Update: I have again updated away from the lab leak theory. Most of the evidence for a lab leak seems overstated after a closer look.See for instance this skeptical take by potholer54.
Hindsight is 20⁄20 but the 85% probability was too high in a certain sense.
I am talking about the following phenomenon: if you had forced me to bet a given fixed amount of money either way right at that moment I would take the 85% implied betting odds. However, if you had (i) offered me such a bet freely, (ii) allowed me to set the amount of money in the bet, (iii) and/or given me more time to research the issue I would ahve refused (i), only bet a small amount on (ii) and certainly spend more time researching the core claims (iii).
The above considerations show the problems with simply giving fixed probability distributions for belief. Certainly, the following phenomena should be considered:
There is a measure on how strongly a belief is held. The strength is often measured in the bet size.
A difference between belief and belief-in-belief
Somebody offering you a bet is implictly giving information about adversarial optimization (I once spoke with a guy in Finance that the bid-ask spread in markets is a measure of this)
There some sort of parameter in a reasoners brain that determines how long that reasoner will spent researching a given issue. Presumably this is set abnormally—perhaps dangerously so! - in the median rationalist.
I am sure there is a literature on this topic which I am now excited to check out! I am sure LessWrongers have thought about this… I would be grateful for any references!
Two important reasons I now favor natural causes: (i) most of the technical evidence seemed to have fallen through—it is always hard to ascertain the validity of technical evidence as a layman, but that was my impression. My initial update rested a lot on (a) not having much evidencemass either way so being easily convinced (b) the lableak piece by Nicholas Wade—even if some of the evidence holds up I feel it overstated its case/omitted contrary evidence.
(ii) the a priori probability of a lab leak origin of COVID-19 should be quite small; of all viri we are confident of a source it is natural, and though lab leaks have happened in the past, there are many more naturally- caused pandemics than human-caused pandemics
Update: I have again updated away from the lab leak theory. Most of the evidence for a lab leak seems overstated after a closer look.See for instance this skeptical take by potholer54.
Do you have a new probability?
I hesitate to give a probability.
Hindsight is 20⁄20 but the 85% probability was too high in a certain sense.
I am talking about the following phenomenon: if you had forced me to bet a given fixed amount of money either way right at that moment I would take the 85% implied betting odds. However, if you had (i) offered me such a bet freely, (ii) allowed me to set the amount of money in the bet, (iii) and/or given me more time to research the issue I would ahve refused (i), only bet a small amount on (ii) and certainly spend more time researching the core claims (iii).
The above considerations show the problems with simply giving fixed probability distributions for belief. Certainly, the following phenomena should be considered:
There is a measure on how strongly a belief is held. The strength is often measured in the bet size.
A difference between belief and belief-in-belief
Somebody offering you a bet is implictly giving information about adversarial optimization (I once spoke with a guy in Finance that the bid-ask spread in markets is a measure of this)
There some sort of parameter in a reasoners brain that determines how long that reasoner will spent researching a given issue. Presumably this is set abnormally—perhaps dangerously so! - in the median rationalist.
I am sure there is a literature on this topic which I am now excited to check out! I am sure LessWrongers have thought about this… I would be grateful for any references!
Two important reasons I now favor natural causes: (i) most of the technical evidence seemed to have fallen through—it is always hard to ascertain the validity of technical evidence as a layman, but that was my impression. My initial update rested a lot on (a) not having much evidencemass either way so being easily convinced (b) the lableak piece by Nicholas Wade—even if some of the evidence holds up I feel it overstated its case/omitted contrary evidence.
(ii) the a priori probability of a lab leak origin of COVID-19 should be quite small; of all viri we are confident of a source it is natural, and though lab leaks have happened in the past, there are many more naturally- caused pandemics than human-caused pandemics
**************************************************************************
“Okay, that was all very very interesting… but please …. I insist”
You put a gun to my head
“What are your bettings odds?”
“Okay, okay 80% chance natural cause, 20% something else”.