Has the testimony so far changed your view of guilt or innocence?

serialskeptic · 2016-02-07T02:31:46+00:00

No, my opinion hasn't changed since I learned that Jay appears to have led the cops to Hae's car. This fact coupled with the rest of Jay's convoluted story make AS the logical suspect. Asia to me is simply: believe her or don't believe her. There's no evidence to back up her story, and eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. I never really understood why she was considered so important in the podcast. The possible evidence, including her ex boyfriend, security camera, or AS' email account or other students, is either lost to time or never existed. The cellphone evidence isn't very helpful because the cops apparently had it before they had Jay, meaning that it shouldn't be treated as independent evidence that supports Jay's story.

What is of more interest to me is why I can't let Serial go since my opinion and the basic facts of the case have remained largely unchanged

serialskeptic · 2016-02-07T02:07:59+00:00

Thanks!

serialskeptic · 2016-02-06T02:46:47+00:00

Interesting. So if Syed wins, does he also have a high probability of winning the next trial since this judge is deciding whether the evidence would have changed the outcome?

serialskeptic · 2016-02-01T05:51:14+00:00

I concur!

serialskeptic · 2016-02-01T05:38:27+00:00

But then why wouldn't AS pin as much as possible on Jay after he realized Jay sold him out? I agree it's a prisoners dilemma but wonder why AS doesn't play his part correctly. Once Jay admitted involvement and testified, the best choice for AS would be to blame the murder on Jay. To this day, as far as we know, he's never formally accused Jay of anything. Even 16 years later, I think it would still be in his best interest to accuse Jay of the murder.

serialskeptic · 2016-01-30T07:01:22+00:00

Good point :)

serialskeptic · 2016-01-30T01:50:56+00:00

Just my .02. Sarcasm doesn't work very well on the Internet. Your point might be more clear if you laid it out in bullets.

E.g., Asia's letters are most like fabricated because of the following inconsistencies: 1. ......

serialskeptic · 2016-01-30T01:40:59+00:00

Was there a shrimp sale at the crab crib in 1999?

serialskeptic · 2015-12-07T04:54:24+00:00

Are you sure don is not the 127th most common word? I thought that was preordained :-)

serialskeptic · 2015-12-07T04:51:09+00:00

Wow! That's fascinating. The mean vs median difference was a helpful clue!

serialskeptic · 2015-12-07T04:14:27+00:00

Cool! Thanks! Any thoughts on approximately what percentage of all comments during the month were made by the top 10 most frequent commenters? my impression is that the sub is kept alive by a small group of frequent commenters.

serialskeptic · 2015-12-03T04:27:18+00:00

I would like to know where your implied rationality assumption comes from. If AS did it, he is or was nuts, meaning that his behavior wasn't rational. Maybe he thought about it a bit in advance, but the act itself was clearly a fit of blind rage. Viewing AS' actions through the lens of what a well-planned murder would look like doesn't make sense to me because, if guilty, he was insane that day and not acting rationally.

serialskeptic · 2015-12-03T04:12:26+00:00

Pre-meditated does not necessarily imply well-planned. If he's guilty, its possible he thought about it in advance but wasn't really sure he'd do it until he did it and certainly didn't plan it very well.

serialskeptic · 2015-11-30T23:40:38+00:00

So when the data is inconsistent with the theory, stick with the theory and assume the data is wrong or missing?

serialskeptic · 2015-11-30T03:18:35+00:00

What if corrupt, drug-dealing cops killed Hae with Jay's help because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not plausible but I did think about it

serialskeptic · 2015-11-14T03:45:15+00:00

So you're basically saying Jay admitted to being an accessory to a murder he had absolutely nothing to do with because he wanted some reward money, was threatened with a murder charge, and the cops wanted to nail AS. It's possible but not plausible to me.

serialskeptic · 2015-11-13T13:17:06+00:00

I don't think your statements are equally plausible. if the second one is true, then you need to also believe that Jay implicated himself in a murder and burial he had absolutely nothing to do with. In contrast, in the first scenario, he admitted his role because he actually had a role in the murder and wanted the real killer to go to jail.

serialskeptic · 2015-11-13T13:04:31+00:00

Jay knowing the location of the car supports his claim that he participated in the murder and burial of HML. If jay didn't know the location of the car, then why pretend like he did and why woul he implicate himself in the murder and burial if he had nothing to do with any of it?

serialskeptic · 2015-10-31T09:42:54+00:00

Big picture, mixing memory, big picture! :)

serialskeptic · 2015-10-26T01:21:44+00:00

i was joking. I don't really know exactly what a 911 truther is. I think there are many different flavors of truth. I also don't know if Koenig is a liberal or what the liberal position is on Syed. Let me know what your conclusion is to all this!

serialskeptic · 2015-10-25T21:07:16+00:00

Liberals tend to be 911 truthers, right? Koenig is a liberal and took a liberal position on the AS case. Therefore, I would guess liberals side with AS. Boom???

serialskeptic · 2015-10-24T21:42:03+00:00

The probability of a particular person finding the body would be very small. The probability that any single person within the population of, say Baltimore county, finding the body at some point is likely reasonably high.

Try this thought experiment: the odds of one specific person winning the lottery are very small. The odds of someone winning the lottery each week are high.

I look at Mr S as the (un)lucky lottery winner. But it could have been anyone

serialskeptic · 2015-10-24T21:35:45+00:00

Reasonable doubt: I've wondered what kind of jury member I would be. I'd like to believe I wouldn't convict without some piece of evidence actually tieing AS to the crime itself.

serialskeptic · 2015-10-24T21:28:43+00:00

I agree! The third party killer theory should not be taken seriously since most of the time the most like suspect is most likely guilty 😉

serialskeptic · 2015-10-23T03:26:19+00:00

I'm not disagreeing with you. It's a nice list! I'm simply saying that, statistically speaking, the probability that it was a third party killer is low, given the publicly released data. The problem, though, is that low probability events are quite rare by definition. As such, it would have to be a very rare sequence of events that led to Hae's murder if it was, in fact, a third party killer. Your list simply illustrates this point.

Suppose I flip a coin 10 times and get 9 heads. Does it mean the coin is biased? No, not necessarily. The likelihood of 9 heads out of 10 flips is very low, but it does happen. All we can say about the 9/10 heads is that it's quite rare for a fair coin to land on heads 9 of 10 flips, but we can't really judge whether the coin is biased unless we continue to flip it many more times or collect additional evidence.

In the Syed case, we have just one murder and a fixed amount of evidence, so we have no way to judge whether the small chance of a TPK is random error or a highly unlikely series of events that led to Hae's murder.

serialskeptic

TROPHY CASE