You are absolutely correct.
I should have said “anything of this nature”, my mistake.
bigjeff5
Karma: 757
Since the elimination of the faulty DNA evidence (which was previously the best evidence against them), the best evidence against Knox and Sollecito come from the police interrogation, specifically Knox’s confession, and the fact that they knew the victim.
The strongest bit here is the confession, as knowing the victim is, at best, a pointer for where to look for a suspect—it is incredibly weak evidence on its own (in fact, there are dozens of people who fit better based on just knowing the victim) and does not in any way eliminate the possibility of a random stranger committing the crime. By all accounts the three got along reasonably well, if not particularly friendly to each other.
There are some interesting facts about the confession that I think you’re missing:
1.) It is factually incorrect. The statements in the confession do not fit the facts of the crime. This severely damages the validity of the confession.
2.) The confession came after 24 hours of non-stop interrogation by the Italian police. There have been a number of studies that have shown that suspects become highly confused after long, intense interrogation sessions—particularly those that include sleep deprivation as was the case here. Suspects can be coerced into making whatever statements the interrogators want. In fact, in the US we have laws against this kind of treatment, including things like the right to silence and the right to have an attorney present during an interrogation to prevent exactly these scenarios. As an attorney I’d expect to know this.
Taken together, by far the most likely scenario is that the police coerced the confession out of Knox. Just on the facts relating to the interrogation alone, I’d put the likelihood that the confession was genuine at 10% at the very highest.
If the confession were genuine, we would expect some physical evidence of Knox and Sollecito at the crime scene. Given the fact that there is literally zero physical evidence of Knox and Sollecito’s involvement, the likelihood that the confession is genuine must drop even further, to below 1%.
Considering the confession is about the only evidence for their involvement, I have to place the likelihood of their guilt at <1%. (There was a homeless man who claimed he saw them enter the apartment, but this is so weak as to be irrelevant given the poor track record of eyewitness accounts even immediately after a highly memorable event, the credibility of a detailed recollection of a mundane event over a year after it occurred is virtually non-existent, particularly without any evidence to back it up of any kind.)
Also, the reason I suggested you re-read the sequences is because you stated that you were 90% certain that all three were guilty, yet 90% that Guide was guilty even if the other two were not. This is a major failure in probability (and is actually a pretty common bias), as the options are Guide acted alone, or Guide acted with accomplices. Eliminating Knox and Sollecito from the equation eliminates a point of uncertainty, no matter how certain you are of Knox and Sollecito’s guilt, and aught to increase your confidence in the individual assessment of Guide’s guilt. Being 99% certain that Guide is guilty, and 90% certain that Guide, Knox, and Sollecito are guilty is logically consistent. Being 90% certain that Guide is guilty, yet 90% certain that all three are guilty is not logically consistent. You have to either lower you confidence in the guilt of all three, or raise your confidence in the guilt of Guide.
I may have phrased that last paragraph poorly, but most people should be able to understand it. I may edit for clarity later.
Edited to add: Here is a good article on coerced confessions, written by a forensic scientist.
Second edit, sorry, pertinent quote from the article:
When a confession is admitted and later retracted and claimed to have been made under duress, an additional question is whether the jury can understand the pressures that led up to the confession. Milgram’s (1963, 1964) obedience studies suggest that, although most people may believe they personally would never succumb to pressure, their behavior in a coercive environment is to conform. Jury members may be unable to perceive how an innocent person could actually confess to something he did not do. Widespread overconfidence in personal ability to resist coercion may lead jurors to give undue and erroneous weight to a coerced confession. Expert testimony may be necessary to help jurors understand the circumstances that lead to nonvoluntary confessions, but trial courts have not always admitted such testimony.
I just want to point out that it is impossible to prove a thing doesn’t exist.
However, when things exist we expect certain observations, and we don’t find them that is, in fact, evidence that the thing we are looking for doesn’t exist. It isn’t particularly strong evidence (unless the “thing” absolutely must cause the effect we’re looking for in the experiment). Not finding any effect in these studies really should shake your confidence in the theory quite a lot unless a.) there is already a large body of evidence contradicting these findings (doesn’t sound like there is) or b.) there are some methodological flaws that invalidates the findings in the study (doesn’t sound like there are, just disagreement with the conclusion). More studies would clarify both issues.
In other words, the lack of findings do, in fact, show that there is no such effect. It’s just weak evidence, that’s all. If various experiments are repeated over and over looking for the self-limiting control and never find them, well, we still haven’t proven it doesn’t exist. However, we can be pretty damn sure that it either doesn’t exist or is so insignificant as to be meaningless.
