I think the right strategy is to assume guilt in the presence of a coverup, because then someone who is genuinely uncertain as to whether or not they caused the issue is incentivized to cooperate with investigations instead of obstruct them.
There are two ways I can read this. The first is that when we catch people covering up evidence that points to them committing a crime, we should assume that they’re guilty of the underlying crime. That seems pretty bad because it’s not necessarily true (altho the coverup is some evidence for it). The second is that you should assume they’re guilty of the crime of covering up relevant info, and treat them as such. That does sound right, but it doesn’t justify you in talking about the underlying crime as if you know who’s guilty of it.
I think it’s also pretty obvious that the social consensus is against lab leak not because all the experts have watched the 17 hour rootclaim debate, but because it was manufactured
I agree that the virology and epidemiology communities didn’t watch the rootclaim debate, but I feel like this is jumping to the conclusion that they’re gullible, rather than that they’re just familiar with a bunch of data and are integrating it sensibly. The main thing that plays against it is low familiarity with the DEFUSE proposal in the GCRI survey, but I think that’s plausibly explained by people not having read the whole thing (it’s really long!).
I mean a third way, which is that covering up or destroying evidence of X should have a penalty of roughly the same severity as X. (Like, you shouldn’t assume they covered it up, you should require evidence that they covered it up.)
I feel like this is jumping to the conclusion that they’re gullible
I think you’re pushing my statement further than it goes. Not everyone in a group has to be gullible for the social consensus of the group to be driven by gullibility, and manufactured consensus itself doesn’t require gullibility. (My guess is that more people are complicit than gullible, and more people are refusing-to-acknowledge ego-harmful possibilities than clear-mindedly setting out to deceive the public.)
To elaborate on my “courtier’s reply” comment, and maybe shine some light on ‘gullibility’, it seems to me like most religions maintain motive force thru manufactured consensus. I think if someone points that out—”our prior should be that this religion is false and propped up by motivated cognition and dysfunctional epistemic social dynamics”—and someone else replies with “ah, but you haven’t engaged with all of the theological work done by thinkers about that religion”, I think the second reply does not engage with the question of what our prior should be. I think we should assume religions are false by default, while being open to evidence.
I think similarly the naive case is that lab leak is substantially more likely than zoonosis, but not so overwhelmingly that there couldn’t be enough evidence to swing things back in favor of zoonosis. If that was the way the social epistemology had gone—people thought it was the lab, there was a real investigation and the lab was cleared—then I would basically believe the consensus and think the underlying process was valid.
There are two ways I can read this. The first is that when we catch people covering up evidence that points to them committing a crime, we should assume that they’re guilty of the underlying crime. That seems pretty bad because it’s not necessarily true (altho the coverup is some evidence for it). The second is that you should assume they’re guilty of the crime of covering up relevant info, and treat them as such. That does sound right, but it doesn’t justify you in talking about the underlying crime as if you know who’s guilty of it.
I agree that the virology and epidemiology communities didn’t watch the rootclaim debate, but I feel like this is jumping to the conclusion that they’re gullible, rather than that they’re just familiar with a bunch of data and are integrating it sensibly. The main thing that plays against it is low familiarity with the DEFUSE proposal in the GCRI survey, but I think that’s plausibly explained by people not having read the whole thing (it’s really long!).
I mean a third way, which is that covering up or destroying evidence of X should have a penalty of roughly the same severity as X. (Like, you shouldn’t assume they covered it up, you should require evidence that they covered it up.)
I think you’re pushing my statement further than it goes. Not everyone in a group has to be gullible for the social consensus of the group to be driven by gullibility, and manufactured consensus itself doesn’t require gullibility. (My guess is that more people are complicit than gullible, and more people are refusing-to-acknowledge ego-harmful possibilities than clear-mindedly setting out to deceive the public.)
To elaborate on my “courtier’s reply” comment, and maybe shine some light on ‘gullibility’, it seems to me like most religions maintain motive force thru manufactured consensus. I think if someone points that out—”our prior should be that this religion is false and propped up by motivated cognition and dysfunctional epistemic social dynamics”—and someone else replies with “ah, but you haven’t engaged with all of the theological work done by thinkers about that religion”, I think the second reply does not engage with the question of what our prior should be. I think we should assume religions are false by default, while being open to evidence.
I think similarly the naive case is that lab leak is substantially more likely than zoonosis, but not so overwhelmingly that there couldn’t be enough evidence to swing things back in favor of zoonosis. If that was the way the social epistemology had gone—people thought it was the lab, there was a real investigation and the lab was cleared—then I would basically believe the consensus and think the underlying process was valid.