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Comment by Scott Alexander

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Rootclaim is an admirable idea. Somebody called it “heroic Bayesian analysis”, and I like the moniker. Regular human reasoning doesn’t seem to be doing a great job puncturing false beliefs these days, and lots of people have converged on something something Bayes as a solution. But the something something remains elusive.
AI Verified source (Mar 28, 2024)
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Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question
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AI Verified Relevant: the quote is about Rootclaim’s Bayesian method in the COVID-19 origins debate, and the surrounding source context explicitly frames the issue as whether one can "directly apply Bayes" to this question, then says that approach "doesn’t work" because the evidence is too hard to quantify. That makes the author’s stance on the complete statement determinable. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
AI Verified The quote is on the exact issue: in this article, Rootclaim is a Bayesian approach to the COVID-origins debate, and the quoted lines are the author’s evaluation of that approach. The surrounding source context makes a determinate stance substantially more likely, because after this praise/qualification he says that directly applying Bayes to the world’s hardest problems here "doesn’t work" and is too hard to quantify, which clearly bears on whether Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim?hide_intro_popup=true&utm_source=openai)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
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AI Verified Although he calls Rootclaim an "admirable idea," the quote says the Bayes-based solution "remains elusive," and the source context immediately adds that directly applying Bayes here "doesn't work" because the evidence is too hard to quantify. So he is not endorsing Bayesian analysis as the right practical framework for settling COVID origins. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
AI Verified He is not endorsing Bayesian analysis as the way to settle COVID origins. The quote is appreciative but skeptical: the "something something Bayes" solution "remains elusive," and the article’s surrounding context makes the implication explicit: applying Bayes directly here "doesn’t work" because there is too much evidence and it is too hard to quantify, so the method failed at the very task of resolving the disagreement. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago

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AI Verified Verified. The provided Astral Codex Ten URL lists Scott Alexander as the author and Mar 28, 2024 as the publication date, and the quoted passage appears verbatim in the article’s “The Aftermath: Rootclaim” section. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
AI Verified Verified. The fetchable Astral Codex Ten post at the provided URL is titled "Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate," lists Scott Alexander as the author and Mar 28, 2024 as the date, and the quoted passage appears verbatim in the article at lines 378-379. ([astralcodexten.com](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
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