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This is something I'm trying to sort out. Is there a qualitative difference between a coincidence and evidence? Ex: Supposing they recover the old database fro
by orblivion 5y ago
This is something I'm trying to sort out. Is there a qualitative difference between a coincidence and evidence?
Ex: Supposing they recover the old database from the WIV and they found the SARS-CoV-2 sequence in there, and notes that described it as the result of an ongoing project. It's still possible that the exact same sequence occurred naturally and leaked to humans that way. It could be a coincidence that the sequence is exactly the same.
It seems that the difference between this and the other coincidences is merely a question of orders of magnitude of likelihood. Otherwise it's the same sort of thing. Therefore, the coincidences so far stated are tantamount to weak evidence.
Yes? No?
- native_samples 5y agoNo, not really. There's evidence of lots of events that are extremely unlikely to occur by chance, and it gets labelled as a "coincidence" by people who don't like where it points and are trying to stop people drawing obvious conclusions. The term "coincidence" only really makes sense when the probability of accidental coexistence is very high but that's not the case here.