After spending two days reading more 90% now feels way to low and 99% more reasonable because so many different stings of evidence point at the same conclusion that it was a lab leak.
I already think a lab leak is more likely than not, and did months ago when I first heard the circumstantial case for the hypothesis, but I’m nowhere near 99%. I’d say ~65%, but that’s just my current prior, and I might not be calibrated that well. The fact that other rationalists are more confident about this than I am makes me want to update in that direction, but I also don’t want to double-count my evidence. I’m also worried about confirmation bias creeping in. Can you summarize the strongest points and their associated Bayes factors? Or factors with error bars, if you prefer?
I don’t factor Bayes factors together when I’m on Metaculus either, so that’s not really how I reason. If you want them I would be interested in yours for the following pieces of evidence.
How do you get a probability as high as 35% for a natural origin? Can you provide Bayes factors for that?
There’s a database for Coronaviruses. We (the international community) funded it to help us for the time when we have to deal with a coronavirus pandemic. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) took it down in late 2019 and doesn’t give it to anyone. Nobody complains about that in a way that brings this in the mainstream narrative even when all those virologists who believe in their field should think that the database is valuable for fighting the pandemic. If it isn’t why are we funding that research in the first place?
According to the US government information there was unusual activity in the WIV in October 2019 with at least significantly reduced cell phone traffic and likely also road blocks.
Three people from the WIV seems to went to hospital in November 2019 with flu or COVID-19 like symptoms in the same week.
Huang Yanling who was in the beginning of the pandemic called patient zero was a WIV employee and US government requests who account for what’s up with her currently go unanswered.
The security at the WIV was so bad that they asked the US for help in 2018 because they didn’t have enough skilled people to operate their biosafety 4 lab safely. Chinese care about saving face, things need to have been bad to get them to tell the US that they didn’t have enough people to operate their lab safely.
There are six separate biological reasons of why the virus looks like it came from a lab.
The bats are more then 1000km away from Wuhan. It’s quite unclear how they would have naturally infected people in Wuhan.
An amazing amount of effort went into supressing the story, likely with a lot of collateral damage that made us react less well to the pandemic. Google, Facebook and Twitter started censoring in early February and that might have been part of the reason why it took us so long to respond.
As Bret Weinstein said, that given that the virus looks so much like it comes from Wuhan the next likely alternative explantion would be that someone went through a lot of effort and released it in Wuhan to make the WIV look bad. If that would be the case it’s however unclear why the WIV doesn’t allow outside inspections to clear their name.
If all the information we had was that Huang Yanling who was in the beginning called ‘patient zero’ was a WIV employee that alone might warrent more then 65%. I mean what are the odds that ‘patient zero’ for a pandemic caused by Coronavirus is randomly an employee of a lab studying Coronaviruses?
Then a lab studying Coronaviruses with known safety problems?
How do you get a probability as high as 35% for a natural origin? Can you provide Bayes factors for that?
I guess that’s fair. I don’t really think that way either, but I want to learn how. I think numbers become especially important when coordinating evidence with others like this. My older prior favored the natural origin hypothesis, because that’s what was reported in the news. I heard the case for the lab leak and updated from there.
There’s a database for Coronaviruses.
Authoritarians in general and the Chinese in particular would reflexively cover up anything that’s even potentially embarrassing as a matter of course. I can’t call a coverup more likely in a natural origin scenario, but it’s still pretty likely, so this is weak evidence.
unusual activity in the WIV in October 2019
Didn’t know this one, but that’s pretty vague. Source?
Three people from the WIV seems to went to hospital in November 2019 with flu or COVID-19 like symptoms in the same week.
The first confirmed case wasn’t until December 8th, last I heard. Still, Wuhan is Wuhan. Even assuming a natural origin, we’d expect people from WIV to be more vigilant than the general public. Three at once is hardly more evidence than one, because they could have given it to each other. I do think this favors the leak hypothesis, because the timing is suggestive, but it seems weak. Could this have been some other disease? How early in November?
Huang Yanling who was in the beginning of the pandemic called patient zero was a WIV employee and US government requests who account for what’s up with her currently go unanswered.
Again, coverup is a matter of course for these guys.
The security at the WIV was so bad that they asked the US for help
Not very strong by itself.
There are six separate biological reasons of why the virus looks like it came from a lab.
Need more details here.
The bats are more then 1000km away from Wuhan.
