I’ve wanted to reply here for a good while, so now that I’ve finally emerged from Lurkdom, I might as well do that. Great post!
Think about what you’re doing here: you are invoking the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is guilty of murder in order to explain the fact that she hung up the phone after three seconds.
That was beautiful. Probably the single most important sentence in that whole article, at least in terms of convincing me to your reasoning.
I have to say though, at least one thing you say sounds not just overconfident but blatantly partisan:
known to have had utterly benign dispositions prior to these events”.
I’d also like to ask, how necessary to your argument was using that Jesus example? That’s preaching to a very narrow choir, even considerably narrower than just “atheists”. If that’s what you wanted then no problem, but I’m thinking about the lost potential of this article to be persuasive to a more general public. This would be a great article to link friends to if it didn’t rely on, not just the tools of rationality, but on specific conclusions shared by (I presume) most lesswrongians.
I’ve wanted to reply here for a good while, so now that I’ve finally emerged from Lurkdom, I might as well do that. Great post!
Thank you! Though I would probably write it differently today, it remains my favorite post, in the sense that upvotes and positive feedback on it make me happier than on anything else I’ve written here.
known to have had utterly benign dispositions prior to these events”.
I wonder how you could know this. If you picked it up from any pro-Knox source of information, it strikes me as a safe assumption that such a source would paint the defendants as angels regardless of the truth.
Perhaps, but remember that this isn’t something like a political issue, where there are always advocacy websites on both sides. Very few defendants X even have “pro-X sources of information” to begin with—even if they’re privileged (which is not particularly the case of Knox, by American standards). And even when they do, it’s often because the case has (or is perceived to have) political implications, and the support is politically-themed. In my view, availability bias resulting from hearing a lot about those types of cases results in an underestimation of the evidentiary value of advocacy on behalf of a defendant like Amanda Knox.
But, remember in any case that we have plenty of anti-Knoxadvocacy to contrast it with, in addition to the numerous media sources (now including several books) that attempt to be more “neutral” (though often fail). And there just isn’t anything bad that anyone can actually find, despite many people trying really hard. The best the anti-Knox folks can do is to come up with their own highly sinister, distorted interpretations of Knox’s and Sollecito’s personalities, not shared by anyone who actually knows either of them. The absence of objectively negative anecdotes is conspicuous. Meanwhile there are all kinds of good things that have been said about both defendants by people who know them.
I’d also like to ask, how necessary to your argument was using that Jesus example?
Not necessary at all; it was indeed basically an applause light for this particular audience. Of course, there wasn’t anything actually wrong about it. And the point I made with it was important: social consensus can’t be trusted, or at any rate is very easily screened off.
But yes, the post was definitely targeted specifically at Less Wrong readers, as opposed to the general public. Though I’ve been surprised at how little negative reaction there has been from outsiders on account of the swipes I took at religion—virtually none, in fact. The main barrier is a general unfamiliarity with the LW culture of Bayesianism—but since this post was designed to be a specific application of the LW perspective, I’m not sure how much that could have been helped.
I’ve wanted to reply here for a good while, so now that I’ve finally emerged from Lurkdom, I might as well do that. Great post!
That was beautiful. Probably the single most important sentence in that whole article, at least in terms of convincing me to your reasoning.
I have to say though, at least one thing you say sounds not just overconfident but blatantly partisan:
I wonder how you could know this. If you picked it up from any pro-Knox source of information, it strikes me as a safe assumption that such a source would paint the defendants as angels regardless of the truth.
I’d also like to ask, how necessary to your argument was using that Jesus example? That’s preaching to a very narrow choir, even considerably narrower than just “atheists”. If that’s what you wanted then no problem, but I’m thinking about the lost potential of this article to be persuasive to a more general public. This would be a great article to link friends to if it didn’t rely on, not just the tools of rationality, but on specific conclusions shared by (I presume) most lesswrongians.
Thank you! Though I would probably write it differently today, it remains my favorite post, in the sense that upvotes and positive feedback on it make me happier than on anything else I’ve written here.
Perhaps, but remember that this isn’t something like a political issue, where there are always advocacy websites on both sides. Very few defendants X even have “pro-X sources of information” to begin with—even if they’re privileged (which is not particularly the case of Knox, by American standards). And even when they do, it’s often because the case has (or is perceived to have) political implications, and the support is politically-themed. In my view, availability bias resulting from hearing a lot about those types of cases results in an underestimation of the evidentiary value of advocacy on behalf of a defendant like Amanda Knox.
But, remember in any case that we have plenty of anti-Knox advocacy to contrast it with, in addition to the numerous media sources (now including several books) that attempt to be more “neutral” (though often fail). And there just isn’t anything bad that anyone can actually find, despite many people trying really hard. The best the anti-Knox folks can do is to come up with their own highly sinister, distorted interpretations of Knox’s and Sollecito’s personalities, not shared by anyone who actually knows either of them. The absence of objectively negative anecdotes is conspicuous. Meanwhile there are all kinds of good things that have been said about both defendants by people who know them.
Not necessary at all; it was indeed basically an applause light for this particular audience. Of course, there wasn’t anything actually wrong about it. And the point I made with it was important: social consensus can’t be trusted, or at any rate is very easily screened off.
But yes, the post was definitely targeted specifically at Less Wrong readers, as opposed to the general public. Though I’ve been surprised at how little negative reaction there has been from outsiders on account of the swipes I took at religion—virtually none, in fact. The main barrier is a general unfamiliarity with the LW culture of Bayesianism—but since this post was designed to be a specific application of the LW perspective, I’m not sure how much that could have been helped.