I’m not saying this has happened at all, I haven’t read any of the papers on the subject, I’m just saying your reasoning has a flaw. If you’re really attached to the self-limiting theory for some reason, it could be a case of looking for evidence that allows you to believe in what you want to believe, rather than looking at whether or not the theory has a decent probability of being right and adjusting your views accordingly.
I’ve read a few articles on this issue, and the problem seems pretty alarming. From what I understand, there are only a small handful of journals that accept null hypothesis (i.e. hypothesis that X is not true), in fact I think there might be only one (JASN).
The vast majority of journals reject (or at least discourage) non-positive results except in the case of famous researchers or contentious issues, which means studies that show negative results tend to not get published. In fact, most researchers don’t even attempt to publish—they start over, or give up and move to a different project. If the study was critical to their career, they may even move to another field entirely.
This meta-study examines studies of publication bias and reporting bias (unfavorable results omitted from conclusions). It comes to the conclusion that studies that show positive results are significantly more likely to be published than studies that don’t.
If the academic culture is discouraging studies that show negative results via the publication process, doesn’t that seem to imply there is, at the very least, a major inefficiency in our process of learning new things?
I’m no scientist, but I do have to do a lot of troubleshooting for my job, and while knowing what works is most important, knowing what doesn’t takes a close second.
If journals encouraged negative results as much as positive results, I’d imagine we’d see major new scientific breakthroughs twice as often as we currently do—and that’s kind of a big deal, I think. Right now the huge academic pressure is not to produce valid results, but to produce positive results. That’s a major problem, in my opinion, precisely because human beings are very vulnerable to such pressure. There are a whole slew of biases that arise because of that type of pressure, and any researcher not very cognizant of their vulnerability is another potential Staple.
I updated my 60% guilt for Knox/Sollecito almost immediately after reading the follow-up article. As I noted on that page, my 60% judgement was a clear case of anchoring. I started with the pro-guilt evidence and only managed an 80% guilt after reading only their evidence. That I was then only able to re-adjust down to 60% was absurd. Since I was (and still am) fairly weak as a rationalist, I probably should have withheld any kind of assessment until after I had read the pro-innocence website, rather than try to make an early assessment and update it with the evidence I knew would be coming.
I didn’t put a number on my update at the time, I just went from “There isn’t enough evidence to convict” to “Why were they still suspects?”. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say this was a <5% chance of guilt.
Since the acquittal, given the judge’s statements about the DNA evidence and the handling thereof (I didn’t read the full assessment by the independent expert), I’d have to adjust it now to <1%.
ETA: I just went through the independent analysis, and the conclusions were even stronger than I thought they were.
I thought that the conclusions were of the nature: “this DNA cannot be conclusively matched to anyone”.
In fact, they were of the nature: “There is no organic material present.”
They did find a few grains of starch on the bra clasp, but that was it. How did the Scientific Police screw it up that badly? They got a shakey DNA match where no DNA existed!
I have to update my assessment yet again, to the lowest I’m willing to put a number on, and that’s <0.1% chance that either of them are guilty. There is literally zero evidence that either of them were involved.
I’ve been an atheist for about a year now, but I still haven’t “come out” of the atheist closet with my parents yet. They are southern baptist, and I know it will devastate them—my mom especially.
My own break with Christianity was a light switch moment (more like turning out the last light before leaving the place for good kind of light switch moment) that happened while I was watching the Discovery Channel, of all things. I’d been raised with the hard-line young earth, all-evidence-for-evolution-is-fabricated, fire and brimstone style belief. My faith had been eroding for almost a decade as I tried to rationalize the existence of God, but it didn’t really click until I saw a bunch of little Japanese Mudskippers crawling around in the mud with their elongated fins, the very picture of an evolutionary transition species that I had been taught since I was kid could not exist. I just thought “Well, that’s it then. I can’t honestly believe Christianity any more can I?” I think I actually let out a sigh at some point, but that may just be my mind filling in details for dramatic effect.
Really, my true belief had been gone since probably some time in high school. That was just the last straw that forced me to give up my belief in belief. Sort of like finally letting go of the rope, expecting to fall to your death, and discovering you were only a few inches from solid ground after all.
125 according to a high school IQ test in the 1930′s.
He was doing integral and differential calculus at age 15 (much better than anybody in my high school managed as a high school freshman). He was formulating mathematical concepts he hadn’t yet been taught before he entered college.
I think it more likely that the IQ test he took was wrong than that he was only a little above average intelligence. His body of work is further evidence of this.