I knew about this one. This combined with the fact that the biosafety 4 WIV is in Wuhan is most of what got me to thinking the leak was more likely than not.
An amazing amount of effort went into supressing the story [...] Google, Facebook and Twitter
Why? And does this have anything to do with whether it was a leak or not? These are primarily American companies that are already censored in China. This was during the Trump era, when the Left was trying to fight him any way they could. “Racist” has been their favorite ad hominem lately. Unless you can establish than China was behind this, and put in more effort than would be expected as a matter of course, I don’t think this is evidence at all of anything other than normal American political bickering. But we’ve already counted the coverup as weak evidence. We can’t count it again.
As Bret Weinstein said
This doesn’t seem to be saying anything new. Weinstein does at least have gears in his models, but seems dangerously close to crackpot territory. I don’t think he’s a conspiracy theorist yet, but he also seems subject to the normal human biases, and doesn’t seem to be trying to correct for them the way a rationalist would. It’s not obvious to me that his next most likely explanation is the next most likely.
why the WIV doesn’t allow outside inspections
Again, coverup as a matter of course. Nothing new here.
I mean what are the odds that ‘patient zero’ for a pandemic caused by Coronavirus is randomly an employee of a lab studying Coronaviruses?
“Patient zero” is the earliest that could be identified, not necessarily the first to get it. That an employee of a lab studying coronaviruses would notice first doesn’t seem that strange, even if it had been circulating in Wuhan for a bit before. This does seem to favor a leak. How strong this evidence is depends a lot on more details. I could see this being very strong or fairly weak depending on the exact circumstances.
Authoritarians in general and the Chinese in particular would reflexively cover up anything that’s even potentially embarrassing as a matter of course. I can’t call a coverup more likely in a natural origin scenario, but it’s still pretty likely, so this is weak evidence.
I think it’s embarrasing to withold a database that was created to help us fight a pandemic in times of a pandemic. It’s bad for any future Chinese researcher who wants to collaborate with the West if it’s clear that we can’t count of resources that we create together with China to help us in a crisis to actually be available in the crisis. Additionally, why did the coverup start in September 2019?
“Patient zero” is the earliest that could be identified, not necessarily the first to get it.
Yes, but if you take 1 billion Chinese and maybe 200 employees of the WIV what are the odds that “patient zero” is from the WIV?
5,000,000 to 1.
Unless you can establish than China was behind this, and put in more effort than would be expected as a matter of course, I don’t think this is evidence at all of anything other than normal American political bickering.
No, it was American/International supression because of NIH funding gain of function involving the WIV in violation of the ban in 2015 and not putting it through the safety review process that was instituted in 2017.
Why? And does this have anything to do with whether it was a leak or not? These are primarily American companies that are already censored in China.
It’s about how important it was for Farrar on the 2nd of February to get through to Tedros and have Tedros decide while talking about ZeroHedge and Tedros announcing the next day that he’s cooperating with Google/Twitter to fight “misinformation” and ZeroHedge being banned from Twitter that day.
The first confirmed case wasn’t until December 8th, last I heard.
Confirmed cases are different from “cases the US intelligence service knows about because they lauched a cyber attack on the WIV and all the private and professional emails of it’s employees”.
Didn’t know this one, but that’s pretty vague. Source?
Yes, but if you take 1 billion Chinese and maybe 200 employees of the WIV what are the odds that “patient zero” is from the WIV?
5,000,000 to 1.
This is obviously not the right calculation, and I expected better from a rationalist. I’ve already counted the fact that it started in Wuhan where they happen to have a biosafety 4 lab studying coronaviruses as the strongest evidence in favor of the leak. You may feel I didn’t count it strongly enough, but that’s a different argument. What does the entire population of China have to do with it after that point? Nothing. You’re being completely arbitrary by drawing the boundary there. Why not the entire world?
The population of Wuhan, maybe, but we can probably narrow it down more than that, and then we also have to account for the fact that the WIV employees would be much more likely to report anything out of the ordinary when it comes to illness. For the rest of Wuhan at the time, the most common symptoms would have been reported as “the flu” or “a cold”. Mild cases are common, and at least a third of people have no noticeable symptoms at all, especially early on with the less virulent original variant.
The population of Wuhan is about 8.5 million, and the number of staff at WIV, I think was more like 600. So that’s more like 14,000 : 1. I think WIV staff could be easily 20x more likely to notice that the disease was novel, so that’s more like 700 : 1. That’s still pretty strong evidence, but nowhere near what you’re proposing.
