4 ms·

How can you prove that natural origin is the hypothesis selected by the razor in this particular case?

shadowgovt 4y ago
The point of Occam's Razor is you can't prove the things the Razor leans you to. Not in a way sufficient to remove the need to invoke the Razor. But you can say that one explanation is simpler than another (such as a pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history than to a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before). I see a bright glow on the eastern horizon about 7AM and it's probably the sun coming up. It could be the first strike in a world-ending nuclear exchange. I can't prove it isn't. ... but it's probably not.
- MockObject 4y ago
  I wasn't asking for a proof of the phenomenon, but a proof that the razor points to that phenomenon.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    That's going to come down to an individual observer's priors on probabilities of "pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history" vs. "pandemic introduced via a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before."
    - MockObject 4y ago
      Wasn't the lab working with coronaviruses? So maybe some of it escaped. I really don't see how that's an unnecessary multiplication of entities. Is the objection simply that, pandemics have emerged from markets, but not labs? But we know that an escape of a coronavirus could lead to a pandemic. I see nothing needlessly complex here, and certainly not extraordinary.
      - divided 4y ago
        I don’t believe anyone is saying it’s needlessly complex, but Occam’s Razor isn’t “the second simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” On one hand you have the market which housed animals that throughout its history some have had and spread different coronaviruses naturally. Every prior pandemic has been believed to have been from animal to human transmission, it’s seemingly the simplest explanation. The lab leak theory of course assumes a lab accident. Biolab accidents are fairly rare, some years have no recorded accidents, others a handful. They’ve all been successfully contained with no more than a couple fatalities each. It’s not that it’s needlessly complex. It’s that you have a market with animals who have coronaviruses and you have a lab that studies coronaviruses. Both are reasonable explanations, but a pandemic similar to all other prior pandemics and lots of humans being exposed to lots of potential virus carriers with no protection _is_ a simpler explanation. Having said that, I’ve remained open minded and willing to consider both reasonable and unproven. Some pandemic will be the first from a lab leak, this may have been it. We will probably never definitively know.
        xyzzy123 4y ago
        Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. Put another way, the simplest explanation that fits the available evidence is most likely to be correct. At this point it seems to me that a lab origin that superspreads at a market looks rather simpler than a market origin with double zoonosis and no trace of an intermediate host.
        divided 4y ago
        To be fair, there’s no trace of it in the lab either /s Double zoonosis? The virus jumped to us and then to dogs, cats, tigers, hippos, pigs, etc. 29 known species! An unfathomable triple zoonosis that happened many, many times (thousands?) over the years. I’d say double zoonosis isn’t too uncommon. The initial SARS presumably passed from bat to intermediate host to humans in a wet market. This exact type of event happened in China just 20 years ago. And there isn’t “no trace” of an intermediate host. There are suspected intermediate hosts but none confirmed. Similarly SARS had a couple potential intermediate hosts, and MERS had a potential intermediate host but unanswered questions around that, too. Scientists had more confidence in those theories, but still uncertainties. Again, I think both theories are plausible. But being a repeat to what we’ve seen before _is_ simpler. When you hear hooves, think horses not zebras.

The point of Occam's Razor is you can't prove the things the Razor leans you to. Not in a way sufficient to remove the need to invoke the Razor. But you can say that one explanation is simpler than another (such as a pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history than to a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before). I see a bright glow on the eastern horizon about 7AM and it's probably the sun coming up. It could be the first strike in a world-ending nuclear exchange. I can't prove it isn't. ... but it's probably not.

MockObject 4y ago
I wasn't asking for a proof of the phenomenon, but a proof that the razor points to that phenomenon.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  That's going to come down to an individual observer's priors on probabilities of "pandemic virus being more closely patterned to every other pandemic in human history" vs. "pandemic introduced via a novel mechanism that has never become a pandemic before."
  - MockObject 4y ago
    Wasn't the lab working with coronaviruses? So maybe some of it escaped. I really don't see how that's an unnecessary multiplication of entities. Is the objection simply that, pandemics have emerged from markets, but not labs? But we know that an escape of a coronavirus could lead to a pandemic. I see nothing needlessly complex here, and certainly not extraordinary.
    - divided 4y ago
      I don’t believe anyone is saying it’s needlessly complex, but Occam’s Razor isn’t “the second simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” On one hand you have the market which housed animals that throughout its history some have had and spread different coronaviruses naturally. Every prior pandemic has been believed to have been from animal to human transmission, it’s seemingly the simplest explanation. The lab leak theory of course assumes a lab accident. Biolab accidents are fairly rare, some years have no recorded accidents, others a handful. They’ve all been successfully contained with no more than a couple fatalities each. It’s not that it’s needlessly complex. It’s that you have a market with animals who have coronaviruses and you have a lab that studies coronaviruses. Both are reasonable explanations, but a pandemic similar to all other prior pandemics and lots of humans being exposed to lots of potential virus carriers with no protection _is_ a simpler explanation. Having said that, I’ve remained open minded and willing to consider both reasonable and unproven. Some pandemic will be the first from a lab leak, this may have been it. We will probably never definitively know.
      - xyzzy123 4y ago
        Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. Put another way, the simplest explanation that fits the available evidence is most likely to be correct. At this point it seems to me that a lab origin that superspreads at a market looks rather simpler than a market origin with double zoonosis and no trace of an intermediate host.
        divided 4y ago
        To be fair, there’s no trace of it in the lab either /s Double zoonosis? The virus jumped to us and then to dogs, cats, tigers, hippos, pigs, etc. 29 known species! An unfathomable triple zoonosis that happened many, many times (thousands?) over the years. I’d say double zoonosis isn’t too uncommon. The initial SARS presumably passed from bat to intermediate host to humans in a wet market. This exact type of event happened in China just 20 years ago. And there isn’t “no trace” of an intermediate host. There are suspected intermediate hosts but none confirmed. Similarly SARS had a couple potential intermediate hosts, and MERS had a potential intermediate host but unanswered questions around that, too. Scientists had more confidence in those theories, but still uncertainties. Again, I think both theories are plausible. But being a repeat to what we’ve seen before _is_ simpler. When you hear hooves, think horses not zebras.