[skissane]

If someone has a track record of hiding stuff, that fact makes it more likely [0] they are actually hiding something. It doesn’t definitively prove they are hiding anything in particular; something being more likely is compatible with it being false. And saying “more likely” is saying nothing about how much more likely; it could just be slightly more likely.

I don’t see how saying that is a “lack of scientific thinking”. I think that criticism is just false.

[0] “more likely” is talking about epistemic probability, Bayesian probability

[bellyfullofbac]

> If someone has a track record of hiding stuff, that fact makes it more likely [0] they are actually hiding something.

That's a tautology. So what, what if someone came with a theory that the virus comes from meteorite that people from this lab had been researching? Does their cageyness mean more likely that the meteorite theory is true? Geez...

[Closi]

> So what, what if someone came with a theory that the virus comes from meteorite that people from this lab had been researching?

The two scenarios are not the same, and denying a plausible scenario isn’t the same as denying an unplausible scenario, particularly when there are negative incentives.

Is your argument really comparing the theory that a coronavirus that hopped species might have come from the lab next door which was doing research on how coronaviruses hopped species with it coming in on a meteorite?

A better example would be if a giant smouldering crater suddenly appeared, and the Chinese government started saying it wasn’t a meteor and holes sometimes just appear because of tectonic activity, while at the same time blocking other nations scientists from seeing the crater.

[fighterpilot]

You're attempting a reductio ad absurdum but it's not valid because the meteorite has a tiny prior probability of being true, whereas the lab leak doesn't have such a tiny prior due to historical precedent of it happening a number of times, even if it is much less likely to be true as the zoonotic origin explanation in the case of COVID.

[skissane]

Thank you. I think this discussion makes more sense if one has a basic understanding of Bayesianism – one starts with a prior probability, one then has various pieces of evidence and associated conditional probabilities than one uses to update that probability, and then one arrives at a posterior probability after updating based on those pieces of evidence. I was talking about the conditional probability for one particular piece of evidence; I was never saying anything about the prior or posterior probability. Obviously you, and others, get this, but it seems bellyfullofbac doesn't.