111–120 of 631 posts
It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
It's called a prior for a reason.
If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
There isn’t enough evidence to convict, so to speak, but the one place that could easily disprove the lab leak claim is the same place desperately stonewalling and destroying evidence. Acting guilty doesn’t mean your guilty, but something nefarious went on in that lab. To the point where they would rather fire bomb the entire lab than answer questions or provide documents. >On the other hand, many people would like i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1…
You are confusing or conflating the lab-leak and lab-made theories.
How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-science" crowd.
In contrast scientists are in the drivers position if the cause was all natural. Then they can propose to be the "defendenders" of the humanity against the next danger.
No wonder that there is strong headwind against any other narrative. Remember all it takes a single dissenter to bury a paper.
It is the in the vital (short term) interest of every scientist to say that the origin is all natural!
If you read the papers that claim natural origin, these turn out to be extremely weakly argued. A heat-map plot here and there, some evasive language when it comes to evidence. But the quotable conclusion is always formulated much more strongly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully agree with your point, but I think the example is a bit aggressive towards OP. I'm sure you got a good chuckle of out of this, but I think it would have been better to give an example that did not seem like an attack. For example the earth being flat, the moon landing being fake or something like that.
Agreed. Also, I'm not happy that I used and reproduced negative connotations about prostitution (that are deeply rooted in patriarchical control of female sexuality and reproduction). But I choose to keep this non-insult since it has a very strong impact in just a few words due to the high cognitive dissonance it causes. (Partly responsible for the chuckle you mentioned). The earth being flat is not a good substitute…
If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
It appears reasonable to assign COVID lab leak hypothesis a higher prior, in Bayesian terms, just based on the many institutions/individuals whose image/status would it directly or indirectly damage if found true (NIH, DARPA, the US, WIV, CCP), and which therefore would be compelled to paint it as unlikely.
I am not sure this is a reasonable assignment of priors. The existence of people who could be blamed is not an argument towards the crime happened.
I support neither treating an accidental leak (if it occurred) as a crime, nor blaming any individual for it.
That aside, the key is not quite “existence of people who could be blamed” but “existence of people who stand to (or think they stand to) lose a lot in terms of image/power/funding and have a certain degree of influence over the outcome”.
(Before you ask why am I not blaming Bill Gates for this pandemic then, there are of course other considerations that go into weighing priors. Using only this factor alone makes it indistinguishable from conspiracy theorising.)
I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.
It started at a wet market on the other side of the city. That's been very solidly established now. The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the wet market, but not around the lab, which is more than 10 km away.[0] > a lab that studies the virus The lab did not study SARS-CoV-2. It studied viruses that are about 20% different from SARS-CoV-2. We know what viruses they were working with, because they publ…
That's simply not true at all, whatsoever. See for example this paper sequencing early samples of the virus: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/12/5211/6353034?logi...
The "wet market" samples are less similar to closely related bat strains than other early samples which are unrelated to the market.
The market is close to a major hospital. If the virus was circulating, it is unsurprising that a super spreader event would occur there. But saying that the market is the point of origin, and this this is "very solidly established" simply flies in the face of known facts.
If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
There is also no evidence that it came from animals directly. Given that there are really only two plausible hypotheses, and nondirect evidence of either, we have to speculate based on circumstantial evidence. And if one hypothesis is floated around the media, we need to raise the other one as well. I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that there can be global media conspiracies, even though the…
That's not a conspiracy, that's just common shared knowledge.
The early cases were very heavily concentrated around the Huanan wet market, but not around the lab, which is on the other side of the Wuhan, a pretty massive city.[0] If the virus had come from the lab, you'd expect the early cases to cluster around the lab. Instead, they were centered around a wet market, just like the early cases of the original SARS were back in 2002. This is completely aside from the other reaso…
No, because it's not proposed that the virus leaked out of the lab building into the nearby air. I presume it's more like a person who worked at the lab getting infected, and then moving around the city as normal, needing only to infect one other person, anywhere in the city.