Comment author: captcorajus 19 December 2009 07:49:52PM 3 points [-]

Here's exactly how Knox arrived on the radar as a suspect. You tell me if this sounds right:

"...Edgardo Giobbi, a police forensic scientist, told the court in Perugia how during a search at the house just hours after the murder, he handed Knox a pair of shoe covers to prevent contaminating the evidence.

"As she put them on she swiveled her hips, pulled a face and said 'hop la' - I thought it was very unusual behavior and my suspicions against her were raised," Mr. Giobbi told the court..."

My reaction to this statement was something along the lines of, "WTF?"

It is natural in ANY investigation to first look at the people who live at the house, but you can't let that give you tunnel vision to the physical evidence around you.

Comment author: erica 20 December 2009 10:03:52AM 0 points [-]

What about the knife wounds?

Were the wounds consistent with different knives or not?

If they were,

and if it is true that the bathmat print was Raff's, and other prints were wiped off the floor, then:

Is it theoretically possible that Raff walked into the room and stabbed a dying woman? - that would not lead to leaving DNA only on the floor and the knife - which may have been a different knife, from the one in the flat, and was discarded and never found?

Surely, if the jury convicted on the basis of the prosecution's story then they must have gone into detail like that in order to examine the plausability of the reasoning?

With all the uncertainty about the many disparate bits of evidence and/or red herrings, I don't see how one can judge the judgement without reading the whole proceedings.

Certainly I agree that there is no real evidence that Raff and Knox were tumbling around the room with Meredith. But I think what is on trial is how murders come about as much as the act itself. That may be a difference in Italian law.

I think some people feel that Knox and Raff may have been morally responsible, by their inconsiderate behaviour. Maybe they were bullying Meredith a bit and playing games that maybe Guede didn't understand.

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 02:40:10AM 1 point [-]

Mainly because (1) there is evidence of alteration/staging; and (2) Knox and Sollecito are still unable to give accounts of the evening (and next morning) which are reasonably coherent and consistent.

Comment author: erica 19 December 2009 10:24:19AM -2 points [-]

I just want to say thanks for your posts, I have found them very interesting.

If the trial has been corrupted then one has to ask why the judge(s) involved would collude in such high profile corruption - that in itself seems unlikely unless there is an unsopken intention to reverse the verdict at appeal, having given the US 'a dose of it's own'. But that seems far fetched. Corruption happens for a reason and those reasons are also traceable.

Your argument that conviction was secured on the basis of a fanciful explanation but not without reason is persuasive. I too am of the opinion that things went on but I'm not sure that makes A and R as evil as they are portrayed or even guitly of murder.

But mainly, your posts are valuable because, without being able to argue the case mathematically, something clearly is wrong with this Bayesian worldview because it is not explaining life, and if Bayesian rationality is the key to 'knowing', as we are led to believe, then I would not be left feeling that many posts that adhere strictly to Bayesian reasoning are somehow missing the point. And I don't think that is because I am an evolutionary throw-back, I think it is because I have a good sense of things not sounding right - I have that feeling with the Knox trial and with this blog. Ciao

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 December 2009 04:46:32AM 2 points [-]

The problem is that finding Guede's semen inside Meredith is not evidence against the hypothesis "Guede and Knox murdered Meredith". Guede's already been caught, too. So now the question is whether to devote any of our remaining attention to trying to catch Knox, and the insufficient/disconfirmatory evidence for this fails to surpass the prior implausibility of the conspiracy hypothesis - it has nothing to do with how hard Guede was caught.

Comment author: erica 19 December 2009 10:11:24AM 0 points [-]

Are you sure semen was found? I've read elsewhere this was a manual rape - still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 02:01:35AM *  3 points [-]

So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.

Indeed not; if we had 30 bits of anti-Knox evidence, the case against Knox would be strong too.

The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.

