Holy shit, I highy recommend people actually read the linked post,
it’s a perfect distillation of the yudkowsky method.
He starts by declaring that he thinks the lab-leak is 80% probable,
and gives absolutely zero explanation of how he arrived at that
number (besides citing nate silvers similarly ass-pulled numbers).
Then for the rest of the post, he just writes as if the lab-leak is a
confirmed fact:
The Covid-19 pandemic was caused by an accidental release by a
US-funded Chinese lab doing gain-of-function studies on human
transmission
As if “Yudkowsky gives a high probability to this based on
circumstantial evidence” is the same thing as “this is true”. Also, he
jumps from “lab-leak is probable” to “this specific subset of lab-leak
is true”, as the gain-of-function is only one of many possible lab-leak
scenarios. And then of course, this is used to conclude that researchers
can’t be trusted, this is why you need to donate to AI researcher,
etc.
This is sort of thinking errors is pretty common amongst the weak thinkers, clearly he should read the sequences and start to become more logical and rational.
Epidemiologists have been head-desking at Nate Silver for the past year, I think. And the climate scientists were like, [welcome to the party](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nate-silver-climate-change_b_1909482).
Silver had great success entering a field where he was more quantitative than others, or at least those others who succeeded in getting attention. But that doesn't work when you're entering a field that's already intensely data-driven. At best, you'll just be on par with the people already working there, and you'll have your own ego to contend with.
It’s not just that his models don’t work when he jumps head first into something new (they generally don’t), it’s that as with this example, his ego has ridden so high on his success with sabermetrics and (somewhat more limited, though often unfairly or just ignorantly maligned) voting patterns, he often straight up doesn’t have a model. He’s doing punditry, pure and simple.
>He’s doing punditry, pure and simple.
Which he used to decry all the time. He's stopped using it as a foil to his own work now for some reason... Anyway numbers good, no I won't explain myself.
How in the fuck can you estimate this when there’s barely enough information? You may as well figure out how likely it is you’ll be having pizza for dinner. (hint: it’s 100%)
The idea that we can figure out where this came from, just from
reading blog posts and news articles writing about this (while ignoring
that apparantly China actively resists any real stats about their
medical situations coming out (as one of the previous links here posted
shows in regard with HIV)), and then adding probabilities to how likely
it is is super weird.
Why cant they just go: I dont know, I cant know, and I lack the
expertise and have no access to enough reliable data to say anything
about this. Why do they have to talk about it, and then pick a side? And
then add in priors/percentages. (The last is because they are
ideologically baysarians I guess (which is weird, as it is just a
tool))
because that would involve *saying the same thing that many reputable scientists say about this*, and just about everything else: investigate every avenue of inquiry until they are proved right or wrong. and that just does not fit with Yud's self image.
reputable scientists saying clearly that all avenues should be pursued and we just don't know enough: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
Scientists are part of The Cathedral, and Yud's career is built around whining about being rejected by them and convincing people it's because he's smarter than they are. Contradiction is the only way to score Culture War points.
As always, you have to look past the factual question they’re
superficially reasoning about toward the imaginary dream question that
motivates their reasoning.
Factual question: Okay, so maybe a virus escaped from a research
institute that’s trying to save the world from this kind of thing.
Ironic, but how are the social implications any more significant than
improper handling of meat or livestock? Hygiene policies failed and
should be updated, the end.
Imaginary dream question: If the virus escaped from a lab, it could
have been an engineered bioweapon! (Despite even less evidence of lab
engineering than lab evolution.)
Also, you'd think all these supposed Bayesians would spend more time on the fact that whatever the conditional probability of a worker at the lab getting infected with the virus, there's a hell of a lot more people in china who *don't* work at the lab than do.
The most offensive thing about this post, to me anyway, is how this
crank is just casually shitting on public health workers,
epidemiologists and other people who a) were planning for pandemic
preparedness before Covid, and b) in many countries, were very effective
in managing and controlling the outbreak.
“Nobody could have prepared for this scenario and there is no
possible way to prevent it” is the kind of thing an asshole says when
trying to wriggle out from self reflection. Well, an asshole who has
done none of the work in trying to understand what actually happened and
how countries other than America didn’t shit the bed.
