This market resolves once we have a definitive answer to this question. (i.e. "I've looked at all notable evidence presented by both sides and have upwards of 98% confidence that a certain conclusion is correct, and it doesn't seem likely that any further relevant evidence will be forthcoming any time soon.")
This will likely not occur until many years after Covid is no longer a subject of active political contention, motivations for various actors to distort or hide inconvenient evidence have died down, and a scientific consensus has emerged on the subject. For exactly when it will resolve, see /IsaacKing/when-will-the-covid-lab-leak-market
I will be conferring with the community extensively before resolving this market, to ensure I haven't missed anything and aren't being overconfident in one direction or another. As some additional assurance, see /IsaacKing/will-my-resolution-of-the-covid19-l
(For comparison, the level of evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change would be sufficient, despite the existence of a few doubts here and there.)
If we never reach a point where I can safely be that confident either way, it'll remain open indefinitely. (And Manifold lends you your mana back after a few months, so this doesn't negatively impact you.)
"Come from a laboratory" includes both an accidental lab leak and an intentional release. It also counts if COVID was found in the wild, taken to a lab for study, and then escaped from that lab without any modification. It just needs to have actually been "in the lab" in a meaningful way. A lab worker who was out collecting samples and got contaminated in the wild doesn't count, but it does count if they got contaminated later from a sample that was supposed to be safely contained.
In the event of multiple progenitors, this market resolves YES only if the lab leak was plausibly responsible for the worldwide pandemic. It won't count if the pandemic primarily came from natural sources and then there was also a lab leak that only infected a few people.
I won't bet in this market.
1,000People are also trading
@0xseraphim I uploaded Claude’s comparison of the two sides’ claims. The conclusion is that both sides are overstating their claims on the database. But the evidence is weak and does not change P(LL) <0.2%. You can take a look in section 3.39 on page 70 in the current version.
@BW I think... that maybe I'm ok... with not looking at a doc filled with 70+ pages of AI slop.... 🤣
@0xseraphim ok I presumed you were trying to say something with a link to the very old database story.
@0xseraphim it is a very common pattern. Prominent lab leakers claim something that is bullshit. They get called out. They admit it was bullshit but useful idiots keep spreading it even 6 years later.
@0xseraphim It was never much active. It is alleged to have been publicly accessible containing incriminating sequences that the whole world missed before it got shut down. Shi’s accounts are corroborated by Daszak to Markolin and Jane Qiu’s reporting independently. And the Zhihua Chen/Coroldo demonstration that substantiates internal testing of database only based on Beijing IP which is where WIV traffic geolocates to.
@BW I have heard this too. And yet, the timing in hindsight looks so very suspicious when lined up with the estimated original contagion event. Not that it is, by itself, a smoking gun.
@0xseraphim so you do not believe the November sick researcher story? Because one cannot believe it leaked twice. Whose estimate though? It is not a mainstream opinion.
@BW If it really did come from a lab, the main smoking guns to look for would essentially be:
- A laboratory possessed SARS-CoV-2 or an extremely close precursor before the outbreak
- A laboratory worker was infected before the first known community cases
- Laboratory records showed a containment failure involving the relevant virus
- Research records documented construction of a virus matching SARS-CoV-2
- The viral genome contained clear evidence of artificial modification
- The earliest infections formed a chain leading from laboratory personnel to the wider community
If you steelman the hypothesis that there was some kind of event at the wuhan lab around september 2019 (ignoring stories about later events for now); then assume they go through some big kneejerk reaction to cover it up; taking that database offline makes a lot of sense within that framing. Even if that original database was never used much to begin with. The fact that they took it offline at that exact moment is a coincidence that really stands out (nonwithstanding any alleged incriminating sequences it may or may not have contained)
@BW you'd basically want to erase as much data as you could as fast as possible and then implement a total information blackout regarding any new related events
@0xseraphim that is why you have to look at it in the context of all the other things you mentioned. Which are also evaluated. I’m afraid there is no short cut to discussing that. One can have inferences and assign likelihoods.
@BW I guess so? But there's so many plausible pieces of evidence to consider. Bayesian analysis isn't going to help you all that much here without having better data to analyse
@0xseraphim anybody interested can take a look at the rebuttals to the issues you raised whether or not the numbers have meaning.
@BW It's like the furin cleavage site. Go assign a prior to that lol
You can ask three different statisticians to mathswash it independently and come up with three completely different numbers
@BW I'm not saying "the numbers" you're talking about are useless. It's just that they're probably not going to be very convincing in the absence of new data
@0xseraphim Addressed in detail and Claude ends up giving a mild likelihood for natural origin. Everything you have mentioned is addressed.
@0xseraphim go ahead. It was a closed book study as I have said. Comparison of provided arguments only.
@BW to be clear, people are interested in what you have to say
It's just that people probably aren't going to care all that much about a massive dump of Opus slop. Maybe there's some insights in there you think stand out?
@0xseraphim I started with that in the other post if you are looking for something that can be said in two minutes.
@BW Ok, but it probably isn't going to give better numbers than other sources right? Because it doesn't have better data, and it doesn't have superhuman intelligence. I guess I follow you if you're making the claim that it's more "neutral". But I wouldn't assign much value to it compared to an aggregate of numbers from other sources.
@BW by all means if your game plan is to respond to anyone posting comments on this market page with references to your doc, feel free to do so! You might find them to be unconvinced however ahaha
@0xseraphim no such game plan but nobody debating here is going to be convinced of anything by the other side anyway.