BlackHumor

The analogy doesn't work. It is unconditionally bad to point a gun at someone -- "every gun is loaded" as the saying goes -- so you still violated protocol even if it's unloaded. In contrast, propositioning someone in an elevator retroactively becomes okay merely on the basis that you're not part of the rabble.

Wait, what? The analogy works exactly; you're just assuming a priori that the bit you think doesn't fit actually doesn't fit. The analogy logically goes that if it's wrong to point a gun at someone regardless of whether you think it's loaded because it might be anyway and that would be Very Bad, it's also wrong to proposition women in elevators regardless of whether you think they'll accept because the situation where they don't would be Very Bad.

I don't know how you missed this; you seem to me to have pointed yourself directly to this conclusion and then walked past it.

A murder is a serious crime. Guede clearly had to break into the house to commit the murder, so he also committed a burglary by your definition.

Which would mean there's no evidence that the burglary was staged, because that would mean that in addition to the burglary that Guede committed, ANOTHER burglary must have been staged by someone else. Which would usually be instantly eliminated by Occam's Razor unless there's a significant amount of evidence of two separate burglaries.

I suspect that you're vastly underestimating how similar people are.

My guess is that people's guesses will be essentially random, except possibly for the trolls (because they're trying, and so will be portraying caricatures of the opposite sex instead of actual people).

I know that I personally have never so far been able to tell men from women over a purely text channel without having been told explicitly, which I assume would be off limits. Though now I think of it that's not entirely true; I would guess from lesswrong demographics that you, Armok, are male. ('course, if you happened to be female that would prove my point nicely.)

Also, though Wikipedia is not an entirely reliable source, it contradicts your claim that "men hunt women gather" is a human universal. Though it's more common than not, there are a few hunter-gatherer tribes where women help men track animals, or where men also gather sometimes, and at least one tribe where women also kill the animals.

Not that you're likely to read this, of course, since you posted the OP years ago, but I just thought I should further point out that your theory is very improbable.

H*st*r! H*st*r! H*st*r!

1.False

1. False
2. True
3. True

Why am I giving (most of) these in boolean terms rather than probabilities? Bayesian probabilities aren't useful in cases where the most probable scenario for (AK guilty) is something like "Two of the perpetrators were secretly ninjas". There really is no rational way to convict someone for leaving no forensic evidence in a room whatsoever.

I have to admit here though that I peeked at your article before posting this. And incidentally, predicted what it would say pretty damn well. (AK not guilty with a probability that reduces to 0, with the other two probabilities also expressible in boolean terms, and on the whole contradictory of the opinion of the jury)

I also have to admit I skipped straight to Wikipedia after reading your article, and found mostly that the facts you gave were correct and thus your argument was sound. My prior probability for any of them being guilty was very low however; around 10%ish. Jury decisions are pretty worthless before an appeal.

I think the entire story of Exodus from Egypt is more likely to be (mostly) fiction than based on a real event.

As Eliezer himself said in that post, the Egyptians were "known for their obsessive record-keeping". If anything remotely comparable to the Ten Plagues or the Exodus happened in Egypt, they ought to have recorded it. That they didn't is very strong evidence that nothing happened.

Same general counterargument as the other people who've posted:

1) If this anecdote is all you have to base your theory on, you have essentially no more chance of being right than I would be making up random theories in quantum mechanics.

2) If you say "I think men can find jars easier because male hunter-gatherers hunted", you are likely some random crank who has just enough experience in the field to think of the idea. Once you suggest a method to test it, you prove that you are familiar enough with the idea and with the rest of the field to know what would prove it which elevates you from "some random crank" to "guy with a strange idea".