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Comment by badatthinkinggood

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Reddit commenter on Bayesian reasoning and the Rootclaim COVID-19 origins debate
My sense there was that their attempt at doing "full Bayesian reasoning" with proper maths showed the weakness, or at least incompleteness, of Bayes as a framework for figuring things out about complex topics. Meanwhile the non-mathematical intuitive arguments for what evidence was relevant was found more convincing by the judges, and most people here (I think).
AI Verified (May 1, 2024)
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badatthinkinggood, comment on “Hello! Tom Chivers here: I've written a book about Bayes, ask me anything,” Reddit r/slatestarcodex, 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: on the source page, this quote appears in a question explicitly about the Rootclaim debate on COVID origins, and the author says the attempt at full Bayesian reasoning showed Bayes’s weakness or incompleteness for complex topics, while non-mathematical judgments about relevant evidence were more convincing. That makes a stance on whether Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question substantially more likely to be determinable. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1chpomp/comment/l25bn1o/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified The commenter’s view is negative: they say the COVID-origins debate’s attempt at “full Bayesian reasoning” showed “the weakness, or at least incompleteness, of Bayes as a framework” for complex topics, and that non-mathematical arguments were more convincing. That strongly implies opposition to Bayes being the right framework for settling this question. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1chpomp/comment/l25bn1o/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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AI Verified The Reddit permalinked comment page shows this passage as a verbatim excerpt from a comment by badatthinkinggood, and Reddit’s JSON for the same comment lists author="badatthinkinggood" and body text matching the submitted quote. I found no evidence that the stored author, URL, content, or stated May 1, 2024 date are wrong. ([reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1chpomp/comment/l25bn1o/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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