Metaculus currently puts the odds of the side arguing for a natural origin winning the debate at 94%.
Having watched the full debate myself, I think that prediction is accurate- the debate updated my view a lot toward the natural origin hypothesis. While it’s true that a natural coronavirus originating in a city with one of the most important coronavirus research labs would be a large coincidence, Peter- the guy arguing in favor of a natural origin- provided some very convincing evidence that the first likely cases of COVID occurred not just in the market, but in the particular part of the market selling wild animals. He also very convincingly debunked a lot of the arguments put forward by Rootclaim, convincingly demonstrated that the furin cleavage site could have occurred naturally, and poked some large holes in the lab leak theory’s timeline.
When you have some given amount of information about an event, you’re likely to find a corresponding number of unlikely coincidences- and the more data you have, and the you sift through it, the more coincidences you’ll find. The epistemic trap that leads to conspiracy theories is when a subculture data-mines some large amount of data to collect a ton of coincidences suggesting a low-prior explanation, and then rather than discounting the evidence in proportion to the bias of the search process that produced it, they just multiply the unlikelihood- often leading a set of evidence so seemingly unlikely to be a cumulative coincidence that all of the obvious evidence pointing to a high-prior explanation looks like it can only be intentionally fabricated.
One way you can spot an idea that’s fallen into this trap is when each piece of evidence sounds super compelling when described briefly, but fits the story less and less the more detail about it you learn. Based on this debate, I’m inclined to believe that the lab leak idea fits this pattern. Also, Rootclaim’s methodology unfortunately looks to me like a formalization of this trap. They really aren’t doing anything to address bias in which pieces evidence are included in the analysis, and their Bayesian updates are often just probability of a very specific thing occurring randomly, rather than a measure of their surprise at that class of thing happening.
If the natural origin hypothesis is true, I expect the experts to gradually converge on it. They may be biased, but probably aren’t becoming increasingly biased over time- so while some base level of support for a natural origin can be easily explained by perverse incentives, a gradual shift toward consensus is a lot harder to explain. They’re also working with better heuristics about this kind of thing than we are, and are probably exposed to less biased information.
So, I think the Rationalist subculture’s embrace of the lab leak hypothesis is probably a mistake- and more importantly, I think it’s probably an epistemic failure, especially if we don’t update soon on the shift in expert opinion and the results of things like this debate.
So, I think the Rationalist subculture’s embrace of the lab leak hypothesis is probably a mistake- and more importantly, I think it’s probably an epistemic failure, especially if we don’t update soon on the shift in expert opinion and the results of things like this debate.
The main shift in expert opinion I see is that in 2020 those experts said that everyone speaking about the lab leak hypothesis is a conspiracy theorist to now being more open about the possibility of a lab leak. We also saw some experts like those at the Department of Energy and FBI to switch to believing the lab leak is the most likely explanation.
Metaculus currently puts the odds of the side arguing for a natural origin winning the debate at 94%.
Having watched the full debate myself, I think that prediction is accurate- the debate updated my view a lot toward the natural origin hypothesis. While it’s true that a natural coronavirus originating in a city with one of the most important coronavirus research labs would be a large coincidence, Peter- the guy arguing in favor of a natural origin- provided some very convincing evidence that the first likely cases of COVID occurred not just in the market, but in the particular part of the market selling wild animals. He also very convincingly debunked a lot of the arguments put forward by Rootclaim, convincingly demonstrated that the furin cleavage site could have occurred naturally, and poked some large holes in the lab leak theory’s timeline.
When you have some given amount of information about an event, you’re likely to find a corresponding number of unlikely coincidences- and the more data you have, and the you sift through it, the more coincidences you’ll find. The epistemic trap that leads to conspiracy theories is when a subculture data-mines some large amount of data to collect a ton of coincidences suggesting a low-prior explanation, and then rather than discounting the evidence in proportion to the bias of the search process that produced it, they just multiply the unlikelihood- often leading a set of evidence so seemingly unlikely to be a cumulative coincidence that all of the obvious evidence pointing to a high-prior explanation looks like it can only be intentionally fabricated.
One way you can spot an idea that’s fallen into this trap is when each piece of evidence sounds super compelling when described briefly, but fits the story less and less the more detail about it you learn. Based on this debate, I’m inclined to believe that the lab leak idea fits this pattern. Also, Rootclaim’s methodology unfortunately looks to me like a formalization of this trap. They really aren’t doing anything to address bias in which pieces evidence are included in the analysis, and their Bayesian updates are often just probability of a very specific thing occurring randomly, rather than a measure of their surprise at that class of thing happening.
If the natural origin hypothesis is true, I expect the experts to gradually converge on it. They may be biased, but probably aren’t becoming increasingly biased over time- so while some base level of support for a natural origin can be easily explained by perverse incentives, a gradual shift toward consensus is a lot harder to explain. They’re also working with better heuristics about this kind of thing than we are, and are probably exposed to less biased information.
So, I think the Rationalist subculture’s embrace of the lab leak hypothesis is probably a mistake- and more importantly, I think it’s probably an epistemic failure, especially if we don’t update soon on the shift in expert opinion and the results of things like this debate.
The main shift in expert opinion I see is that in 2020 those experts said that everyone speaking about the lab leak hypothesis is a conspiracy theorist to now being more open about the possibility of a lab leak. We also saw some experts like those at the Department of Energy and FBI to switch to believing the lab leak is the most likely explanation.