This is obviously not the right calculation, and I expected better from a rationalist. I’ve already counted the fact that it started in Wuhan where they happen to have a biosafety 4 lab studying coronaviruses as the strongest evidence in favor of the leak.
I have 99% as my likelihood for the lab leak not 99,9999%, I don’t suggest that 5,000,000 to 1 should be the end number. It’s just a random calculation.
I am often enough at metaculus and played the credence game to not go for the 99.9% that Dr. Roland Wiesendanger proposes.
I think WIV staff could be easily 20x more likely to notice that the disease was novel, so that’s more like 700 : 1.
If that’s your calculation how can you justify only 65%, especially when that’s only one of the pieces of evidence?
After spending two days reading more 90% now feels way to low and 99% more reasonable because so many different stings of evidence point at the same conclusion that it was a lab leak.
I already think a lab leak is more likely than not, and did months ago when I first heard the circumstantial case for the hypothesis, but I’m nowhere near 99%. I’d say ~65%, but that’s just my current prior, and I might not be calibrated that well. The fact that other rationalists are more confident about this than I am makes me want to update in that direction, but I also don’t want to double-count my evidence. I’m also worried about confirmation bias creeping in. Can you summarize the strongest points and their associated Bayes factors? Or factors with error bars, if you prefer?
(Sources and so on are in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wQLXNjMKXdXXdK8kL/fauci-s-emails-and-the-lab-leak-hypothesis)
I don’t factor Bayes factors together when I’m on Metaculus either, so that’s not really how I reason. If you want them I would be interested in yours for the following pieces of evidence.
How do you get a probability as high as 35% for a natural origin? Can you provide Bayes factors for that?
There’s a database for Coronaviruses. We (the international community) funded it to help us for the time when we have to deal with a coronavirus pandemic. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) took it down in late 2019 and doesn’t give it to anyone. Nobody complains about that in a way that brings this in the mainstream narrative even when all those virologists who believe in their field should think that the database is valuable for fighting the pandemic. If it isn’t why are we funding that research in the first place?
According to the US government information there was unusual activity in the WIV in October 2019 with at least significantly reduced cell phone traffic and likely also road blocks.
Three people from the WIV seems to went to hospital in November 2019 with flu or COVID-19 like symptoms in the same week.
Huang Yanling who was in the beginning of the pandemic called patient zero was a WIV employee and US government requests who account for what’s up with her currently go unanswered.
The security at the WIV was so bad that they asked the US for help in 2018 because they didn’t have enough skilled people to operate their biosafety 4 lab safely. Chinese care about saving face, things need to have been bad to get them to tell the US that they didn’t have enough people to operate their lab safely.
There are six separate biological reasons of why the virus looks like it came from a lab.
The bats are more then 1000km away from Wuhan. It’s quite unclear how they would have naturally infected people in Wuhan.
An amazing amount of effort went into supressing the story, likely with a lot of collateral damage that made us react less well to the pandemic. Google, Facebook and Twitter started censoring in early February and that might have been part of the reason why it took us so long to respond.
As Bret Weinstein said, that given that the virus looks so much like it comes from Wuhan the next likely alternative explantion would be that someone went through a lot of effort and released it in Wuhan to make the WIV look bad. If that would be the case it’s however unclear why the WIV doesn’t allow outside inspections to clear their name.
If all the information we had was that Huang Yanling who was in the beginning called ‘patient zero’ was a WIV employee that alone might warrent more then 65%. I mean what are the odds that ‘patient zero’ for a pandemic caused by Coronavirus is randomly an employee of a lab studying Coronaviruses?
Then a lab studying Coronaviruses with known safety problems?
I guess that’s fair. I don’t really think that way either, but I want to learn how. I think numbers become especially important when coordinating evidence with others like this. My older prior favored the natural origin hypothesis, because that’s what was reported in the news. I heard the case for the lab leak and updated from there.
Authoritarians in general and the Chinese in particular would reflexively cover up anything that’s even potentially embarrassing as a matter of course. I can’t call a coverup more likely in a natural origin scenario, but it’s still pretty likely, so this is weak evidence.
Didn’t know this one, but that’s pretty vague. Source?
The first confirmed case wasn’t until December 8th, last I heard. Still, Wuhan is Wuhan. Even assuming a natural origin, we’d expect people from WIV to be more vigilant than the general public. Three at once is hardly more evidence than one, because they could have given it to each other. I do think this favors the leak hypothesis, because the timing is suggestive, but it seems weak. Could this have been some other disease? How early in November?