Comment author: erica 19 December 2009 02:30:53AM -3 points [-]

or it could be that Knox and Sollicitos' behaviours were so irrational that it is harder to fathom what the evidence means:

  1. they both retracted statements
  2. Italy's legal system has been praised as well as criticised
  3. the footprint on the bath mat paradox
  4. the picture on S's blog
  5. K's rape story
  6. the verdict is for 'involvement' not physical action
  7. capacity to be irrational induced by drugs, hormones, a generational obssession with the supernatural, and the perennial boredom of the over-educated bourgeoisie

I reckon that whatever happened that night, K/S got so close to the boundary between fanatsy and reality that they couldn't risk admitting whatever folly they had been up to.

I think what is on trial is culture. I count at least 8.

Comment author: whpearson 18 December 2009 03:33:55PM *  0 points [-]

My brief attempt to outline one possible explanation for the phenomenon.

Read if you not familiar with search algorithms/spaces the wikipedia article on it.

Imagine trying to find a good piece of music, you could just create random notes and see how good they are, but that wouldn't be very interesting music. So instead you have to have an algorithm to generate interesting pieces of music. The algorithm might take a small piece of work and build upon it.

I didn't say where the algorithm came from, likely we build it in some way as we get experience. This building of skills is in turn is another search problem, that of finding good specialist searches. So in answer to your question, the gifted people might be those that are lucky and find good search algorithms (at a variety of different levels).

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 05:18:10PM 1 point [-]

Aaah, Thank you.

Comment author: wedrifid 18 December 2009 02:09:34PM 0 points [-]

So, why is that individual able to catch the moment and not another?

Pardon me. In the absence of knowing which brain state (or, possibly non existent phenomenon) the parapsychologists are describing with the 'catching a moment in time' I was going for a more literal interpretation. Referring to the human (particularly masculine) drive to capture as much space as possible for as much time as possible.

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 03:12:45PM -3 points [-]

The parapsychologists aren't describing it, but musicians often talk as if their compositions are somehow external and they are able to tap into them.

The prodigee I was thinking of said, in response to 'Where do you get your ideas from?', 'It's like catching a split second in time and if I catch that, all the rest (i.e. the full composition) follows'.

I asked my son, who's reading maths, if there could be a formula to explain this description and he said, 'Mum, to be honest, I don't know what you're on about.'

But there was a very good Horizon programme not long after, I think presented by a mathemetician, and he came to the conclusion that one day we will have mathematical formulae for consciousness.

Comment author: wedrifid 18 December 2009 12:41:24PM 0 points [-]

Do they catch a moment in space?

Yes, it is one of humanity's favourite pastimes.

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 01:28:49PM -1 points [-]

So, why is that individual able to catch the moment and not another? Because they have the receptor? How did they get the receptor - was it a random mutation or an hereditary bias towards reception?

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 12:29:52PM -4 points [-]

If you start with Darwin, add Jung, Sheldrake and Dawkins, parapsychology becomes interesting. How do cultures evolve? What is a mentality? Why do prodigees talk of 'catching a moment in time'? Do they catch a moment in space or a happy coincidence of chemical patterning in the brain?

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 11:07:43AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the Welcome. I laughed at the illustration.

  • I'm in the UK, are most other people in the US?
Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 12:21:24PM 1 point [-]

Thanks for your replies. Orientation increased to 37% :)

Comment author: erica 18 December 2009 11:18:26AM 0 points [-]

I'd love to know what Amanda and Raffaelle got up to that night but the lack of DNA in the room and on the body suggests that whatever they did, they weren't in the room or directly responsible for the death, and nor did they go back in the room to move the body around - that would require head to toe covering. But...

Did Amanda and Raffaelle sit in the flat egging Guede on, not realising the screams were real? Or, worse, did they laugh knowlingly when they heard screams?

What would they be guilty of? Would either scenario count as murder?

Did they feel so sure that they would be acquitted that they didn't own up to being in the flat?

If they owned up now, could the courts increase the sentence to 30 years for having perjured themselves, even if it wasn't classed as murder?

Or, are they just two idiotic and/or idealistic students who don't make sense, can't make sense?

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