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Comment by Born-Requirement2128

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Reddit commenter on priors and COVID-19 origins
I suppose you could base the priors on geographical proximity. If from a lab, the virus had to travel zero miles to get to the city with the outbreak, if a natural virus, it had to travel 1000 miles without causing any infections along the way. The zero mile journey is clearly far more likely than the thousand mile one.
AI Verified (Apr 4, 2026)
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Born-Requirement2128, comment on “Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak,” Reddit r/slatestarcodex, 2026.
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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 explicitly discusses how to set priors and compare likelihoods for lab-origin versus natural-origin hypotheses, which is core Bayesian reasoning about the COVID-19 origins question. In context, it appears as a reply in a subthread debating whether such reasoning is the right way to approach the issue, so it provides enough signal to infer a stance on the complete statement. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1ahdisp/comment/oebnis9/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified The quote is best read as supporting the statement: the author answers a complaint about “bad Bayesian reasoning” by proposing how to set priors—“base the priors on geographical proximity” and compare the likelihood of a “zero mile” versus “thousand mile” journey—so they are endorsing Bayesian-style analysis as an appropriate way to judge COVID origins. The inference to “the right framework for settling” is somewhat stronger than the quote itself, but support is more likely than opposition or neutrality in this context. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1ahdisp/comment/oebnis9/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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AI Verified The supplied Reddit permalink shows a comment by Born-Requirement2128 containing the quoted text verbatim aside from line-break formatting, under the thread “Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak — LessWrong.” The source URL therefore contains the quote and supports the attribution. The fetched page shows only a relative timestamp (“3mo ago”), so the exact day is not independently exposed there, but nothing in the source contradicts the stored date. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1ahdisp/comment/oebnis9/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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