3 ms·
Yes, I assumed that if the virus is not from the WIV, then all areas of China (weighted by population) would be equiprobable candidates for the outbreak locatio
by dlubarov 7y ago
Yes, I assumed that if the virus is not from the WIV, then all areas of China (weighted by population) would be equiprobable candidates for the outbreak location. Of course this is an imperfect model, but I think it's a reasonable one.
This alternate conspiracy seems way more farfetched to me (why would US intelligence need such any such event to get an agent into China?), but if someone believed that it should be given a non-negligible prior, then they should revise my assumption that
> P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus not from WIV) = 1/3,000
I.e. their revised value should be at least as large as their prior for the alternate conspiracy.
What part of the argument are you disputing exactly? Are you claiming that applying Bayes' theorem in this way is somehow invalid, or are you just taking issue with the assumption quoted above?
- gabaix 7y agoThanks for using Bayes theorem. Although it does not provide evidence, it should guide us to where we should look for evidence. I am also very surprised at people throwing probabilistic equivalence between foreign-agent conspiracy, and an accident in a lab. It seems that the latter is so much more probable.