This is a side-point, perhaps, but something to take into account with assigning probabilities is that while Amanda Knox is not guilty, she is certainly a liar.
When confronting someone known to be lying during something as high stakes as a murder trial, people assign them a much higher probability of guilt, because someone that lies during a murder trial is actually more likely to have committed murder. That seems to be useful evidence when we are assigning numerical probabilities, but it was a horrific bias for the judge and jury of the case.
Edit: To orthnormal, yes, that is what I meant, thank you. I also agree that it’s possible that her being a sociopath and/or not neurotypical confused the prosecutor.
IAWYC (and don’t understand the downvotes); the point in the last paragraph is a key one. Evidence that a suspect is lying should raise the probability of their guilt, but not nearly to the extent that it actually sways judges and juries (because people have the false idea that everyone but perpetrators will be telling the truth).
someone that lies during a murder trial is actually more likely to have committed murder.
People lie all the time, mostly to protect their self-image or their image in others’ minds. Just because it was done during a trial does not mean they are more likely to have committed the crime. Just as often people misremember, forget things they said before, or remember things they didn’t mention before.
I think if we compare the set of all accused murderers that lie during their trials to those that tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, a higher percentage of liars will be guilty.
It’s improper reasoning, however, to use that as the reason for convicting someone of murder.
I think there is a significant chance she was in the house at the time of the murder or otherwise knew something that she didn’t tell the police, and that major lie could have really confused the prosecutor, who was also the interrogater when she implicated Patrick Lumumba.
I’ve addressed the relationship between legal and Bayesian reasoning here.
In general, I think we should keep discussion of the Knox case to the post dedicated to that subject. Here I’ll just note that the meme about Knox being a “liar” derives from the allegation of “changing stories”, which is an uninformed misconception.
Sorry to put this here instead of the other thread, but I don’t think this actually came up there:
Here I’ll just note that the meme about Knox being a “liar” derives from the allegation of “changing stories”, which is an uninformed misconception.
It can derive from other sources as well. I ran into the case on the Eyes for Lies blog, written by an experimentally identified “truth wizard” (boy do I hate that term) with a pretty impressive track record for judging liars from their media appearances. The author sees a number of telltale signs of lying and of sociopathy.
Now this shouldn’t be admissible in court, and it’s not unassailable Bayesian evidence that Amanda Knox is a liar or a sociopath (even these truth wizards are wrong on the order of 5% of the time). But it is evidence of those. (Still, being a sociopath only moderately raises the odds of being involved in the murder, and those are very low given the other facts of the case.)
In fact, looking at the blog, I didn’t find much data. There was a link to an unimpressive article by a psychoanalyst, with some not-particularly-expert-sounding comments from the blog author—who also admitted to not being able to tell whether Knox was lying during the testimony without hearing the questions. Furthermore, the author’s understanding of the facts of the case left a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.
But even if we grant that this person has a tested above-average ability to identify characteristic signs of lying/sociopathy, and has identified Knox as possessing some of these signs (an assertion I didn’t actually find, though I could have missed it), I’d want to know a lot more: what sort of likelihood ratios are we talking about? (I.e. what fraction of non-sociopaths also exhibit these signs?) Exactly what is this person’s error rate? What do other “wizards” say in independent testing with strict experimental protocols? Etc.
Then there’s also the theoretical question: if this evidence is truly worth paying attention to, why shouldn’t it be admissible in court? (Presumably there’s no danger of abuse of police power or similar, so the reason for exclusion must have to do with the evidentiary strength or lack thereof.)
if this evidence is truly worth paying attention to, why shouldn’t it be admissible in court?
Hmm. I was going to say that it’s really a form of private evidence, if these “truth wizards” can tell more accurately on a subconscious level than they can consciously explain the reasons for. But this basically puts them in the same boat as other expert witnesses, whose authority and probity basically has to be trusted (or countered by another expert of the same type).
Exactly what is this person’s error rate?
Like I said, the usual figure is 5% false positives, and this person did list a recent case where they offered an opinion on the blog and later found themselves mistaken. Their track record otherwise looks pretty good.
I am strongly tempted to defy the data here.
Why? (Serious question.) It doesn’t seem to me that there’s strong evidence in the other direction, just a low prior of a random person being a sociopath. But given the way that this case has gone, it’s worth considering the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is a sociopath who is innocent of this particular crime, but suspected nonetheless because of her atypical behavior during the investigation.
