Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins
by defrost on Saturday January 25, 2025 @10:56PM
(#42827574)
> I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate
It was 18 hours.
Three blocks of six hours.
Plus preparation time by both parties and the multiple judges who were chosen to have the kind of expertise to weigh up arguments.
Both parties were invested in making a case, and each put up $100,000 in escrow to add weight to the debate.
The case that you put forward lost.
It was debated by the person that put it forward.
He lost.
Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins
by vcdimension on Sunday January 26, 2025 @07:52AM
(#42829774)
I had a look at Eric Stansifer's write-up of his decision, but I didn't read all of it (83 pages!).
He does seem to have a good understanding of Bayesian decision making and hypothesis testing.
What confuses me however, is his dismissal of two pieces of evidence in table 2 which he says should be ignored "following the presumption that HSM is the first SSE", and yet earlier, in footnote 24, he states "We are very specifically not conditioning on that place being HSM" (talking about the first SSE location). Can anyone enlighten me about this seeming contradiction?
I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-...
I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.