I’m not trying to be a troll, but I genuinely don’t understand why
this has become such a flash point and I don’t understand why the lab
leak theory is discounted immediately as a conspiracy theory in some
quarters (Likewise I don’t understand why others are all of the sudden
extremely confident about it being the case). I have been busy lately so
while I would usually dive into a topic like this myself and try to
figure it out I just don’t really have the time. Yud sucks and his post
is weird, but all of that aside the theory itself and the related facts
seem, to the best of my understanding with some brief reading,
reasonable enough to at least consider. It seems to me like the waters
were muddied a few days ago because of that BS Bayesian analysis paper
that claim it was like 99% certainty that covid 19 came from a lab. That
paper was awful and I can see how it may have contributed to the battle
lines getting drawn here. But wasn’t the timing of that paper in
relation to the development of this story/argument just
coincidental?
What am I missing? I’m asking honestly. Try as I might, I can’t keep
up with every one of these epistemological breakdowns. I’m not smart
enough, and I know that, and I’m also exhausted. I feel an obligation to
maintain some level of understanding in issues like this so it stresses
me out when I can’t. I would be very appreciative of anyone who can
share some varying perspectives with me or point me to trustworthy and
responsible reporting that can shed some light.
Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to respond to
this and share some knowledge with me. Much appreciated.
For yudkowsky, the statistic is about jumping on a contrarian bandwagon early. If the lab-leak hypothesis is wrong, it just gets added to the long list of rationalist failures, and nobody remembers it (except for us). In the unlikely case that it's right, he gets to write a long blog post about how he's a big smart man who knew things before the scientists did. It's pretty clear where the incentives lie here.
Not that I think yudkowsky is lying about what he believes, I think it's just a natural expression of his irrational contrarian bias and responding to his own incentives.
I don’t think that the contrarian impulse can be separated so cleanly from the adoption of a conspiracy theory propagated within his kinds of circles, often by people with even the *explicit* goal of shoring up the kind of ideology which benefits from the conspiracy theory.
Ideology no doubt plays a role in *which* contrarian positions get jumped on. From reading the post, yudkowsky clearly *wants* the lab-leak to be true, and explicitly makes the connection to his AI fearmongering.
I think the reason he's jumped on to it now instead of earlier is that it's the earliest time when the lab-leak has been taken seriously by serious men (WSJ, etc).
That makes it sound like he invests early in speculative conspiracy theories before they get proven or disproven, but most of the time it seems like Rationalists reopen issues that were already settled with a *But what if all the experts were wrong?*
agree. as the link I posted above responding to another comment says, many (most?) real scientists think the question is still wide open and should be investigated from every angle, but that xenophobia is rampant in these discussions and has no place in them (or anywhere) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
Everything boils down to China baiting in the end. The lab release theories require a full-throated Big Lie from China:
> We first received the clinical samples of SARS-CoV-2 on December 30 2019, which were called back then samples of “pneumonia with unknown etiology”. Subsequently, we rapidly conducted research in parallel with other domestic institutions, and quickly identified the pathogen. The complete genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was submitted and published via WHO on January 12. Before that, we had never been in contact with or studied this virus, nor did we know of its existence.
http://scim.ag/ShiZhengli
> The reserved sera in April 2019 and March 2020 from all the workers and students in research group led by Professor Shi Zhengli were seronegative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies."
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part-annexes.pdf
And like, China does lie sometimes. Notably in the shifting official narrative about Xinjiang prisons, which changed too fast to have been accurate at all times even if\* you agree with state media. But people immediately taking a Big Lie for granted, not even mentioning the domestic implications before slapping a P(1) on there, have a cartoon character view of the world. I can't take them seriously.
That's why it's a partisan thing. I think the silly Bayesian analysis paper is unrelated and this is all prompted by Nicholas Wade's editorial slowly getting echoed by other outlets and oozing through right-libertarian media. Frankly, I don't see the point in fussing about it without any new info to "adjust our priors".
\* big "if "lol
Thanks for the help, I really do appreciate it. I guess part of my problem is that it's hard not to assume some sort of new info *had* come out given how suddenly this has become a huge topic of debate. I think I'm following your entire comment but just want to make sure (Sorry). The lab leak theory is predicated on the possibility that teams led by Shi Zhengli were the ones who originally brought SARS-CoV-2 into a lab. And if that happened, then they must have been exposed to it, and their "reserved sera" would show it. So if the lab leak theory is true, the Big Lie would be that statement that everyone in the group was seronegative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Am I understanding you correctly or am I still missing something? I have more questions but if I'm already misunderstanding you then they will be pointless. And please feel free to ignore me if you don't feel like taking time explaining this to an idiot, I understand.