The prosecutor does appear to be a hack with an affinity for farfetched conspiracies, but he didn’t try that in every case he’s touched— it’s reasonable to suspect that something in Knox’s interrogation set him down that trail, and one plausible hypothesis is that she wasn’t acting the way a neurotypical human being would act in that situation. Indeed, there are plenty of bits of evidence you mentioned to this effect, but you (rightly) treated them as mostly irrelevant to the question of whether she committed the crime. They are, however, good evidence that she’s not neurotypical, and Eyes for Lies’ analysis further supports that theory.
We may need to do some tabooing. My understanding is that “sociopath” is a much narrower category than “not neurotypical”; in particular, I was under the impression that sociopathy involved a lack of empathy. That doesn’t appear to characterize Knox from anything else I have come across (there are perhaps one or two anecdotes that you could retrospectively regard as consistent with that assumption, but only if you didn’t know anything else—most information about Knox from her hometown points in the opposite direction).
It doesn’t seem to me that there’s strong evidence in the other direction, just a low prior of a random person being a sociopath.
On applying the word liar, I wasn’t intending to allude to an existing meme.
First, she was found guilty of trying to implicate Patrick Lumumba in the murder. I understand she did it during duress. I’m not sure if “told during duress” changes when we can apply the word liar, but I agree that liar is a charged word.
Second, I mean that I am positive she has told at least one lie while on the witness stand. There are many aspects of the defense’s story that don’t quite make sense. They, like the prosecution, are making up stories about what exactly happened to Merideth Kutcher that night. Also, in Italian court, defendants are legally allowed to lie on the witness stand; she was not expected to tell nothing but the truth during the trial.
Can we please keep discussion of this particular court case in the relevant thread? We really don’t need the politics of near mode ‘justice’ spreading too much into loosely related topics.
I was actually going to post about this in the meta-thread until I saw your reply, but I think orthonormal’s statement “I don’t think this actually came up there” applies for the most part. Let’s please not meta-discuss outside of the meta-thread. I would however be fine if a moderator could move this entire thread to the Amanda Knox post, but I don’t think that’s possible.
Edit: Also, discussing why the prosecution and jury and judge believed Knox and Solecito guilty with absolute certainty seems relevant.
This is a side-point, perhaps, but something to take into account with assigning probabilities is that while Amanda Knox is not guilty, she is certainly a liar.
When confronting someone known to be lying during something as high stakes as a murder trial, people assign them a much higher probability of guilt, because someone that lies during a murder trial is actually more likely to have committed murder. That seems to be useful evidence when we are assigning numerical probabilities, but it was a horrific bias for the judge and jury of the case.
Edit: To orthnormal, yes, that is what I meant, thank you. I also agree that it’s possible that her being a sociopath and/or not neurotypical confused the prosecutor.
IAWYC (and don’t understand the downvotes); the point in the last paragraph is a key one. Evidence that a suspect is lying should raise the probability of their guilt, but not nearly to the extent that it actually sways judges and juries (because people have the false idea that everyone but perpetrators will be telling the truth).
People lie all the time, mostly to protect their self-image or their image in others’ minds. Just because it was done during a trial does not mean they are more likely to have committed the crime. Just as often people misremember, forget things they said before, or remember things they didn’t mention before.
I think if we compare the set of all accused murderers that lie during their trials to those that tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, a higher percentage of liars will be guilty.
It’s improper reasoning, however, to use that as the reason for convicting someone of murder.
I think there is a significant chance she was in the house at the time of the murder or otherwise knew something that she didn’t tell the police, and that major lie could have really confused the prosecutor, who was also the interrogater when she implicated Patrick Lumumba.
I’m not saying that is correct, I’m identifying a cognitive bias that helped to convict Knox and Solecito.
I’ve addressed the relationship between legal and Bayesian reasoning here.
In general, I think we should keep discussion of the Knox case to the post dedicated to that subject. Here I’ll just note that the meme about Knox being a “liar” derives from the allegation of “changing stories”, which is an uninformed misconception.
Sorry to put this here instead of the other thread, but I don’t think this actually came up there:
It can derive from other sources as well. I ran into the case on the Eyes for Lies blog, written by an experimentally identified “truth wizard” (boy do I hate that term) with a pretty impressive track record for judging liars from their media appearances. The author sees a number of telltale signs of lying and of sociopathy.