The key point you’ve missed in your analysis, however, is that Omega is almost always correct in his predictions.
It doesn’t matter how Omega does it—that is a separate problem. You don’t have enough information about his process of prediction to make any rational judgment about it except for the fact that it is a very, very good process. Brain scans, reversed causality, time travel, none of those ideas matter. In the paradox as originally posed, all you have are guesses about how he may have done it, and you would be an utter fool to give higher weight to those guesses than to the fact that Omega is always right.
The if observations (that Omega is always right) disagree with theory (that Omega cannot possibly be right), it is the theory that is wrong, every time.
Thus the rational agent should, in this situation, give extremely low weight to his understanding of the way the universe works, since it is obviously flawed (the existence of a perfect predictor proves this). The question really comes down to 100% chance of getting $1000 plus a nearly 0% chance of getting $1.01 million, vs nearly 100% chance of getting $1 million.
What really blows my mind about making the 2-box choice is that you can significantly reduce Omega’s ability to predict the outcome, and unless you are absolutely desperate for that $1000* the 2-box choice doesn’t become superior until Omega is only roughly 50% accurate (at 50.1% the outcome equalizes). Only then do you expect to get more money, on average, by choosing both boxes.
In other words, if you think Omega is doing anything but flipping a coin to determine the contents of box B, you are better off choosing box B.
*I could see the value of $1000 rising significantly if, for example, a man is holding a gun to your head and will kill you in two minutes if you don’t give him $1000. In this case, any uncertainty of Omega’s abilities are overshadowed by the certainty of the $1000. This inverts if the man with the gun is demanding more than $1000 - making the 2-box choice a non-option.
My problem with the collapse version of QM—and this may stem from the fact that Eliezer’s explanation is the only one I’ve read that I’ve actually had a decent understanding of it (such that I am relatively confident I could pass along the basic concepts to someone else without becoming “Goofus” in some of EY’s earlier examples) - is that there is no apparent reason for the collapse.
Take a coin toss. We say the probability of a heads or tails on a fair coin is .5 for each outcome. When heads eventually happens, the truth of the matter is that if we had information like the state of the coin pre-flip, the position of the hand flipping the coin, the force of the arm as it moves up and the exact position and force of the thumb on the coin itself, we could raise our estimation of the probability for that flip to be heads up to probably .9+. Given more precise information, we could conceivably get the probability up to .99. Excluding quantum effects, the actual probability that the coin would come up heads in that particular instance was essentially 1.
This does not seem to be the case with quantum mechanics. There does not seem to be any new information that could give any insight as to why the electron went through the first slit instead of the second, or vice versa. It’s not just that the information is hidden, it doesn’t seem to exist at all. Instead, the probability itself appears to be “baked into” reality, with no reason to prefer one outcome over the other. The CI response seems to be “It just does, Born probabilities blah blah blah accept it” without even attempting to explain what seems to me to be a major problem with the way reality works under this interpretation. CI doesn’t actually explain the Born probabilities any better than MWI, as far as I’ve read, they just seem to have “claimed” them. For this reason, I don’t think CI satisfies your criteria of having a “derivation… of the probabilities which contain all of the actual predictive content of quantum mechanics” criteria either. At least not any better than MWI.
If the wave functions aren’t a real property of the universe, then why the hell does reality seem to follow them? And if they are real, why did A happen when there is no reason B didn’t happen? This seems to imply that luck is a fundamental property of the universe!
It’s these two basic questions that I haven’t seen answered satisfactorily from the CI or more general collapse perspective (if such a thing exists separate from mainstream CI). The fact that most physicists believe some variation MWI bolsters my confidence, even though the idea that decoherance effectively produces zillions of universes continuously simply blows my mind.
It sounds like you are mocking the post, not expressing genuine amusement.
I imagine that wasn’t your actual intent, though; judging tone over the internet is notoriously difficult. Your comment follows the same format as other mocking posts, so I’d avoid it—i.e. starting off with “haha”, “scream with laughter”, it comes off as sarcasm.
The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
What do you mean by “I know of”. Do you mean an account that you have evidence for? If yes, what >evidence is that? Or do you mean the earliest recorded? Surely there were early ones recorded. >Korach and the 250 men?
The OP mentioned the earliest account he knows of, and ed suggests he aught to know of earlier ones. This is, frankly, bizarre. The OP never suggested it was the earliest account in existence, or even that the account was true. The truth of the account was irrelevant to what the OP was talking about, and in fact the reason for pointing it out was almost certainly to show the irony that such a completely unreliable book could contain within one of its most famous stories the blueprint for dismantaling the veracity of the entire thing (or at least, all of its most questionable elements).
