Post by @gerikson@awful.systems

2026-10-29 08:24 UTC

I think it’s more that someone made a Bayesian analysis and concluded with 60% certainty or something that it was a lab leak. Can’t remember the link now but I believe it was widely discussed at the time.

Replies (1)

@Architeuthis@awful.systems 2026-10-29 08:53

There was a rat startup that was aiming to become a sort of ground truth arbiter by putting up bet money if you could win a debate against them on a controversial topic. Lab leak was the first such debate with them on the pro side and they lost like 100K over that to a random acx poster who took them to school. Anyway I’m mentioning this because “60% certainty” reminded me that when arguing for the side of the lab leak all sorts of rationalist accepted truths type stuff emerged, like how they posited a bunch of other incidents as lab leaks and it turned out nobody else actually thought that and it was just arbitrary prior wrangling because it turns out that having we are better than any experts that haven’t read the sequences type contrarianism as a pillar of faith encourages conspiracy brain. Also Sam Altman is a lab leak truther but it’s not like it’s possible to take anything he says at face value.

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