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Comment by sarahconstantin

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LessWrong commenter on Bayesian epistemology and the Rootclaim COVID-19 origins debate
You cannot apply Bayes' Theorem until you have a probability space; many real-world situations, especially the ones people argue about, do not have well-defined probability spaces, including a complete set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive possible events, which are agreed upon by all participants in the argument. [...] Rootclaim's lab leak debate [...] took a lot of setup labor and time, and where the result of quantifying the likelihoods was to reveal just how heavily your "posterior" conclusion depends on your "prior" assumptions, which were outside the scope of debate.
AI Verified (Oct 6, 2024)
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sarahconstantin, comment on Richard Ngo, “Why I’m not a Bayesian,” LessWrong, October 6, 2024.
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Policy proposals and claims
Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question
votes Against
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AI Verified The quote is directly about applying Bayesian reasoning to the COVID-19 origins/lab-leak debate. In source context, Sarah Constantin says contentious real-world disputes often lack a well-defined probability space and specifically cites the Rootclaim lab-leak debate as showing that the Bayesian-style result depends heavily on contested priors, which makes a stance on whether Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling COVID origins substantially more likely and determinable. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MGMwqENAgdi85fiwF/p/TyusAoBMjYzGN3eZS)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified The quote is strongly against: she says you often cannot apply Bayes because contentious real-world disputes lack a well-defined probability space, and cites the lab-leak debate as showing that the "posterior" depended heavily on prior assumptions rather than settling the issue. That implies Bayesian analysis is not the right framework for settling COVID-19 origins. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TyusAoBMjYzGN3eZS/why-i-m-not-a-bayesian)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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AI Verified The supplied LessWrong URL contains the exact wording in a comment attributed on-page to “sarahconstantin”; the quoted text matches verbatim aside from the allowed ellipsis omitting intervening sentences. The page itself is dated 6th Oct 2024, consistent with the stored date, and I found no reliable evidence that the author, content, or source URL need correction. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TyusAoBMjYzGN3eZS/why-i-m-not-a-bayesian)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
replying to sarahconstantin