You're good. It wasn't my best comment but you have it pretty much. I think these theories imply a "big lie" where China tells the world that it was a natural pandemic when it was not. Then at least one significant lie has to fill in the details. I see three reasonable theories:
1. WIV created COVID and then accidentally released it.
2. WIV didn't create COVID but accidentally released it when working with samples
3. WIV didn't create COVID but accidentally spread it after being infected directly from a natural reservoir
And two important Chinese statements:
a. WIV didn't encounter COVID until the pandemic. Contradicts 1 and 2.
b. Tests show nobody relevant ever had COVID. Contradicts all three theories.
Each flavor of lab leak theory requires at least one significant and direct lie to prop up the big lie, as well as a bunch of little ones in the media and such.
Sadly, there doesnt have to be any new info at all, messages can easily be spread from small blogs to big blogs to news websites Chinese wisper style. Some people even do this maliciously (as the book 'trust me im lying' has shown).
What you're missing is that the fact that it may have leaked from a lab at some point in its nascent history does not mean that it is not naturally occurring, and the evidence that it is naturally occurring is overwhelming.
If you want to think about it probablistically, there are basically four things that could have happened.
1. No lab leak:
The virus occurred naturally > spread around the world
2. Lab leak:
Virus occurred naturally > spread was stopped and it was studied in a lab > lab leak resulted in worldwide spread
3. Lab leak but barely relevant:
Virus occurred naturally > spread never stopped while it was studied in a lab > lab leak coincided with worldwide spread
4. Yudkowski/QAnon crackpot lab leak theory:
Virus was developed in a lab > lab leak resulted in spread
In order I would say 1, 2 and 3 are basically equal probability, or at least we don't have the evidence to distinguish which are higher at this point. Scenario 4 makes up the remaining 0.000001% or whatever.
Exactly. It's the dishonest, consistent, subtle substitution of "on accident" with "on purpose" (plus the implication of artificiality and bio-warfare) that gets us riled up.
> In order I would say 1, 2 and 3 are basically equal probability, or at least we don't have the evidence to distinguish which are higher at this point. Scenario 4 makes up the remaining 0.000001% or whatever.
Thanks for the response. Could you elaborate on why scenario 4 is this unlikely? To be clear, I don't think it's likely either but in my own reading when I get to the parts that start going into the [missing link in virus's biological record](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/nl8vb3/big_yud_joins_the_lab_leak_conspiracy_theory/gzithua/), or some specific analysis of a [RBD sequence](https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html), or whatever the hell it is, I clock out because I don't have even a sliver of the expertise I would need to meaningfully engage with it. I literally don't even know what an RBD sequence is. It would be a joke for me to have an opinion here.
Edit: Btw, that RBD sequence link came from a Twitter thread which was linked to from a WaPo article giving a timeline of events for this controversy. So that's how I ended up there.
So I asked one of the people I work with about why this consensus exists that the genome of the virus shows it's naturally ocurring, and the answer he gave was simpler than I thought. If scientists had been studying a virus they had modified, they would also have modified some part of it with some kind of tag to visualise their results - either green fluorescent protein or something else. These are absent in SARS-CoV-2, so if scientists were studying it they never intended to visualise and publish results. I don't know if there are other reasons that more complex.
The RBD sequence link is interesting. The author's argument seems to make two arguments - first that leucine is more similar to tyrosine than serine is, which if you google the respective amino acids is fairly questionable on its face depending on what exactly the tyrosine residue at that position in SARS-CoV actually does. The second argument seems to be based on the statistical likelihood that that red line would be flat, but does not perform any kind of statistical test to actually show this. So like, not something that is easy to debunk on its face, but also not as compelling as I would expect for someone who seems to be scientifically literate dropping what they clearly think is an absolute bombshell.
The fact that there is a missing link in the virus's biological record is like.. OK.. I'm no expert but aren't there missing links in a lot of things?
It depends on the type of study you're performing, you wouldn't necessarily modify the virus with a tag.
If the lab leak is true, which I suppose we can't rule out, the most likely culprit would be gain-of-function passaging experiments, in which viruses are repeatedly introduced to a cell type (e.g. introducing bat coronaviruses to human cells) and selected for virulence.
