There are many different types of superintelligence. Some people understand quantum mechanics. Some people are really good at chess. Some people can read Finnegan’s Wake.
[I’m tempted to say, “Some people understand supply and demand
Scott Alexander is really, really good at analysis. So good that he’s become famous for engaging in this activity, with a cult following all over the world. (In recent years, the new people I meet in Orange County are largely through Scott Alexander meet-up groups.)
Thus it would be interesting to see what would happen if Alexander took a deep dive into the Covid origins debate, and looked at all of the evidence that’s been presented by both the Lab Leak and Zoonosis advocates.
Now he’s done so. First in a post that looked at a highly publicized debate between the two sides, and now in a follow-up post that dealt with a wide range of comments on his first post. (For those who don’t know, his comment sections are very long and full of high quality observations. If the objection is not in his comment section, it’s probably not worth considering.)
In the end, Alexander comes down pretty close to where I am:
For now, I’m still at 90-10 zoonosis.
And like me, he gets frustrated with the game of whack-a-mole played by Lab Leak proponents:
I know this comments post won’t be the end of the story. I know that (just as with every other one of my posts, I’m not blaming origins debaters in particular here) someone’s going to go “Sure, Scott confronted 489 arguments. But he failed to confront the strongest argument against his case – this one obscure article in a Nepalese journal that nobody except me has ever heard of. That means he’s a bad-faith actor strawmanning everyone he disagrees with!” I know that someone will find some detail I’m wrong about and spam it all over Twitter with “Scott didn’t realize that an 91Q mutation is different from a ZY6 mutation, how can you ever trust anything he says?” And I know that next month, someone will come up with another SMOKING GUN! – and if I don’t respond to it immediately they’ll say I’m scared and know I’ve lost and am refusing to admit I’m wrong out of sheer stubbornness, and twist some quote of mine to show I’ve admitted I’ve changed my mind.
You need to devote a considerable period of time to the debate if you truly wish to become informed on this issue. Alexander’s two posts are a good place to start.
I occasionally read some really smart bloggers who view both lab leak and zoonosis as being roughly equally probable. I respect their views, as that likely means they didn’t waste enormous portions of their life taking a deep dive into this debate like I did. Good for them. I suspect that if they read Alexander’s two posts carefully, they’d switch their views toward strongly favoring zoonosis—the evidence is pretty strong in that direction.
A couple years ago, commenters raked me over the coals for refusing to admit what they thought was obvious—that Covid came from a lab leak. They claimed I was stubbornly refusing to admit the obvious out of some sort of strange loyalty to the CCP (despite the fact that I said lab leak is a danger worth worrying about, and despite the fact that I severely criticized the CCP at the beginning of the pandemic, and despite the fact that zoonosis is far worse for China’s reputation than lab leak, which explains why the CCP has vigorously tried to cover-up the zoonosis evidence.)
No doubt these commenters will show up here and apologize for their slander against my character.
Just kidding!!
PS. I enjoyed this comment, in reference to a picture of WIV scientists:
This is the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research group, out for a team dinner at a local restaurant on January 15th 2020 (ie a month after the pandemic started). This isn’t the most rational probabilistic evidence in the world. But we’ve already seen people take the rational probabilistic evidence twenty different directions. So let’s ask the same question Peter did – do these look like people who secretly know they just started the worst pandemic in modern history?
If they secretly knew they’d just started the worst pandemic in modern history, wouldn’t they at least be wearing masks?
Like Alexander, I don’t see the picture as being definitive evidence, rather it’s a reminder that these are real people. When I read lots of recent western commentary on China, I get the impression that the Chinese people are viewed as some sort of totalitarian cyborgs. But when I visit China and talk to people, they seem kind of like Americans. I’m slightly more persuaded by a western scientist that met the WIV people at a conference at the end of 2019, and reported that their mood seemed completely normal. Scientists aren’t like lawyers—they’re pretty transparent.
I also believe that people underweight the fact that the Chinese scientists clearly thought it was zoonosis in the early stages of the pandemic, before the CCP told them to keep quiet and began pushing alternative theories.
People who’ve never been to China often have this weird idea that the CCP is omniscient, and that nothing happens in China without the CCP knowing about it. China is different in some respects, but nowhere near as different as many of you assume. Like the US, it’s a vast and endlessly complicated place.