Again, coverup is a matter of course for these guys.
Not very strong by itself.
Need more details here.
I knew about this one. This combined with the fact that the biosafety 4 WIV is in Wuhan is most of what got me to thinking the leak was more likely than not.
Why? And does this have anything to do with whether it was a leak or not? These are primarily American companies that are already censored in China. This was during the Trump era, when the Left was trying to fight him any way they could. “Racist” has been their favorite ad hominem lately. Unless you can establish than China was behind this, and put in more effort than would be expected as a matter of course, I don’t think this is evidence at all of anything other than normal American political bickering. But we’ve already counted the coverup as weak evidence. We can’t count it again.
This doesn’t seem to be saying anything new. Weinstein does at least have gears in his models, but seems dangerously close to crackpot territory. I don’t think he’s a conspiracy theorist yet, but he also seems subject to the normal human biases, and doesn’t seem to be trying to correct for them the way a rationalist would. It’s not obvious to me that his next most likely explanation is the next most likely.
Again, coverup as a matter of course. Nothing new here.
“Patient zero” is the earliest that could be identified, not necessarily the first to get it. That an employee of a lab studying coronaviruses would notice first doesn’t seem that strange, even if it had been circulating in Wuhan for a bit before. This does seem to favor a leak. How strong this evidence is depends a lot on more details. I could see this being very strong or fairly weak depending on the exact circumstances.
I think it’s embarrasing to withold a database that was created to help us fight a pandemic in times of a pandemic. It’s bad for any future Chinese researcher who wants to collaborate with the West if it’s clear that we can’t count of resources that we create together with China to help us in a crisis to actually be available in the crisis. Additionally, why did the coverup start in September 2019?
Yes, but if you take 1 billion Chinese and maybe 200 employees of the WIV what are the odds that “patient zero” is from the WIV?
5,000,000 to 1.
No, it was American/International supression because of NIH funding gain of function involving the WIV in violation of the ban in 2015 and not putting it through the safety review process that was instituted in 2017.
It’s about how important it was for Farrar on the 2nd of February to get through to Tedros and have Tedros decide while talking about ZeroHedge and Tedros announcing the next day that he’s cooperating with Google/Twitter to fight “misinformation” and ZeroHedge being banned from Twitter that day.
It’s complex, but if you want to understand the point I have it written down in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wQLXNjMKXdXXdK8kL/fauci-s-emails-and-the-lab-leak-hypothesis
Confirmed cases are different from “cases the US intelligence service knows about because they lauched a cyber attack on the WIV and all the private and professional emails of it’s employees”.
It’s the letter that the NIH send the EcoHealth Alliance with question that have to be explained before they want to give funding to the EcoHealth Alliance again. Generally, if you want sources read https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wQLXNjMKXdXXdK8kL/fauci-s-emails-and-the-lab-leak-hypothesis
This is obviously not the right calculation, and I expected better from a rationalist. I’ve already counted the fact that it started in Wuhan where they happen to have a biosafety 4 lab studying coronaviruses as the strongest evidence in favor of the leak. You may feel I didn’t count it strongly enough, but that’s a different argument. What does the entire population of China have to do with it after that point? Nothing. You’re being completely arbitrary by drawing the boundary there. Why not the entire world?
The population of Wuhan, maybe, but we can probably narrow it down more than that, and then we also have to account for the fact that the WIV employees would be much more likely to report anything out of the ordinary when it comes to illness. For the rest of Wuhan at the time, the most common symptoms would have been reported as “the flu” or “a cold”. Mild cases are common, and at least a third of people have no noticeable symptoms at all, especially early on with the less virulent original variant.
The population of Wuhan is about 8.5 million, and the number of staff at WIV, I think was more like 600. So that’s more like 14,000 : 1. I think WIV staff could be easily 20x more likely to notice that the disease was novel, so that’s more like 700 : 1. That’s still pretty strong evidence, but nowhere near what you’re proposing.
I have 99% as my likelihood for the lab leak not 99,9999%, I don’t suggest that 5,000,000 to 1 should be the end number. It’s just a random calculation.
I am often enough at metaculus and played the credence game to not go for the 99.9% that Dr. Roland Wiesendanger proposes.
If that’s your calculation how can you justify only 65%, especially when that’s only one of the pieces of evidence?