These don't leave the obvious traces that genetic modification would (e.g. snipping out the spike protein coding gene and inserting it into another sequence), although I'm not directly involved in this field so there may be some complex method of determination (maybe relative non-specific mutation rates? Looking into it). There is apparently evidence of these types of experiments being funded and performed at the WIV.
The problem is that we may never know, as any investigation is going to be a guided-tour shitshow, and the leak would be long since passed so even if it was true there will likely never be any proof, so it'll devolve into he-said, she-said.
With most GOF studies I can find the actual passaging results in a few amino acid changes from the original seed stock (possibly reassortment in the case of flu which would not apply to coronaviruses), so to carry out passaging experiments you need to start with a virus that is close enough to the eventual outcome that it mutates into during the course of passaging. If such a seed stock came from nature I agree that genetic modification wouldn't be necessary, but the lab-leak theorists seem to be arguing that there is not a natural virus that was capable of making the jump without direct modification.
Presumably that would contradict the consensus among virologists that the genome itself is naturally occurring. I don't know enough about that niche field to evaluate evidence supporting that consensus, but my prior is those people tend to know what they're talking about.
The biology of the virus is compatible with it being something that came from the bat population into other mammals quite recently, either directly into a human or a brief passage through another mammal.
This is compatible with it being a wild zoonotic event, or with there being a stock of it in a laboratory that accidentally infected a lab worker. The former happens all the time. The latter has happened a few times with SARS classic but I would expect the former to be much more likely since as some random bat coronavirus there would have been like one stock of it in somebody's freezer somewhere if it were in a lab rather than lots of stocks in many labs after studying a pandemic virus.
The crazies are yelling about the virus somehow being artificial. That's utter bull. The furin nonsense is infuriating.
Time for me to earn my username.
The spike protein is a coiled spring that binds to an infectable cell and then fires, fusing the membranes together. It can only go off once, so it has mechanisms in place to make sure it only fires when it is bound to an appropriate cell. It has a N-terminal S1 domain that mediates sticking to the cell, and a C-terminal S2 domain that is the coiled fusion spring, and they need to be physically cleaved apart in two separate (but adjacent) places by protease enzymes of the host cells before the firing can take place.
SARS-classic and many other betacoronaviruses have two cut sites that are only cut when the virus is internalized and 'eaten' by a cell that it has bound to, and a relatively narrow range of cell types will contain the proper enzymes. SARS-2 has a much broader range of cell types (and species) it can infect because it has switched up these cut sites relative to many of its relatives.
One of them is an enzyme present on the surface of human respiratory cells, meaning the virus does not have to be internalized and can just touch the surface of a cell. (This is also the reason that chloroquine and related drugs do not work well for SARS-2 while it has an effect on SARS-classic, these drugs act on the compartment the viruses are internalized into which is not needed for this virus, you can also see why people were looking at this drug with justified hope last March until the scientific results came in.) The other one is a cut site for a protease called 'furin' which is actually in the pathway the virus takes on the way OUT of the cell, so the virus comes out of a cell already half-activated and with a much easier time getting activated with many more cell types able to activate it the rest of the way. Tradeoff of being a little more unstable.
The furin site was introduced between the last common ancestor of this virus with its closest relatives, and entry to the human population, via a small insertion in the spike protein. Certain people have been screaming that this is proof the virus was bioengineered and they are stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit. The furin cut site created by the insertion barely counts as a furin cut site and is not optimal, and all of the more infectious lineages that have evolved in the last six months have 'fixed' it from being a just-good-enough approximation of a furin cut site into being a good, high efficiency cut site. The insertion is what is called 'out-of-frame' and as such is not something that any sane biologist would engineer - its as if a programmer reached into the binary of a program and altered single bits in multiple instructions that caused them to happen to form another valid set of instructions, rather than cutting and pasting. And insertions and deletions happen all the time in evolution rather than as some idiots say being very rare, and several of the closest relatives of this virus have other insertions and deletions in the exact same spot of the spike protein, just not ones that produce furin cut sites.
What gets people excited is that many other viruses that switch species or become particularly virulent do so by developing furin cut sites, and under contrived laboratory evolution experiment conditions it is possible to drive them into existence in a few cases. But these things HAPPEN, they happen naturally, and what first entered the human population was pretty damn obviously not designed and sloppily just good enough to be bad.
18 days late but just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write up this explainer. I really appreciate it 🙌. It is genuinely fascinating stuff, albeit under horrible circumstances.
