5 ms·

> I think it's perfectly reasonable and even necessary that ill-founded but hard-to-disprove theories such as the lab leak theory at the time are examined crit

> I think it's perfectly reasonable and even necessary that ill-founded but hard-to-disprove theories such as the lab leak theory at the time are examined critically, There's nothing ill-founded, it was then and is now the most reasonable and plausible explanation for the outbreak. You can do the same back of the envelope calculation today that I did 2 years ago, and nothing has made it less valid: 1. There's 100 cities in PRC with >1 million inhabitants. 2. There's one (1) lab in PRC doing work on bat viruses. The probability that the outbreak happened in the same city as the one with the lab by pure coincidnce is therefore about 1%. That's not a proof, that's not a definite argument, that's just evaluating how plausible the hypothesis is. You can tweak the values to be more charitable if you want, say note that Wuhan is a large city and we shouldn't count smaller ones, or point out that there might be a few mor labs doing the same kind of work but with less prominence. That merely lowers the lab leak's plausibility to 50%. I.e very plausible.

NLips 5y ago
To get the 1% figure you have to include an unstated assumption, which is that a novel virus is just as likely to emerge from this lab as from all top 100 cities put together. If we try to make a rough calculation from an unknowledgeable starting position, it might be more reasonable to say "just as likely to come from each 1M+ city as to come from each lab [of which there is one]". Then, if we didn't know the geographic origin, the lab probability is ~1% ( = 1/(100 cities + 1 lab)), but knowing the geographic start point you'd get 50% P(this lab given Wuhan) = P(Wuhan given this lab) * P(lab) / P(Wuhan) P(this lab given Wuhan) = 1 [this lab is in Wuhan!] * (1/101) / (2/101)
- himinlomax 5y ago
  Fact is, there's nothing that points to Wuhan as being a more likely source of viruses in the first place. It's not a tropical rainforest area, for instance. And indeed, the closest wild relatives we know of have been found much farther south.
  - NLips 5y ago
    I agree? In the above I'm assuming equal likelihood between each lab and each city, rather than equally likely to have come from any lab vs any city. The second is a poor starting point as it suggests having two, 100, or 1M labs would mean no increased chance of coming from a lab vs 1 lab. That's why I suggest the first.
emn13 5y ago
That's one aspect to consider, sure. But with all due respect - people have publically tried to analyze this question from all kinds of angles, and there are lots and lots of equally valid extremely indirect bits of evidence, and people that have looked at this with a lot more time than me and (I'm guessing here) you to invest in the question, and they haven't been able to really conclude on this matter either way. But when you take specific bits of evidence out of the great soup surrounding this and highlight them, it's really easy to draw the wrong conclusions, or to get the feeling that this bit of evidence simply due to familiarity is more trustworthy than some other evidence. And we also have biases towards evidence we understand, which kind of makes sense, but is also a problem, as non-experts...

NLips 5y ago

To get the 1% figure you have to include an unstated assumption, which is that a novel virus is just as likely to emerge from this lab as from all top 100 cities put together. If we try to make a rough calculation from an unknowledgeable starting position, it might be more reasonable to say "just as likely to come from each 1M+ city as to come from each lab [of which there is one]". Then, if we didn't know the geographic origin, the lab probability is ~1% ( = 1/(100 cities + 1 lab)), but knowing the geographic start point you'd get 50% P(this lab given Wuhan) = P(Wuhan given this lab) * P(lab) / P(Wuhan) P(this lab given Wuhan) = 1 [this lab is in Wuhan!] * (1/101) / (2/101)

himinlomax 5y ago
Fact is, there's nothing that points to Wuhan as being a more likely source of viruses in the first place. It's not a tropical rainforest area, for instance. And indeed, the closest wild relatives we know of have been found much farther south.
- NLips 5y ago
  I agree? In the above I'm assuming equal likelihood between each lab and each city, rather than equally likely to have come from any lab vs any city. The second is a poor starting point as it suggests having two, 100, or 1M labs would mean no increased chance of coming from a lab vs 1 lab. That's why I suggest the first.

emn13 5y ago

That's one aspect to consider, sure. But with all due respect - people have publically tried to analyze this question from all kinds of angles, and there are lots and lots of equally valid extremely indirect bits of evidence, and people that have looked at this with a lot more time than me and (I'm guessing here) you to invest in the question, and they haven't been able to really conclude on this matter either way. But when you take specific bits of evidence out of the great soup surrounding this and highlight them, it's really easy to draw the wrong conclusions, or to get the feeling that this bit of evidence simply due to familiarity is more trustworthy than some other evidence. And we also have biases towards evidence we understand, which kind of makes sense, but is also a problem, as non-experts...