But ed wanted to take issue with it for some reason. It sounded like an attack on the OP for no reason other than that he mentioned something in the bible, which is lame, so I got snarky.
On the age, I was making a rough estimate—more a guess really—that was off by about 20% - not exactly something to get crazy over in my opinion. If you like, 1 Kings is probably between 2550 and 2570 years old. Better?
Which is the fundamental misunderstanding I was attempting to point out.
The original statement was that the bible contains an account of Elijah performing an experiment. This is absolutely true.
The original statement had nothing to do with whether or not Elijah actually performed any such experiment, and in fact the truth of the account itself was absolutely irrelevant to the discussion, but that’s what ed and ndm25 jumped on.
It’s silly.
Edit to point out that by “original statement” I mean the statement ed was responding to.
Was the downvote because I used the word stupid, or does someone actually believe the bible does not contain an account of Elijah performing an experiment?
If the former, don’t be so sensitive, I didn’t call anybody stupid, I was just pointing out the absurd notion that the account does not exist.
If the latter, well, I really can’t help you. The existence of the account is an absurdly easily provable fact. I certainly don’t believe the events described in the account ever took place, however.
Earliest “account”.
Since the most popular book in the world contains this account, I’d say questioning its existence is pretty stupid.
The test given in the account that Elijah supposedly performed would, with only slight tweaking*, be a completely valid scientific experiment.
Now, whether the events in the account actually happened is an entirely different question (and I’d agree with you there). But you’d be foolish to say the account itself doesn’t exist, which is what you and ed have thus far said. Words on paper are extremely strong evidence the account exists (it exists on the paper). The fact that I’m talking about the account is pretty strong evidence that the account exists as well (it exists in my mind).
*As has been noted by others, he went over-board when setting up his side of the experiment. To get the most relevant results he should have kept both altars exactly the same instead of dousing his lambs with water. Of course, he was doing science accidentally, so he didn’t know better.
A lot of the dumbed down science I read/watch (documentaries, popular sciency magazines, sciency websites, etc) suggests that this is exactly how a number of physicists view the world these days.
For example, often when there is debate about whether such and such theoretical effect breaks the conservation laws they speak in terms of information being conserved or destroyed, even though they are referring to things like photons and whatnot (e.g. the Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet concerning Hawking Radiation).
After a few recent posts of mine it looks like I need to work on my phrasing in order to make my points clear.
No harm no foul.
I still don’t see it as a very good reason for a down vote when nothing in the post is considered incorrect.
I expect not to be up voted if I’m being rude and technically correct, but I don’t expect to be down voted. Usually when I’m down voted it is because I’m either factually wrong or I’ve failed at reasoning. Getting down voted for a phrasing that someone considers a little rude seems odd on this particular website. And honestly, I was not intending to be rude in any way, it is a common phrase when someone makes a mistake. I did not intend to imply anything other than the fact that he used the wrong word in his paradox.
In any case, the points aren’t a big deal, and someone corrected it anyway. I was just curious if I had made a mistake, because I didn’t see one even after looking over what I wrote a second and third time.
I’m very sorry, I didn’t consider that. I actually got to the original Amanda Knox post through the spoiler, but I stopped reading at the mention of the original and went straight to that one first.
I’ll change the link so it doesn’t trip anybody else up.
My apologies, I misread/misremembered your original assessment. I should have double checked before posting; you can ignore that whole portion of my post.
These circumstances are enough to drive suspicion toward Knox and Sollecito, but without any sort of physical evidence to back up the suspicions they are insignificant. There are a lot of possible explanations for their behavior and the vast majority don’t include murder.
If it is proven that it was staged by Knox/Sollecito, then absolutely. The inverse is also true, however: if Knox/Sollecito are innocent, then they didn’t fake the break-in. The evidence that the break-in was staged is very weak, which is exactly what you expect to see if they are innocent.
This is the part, I think, that you are missing: the physical evidence (including reliable electronic evidence) is extremely strong evidence. It is “trumps everything” kind of strong. Slightly odd behavior is incredibly weak evidence. There is a huge amount of physical evidence in this case, and none of it points to Knox or Sollecito. The likelihood that they could be guilty of murder without leaving any evidence behind is incredibly small. Without evidence of any sort of link between Guide and Knox/Sollecito the complete lack of physical evidence of their involvement trumps the little bit of circumstantial evidence by a wide margin.