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Comment by Roko

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LessWrong author and commenter on probabilistic reasoning and COVID-19 origins
It's hard for me to objectively ballpark (4) without help from a few experts. But (1), (2), and (3) are fairly easy to get a ballpark figure for. I think these three are all pretty much independent, so the overall probability of these three things happening under the null hypothesis is just the product - 1/200 × 2/80 × 3/59 = 1/157,000 [...] You can go through Bayes rule, but 80 million is large enough to completely swamp the prior. So either something is wrong with this whole exercise, or the lab leak is basically certain.
AI Verified (Feb 7, 2024)
Source:
Roko, “A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely The Circumstantial Evidence Around Covid-19 Is,” LessWrong, February 7, 2024.
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Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question
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AI Verified The quote is directly about using Bayesian reasoning to evaluate COVID-19 origins: it discusses a null hypothesis, an alternate hypothesis, priors, and Bayes rule, and claims the evidence is strong enough to make a conclusion about lab leak. That makes a stance on the statement substantially determinable. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZdNyKE5yC4YjXGzfG/a-back-of-the-envelope-calculation-on-how-unlikely-the?utm_source=openai)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified The author is most likely for: he frames COVID origins in explicitly Bayesian terms—comparing the evidence under a "null hypothesis" and an alternate, discussing priors, and saying "Bayes rule" would make the evidence "completely swamp the prior," so that "the lab leak is basically certain." That strongly implies he treats Bayesian analysis as the right framework for resolving the question, even though he says this specific model is only "very preliminary." ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZdNyKE5yC4YjXGzfG/a-back-of-the-envelope-calculation-on-how-unlikely-the)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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AI Verified The LessWrong post at the supplied URL is titled “A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely The Circumstantial Evidence Around Covid-19 Is,” credited to Roko, and dated 7th Feb 2024. The page contains the opening quoted passage verbatim at lines 40-41 and the closing sentence verbatim at line 56; the submitter’s [...] accurately omits intervening text, so the quote is authentic, correctly attributed, and present at the source URL. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZdNyKE5yC4YjXGzfG/a-back-of-the-envelope-calculation-on-how-unlikely-the)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
replying to Roko