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
Are you sure semen was found? I've read elsewhere this was a manual rape - still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.
or it could be that Knox and Sollicitos' behaviours were so irrational that it is harder to fathom what the evidence means:
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.
Aaah, Thank you.
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.
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?
Thanks for your replies. Orientation increased to 37% :)
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?
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.