I don’t read twitter threads for this stuff, if I had an opinion on the origins I would be in epidemiology or public health or similar, because I have some degree of epistemic humility on the subject
My training in things like media studies leads me to suggest that using phrases like “wet market hypothesis” as casually as you do above contributes to a media environment that is less than healthy, especially given that (I assume) neither you nor I am working on this stuff in any accreditable capacity
Perspicuous readers will notice that I have already addressed more specifically some of the media issues with Yudkowsky’s post insofar as they are relevant to the link given here, and the comment section is at the time of writing only 12 comments large
Incidentally I already read that thread and it has its own red flags in the “very precise” quote (for example): in the body text of the WSJ article it’s clear that the framing of “very precise” is in fact to cast doubt on the authority of the source for that particular quote, which is in direct opposition to how the twitter critic is framing it
You didn’t make that point, you put it in the other direction: what you said was that one claim - at *best* clumsily phrased with the term “wet markets hypothesis”, a point of my own you dismissed out of hand in spite of the enormous significance of the problem with it - is better evidenced than the conspiracy theory. I don’t disagree, but only to the *very minimal* extent that I can generate or advocate any positive hypothesis for the original transmission of the virus one way or another. I assume any responsible and scientist should entertain the conspiracy theory, even if only to throw it out at a first glance, and I assume you agree.
What’s more we don’t need any amateur statisticians in this sub posting twitter threads and already discredited terminologies such as “wet markets hypothesis” and refusing to admit any mistakes of their own, even if they’re in the ultimate right.
I don’t think the vast majority of people should have any opinion whatsoever on the original transmission of the virus: they’re not equipped to do much else than satisfy their own pretension to understand what happened way back then, and it doesn’t do their mental health any good or change much about how they get on with their personal and social lives from now on to start doing so. If you want to do *media crit* on how this stuff works, affects your life, and so on, then sure, but you have to do it carefully, and you have to do it without playing an armchair scientist into the bargain.
because there are unusual gaps in the biological record. in other diseases that have leapt from animals (including from wet markets) to humans, we've been able to find the intermediate forms (where the infectious agent mutated to a form that was dangerous to humans) very quickly. in this case, we still haven't come anywhere close to that, and given the amount of research time devoted to it, that is puzzling. as is the distance (approx 1000 miles) between the only known source for the precursor virus and the one that infects humans.
here's a Stanford microbiologist on the remaining open questions: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/david-relman-on-investigating-origin-of-coronavirus.html
"natural jump" is certainly still a reasonable hypothesis, but I'm not sure it qualifies as more reasonable than several others.
Wow that latter part has some really bad reasoning there.
Having some corp basic denial (which, no matter what happend would have always been said (except in the one case where the guy is a paragon of virtue, and the virus is man-made and he knew about that (remember conditional assumptions like this make things less likely)), just think about all the options (call that game theory if you are into that ;) )) change your mind on things is just bad reasoning.
Nicholas Wade, a poster child for trying to give race science a good name, does bad reasoning? on a topic that is heavily informed by racism?
He does.
Why the generally reputable *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* published him is beyond me.
He is wrong, and above poster is wrong, about real scientists wanting this not to be investigated. Many do, and have said so publicly, including Dr Fauci.
I was talking about the latter half the whole, I believe it is human-made, because they deny it is human-made bit, and that is why you can't trust the Scientific Cathedral Science Pope Community.
I didn't even read the article, so I had no idea, that just all makes it worse.
I'm not sure it provides an excuse for the US failure; the origin (lab or wet market) has no impact on the way it was handled - unless the assumption is also that the leak was intentional/targetted. If you ignore that last element though, China can be just as readily blamed for the virus (and for the same reason, lack of enforcement of proper hygiene/control measures + initial cover-up), in both cases.. Although I do think that those who vocally support the lab theory are often people who at least implictly see it as the result of nefarious intentions..
The virus was first identified in Wuhan.
The Wuhan Institue of Virology has a BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.
There are only two BSL-4 labs in China.
In a world where the lab leak hypothesis is true, the pandemic is more likely to have started in a city with a BSL-4 lab than in a world where the wet market hypothesis is true.
This constitutes as evidence for the lab leak hypothesis.
Wet markets have been linked as the source of previous viral outbreaks.
