The judge’s response to the lawyer: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The toothbrush thing, though. That was real. And I refuse to apologize for it.

Aside from that, I think we’re agreeing. People are crazy.

James

The line about correlation not being causation is easy. I will attempt go give a more in depth answer though.

We now live in an age of information overload. Online, our presences are recorded and searchable: our credit card information is available for a fee, anything we wrote online is conveniently available, and our bank records can be uncovered for the right amount of money. All this information is then available on the day after we snap and climb the bell tower. People with nothing better to talk about, that is to say the media on their 24 hour news insanity cycle, can then search out this information and ask “Why god why didn’t someone see this coming?”

It’s a trap though. As humans, we’re wired to search through our memories of someone’s prior actions to make judgments on their future behaviour. We all do it because that’s how we’ve adapted to cope in society where we meet lots of people. We guess at their future behaviour by their past actions. However the internet age and people like news hosts and opposition politicians are twisted by their own internal programming.

The CIA had huge data stores and even briefed the president about the possibility of 9/11. Tom Clancy basically wrote a guidebook for how to carry out the attacks. But after it happened, after all the rage and fury had subsided, people were still asking why they didn’t see it coming. A Gunman shoots up Fort Hood and afterwards all the interviews with his superiors and colleagues come out talking about how unfit he was to serve, but no one connected the dots.

This whole thing is just a trap. Instead of just allowing that life is not predictable in all cases, politicians created this tool. “The leader should have seen it coming!” This implies his negligence, despite the fact that connecting 4 words in the terabytes of information is difficult and may cause a false assumption. But then the trap spread past simple political manipulation and began to be used anytime something unpredictable and bad happened. In the case of Amanda Knox the implication is that through her words we should have uncovered her future deeds. G has weighed in on that one though.

What began as a social coping strategy has morphed into something else. It became a political tool, and perhaps a legitimate cause for criticism in some cases. Now, in the sea of information we live in it is a useless bleating against the winds of uncertainty. Because it is tied back to our evolved coping strategy it is given more creedance and legitimacy than it should be.

The important thing for me is that I would never want my record examined in that way. You could probably come up with theories that I have potential future behaviour committing all manners of sins. You could justify views that I was both a egomanical psychopath and a depressed spiritual wastrel at the same time. People are too complex to be judged in that way from a distance. However, if James B, who knows me quite well, were to find me writing depressing and suicidal facebook posts he would have a legitimate concern. But he knows me, and he knows where to draw that line. In Amanda Knox’s case no one, outside her circle of friends, family, and confidants, has that ability to judge. Maybe her writing was a clue. But most likely it was just what G has said: Stories from a young writer.

… wow… a full fledged rant, what the heck….

James

This is because we’re pattern-seeking creatures, and where patterns don’t exist, we’ll make them up. What shape is that cloud, etc.

Our society in particular is also drawn to the morbid and the oddity. As an example, how many people know the name J.D. Salinger, as opposed to that other guy – you know, the one who actually killed Lenin? Never mind how many murders have happened (inluding of famous people) where there was not even remotely a literary connection. Never mind that it’s very clearly laid out in this case that it wasn’t the book, it was The Crazy. Highscools all over the world have the book on their study list because of it’s bizzare association with Lennon’s death.

Also, look at what a fuss is made over John Wilkes Booth being an actor. The intersection between the “acting” set and the “murdering” set is pretty slim, but we sure do make a big deal of that little slice.

James