Now this shouldn’t be admissible in court, and it’s not unassailable Bayesian evidence that Amanda Knox is a liar or a sociopath (even these truth wizards are wrong on the order of 5% of the time). But it is evidence of those. (Still, being a sociopath only moderately raises the odds of being involved in the murder, and those are very low given the other facts of the case.)
I am strongly tempted to defy the data here.
In fact, looking at the blog, I didn’t find much data. There was a link to an unimpressive article by a psychoanalyst, with some not-particularly-expert-sounding comments from the blog author—who also admitted to not being able to tell whether Knox was lying during the testimony without hearing the questions. Furthermore, the author’s understanding of the facts of the case left a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.
But even if we grant that this person has a tested above-average ability to identify characteristic signs of lying/sociopathy, and has identified Knox as possessing some of these signs (an assertion I didn’t actually find, though I could have missed it), I’d want to know a lot more: what sort of likelihood ratios are we talking about? (I.e. what fraction of non-sociopaths also exhibit these signs?) Exactly what is this person’s error rate? What do other “wizards” say in independent testing with strict experimental protocols? Etc.
Then there’s also the theoretical question: if this evidence is truly worth paying attention to, why shouldn’t it be admissible in court? (Presumably there’s no danger of abuse of police power or similar, so the reason for exclusion must have to do with the evidentiary strength or lack thereof.)
Hmm. I was going to say that it’s really a form of private evidence, if these “truth wizards” can tell more accurately on a subconscious level than they can consciously explain the reasons for. But this basically puts them in the same boat as other expert witnesses, whose authority and probity basically has to be trusted (or countered by another expert of the same type).
Like I said, the usual figure is 5% false positives, and this person did list a recent case where they offered an opinion on the blog and later found themselves mistaken. Their track record otherwise looks pretty good.
Why? (Serious question.) It doesn’t seem to me that there’s strong evidence in the other direction, just a low prior of a random person being a sociopath. But given the way that this case has gone, it’s worth considering the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is a sociopath who is innocent of this particular crime, but suspected nonetheless because of her atypical behavior during the investigation.
The prosecutor does appear to be a hack with an affinity for farfetched conspiracies, but he didn’t try that in every case he’s touched— it’s reasonable to suspect that something in Knox’s interrogation set him down that trail, and one plausible hypothesis is that she wasn’t acting the way a neurotypical human being would act in that situation. Indeed, there are plenty of bits of evidence you mentioned to this effect, but you (rightly) treated them as mostly irrelevant to the question of whether she committed the crime. They are, however, good evidence that she’s not neurotypical, and Eyes for Lies’ analysis further supports that theory.
We may need to do some tabooing. My understanding is that “sociopath” is a much narrower category than “not neurotypical”; in particular, I was under the impression that sociopathy involved a lack of empathy. That doesn’t appear to characterize Knox from anything else I have come across (there are perhaps one or two anecdotes that you could retrospectively regard as consistent with that assumption, but only if you didn’t know anything else—most information about Knox from her hometown points in the opposite direction).
Start here, here, here, and here (4:50).
But you may be right in the sense that I may be overestimating P(Guilty|Sociopath).
On applying the word liar, I wasn’t intending to allude to an existing meme.
First, she was found guilty of trying to implicate Patrick Lumumba in the murder. I understand she did it during duress. I’m not sure if “told during duress” changes when we can apply the word liar, but I agree that liar is a charged word.
Second, I mean that I am positive she has told at least one lie while on the witness stand. There are many aspects of the defense’s story that don’t quite make sense. They, like the prosecution, are making up stories about what exactly happened to Merideth Kutcher that night. Also, in Italian court, defendants are legally allowed to lie on the witness stand; she was not expected to tell nothing but the truth during the trial.
Can we please keep discussion of this particular court case in the relevant thread? We really don’t need the politics of near mode ‘justice’ spreading too much into loosely related topics.
I was actually going to post about this in the meta-thread until I saw your reply, but I think orthonormal’s statement “I don’t think this actually came up there” applies for the most part. Let’s please not meta-discuss outside of the meta-thread. I would however be fine if a moderator could move this entire thread to the Amanda Knox post, but I don’t think that’s possible.
Edit: Also, discussing why the prosecution and jury and judge believed Knox and Solecito guilty with absolute certainty seems relevant.
A single request is just a polite alternative (and precursor) to systematic downvoting.
Reply here.