The very first known superspreader event of covid occured at a wet market in wuhan that sold exotic animals, with a very high amount of people that worked with wild animals.
Wouldn't it be a huge coincidence for the outbreak to be completely unrelated to said wet market or the workers there?
The truth is, there is circumstantial evidence for both hypotheses, as well as other ones. Gesturing at coincidences can only get you so far. Until there is real evidence, throwing percentages out is just intellectual masturbation.
I was just responding to the "no evidence" claim of the previous commenter and wasn't trying to throw out percentages.
However, to answer your question: No, I don't think that is a big coincidence. In China wetmarkets are traditional markets and are very common in urban areas. Lots of people go there, so irrespective of the origin of the virus, they can easily become a nice venue for spreading it.
If you assume wet markets are the origin, the pandemic could have started with pretty much every person living in urban areas which is 902 million people according to the Seventh National Population Census. Compared to that, the number of people living in cities with BSL-4 labs(Wuhan, Harbin) is 15 million which would be a much greater coincidence.
The coincidence isn't that they were in a city with a wet market, it was that the wet market outbreak was the first outbreak we knew about, as opposed to a theater, resturant or something, etc. So to get the true odds, you'd have to look at the percentage of people who visited the market, how thoroughly they looked for other events, etc.
But you can keep going with the odds hunting. We know there are far more natural infections from wild animals than there are lab accidents in BSL4 labs. What are the odds that the first worldwide pandemic in a hundred years would originate from a lab accident? And what are the odds that the leaked virus would be not be obviously identifiable as coming from that lab from looking at prior research, etc? Like, if the virus that had leaked was MERS it would have been bloody obvious.
The thing is, every event is going to have major coincidences associated with it, you can't just pick and choose. Like, why did you pick BSL-4 labs in particular, would the conversation really have been different if there was a BSL-3 lab nearby?
I understand that that was the coincidence you gestured at, my response to it was my second paragraph(in short: subjectively not that big of a coincidence imo, but no numbers given), my third paragraph is a different argument showing how big the lab coincidence is(some numbers given albeit with a simple model where every person living in a city is equally likely to get it).
"What are the odds that we still haven't found the animal souce if it is zoonotic?" This and your questions aren't that significant imo, because they are complicated, hard to quantify and to consider every possibility especially if you are not an expert, so they don't sway my opinion that much. Whereas the BSL-4 lab coincidence is a very clear argument pointing in one direction which could be understood by anyone. Oftentimes, the simple arguments are the most powerful.
To emphasize, my goal with my first comment was purely to show the person I replied to that "no evidence" is not true. I barely care about this topic to be honest, so I definitely wasn't trying to convince others it's for sure a lab leak. For the record I do think that it is likely a lab leak, but my reasons for that are ineffable inner weightings of various evidence.
Btw do you refer to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market as your first superspreader event? WHO said it was unlikely to be the origin, because of earlier cases.
It's bog-standard Bayes' theorem. I don't see what you mean.
If it helps, imagine an extreme case with a simple model and see whether the structure of the argument makes sense there: There are 10000000 cities in a country. 1 city has a biolab. We know that one of the following two posibilities happened:
1. Pandemic started by zoonosis. This can happen in every city (even in one with a lab) with equal probability.
2. Pandemic started by the virus escaping a lab. This can only happen in a city with a lab.
But we want to know which one of these actually happened. You learn that the pandemic started in a city with a lab. Even though there is a lab in the city the pandemic started in, it's not impossible that option 1 happened, but wouldn't you agree that after learning this new information, option 2 seems more likely than before?
Do you know what circular reasoning is? If you didn’t please look it up.
Abusing the Bayes theorem to justify you circular reasoning does not make it any more correct.
You know, there’s a funny thing about numbers. They just don’t mean
shit. They just are. But people seem to be gravitated towards them.
In other words, why 80%? Why not 80.1% or 81%? Or 80.3333333
(repeating of course) percent?
The answer is, of course, because 80% is a round number, humans find
round number pleasing and easy to say (eighty percent, vs eighty point
three three three three repeating of course, percent).
But since when did anything in the natural world converge exactly on
a round number? It would be so much more useful if pi was 3. No wait, 4.
A nice round number. Yeah. Or any other physical constant really.
There was a whole diatribe on LessWrong about how the only numbers that don’t need any justification are zero, one, and infinity. I think EY should read them, let me see if I remember who wrote that ... ah, yes, it was part of the ... Sequences, written by ... EY. Huh.
