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It's the gift that keeps on giving. No, neither phonographs nor guilt nor syphilis. It's the COVID-19 zoonosis/lab-leak debate. When last we left it*, the rationalists and the establishment had concluded to their own satisfaction that the origin was zoonotic, happening at the Wuhan Seafood Market. The dissidents looked at their evidence and arguments and were convinced... that the other side was trying to pull a fast one. And there it stood, with both sides convinced of their own hypothesis but no smoking gun present.
Today... none of that changes. A paper published in 2022 argued that two successful introductions to humans was more likely than one, and this was evidence for the zoonosis hypothesis. Dissident Michael Weissman has now published a paper showing the earlier paper has a fundamental error, and in fact one successful introduction is more likely. Weissman had earlier responded to Scott Alexander's arguments with the same math error, before official publication.
*Citation not provided.
I was never satisfied with the Wilf - Miller debate. I felt that Wilf was out debated.
Specifically Wilf didn't get into the weirdness of the Wuhan lab. It's known that Chinese researchers stole flu virus samples from the lab in Winnipeg and brought them to Wuhan. That's important because it implies that the Wuhan lab had a habit of keeping virus samples around without putting them in the official database.
Perhaps it was just to get ahead in publishing virus research, perhaps it was some CCP bioweapons program, perhaps they were stolen samples from an American bioweapons program. It doesn't really matter.
The debate is important because in the case of a lab leak then we're at a point where it's clear that modifying infectious human viruses has killed far more people than it's saved. It should probably be completely banned for the next 30 years or so.
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With 75% probability I believe there are a few humans who with 99% certainty know how the pandemic began. Either because they really do understand the science or were at the lab and know it’s the lab.
I don’t believe the intelligence agencies have any ability of my own to figure out how this caused. I am smart. They are smart. I don’t believe us nor Scott have any real ability at making Bayesian predictions on the science we know. We are basically all playing a game of trying to figure out what expert is truly credible on which peace of evidence is highly predictive.
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