erica

Karma: 1

erica 20 Dec 2009 10:03 UTC
0 points
in reply to: captcorajus’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
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.

erica 19 Dec 2009 10:24 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: brazil84’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
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

erica 19 Dec 2009 10:11 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Are you sure semen was found? I’ve read elsewhere this was a manual rape—still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.

erica 19 Dec 2009 2:30 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
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.

erica 18 Dec 2009 17:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Parapsychology: the control group for science
Aaah, Thank you.

erica 18 Dec 2009 15:12 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Parapsychology: the control group for science
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.

erica 18 Dec 2009 13:28 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Parapsychology: the control group for science
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?

erica 18 Dec 2009 12:29 UTC
−5 points
on: Parapsychology: the control group for science
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?

erica 18 Dec 2009 12:21 UTC
1 point
in reply to: erica’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
Thanks for your replies. Orientation increased to 37% :)

erica 18 Dec 2009 11:18 UTC
0 points
on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
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?

erica 18 Dec 2009 11:07 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
Thanks for the Welcome. I laughed at the illustration.
- I’m in the UK, are most other people in the US?

erica 18 Dec 2009 11:02 UTC
3 points
in reply to: baloney’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
I don’t think I’m being ironic. First, I don’t think character analysis is necessary in this case but as the prosecution and support for the verdict both rely on character analysis, I have attempted to put forward an alternative analysis that depicts Amanda as cosseted, well-educated, literary and imaginative. This is the opposite of Rosemary West, so I raise the question as to whether the two styles of writing are directly comparable.

erica 16 Dec 2009 9:08 UTC
10 points
on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
Familiarity pretty good—I’ve read the Wiki page, revisited several articles from when the murder was first discovered and I watched Sky news the day of the verdict and saw/heard Prof of Criminology, feminist journalist, UK barrister and two Italian barristers. I frequently search the web, hence I found this site.

(I don’t understand the up/down system.)

I find the logic of the murder disturbing—if the murder was a game gone wrong, then it was not premeditated, so unlikely gloves were worn. If bleach was used to clean, then why was Guede’s DNA all over the body and room? The only DNA evidence for Raffaelle is highly suspect and a physical impossibility to leave DNA only in that one place I would think. That really is the beginning and the end of it.

The Prof of Criminology’s view I have to take seriously. But, in saying that Amanda’s diary reads like a gap-year Rosemary West he failed to draw contrasts as well as comparisons. Rosemary West was severely abused from early chidlhood, she did not study languages or develop an interest in creative writing.

I have an alternative scenario—a young woman from a comfortable secure All-American upbringing, who has no idea of the level of corruption and politicking in the world, visits Italy and discovers the magic of old Europe and the unexpected appeal of herself to Italian men—the intoxicating culture of Italy, the constant calls of ‘Ciao Bella’ from men lounging in doorways—and, being naive and unwordly, behaves carelessly and without circumspection not realising that beneath the relaxed veneer of Italian culture lies a strict code of conduct, especially for women. Amanda has behaved exactly as you would expect of an innocent girl with that background—she simply could not comprehend that she could be convicted for a crime that she did not commit and didn’t take her interview with the police seriously.

Given the above scenario, when asked to imagine what might have happened that night, Amanda may well have enjoyed being able to apply her obvious interest in macarbre story telling. I myself wonder at the violence depicted in much fiction but being able to express the human condition in fiction is important and we should not rush to criminalise the use of the macarbre in fiction.

I don’t want to cast aspersions but I found it very strange that Meredith’s parents did not talk at the press conference and I started to find their silence spooky rather than dignified. I also think that Meredith had made it clear to her family that she did not at all like her flatmate’s arrogant American ‘no one can touch me’ attitude. Supposing the Italian barrister dangled the potential for millions in compensation in front of them? How would they feel?

And why does Meredith’s mother now say that querying the verdict is making her unhappy? Would she not care if an innocent went to jail? And surely the pain of her daughter’s death is not going to disappear from her mind even when the story disappears from the media? It starts to sound more like a desire for revenge than for justice.

Finally, I’ve worked with about a dozen Italian professionals and was astounded by their anti-American feeling. There have been US bases in Italy since WWII and Italy led the anti-Iraq war movement with their colourful Pace flags.

I don’t know what Amanda and Raffaelle were up to that night. I think they were in the first bloom of attraction to each other, on drugs (perhaps more than just cannabis), and not being particularly sensible. But the case is not beyond reasonable doubt, neither is accusing the other, and they have served 2 years in jail already.

PS. this site is a very welcome find—it seems that many, many people these days prefer ‘opinion’ to logic or standards—I call it the Strictly Syndrome—a cult of personality combined with sectarian affiliations—it’s really quite scary to hear how little people care about evidence, universal standards or intelligent debate nowadays. Bring back the Enlightenment, I’ve had enough of postmodernism!