Holy shit, I highy recommend people actually read the linked post, it’s a perfect distillation of the yudkowsky method.
He starts by declaring that he thinks the lab-leak is 80% probable, and gives absolutely zero explanation of how he arrived at that number (besides citing nate silvers similarly ass-pulled numbers).
Then for the rest of the post, he just writes as if the lab-leak is a confirmed fact:
As if “Yudkowsky gives a high probability to this based on circumstantial evidence” is the same thing as “this is true”. Also, he jumps from “lab-leak is probable” to “this specific subset of lab-leak is true”, as the gain-of-function is only one of many possible lab-leak scenarios. And then of course, this is used to conclude that researchers can’t be trusted, this is why you need to donate to AI researcher, etc.
Y’all know what’s more dangerous than a lab leak of a virus?
That’s right, a lab leak of an unfriendly AI.
Donate to MIRI!
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The idea that we can figure out where this came from, just from reading blog posts and news articles writing about this (while ignoring that apparantly China actively resists any real stats about their medical situations coming out (as one of the previous links here posted shows in regard with HIV)), and then adding probabilities to how likely it is is super weird.
Why cant they just go: I dont know, I cant know, and I lack the expertise and have no access to enough reliable data to say anything about this. Why do they have to talk about it, and then pick a side? And then add in priors/percentages. (The last is because they are ideologically baysarians I guess (which is weird, as it is just a tool))
As always, you have to look past the factual question they’re superficially reasoning about toward the imaginary dream question that motivates their reasoning.
Factual question: Okay, so maybe a virus escaped from a research institute that’s trying to save the world from this kind of thing. Ironic, but how are the social implications any more significant than improper handling of meat or livestock? Hygiene policies failed and should be updated, the end.
Imaginary dream question: If the virus escaped from a lab, it could have been an engineered bioweapon! (Despite even less evidence of lab engineering than lab evolution.)
The most offensive thing about this post, to me anyway, is how this crank is just casually shitting on public health workers, epidemiologists and other people who a) were planning for pandemic preparedness before Covid, and b) in many countries, were very effective in managing and controlling the outbreak.
“Nobody could have prepared for this scenario and there is no possible way to prevent it” is the kind of thing an asshole says when trying to wriggle out from self reflection. Well, an asshole who has done none of the work in trying to understand what actually happened and how countries other than America didn’t shit the bed.
Yud being 80% confident in something is a good reason to adjust your priors in the opposite direction
I’m not trying to be a troll, but I genuinely don’t understand why this has become such a flash point and I don’t understand why the lab leak theory is discounted immediately as a conspiracy theory in some quarters (Likewise I don’t understand why others are all of the sudden extremely confident about it being the case). I have been busy lately so while I would usually dive into a topic like this myself and try to figure it out I just don’t really have the time. Yud sucks and his post is weird, but all of that aside the theory itself and the related facts seem, to the best of my understanding with some brief reading, reasonable enough to at least consider. It seems to me like the waters were muddied a few days ago because of that BS Bayesian analysis paper that claim it was like 99% certainty that covid 19 came from a lab. That paper was awful and I can see how it may have contributed to the battle lines getting drawn here. But wasn’t the timing of that paper in relation to the development of this story/argument just coincidental?
What am I missing? I’m asking honestly. Try as I might, I can’t keep up with every one of these epistemological breakdowns. I’m not smart enough, and I know that, and I’m also exhausted. I feel an obligation to maintain some level of understanding in issues like this so it stresses me out when I can’t. I would be very appreciative of anyone who can share some varying perspectives with me or point me to trustworthy and responsible reporting that can shed some light.
Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to respond to this and share some knowledge with me. Much appreciated.
You know, there’s a funny thing about numbers. They just don’t mean shit. They just are. But people seem to be gravitated towards them.
In other words, why 80%? Why not 80.1% or 81%? Or 80.3333333 (repeating of course) percent?
The answer is, of course, because 80% is a round number, humans find round number pleasing and easy to say (eighty percent, vs eighty point three three three three repeating of course, percent).
But since when did anything in the natural world converge exactly on a round number? It would be so much more useful if pi was 3. No wait, 4. A nice round number. Yeah. Or any other physical constant really.
So, why 80%?
this is all very rational
Yeah Yud is dumb, but calling it a “conspiracy theory” is not accurate.