the same message.) The commenters:
AngryParsley / Cyan / Daniel_Burfoot / Eliezer_Yudkowsky / GreenRoot / John_Maxwell_IV / LauraABJ / Mario / Matt_Simpson / Morendil / Psychohistorian / Shalmanese / Threads / Unknowns / badger / bentarm / bgrah449 / bigjeff5 / brazil84 / dilaudid / jimmy / kodos96 / lordweiner27 / mattnewport / nerzhin / tut
I look forward to seeing their retrospectives, or indeed, anyone's retrospectives on the matter.